It was in those earlier memories that the SLA had taken form. Of course, Waldron Perriweather couldn't care less about most animals. They were coarse, hygiene-obsessed things that cared as little for insects as human beings did. But when he had first tried recruiting people for the Insect Liberation Front, no one had seemed particularly interested. Human beings were self-centered creatures who wanted to believe that they were the superior species of earth. Most of them didn't even know that they were outnumbered by insects more than a million to one. As far as most ignorant humans were concerned, insects were objects to be swatted without a thought. Little boys tore the wings off flies for sport. Housewives regularly sprayed their kitchens with fly poisons. They let out plastic containers that emitted toxic fumes just to avoid sharing their space with flies. The injustice of it was too great to be borne.
But he couldn't interest anyone in the Insect Liberation Front, so quietly, using a lot of other people as the up-front leaders, he had begun the Species Liberation Alliance. He put up the money and directed it. In the early days, the public members took the credit. Now, as the group had become more violent in its methods, the public members took the blame. All Waldron Perriweather got was the satisfaction of a job well done.
But now the battle was almost over. He had his invincible weapon. One of them was alive in the Plexiglas cube in his office, and another twelve were little maggots, gorging themselves on rancid beef. In another day or two, they would be red-winged beauties too. Ready to take their revenge on the earth.
Upstairs, in the dusty quiet room housing the jeweled miniature casket, Perriweather spoke softly to the withered black insect.
"It has begun, Mother," he said. "I told you that your death would be avenged. The punishment is coming for all those who could so casually kill our kind as if we were of no importance. They will see our importance, Mother. The new red-winged fly will be our avenging angel."
He thought for a moment. "There are two obstacles yet to deal with, Mother. The two new scientists at the IHAEO laboratory. From what I hear, they claim to be even further advanced than Dr. Ravits was. And they were responsible for the mass murder in Uwenda, wiping out the Ung beetle."
A tear rolled down his cheek as he thought of the horrible numbers of insects killed. "They're monsters, Mother. But don't worry. Their time is coming. This Dr. Remo and this Dr. Chiun will see no more sunrises."
Chapter 14
Barry Schweid had finally simplified the steps necessary to get the information from the small attache-case computer. Smith still did not understand how Schweid was able to use something he called cosmic energy for storage, but that didn't matter. It was enough that any bit of information that went into CURE's main computers at Folcroft and on St. Martin Island would instantly be transferred to the small hand-held attache case. And now Smith no longer needed Schweid to access that information: he could get it himself.
Schweid had also worked out the erasure mechanisms for the main computer: He had already installed it on the St. Martin equipment and when Smith went back to Folcroft, he would do the same with the mainframe computers there. CURE's information would be safe from invasion. If anyone should ever enter the computer line, it would instantaneously erase itself.
It was absolute safety, absolutely foolproof, and Smith felt good.
Until he felt the click in the attache case which meant that there was a telephone call for him.
When he opened the case, he saw a small green light lit. That meant the call was coming from his office in Rye, New York, and he was surprised.
The green light had never been lit before. Mrs., Mikulka, his secretary, was far too efficient to require any help from him during the time he spent away from the office.
Actually, it was Mrs. Mikulka who ran the day-to-day operations of the sanitarium, and her salary, if not her title, reflected it. She knew nothing about CURE and if her superior often seemed inordinately engrossed in some business that needed no one but himself to run it, she kept that opinion to herself. Actually, she believed that Smith had himself some kind of time-consuming hobby, like correspondence chess, and not a business that he organized and managed, because she felt that Harold Smith was one of those men who could not organize a button into a buttonhole unaided.
"Yes, Mrs. Mikulka," he said into the small portable telephone in the case.
It couldn't be anything bad, Smith thought. His security problems with the computers were solved; Remo had obviously found and disarmed the atomic weapon because there had been no explosion, and he had faith that Remo and Chiun would soon put an end to whoever was behind the attacks on the IHAEO labs. And Dr. Ravits' great scientific breakthrough was safe and now belonged to the world's scientific community. The day might come when the world would be free of destructive insects, and if that happened, CURE could take some of the quiet credit. Nothing bad could happen to Smith now.
"I'm sorry to bother you, Dr. Smith," Mrs. Mikulka said hesitantly. There was a catch in her voice. Her words trailed off into silence.
"Hello. Mrs. Mikulka, are you there?"
"Yes, sir," the woman said. "I don't know quite how to tell you this . . ."
"Go ahead, please," Smith said, but tried not to be snappish with the woman. "I'm expecting another call and I'd like to keep this conversation brief." The truth was, Smith was expecting no other call. He didn't like to tie up any telephone line. The more words, the more chance of someone overhearing them.
"Of course, sir," she said. "The offices have been broken into."
"The computers downstairs?" Smith said. "No, they weren't touched. It was my desk."
"What in the desk?" Smith asked mildly, feeling a wave of relief flood his body. There was nothing of importance to CURE in her desk.
"Your telephone book, sir."
Telephone book? All the telephone numbers in the world had been programmed into the Folcroft computers years before.
"The old book," she continued. "The address book you gave me. It was before you built your computers. You had me type all your numbers into a directory. I think it was in 1968."
He remembered. It was taking a risk back then, having eyes other than his own see the material he was assembling to put into the computers. For that reason, he had never hired a permanent secretary, using instead an endless series of temporary typists to handle the overwhelming paperwork.
The typists were dull things as a rule, slow and sometimes too inquisitive about reports that obviously had nothing to do with the administration of a nursing home for the elderly. Only Mrs. Mikulka, on the days she worked for Smith, met his requirements. She was fast, well-organized and totally accurate, and most important, asked no questions about the work.
Eventually, after the computers were installed, Smith took her on permanently, knowing that the sanitarium business at Folcroft would run smoothly and unobtrusively under her keen and discreet eye. But the telephone book was different. It contained a list of numbers, all coded but decipherable, of every contact CURE had used up until 1988. It contained the name of the man who had first recruited Remo, all the upper-echelon Pentagon personnel, leaders of foreign countries, large-scale crime bosses and the like. The information the book contained was of secondary importance. Most of the cast of characters had changed in the intervening years. The danger of the book lay in the fact of its very existence and that it could lead an intelligent observer to wonder who would compile such a list of numbers and possibly bring him to the realization that America had a supersecret agency working outside the law.