"Did Sun not wish them inside the stadium during the ceremony?" Smith asked.
"In or outside," Remo explained. "There weren't any cops around anywhere. More than twenty bodies raining down all around us, and not even a beat cop with a billy club to give me and Chiun a hand."
"Twenty?" Smith asked, gray face creasing in tart displeasure. "You said there were only nine."
"Oh," Remo said. "I guess I forgot to mention the Sunnies who were killed."
"Yes, you did," Smith said aridly.
"There were about fourteen of them," Remo explained. "One of the hit men got off a couple of rounds before I could get to him."
Smith's pinched face grew troubled. "And they did not report that, either?" he said. "How is it possible they could have kept it sec-?" Smith paused, a sudden realization dawning on him. Typing swiftly, he brought back up on his computer screen the original story that the mainframes had collected.
"Remo," the CURE director said flatly when he was again scanning the familiar lines of text, "I am looking at an Associated Press story out of New York that concerns a number of unidentified bodies that have washed up along the banks of the East River this morning. All eight victims died of gunshot wounds."
"They can't be the ones, Smitty," Remo said. "The police collected the bodies."
"You said there were no police," Smith said slowly.
"They showed up after."
Smith considered. "One moment, please." The aching in his fingers long-forgotten, Smith rapidly accessed a stealth program that allowed him to slip into the computerized homicide records of the NYPD. "There is no evidence of any bodies being removed from the Sunnie ceremony," he said after only a quick perusal of the files. Leaving that aspect of the police system, he logged in to another area.
"That's impossible," Remo insisted while Smith worked. "I saw them myself."
"No," Smith said firmly. "You did not." He had stopped typing. "Whoever you saw was not with the police. There are no records of any officers being placed on duty near Yankee Stadium during the wedding ceremony. Nor were any summoned there for any type of disturbance."
"They were phonies?" Remo asked.
"So it would seem."
"So you think the bodies in the East River are who? The hit squad or the Loonies?"
"It seems that the ones who have washed up so far would be with the Grand Unification Church. All young white males. But there have only been eight in all. Your Korean assassins might still be out there. I will alert the authorities to begin conducting searches along beaches and in the waters between the Triborough and Bronx-Whitestone Bridges. The bodies collected thus far have been tightly concentrated roughly at the midpoint of this area."
"I don't know, Smitty," Remo said doubtfully. "If they dumped twenty-three bodies into the river at once, doesn't it seem like at least one of the eight corpses that have turned up so far would be one of the killers?"
"Possibly," Smith conceded. "But not necessarily. We will learn more when the Korean bodies are recovered."
"I'm kind of curious to know who they were," Remo said.
"As am I," Smith agreed. "I do not enjoy the prospect of assassination squads running loose on American soil. I will contact you when any new information presents itself." Smith was typing as he spoke. "I asked you before if you were at home, but I do not believe you answered."
"Yeah, you did, didn't you?" Remo said.
Instead of a reply to his query, Smith heard the familiar flat buzz of a dial tone.
Chapter 16
The first government agent to peer into the mysterious box from America threw up. He pressed his hands tightly against his mouth as brown rice launched from between his tense fingers.
"What is wrong with you?" demanded the security agent assigned to watch his colleague. For suspicion rather than security, there were always at least two men in each detail. The second agent's face was angry.
The first agent was vomiting so hard it was impossible for him to speak. He merely turned away at the question, shaking his head as he continued to retch uncontrollably.
The second agent scowled. As he sidestepped both the still vomiting agent and the pile of clotted rice-thick with stomach fluids-gathering at the man's feet, the second North Korean official peered inside the cardboard case.
His lunch immediately joined that of his comrade on the cold concrete floor.
They vomited and vomited until there was nothing left but air. For several long, painful minutes, they continued to dry heave.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea was starving yet again. Food was being strictly rationed, and every meal was meager.
When they were through vomiting, rather than leave the former contents of their stomachs for the cleaning staff to take home to divide among the members of their starving families, the two men got down on their hands and knees. Like dogs, they began scooping up and eating their own vomit. Only when they had licked the floor clean did they leave the room, careful not to peer at the ghastly contents of the innocuous open box.
THE HEAD OF THE People's Bureau of Revolutionary Struggle was immediately summoned to the locked airport room. He arrived from his Pyongyang office by official car twenty minutes later.
As he entered the small secure room, he noted with disdain the stench of stomach fluids.
The two security agents accompanied him inside. They hung back by the door, faces ashen, as the PBRS head strode over to the cardboard box.
The head of North Korean intelligence did not have the same response to the box's contents as his subordinates.
"When did this arrive?" he asked, hooded eyes peering inside.
"An hour ago," was the reply from one of the sickly men.
"Directly from America?"
"America? No. It came from the South."
"With a message from America," the intelligence head said leadingly.
The men glanced at each other, puzzled. "None that we know of," one admitted.
Hmm.
For a few moments, the older man merely stared into the box, tipping his head to see inside from different angles. But all at once, to the horror of the two men across the room, the director of PBRS reached inside the box. He used both hands, shoulders making a shrugging motion as he clasped the object contained within.
He lifted it out into the wan fluorescent light of the drab little room located off the main Pyongyang terminal.
For the second time within a half hour, the first security agent's lunch spewed out onto the floor.
The other man had braced himself. Covering his nose and mouth, he managed to keep his rice down, though his stomach knotted in waves of churning acid fire. He swallowed the clump of rice that had gathered in his throat.
Across the room, the director of the People's Bureau of Revolutionary Struggle turned the object over in his hands. He was like a woman in a market carefully appraising a large melon. Except melons did not have noses.
The severed head had distinctly Korean features. But it was somewhat desiccated, even though it had been encased in some kind of plastic shrinkwrap.
The wrapping twisted the nose to one side and flattened the eyes even further than nature had. Deep maroon pools of blood had gathered, mostly dry now, at the bottom of the tight bag. Through the congealed blood, the director could make out jagged tears in the flesh of the neck. The object employed to remove the head had not been particularly sharp.
Without warning, the director tossed the severed head to the subordinate who had yet to throw up in his presence.
"Have this taken to the PBRS forensics laboratory immediately," he ordered.
There were eight other boxes just like it stacked neatly beside the first. They had yet to be opened.
"Do not open these," the PBRS director commanded. "I will hold the two of you responsible if they are damaged in any way. Take them to the lab, as well."