Instead, he swam by day—innumerable laps around the motel’s swimming pool—and worked the beach at night. No showing off in front of tourists during daylight hours. Remo backed off the Sinanju dives that he had learned from Chiun and simply swam to work off nervous energy.
The nights were something else.
He went out late, allowing youthful drunks and lovers ample time to finish up their business on the beach. A brooding fear of crime helped clear the water’s edge, and Remo rarely saw another living soul. If there were muggers lurking in the shadows, watching him, they had enough sense left in wasted brains to let him be.
Too bad. He would have welcomed company, if they came armed and looking for an easy touch.
Instead, he worked the sand. Ran miles along the beach without a footprint to betray his passing, up the coast from Lauderdale as far as Pompano, or south to Hollywood. It felt like floating when he ran, barefoot, left nothing for the naked eye to follow. Hunting dogs could have picked up his scent, perhaps, but he was not concerned with hounds just now.
His enemies were human beings.
Once each night, when he was sure he had the beach all to himself, he stripped his clothes off, dashed into the surf and swam as Chiun had taught him, the Sinanju way. He didn’t struggle with the current, but rather used it, let it help him as he swam for a protracted distance underwater. An observer could have been forgiven for assuming he had drowned, his body carried out to sea or maybe savaged by a shark. When Remo surfaced, better than a hundred yards from shore, he felt no weariness or pain. Instead, it was as if the worries of the day had sloughed off, like a reptile’s skin, to leave him fresh, renewed.
He carried no towel with him, but the warm air dried him as he ran back toward the motel. A mile or so before he reached his destination, Remo stopped again, this time to dress. He wondered what the police would make of the reports if someone saw him running naked on the beach, and finally decided it would not make news in Florida—unless, of course, he was a politician, televangelist or host of some insipid children’s TV show.
Chiun was sleeping when he left the room at night and made no sound when he returned, but Remo knew the old Korean was aware of every move he made.
The Master of Sinanju didn’t sleep with one eye open, but he very likely could have if he wanted to. Instead, he was so perfectly attuned to his environment—wherever and whatever it might be—that he could sense a change, regardless of his waking state. He was Chiun. That said it all.
On Day Three, when they came back from a long walk, the message light was flashing on the bedside telephone. Remo’s Aunt Mildred had called, the operator told him, asking Remo to return the call as soon as possible. Smith’s code.
The blue contact telephone rang only once before Smith picked it up.
“I have some information for you, Remo.” No amenities or salutations. The CURE director ran true to form, got straight to business, as if every wasted moment was a personal affront.
“I love to talk to you first thing in the morning, Smitty. You’re like a sparkling ray of sunshine. What have you got?”
“First I should tell you the bad news—or I suppose I should say the non-news. The police and FBI came up with nothing on the killer in Coral Springs except his fingerprints. Another perfect match with Thomas Allen Hardy. DNA analysis will take a while, but my guess is that it will be another match.”
“So, now it’s triplets,” Remo said, seriously.
“He drove a rented car,” Smith said. “They found it two doors up the street. Hardy’s fingerprints all over it. He had to show a driver’s license for the rental, but it was bogus. A patrolman found it in the glove compartment along with a street map. Maybe we can trace the artist, maybe not. It is doubtful he or she would know our Mr. X, in any case.”
“That’s it? No airline tickets? Nothing that will help us. backtrack?”
“Nothing,” Smith replied. “Right now I could not even prove he flew to Florida. I am going to check airline registers against the driver’s license, but I have a hunch he would not use the same name twice. If there is a round-trip ticket sitting in a locker. or a motel room somewhere, it is likely we will never hear about it”
“Damn! These guys drop out of nowhere, like they beamed down from the freaking starship Enterprise or something.”
“Perhaps not,” said Smith. “I began with the bad, but there is some good news.”
“I could use some,” Remo told him.
“I got lucky with a hit on Radcliff. Working from the logical assumption that the move on Jasper Frayne was probably related to Eugenix Corporation, I made cross-checks on the personnel my first priority.”
“I thought you said the records were destroyed.”
“Correct.” Smith sounded smug, and Remo wondered if his lemon face would be showing just the bare hint of a smile. “I had to do it backward, which was no small task, I can assure you.”
“Backward?”
“You recall the stated goals on the Eugenix corporate charter?”
“Education and genetic research,” Remo said.
“Correct. I think it is safe to say the education part of it was fraudulent, but I pursued both angles just in case.”
“I still don’t follow you.”
“Education calls for teachers, and genetic research calls for scientists—geneticists and biochemists at the helm, with all kinds of supporting staff.”
“Makes sense.”
“With that in mind,” Smith said, “I programmed the computer to select all secondary-level educators, medical researchers and physicians by the name of Radcliff who were practicing from 1961 to 1984, inclusive.”
“You can do that?” Remo never ceased to marvel at the ways in which advanced technology invaded private lives.
“It is not foolproof,” Smith admitted. “Someone always tumbles through the cracks, of course, but the computer threw up nineteen thousand names. Approximately half of those were teachers, anywhere from junior-high-school English to the dean of girls at a Midwestern university, but none of them had any visible connection to Eugenix.”
“Wow. Surprise.”
“The medics were a different story, but it still took time. Of the 8,295 subjects, I scored a hit on number—let me see—3,014. Naturally I finished off the run, but this is it. The one and only.”
“Do I have to guess, or what?”
“His name is Dr. Quentin Bishop Radcliff— He is an M.D., not a Ph.D. He specializes in—”
“Genetics?”
“Correct. Anyway, he did.”
“And now?”
“Let me begin at the beginning. Quentin Bishop Radcliff, born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on March 7, 1931. His father was a Harvard-educated surgeon. The son followed the father into the medical field. However, his preoccupation was with research. Interned at Boston Memorial and passed his boards in 1961. Apparently, he went directly into theoretical research.”
“The same year Jasper Frayne set up Eugenix Corporation.”
“That is correct. It would seem that Radcliff made Eugenix his career for almost twenty years. He left in 1981, three years before it finally collapsed, and opened up a private practice in Raytown, Missouri, east of Kansas City.”
Remo frowned. “What kind of private practice?”
“Obstetrics and gynecology,” said Smith.
“A baby-delivery doctor?”
“So it would appear.”
“How long was he in Raytown?”