“What did you find out?” Sherm asked.
“The contest was rigged.”
“Oh.”
“We were in Australia a week before that. Another stupid contest. And you’ll never believe what we learned.”
Sherm’s mouth was bone dry. “Rigged?”
“Yes. The stupid Australian contest was rigged, too.”
“Don’t forget the shameless unclothed ones,” the old man added.
“That’s right, Sedona. Would you believe they roll down hills, on their backs, in their birthday suits? It’s fascinating for all of ten seconds, and then, yech. But somebody rigged that one, too. A big difference though. Nobody was killed in Sedona.”
The glimmer of destruction flashed in those horrific eyes again, like the beacon of purgatory. “Lots of people died in Australia. A few corpses in New Zealand. Montana was a slaughterhouse.”
“Montana?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t remember Montana,” Remo blazed. “When you go and snuff out the lives of a dozen odd skydivers, just to give your man the competitive edge, the least you can do is remember the contest.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with it. Any of it.” The lie was transparent even to MacGregor. Remo sneered. “I was there. I was a part of that jump, Sherm. I smelled the bodies burning.”
“Let’s talk this over,” Sherm suggested.
“We are talking it over.”
“Could you make it so I can move?”
“Absolutely not. Let’s talk about the Drake Passage. I see your confusion. The Drake Passage is a body of water. If you go out the door, turn south and walk and walk until you can’t walk any more, that’s the Drake Passage. It goes around the tip of South America and a bunch of guys in sailboats took the passage on their way around the world. Another dumb-ass contest. Only somebody started offing the guys who were winning the race, and when they reached guy number 3, somebody got rid of the killers. That somebody was me. Now is it ringing a bell?”
“The Around the World All by Yourself sailboat race,” MacGregor admitted.
“See, I’ve been cleaning up your messes for months.”
“It was the foreman who committed the crimes, not me. He was the one who hired the hit squad to take out the sailboat racers.”
“Explain, Sherm. What was that supposed to accomplish?”
“I wanted the guy in fifth place to win. He was a young guy, real enthusiastic. A go-getter. He was supposed to be on boxes of Extreme Nuggets. But they called the race off. So after that, me and the network, we decided there should be a standard policy that all competitions must continue despite injury or loss of life. Canceling was a big financial hit for everybody.”
“ESN’s not in on your little scheme,” Remo said. “They’re heartless bastards, but they’re not the ones committing murder.”
The accusation had been ready to fly out of MacGregor’s lips—at least ESN could take some of the blame. But these killers already knew the truth. Why was he so helpless? Why wasn’t he fighting back?
Because Sherman MacGregor would do anything to not unleash the destroyer that dwelt like a malevolent spirit in this man. This man knew how to kill in ways MacGregor could only dream of.
“Please take me to jail,” MacGregor said.
“So, is that how you did it? You’d pick a candidate, engineer their victory, then recruit them? Wouldn’t you get them for less if you struck a deal before they won?”
“Didn’t want to be associated with them prior to the win. Didn’t want it to look like I had foreknowledge. Don’t I get my rights read to me?”
“Who’s the foreman?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know his name. He’s a free agent. He claims he’s never been caught. I was in Mexico City hiring mercenaries and he approached me. All I have is a phone number.”
Chapter 40
Mrs. Mikulka was having a chat with young Mark’s lady friend, Sarah, a lovely girl. The phone interrupted them.
“Hi, Mrs. M. It’s Romeo. I need to talk to Dr. Smith. Would you believe I lost his phone number?”
Mrs. Mikulka pursed her wrinkled lips. “Oh, Romeo, of course. I will put you through to Dr. Smith.”
She buzzed the call through, then hung up, a curious frown. “You know, you would think he would have memorized Dr. Smith’s direct line by now. That Romeo has been a good friend of Dr. Smith’s for so many years. But I’ve always thought he might be a little flighty.”
“Romeo?” Sarah asked deadpan. “Like on The Ladies’ Man?”
Mrs. Mikulka tittered. “Can you imagine that Romeo on some TV show about, you know, seduction? I don’t think so.”
“He’s not a ladies’ man?”
Mrs. Mikulka made a face. “I think he spends all his time waiting on his father, hand and foot. He’s very devoted, I’ll give him that. But he’s no ladies’ man.”
Dr. Smith switched the call to a secure line as Mark Howard penetrated the encryption code guarding the remote control of the explosives in the ice wall.
“Cleverly done,” Howard admitted. “There’s an Extreme Nuggets Web site hosted in New Zealand by MacBisCo. It gets pinged from Battle Creek ten times a second. The commands for the explosives get to New Zealand masked as a ping, then go over standard phone lines to a transmitter mounted on the mountain face across from the ice wall.”
“I see,” Remo said.
“You do?”
In MacGregor’s office, the computer window showed the two technicians being helicoptered off the winner’s summit. The one who had climbed back to the summit was treated at the scene by paramedics. The other one got just a few moments of attention with a stethoscope, then his face was covered.
“So, what did you win today, Sherm?” Remo demanded. “Or was that just you having a little fun?”
MacGregor looked at his lap.
“Well? Was it fun after all?”
MacGregor didn’t answer.
“Let us render this device unusable,” Chiun said impatiently as the helicopter left with the technicians. “Cornmonger, if I detonate the little booms far away, they will forever after be harmless. Is this not so?”
“Right,” MacGregor said.
Chiun reattached the mouse and unceremoniously clicked the cursor on the remaining red spots. The ice bulged and cracked where the last charges went off, and all the red spots turned to black Xs.
“I have never seen a more cowardly way to kill,” the old Master of Sinanju declared.
“Now we call the foreman,” Remo announced. “You ready to track him down?”
“We’re ready,” Mark Howard said from the phone speaker.
Remo used the speed dial on MacGregor’s mobile phone—just click, click, nothing to it—and held it to the ear of the cereal magnate.
Sherman MacGregor tried to relax, to make his voice natural when he talked to the foreman.
The line rang, and rang, and stopped.
Chapter 41
The foreman dropped the stack of blue jeans and tube socks. The moment his mobile phone started ringing, the fear had come. They were close to him. They were on to him. They were calling him.
He looked at the phone display. It was Sherman MacGregor calling. They had caught the son of a bitch. He’d squealed and fingered the foreman.
These people were something out of the ordinary. The foreman had been in close scrapes before, but he never had the feeling of fear that he had right now, and that he had when he cowered in the toilet in the Auckland airport.
He didn’t know what they looked like, but he knew what they sounded like. Two men, and one of them called the other one Little Father. The one who was Little Father had a high-pitched, almost a singsong, voice. They were terrifying. If the foreman lifted the cover on his mobile phone, those two, or whoever they worked for, would immediately pinpoint the foreman in the All-Mart in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.