He had been at the business of learning people's secrets for most of his life, and one of the things he had learned was that at the core of most mysteries was money. If you found something unusual going on, and if you stayed at it long enough and you dug into it deeply enough, sooner or later you would find somebody with a monetary interest behind it all.
When the airline deaths had affected only just Folks Airlines, he had been inclined to think it might have been the work of cultists or lunatics, attracted by the airline's low fares and willing to settle for the few dollars they might get from economy-minded passengers.
But suddenly just Folks had been moved off the passenger kill list and International Mid-America and Air Europa had been savaged, and in a different way. The Just Folks killings had been small, one at a time, small family groups. But the two other airlines had been hit in such a way as to maximize the impact of the killings on the airlines' reputations and stability.
Money was involved somehow. Smith knew it.
He had the computers roll up an ultrarapid scan of all U.S. airline ticket sales during the past month, and concurrently had the machines check for any sizable cash withdrawals from any airline official with IMAA or Air Europa. As an afterthought, he included just Folks.
Then he sat back and let the computers permute for all they were worth.
It was the great beauty of the computers-which he called the Folcroft Four and which he had personally designed - that their exteriors looked like oversize scrap heaps, obsolete in their technology, and excessively dependent on exotic maintenance systems. But inside, each one was a masterwork, with much of the technology invented by Smith himself when he could not find it available through commercial channels.
And for years, into the four computers had gone the information gathered by a network of people who reported all the bland and mediocre details of their jobs. For this work, they got a small stipend from Smith. Of course, none of them had ever heard of Smith or CURE and did not know who was sending them money. They just assumed it was the FBI or the CIA and didn't really care who it was as long as the small monthly checks kept coming.
These reports were organized by Smith's computers, indexed and cross-indexed, cataloged and cross-cataloged, so that they were able to answer within minutes almost any kind of question about any kind of activity in the United States.
And now they answered his questions, and from the answers Smith extracted one glaring, blinding detaiclass="underline"
A. H. BAYNES, PRESIDENT OF JUST FOLKS AIRLINES, REMOVED FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS FROM PERSONAL ACCOUNT 7/14. On 7/15 TWENTY-ONE TICKETS ABOARD INTERNATIONAL MID-AMERICA AIRLINES PURCHASED BY UNKNOWN BUYER FOR $4,927 CASH. A. H. BAYNES SOLD STOCKS WORTH $61,000 7/23. On 7/24, 120 TICKETS ABOARD EUROPA FLIGHT TO PARIS PURCHASED FOR $60,000. PROBABILITY OF CONNECTION, 93.67 PERCENT.
Smith felt like whooping for joy. Instead he pressed the intercom button on his desk and said in his usual dry, lemony voice, "Hold my calls for a while, Mrs. Mikulka."
Then he called just Folks Airlines and got a cheerful recording saying that if he really wanted to talk to someone, he should hold. He waited through three long selections of Muzak, made even longer because it was the music of Barry Manilow, before a female voice broke through with a crackle.
"Just Folks, the friendly, SAFE airline," she said.
"I'd like to speak to Mr. A. H. Baynes, please," Smith said.
"I'm sorry, but Mr. Baynes is unavailable."
"Is this his office?"
"No, this is the reservations desk at the airport."
"Then how do you know he's unavailable?"
"Do you think a millionaire like A. H. Baynes would be standing here getting varicose veins and hawking tickets for poverty wages?"
"Would you please connect me with his office?" Smith said.
"Mr. Baynes's office," another female said. Her voice had the steel edge of the executive secretary.
"Mr. Baynes, please. This is the Securities and Exchange Commission calling."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Baynes isn't in."
"Where can I reach him? This is an urgent matter."
"I'm afraid I can't tell you," she said, the flinty voice mellowing with a kind of desperation. "He's away on personal business."
"Now? With the crisis in air travel?" Smith said.
"At Just Folks, there is no crisis," the secretary said levelly.
"Does he call in for messages?"
"Occasionally. Do you want to leave one?"
"No," Smith said, and hung up.
He realized he was alone. No Remo. No Chiun. And the clock was ticking away on CURE. But he knew Baynes had something to do with the airline killings. He knew it.
He would have to find Baynes. And he would have to do it alone.
Chapter Seventeen
Remo sat on the edge of the bed in the New Orleans motel room, his elbows braced on his knees, his hands covering his face. Why was he in New Orleans?
He didn't know. He had come on his own, walking, hitchhiking, following road by road, following something he could not explain or understand.
Where was Chiun? Chiun would understand. He knew about the Kali business. It had seemed to Remo like a fairy tale when he had first heard it-the hopeless fantasy of an old man who believed too strongly in legends-but Remo wasn't sure anymore. Something had brought him to this shabby room on this dark street. Something had pulled him all the miles from Denver to here.
The worst of it was that he could feel its influence growing inside him. There was something dark and alien and frightening right under his skin. That something that had compelled him to shame himself with that blond girl in a public alley. A normal man, burning up the way Remo was, might run amok and kill someone. But what of someone with Remo's strength and killing techniques? How many would he kill? How much damage could he do?
It was a nightmare and there was no way Remo could wake from it. Little by little, he had given in.
From his first tentative steps outside the hotel room in Denver, he had convinced himself that he was only going for a walk around the city streets. He had told himself, very calmly and logically, that he couldn't very well wait inside a closed room for the days or even weeks that it might take Chiun to return.
Reason was on his side and Chiun's story about Master Lu and the talking stone goddess was unreasonable. He would have been a fool to hide out for fear of a silly legend. So he walked out of his hotel room in Denver, and his reason told him that it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do. But something in the back of his mind knew better.
In the old days, before he knew of Harold Smith or CURE, when he was just a foot cop walking a beat in Newark, New Jersey, Remo had tried to quit smoking. The ritual occurred every year: he would stop cold, filled with righteous willpower and a sense of mastery over his own impulses. Then, generally after a week, he would allow himself one cigarette. It was nothing, one cigarette. His reason told him so. He didn't even enjoy the one cigarette. But it always marked the end of his good intentions, and even though his reason told him that one single cigarette was harmless, his inner mind knew the truth: that he was a smoker once again.
And so when he left the hotel room in Denver, he wrote the Korean characters for "going" in yellow chalk on the outside of the hotel building. He had marked it on two other places in Denver and sporadically throughout his journey, throwing out crumbs of bread for Chiun to follow.
Because he knew in the back of his mind that he was already lost.
Chiun, come find me. He clenched his hands into two fists and held them in front of him, shaking. The lust was growing within him. It, the thing, Kali, whatever. It wanted him to move. His destination was near. He had known it when he reached the dark street in New Orleans. The force inside him had grown so great that it had taken all his effort to fight it and duck into this seedy hotel with no bedspread, a battered television set strewn with wires, and only a thin yellow hand towel in the bathroom.