There was a telephone too. If he'd had a friend, he would have called just to listen to a voice. A voice might keep him sane. But assassins had no friends. Only victims.
He stood up. He was bathed in sweat and his breath was labored and rasping.
He had to get out. He had to breathe. It was only reasonable.
"What's happening to me?" he shouted aloud. The sound reverberated through the silent room. It wanted him out. It wanted him to come. It, with its sickly-sweet smell and arms of death.
He smashed his fist through the mirror. His image splintered into a thousand pieces and flew in all directions. With a sob, he sat down.
"Get it together. Calm down." He spoke the words softly, gently. He smoothed his hands together until their violent trembling stilled. He turned on the battered television.
"The victims of the most recent wave of airline killings which struck Air Europa earlier this week are still turning up in Paris," the announcer said.
Remo moaned and listened.
"The bodies of three prominent Denver-area residents were found early this morning in a public park near Neuilly, France, a suburb of Paris. They were identified as Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Palmer and Mrs. A. H. Baynes, wife of the president of just Folks Airlines. Apparently she was traveling with her two children, Joshua and Kimberly Baynes, whose whereabouts are still unknown."
"Oh, God," Remo said. It had been his job to stop the airline killings. His job.
How long had it been since he had given a thought to his job, to his responsibilities, to his country? He felt sick. He knew what to do now. He had to go back to work. He had to forget this force that was pulling him away.
He reached for the telephone and began to dial the complex routing code that would eventually connect him with Harold Smith.
The connections were slow. His hand strayed to replace the receiver, but he forced himself to hold on, knowing that It wanted him to hang up. It wanted him alone. For herself.
When Smith pulled into the driveway of his home, he thought about the letter he had meant to write to his wife. Like all the other letters he had planned to write her, it had not been written. And perhaps he would never have the chance again.
He was no fool. The President's phone call had been his last warning to CURE. Unless Smith could do something about the air deaths, the next communication from the White House would be to disband. And with Remo gone, with Chiun gone, Smith had no illusions. He might return empty-handed, and that would be the end of CURE, and of Harold W. Smith.
He owned Irma a good-bye.
As he got out of the car, he saw two neighbors sitting in their front yard and he realized that he had been living in the same house with Irma for twenty years and he did not know the names of any of his neighbors.
Irma, of course, knew everyone's name. She was like that. She was in, and of, the neighborhood. Her flower garden had won first prize in the neighborhood gardening contest for fourteen years in a row, until she had decided that delphiniums weren't worth the effort.
But each June, until then, a bright blue ribbon had hung proudly from the Smiths' door. Most years, it was the only acknowledgment Irma made that she had won, and Smith realized that he had never told her that the garden looked nice.
As he walked up the drive, he could see Irma, through the bay window, tearing off her apron and patting her hair in place in preparation for his arrival. It made him smile one of his infrequent smiles. His plump wife, her hair now a bluish ghastly silver, always treated him like a beau coming to call on their first date. If she was awake. Most nights, he would come home too late and she would already be asleep. But a plate of food, always awful, always covered with some kind of tomato-soup goo, would be waiting for him. But there were never any accusations, never any reciminations for keeping the hours he did. As far as Irma was concerned, anything was an improvement over the old days when Smith worked in the wartime OSS and then the CIA and was gone without a word for months at a time. During the whole of World War II, she had seen Smith twice. During the five tensest years of the Cold War, she had seen him only once, and had received two telegrams from him, each exactly ten words in length.
"You're just in time for supper," she said, pretending as she always did, not to be excited about seeing him.
"I'm not hungry. Please sit down."
"Oh, dear." She sat, her forehead wrinkled. "Is it very bad?" She picked up her knitting.
"No. Nothing of the sort." There was a long, awkward silence.
"Will you take off your jacket, dear?" Irma asked.
"No. I have to be going."
"Busy at the office, I expect."
"No. Everything's fine. I have to go out of town. Maybe for some time."
Mrs. Smith nodded and managed a smile. She had always smiled. Even when Smith had left for Europe at the start of the war, after they had been married only three weeks, she hadn't cried. She had only smiled. Smith looked at her and wondered: How do you tell a woman like that that you may have to commit suicide very soon?
She clasped his hands. "Go do what you have to do, dear," she said gently.
He stared at her for a moment. It had never occurred to him that Irma might know that he did secret work, that he had more of a job than just head of Folcroft Sanitarium. But maybe she did. No. She couldn't know. He had never discussed his work with her. Really, he thought with some shame, he had never discussed much of anything with her. And yet she had always made things easy for him. Even now, she was making it easy for him to leave, as if she sensed that it was somehow very important.
"Right." He cleared his throat, nodded, and left the table. Halfway out the door, he turned around. "Irma, I have to tell you something."
"Yes, dear?"
"I ... er, you ... that is, I . . ." He exhaled noisily. "The garden is lovely."
She smiled. "Thank you, dear."
A. H. Baynes's home was in a suburb of Denver where there were more trees, more schools, more parks, and more money than anywhere else in the area. All the houses were on large tracts of manicured lawn, with garages the size of most single-family dwellings in the city.
There was no answer at the home of Baynes or at the home of the late Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Palmer. The neighbors on the other side of Baynes's house were named Cunningham, and when Smith rang the bell, a stylish middle-aged woman in expensive tweeds answered.
"Mrs. Cunningham?"
She shook her head. "I'm the housekeeper. May I help you?"
"I'd rather speak with Mrs. Cunningham, if you don't mind." He took a Treasury Department ID card from his wallet. "It's rather urgent," he said.
"Mrs. Cunningham's in her studio. I'll announce you."
She led him through a house furnished with all the latest trends, from mauve furniture in the living room to a green-and-white kitchen adorned with butcherblock floor tiles, to a sparkling chrome gym in the rear of the house. Puffing on an exercise bicycle was a short woman, agonizingly underweight, wearing a trendy V-neck leotard and trendier, high-cut green sneakers.
"Mr. Harold Smith from the Treasury Department, ma'am," the housekeeper announced.
"Oh, all right. Bring in my breakfast, Hilary." She turned her attention to Smith, obviously appraising his unstylish suit. "You'll have to forgive me, but I won't be able to talk with you until I've eaten."
Hilary brought in an old Worcester china plate that held a single slab of raw tuna fish. Mrs. Cunningham picked it up with her fingers and popped it in her mouth. Smith closed his eyes and thought of the flag.
"There," she said with satisfaction. "Oh, I'm sorry. Would you care for some sushi?"