"There was another man killed. A lumberjack," Remo said. "Was he one of them?"
"No," Brack grunted painfully. "He stumbled in. They killed him. I tried... get back... save Joey."
Remo shook his head. He could see the wounded Oscar Brack dragging his injured broken body for miles through the snow trying to warn Joey Webb. He must have reached the A-frame just too late, just as it exploded, and he was blown back into this stand of trees.
Remo watched as Chiun touched Brack in places that should have helped him, that could have kept him alive. But the old man had no desire to live.
"Who were the men?" Remo asked. "Who were the men from the Association?"
Brack smiled a smile that was much too wide. His upper gums showed; they had turned blue. He whistled a breezy version of "Danny Boy," then began to gasp.
Remo reached out to him. It was too late.
When Remo stood up, he saw Roger Stacy and Pierre LaRue standing behind him. They had been watching, listening.
"Any of that make any sense to you?" Remo asked them. Both men just shook their heads.
Chiun and Remo walked back to the clearing where Joey Webb leaned against a tree, watching her A-frame headquarters settle down into smoldering embers and ash.
As they walked, Chiun said, "This is very bad."
"It really is," Remo agreed.
"Then why don't you do something about it?"
Something in Chiun's voice made Remo ask, "What are you talking about?"
"That friend of yours who has been yelling your name all night. Now he is whistling."
Remo did not understand at first. Then he listened. In the growingly silent night there was a faint whistle from behind where the A-frame had stood — from the area where someone had been calling his name earlier.
Remo nodded and ran past the building, across the hundred yards of snow. He found the spot where he had been standing, where the sound had seemed the loudest. Now there was only a faint whistle coming from below his feet somewhere.
Remo reached down into a snowdrift and found it — a battery-operated cassette tape player, whistling now with the signal that it had reached the end of the tape.
Remo pressed a button on the wet machine to run the tape back a few feet. Then he pressed the play button and the hissing, whispering voice sounded over again.
"Remo... Remo... Remo..."
He turned off the machine angrily. Someone had planted this out here to get Remo out of the A-frame, so that it could be blown up without his interference, and an anger overwhelmed him that he had been used as a pawn, a dupe by someone.
Whoever that someone was would pay.
Chapter Twelve
There was nothing left in the A-frame to salvage, so Pierre LaRue had brought in a bulldozer to level the wreckage of the building and then bury it in snow.
Roger Stacy had told Joey to move into Oscar Brack's log cabin and had helped wipe it clean of its more odious bloodstains.
Remo told Stacy to double his guard on the copa-iba tree farm. "Make sure they have guns and make sure they know how to use them," Remo said. "Tell them to shoot anything that moves."
Stacy nodded. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to sleep," Remo said.
Finally, he and Chiun and Joey were in the log cabin. LaRue had left after burying the A-frame next door. Stacy had gone back to the main camp.
Joey had built a good, roaring fire. Chiun's sleeping mat was unrolled on the floor in a corner, and he was sleeping.
Joey and Remo sat in front of the fire.
"Poor Oscar," she said.
"He was trying to save your life."
"So many deaths," she said.
Remo nodded.
"And more to come," he said coldly. "More to come." Idly, he pressed the buttons on the tape recorder he had found in the snow.
Chapter Thirteen
It was afternoon. Remo had spent much of the day wandering through the woods where they had found Oscar Brack, where he had found the buried tape recorder, looking for something, anything, that would indicate who was behind the violence.
But he found nothing.
Who was behind the violence? He didn't know. And if the trees were the target, why not just have burned them down? Why kill? Why kill Danny O'Farrell, Joey's fiance? Why kill Oscar Brack? Why try to kill Joey Webb?
Maybe the trees could be replaced too easily for burning them down to mean anything. But perhaps the brains at work trying to make the copa-ibas an alternate source of oil for America, perhaps those brains were not easily replaceable. Maybe that was the reason for the murders and the attempts on Joey.
But who? Who had used the tape recorder to lure him from the A-frame last night before putting it to the torch?
Who had killed Danny O'Farrell and Brack?
Last night, when the A-frame went ablaze, Pierre LaRue had said instantly that it was the work of the Mountain Highs. After all they had tried to set the forest ablaze earlier in the night. But, Remo felt, somehow killing would not be their style. And who was to say that it wasn't LaRue or Roger Stacy who were behind the killings?
So many questions and so few answers.
Remo walked back to Alpha Camp. He decided he had to start somewhere, and the Mountain Highs were as good a place as anywhere else.
He reached the log cabin just as Joey and Chiun were stepping outside.
"We're going to look at the copa-ibas," she said. "Chiun has an idea."
Remo leaned close and whispered, "He has an idea that this is a Korean tree that you people stole from his country. Be careful."
Joey just nodded and smiled. "There was a phone call for you," she said.
"Who?"
"No message. But it sounded like... well, like Dr. Smith."
"Thanks," Remo said. "Do you know where the Mountain Highs camp out?"
Joey pointed to the direction of the main road and told him he could find their camp about three miles from the main office of Tulsa Torrent.
"You going there?" she said.
"Maybe," said Remo. "Have to start looking somewhere."
"Be careful," she said.
"I'm always careful."
It wasn't really a town. It was just a small widening in the road as it passed through the California hills, and there was a gas station and a small grocery store. Behind these roadside structures a few hundred yards down the road, Remo could see the tents that belonged to the Mountain High Society.
He stopped in at the grocery store and dialed Smith's 800 area-code number.
Smith picked up the telephone in his darkened office at Folcroft Sanitarium.
"You called?" Remo said.
"Have you found out anything?"
"Nothing yet," Remo said.
"I heard of the trouble last night."
"Yeah," Remo said. "We've had nothing but trouble. Joey's all right, though."
"She is no more important than anyone else involved in this matter," Smith said sternly. "Do not let personal considerations..."
"You're a cold-assed fish," Remo said. "You helped raise the kid."
"I know," Smith said.
There was an awkward pause and Remo said, "Have you found out who those two guys were who tried to burn down the copa-ibas last night?"
"No," Smith said. "No information has been received yet in Washington."
"Damn local police," Remo said. "They were supposed to get the prints out right away, to try to identify them."
"I will keep my eyes open," Smith said. "Anything else?"
"Yes," Remo said. "A tape recorder. You think you could trace it from a serial number?"