"We'll move," Remo said. "It's a fresh body. We've got time."
"I hope the police do come and they can take their foul, evil, deleting computer with them," said Chiun. He turned back to Smith, again smiling. "We commiserate with you and your problems and we are here to give glory to your name."
Smith started to speak but could not take his eyes off the body. Remo and Chiun did not seem to mind it and he thought that perhaps it was the awesome skill with which these assassins worked that had made death cease to have real meaning for them. He did not know, and he realized, sadly, that it didn't matter. He no longer really cared about life and death that much himself.
"So what's this big thing you want us to work on?" Remo said cheerily.
Smith steadied himself and took a great breath of air.
"Remo," he said, "what do you know about insects?"
Chapter 3
"Not yet, Mr. Perriweather," said the scientist.
"Oh," said Waldron Perriweather III, disappointed.
"Maybe in two weeks, sir."
"Yes, of course. No sooner?"
"I'm afraid not, sir."
Perriweather sighed and took one more look into the microscope.
"We need two more generations, sir. At least," the scientist said.
"I see," said Perriweather. He was feeling dizzy. A sense of breathing difficulty filled his chest. There was that smell again, the one that always sent waves of nausea and fear through his body.
The biologist was working with DDT again. Of course he had to. Perriweather walked past a window that allowed in only dim light through its fine mesh cover. Not even a fly's egg could fit through the glistening nylon mesh. Outside was air, good clean air. Perriweather threw two hands at the window and shoved.
"No," screamed the scientist, diving at Perriweather and pulling him from the window. "What are you doing? Are you crazy?"
"I need air."
"Use the door," said the scientist. He helped his employer to his feet and dragged him toward the door.
Outside the lab door, Perriweather leaned against a marble table imported from a czarist court. The biologist was surprised at how quickly Perriweather recovered.
"I thought you were having a heart attack," he said.
"No. It was the DDT."
"There isn't enough in that room to harm a mouse," said the scientist. "It's amazing. I've never seen anybody as sensitive to it as you are. But you know I have to use it in this stage of the project. You understand that?"
"I do," Perriweather said.
"There's going to be more DDT and other toxins in this lab before we're through. That's if you want this carried out correctly."
"I understand," Perriweather said. "You keep at it."
"But one thing I will not go along with, can't go along with, is your ever opening a window in there," the scientist said. "They must be sealed."
"Go ahead with your work. I understand," Perriweather said.
"And once we achieve success, of course, we must put all our data into files and then destroy what we have created."
Waldron Perriweather III shivered at the thought, but inwardly. He hid it well.
"Of course," he said. He had to say that. The scientist would never have agreed to the project in the first place if Perriweather had not promised to destroy what was created.
But he knew that the time would come when he would not need the biologist, and then, thought Perriweather, I will happily eat the rotting eyes out of your ugly head.
He said, with a buzzing little smile, "You're doing a wonderful job."
And then he was off for another press interview. The Species Liberation Alliance had struck again. The parents of a family of five had been strangled. Apparently they had not been the primary targets. The SLA had tried to gain access to a laboratory of the International Health Organization. Police had chased them until they had them trapped in a nearby farmhouse where they held the parents as hostages. They had delivered ten nonnegotiable demands to the police and when the demands weren't met, killed the farmer and his wife, while the children looked on. Then they tried to shoot their way out through a police barricade. They wounded several state troopers but were stopped before they could hurl the concussion grenades they had been carrying. State police bullets nailed them in the front seat of the dead farmer's car.
It was to this issue that Waldron Perriweather III addressed himself. The television reporter was sure that this time he had Perriweather.
"I understand your position as America's leading spokesman for wildlife preservation," the reporter had said. "But how on earth can you defend, even remotely, the murder of parents in front of their children? People who didn't want anything but to live. They weren't polluting the atmosphere. As a matter of fact, the SLA murdered an organic farmer. He didn't even use pesticides. What do you say to that?"
Perriweather's smooth face appeared as unruffled as if his eyes had alighted on a large chocolate cake.
"I would like here and now to protest the use of automatic weapons by the state police. It was an excessive display of force, considering that the SLA used only small revolvers. Where is this country going when police feel free to fire automatic weapons at civilians?"
"They were murderers," the reporter said.
"Who found them guilty? Did they have a trial by jury? No. Their judge and jury was the barrel of an M-16. And what were they trying to do, these two who never had a chance for a fair trial? They were trying to say: 'Look. We are not the only ones on earth. Live and let live. We are not the only creatures in the world.' And for that, they fell, before extraordinary force."
"What about the farmer and his wife? What about the children who are now orphans? What about the police who were wounded?"
"To eradicate so-called terrorism, you must deal with its causes. You will never stop the just and legitimate aspirations of those who care for a just and legitimate new order for all creatures, not only those with the power to get themselves represented and heard, but the powerless also, those creatures who are considered unworthy of living by those who deal death in DDT and other killer toxins."
What bothered the reporter most was that this malicious absurdity would probably be supported on college campuses around the country. The police were going to be put on trial in the media, after stopping two murderers from killing again.
In Washington, the chief of a special FBI detail that had been assigned to protect the laboratories of the International Health, Agricultural and Educational Organization, watched the interview with Perriweather in helpless fury. Hours before, he had been told that his bureau was being relieved of its reponsibility to protect the IHAEO lab.
"We had terrorists attack the lab today. They didn't get in because we were there," said the unit chief. "So why are we being relieved?"
"Orders," he was told by the supervisor, who had a corner office in the J. Edgar Hoover Building.
"But that's ridiculous. We stopped them. That's why they went at the farmer and his family. We prevented them from entering the lab. Us. No other nation has been able to do that."
"I know," said the supervisor. "But orders are orders. Your unit's relieved."
The IHAEO lab had been one of the great intelligence mysteries of the last decade. It was one of the few actually productive parts of the IHAEO, doing international research against crop-destroying insects. Yet the lab was the only part of the IHAEO that had ever been attacked.
This was doubly strange because the lab was the single element of the IHAEO that all nations, rich and poor, communist and capitalist, supported. In fact, the lab had represented what everyone admitted was the only absolutely unassailable good work ever done by the IHAEO.
But over the past decade, the lab had come under repeated physical attack. Scientists were kidnapped, killed, threatened, mutilated and bombed. From one country to another, no matter where the laboratory had been established, scientists were targets.