Abruptly Chiun walked into the underbrush.
Remo soon saw why. A crushed sprig of mimosa showed that a man had walked here in the recent past.
Carefully Chiun placed his feet on the bare spot. His gait became deliberate, cautious.
Remo watched the ground as he followed.
"Who we followin'?" Melvis asked.
"Search me," Remo admitted.
"Hush!" said Chiun. His tone was very serious.
They walked into trackside woods. This was east Texas. Pine and sweet gum predominated. Without warning, Chiun stopped.
"What's wrong?" Remo asked.
"They stop," he said.
"What stops?"
"The tracks."
"Whose tracks? I see only yours."
"Come around. Carefully."
Remo did. Melvis hovered close.
The Master of Sinanju was pointing at the sandy yellow soil. Ahead of him stretched a short set of footprints. They looked like Chiun's. But Chiun hadn't walked this far yet. And Chiun left prints only when he wanted to. Remo followed them back and saw that Chiun was standing in a lone set. Only then did Remo realize that the tracks he'd thought were Chiun's were really older tracks Chiun's feet perfectly fit into.
"Wait a minute..." Remo said.
"Hush."
"What's goin' on?" Melvis muttered.
Chiun's eyes squeezed into slits of deep thought. "These tracks are two days old. Perhaps older. But no more recent."
"Yeah. You're right," said Remo.
Their eyes met. Chiun's chin lifted. A dusty breeze toyed with his wispy beard. He took it between two fingers, the short-nailed index finger and the second one.
"Two days," he repeated. "No sooner."
"No argument there..." said Remo.
Chiun turned on Melvis. "What manner of vehicle was destroyed here?"
"Lemme think now. It was a funny one. Oh, yeah. A Nishitsu Ninja."
"Hah!" crowed Chiun.
"Hah what?" asked Melvis.
"Weren't they recalled a few years back?" Remo said.
"Yeah. They kept tippin' over on tight turns. But a few folks spent the money to have 'em fixed up so they were stable. That's why I said it was funny. You don't see too many Ninjas on the road these days. Worst Burn rice-burner ever built."
Suddenly Chiun turned, hurrying back to the rail line. He walked them carefully, striding, his fists tight, hazel eyes scouring the rails, the ties and the surrounding brush.
"What's he lookin' for now?" Melvis asked Remo.
"You'll know when I do."
"You're not bein' very cooperative."
"Sometimes the dog wags the tail. Other times it's the other way around. I learned a long time ago to follow along and let the pieces reveal themselves."
Melvis spit. "You would last two days with NTSB."
Chiun stopped so abruptly that Melvis nearly bumped into him. They gathered around. Chiun was looking straight down.
In the center of a tie was a fresh gouge.
"I'm lookin' at a gouge, am I right?" said Melvis.
Chiun nodded.
"Looks like a hunk of metal hit it pretty hard. It's sound, though. No urgency about replacin' it. Am I right?"
"A katana did this," Chiun intoned.
"Oh-oh," said Remo.
"What's a tanaka?" asked Melvis.
"Katana. Sword."
"Sword, huh? I'd put it down as a flyin' hunk of axle or something."
"It's a sword cut," said Remo.
"What sword?"
"The blade that beheaded the engineer," said Chiun.
"You funnin' me? He was decapitated."
"Beheaded."
"What makes you say that?"
"Experience," said Chiun, abruptly leaving the rail.
"Where we goin' now?" Melvis wanted to know.
When Chiun stepped into the rental car, the immediate question was answered.
Remo leaned into the car. "Where to next, Little Father?"
"We must speak with Smith."
"Who's Smith?" asked Melvis.
"Our supervisor."
"I got a cell phone in my rig."
"We need more privacy than that."
"Well, there's gotta be a pay phone somewhere's around. After all, this is Texas."
"Not if he gets his way."
"Say again?" asked Melvis in a dubious voice.
"It goes back to the original settlers."
"The Mexicans? Never."
"No, before them," said Chiun.
"You mean the Injuns?" Melvis exploded. "I'd sooner see the dang Asiatics have it."
"You're getting warmer," said Remo.
Chapter 12
Harold Smith was at his desk when the blue contact phone rang. He had been cleared to work by the Folcroft doctors who had pulled him from the taxi and administered stimulants.
The first thing Smith had said upon regaining consciousness was, "I must get to my desk."
"It's the middle of the night, Dr. Smith," the head doctor said. "I prescribe rest."
"And I pay your salary," Smith snapped.
The Folcroft staff knew their director. They eased him into a stainless-steel wheelchair and rolled him to his Spartan office, where he peremptorily dismissed them.
Reaching under his desk, whose top was a slab of black glass, Smith pressed the button that activated the buried video terminal. It lurked under the tinted glass. When the screen came on, the amber phosphorescent sign-on cycle was visible only to Smith.
None of the Folcroft staff suspected the concealed terminal any more than they knew of the existence of the four mainframes that hummed quietly in the basement behind blank concrete walls.
This was the nerve center of CURE.
As soon as he had the system up and running, Smith called up incoming reports on the derailment he had just survived, downloading them into his ongoing Amtrak file.
Twenty-odd minutes into this he remembered to call his wife.
"I am fine," Smith said without bothering with a greeting.
"Why wouldn't you be, Harold?" Maude Smith asked sleepily.
"I was on the train that derailed but I am fine."
"Oh, Harold."
"I am fine," he repeated.
"Where are you now?"
"At work."
"You should come home, Harold. You sound tired."
"I will see you tomorrow," said Harold, hanging up and thinking that there was no reason to let Maude know he had been on that wreck. There was no sense worrying her needlessly.
That was hours ago. Smith had toiled through the night, pausing only when he experienced an uncontrollable fit of coughing. His tongue tasted brackish. His stomach was sour. He loaded it up with antacid pills and Maalox, all to no avail.
When his secretary showed up for work, he asked her for black coffee but said nothing about the accident.
The wire feeds on the Mystic derailment were still coming in. The death toll was mounting in slow increments. It looked as if the final fatality total would exceed forty. Smith read that information, making absolutely no connection with his own brush with death.
In his mind a person either survived an accident or did not. One is dead or living; there is no in-between. Harold Smith still breathed. Almost didn't count.
The first bulletins were fragmentary and under constant revision. The earliest reports simply attributed the derailment to excessive speed. This was revised to human factors, a euphemism for crew fatigue or drug-induced engineer impairment.
When he read that the train had struck a bulldozer, Smith frowned like a puckering lemon.
"What would a bulldozer be doing on the tracks?" he muttered.
A follow-up report referred to cable being laid in the vicinity of the derailment, and suggested the bulldozer had attempted to cross the tracks and become stuck. There were no witnesses and no missing workmen.
"Ridiculous," Smith said. "There is no crossing on trackage so close to the water and no place on the shore side for the bulldozer to go."
But there the reports stood. A bulldozer had blocked the tracks. That was the end of it as far as the media was concerned. All they cared about were facts-whether true or not.