The list was not long. But the first entry was headed, "Bayou Canot."
Smith remembered it well. September 22, 1993. The Sunset Limited was barreling south to Florida through Alabama bayou country. A towboat had taken a wrong turn and struck a trestle bridge, weakening it. When the Sunset Limited went over the bridge, three lead engines and four trailing Heritage cars tumbled into the water. Forty-seven people drowned. That one event doubled the total number of fatalities in Amtrak history overnight. To this day it remained the most deadly Amtrak accident ever.
Suddenly Smith doubted the official NTSB explanation. Odds were Bayou Canot was about to be repeated.
Dialing the Maryland hotel, Smith reached Remo. "Remo. Here are your instructions. Go to Mobile, Alabama. Find the railroad bridge over Bayou Canot." Smith spelled it. "Then guard that bridge from sabotage. I have reason to believe the ronin will attack it."
"On our way," said Remo.
Hanging up, Smith returned to his computer. There was a lot to do, and he had relatively little hard data.
But he did have a name: Furio Batsuka.
Smith began a search of his data base first. It was unlikely to be legitimate, but the possibility had to be factored out first.
Smith was surprised when the global search came up positive. His gray eyes scanned the scrolling blocks of amber text. His expectant expression soon turned sour: "Seattle Mariners slugger Furio Batsuka strikes out at All-Star Game."
Smith didn't bother to read the rest.
"The name is an obvious alias," he said unhappily.
Hunching his shoulders, Harold Smith tried attacking the problem from another angle. Dead ends were to be expected when dealing with industrial-espionage operations, as this assuredly was.
GETTING TO BAYOU CANOT involved a car ride and then renting a motorboat. It was nearly dusk by the time Remo and Chiun got to the boat leg of the trip.
They were puttering down the sluggish river, Chiun standing in the stern like a watchful figurehead while Remo piloted the craft. A mist was rising from the water. The air was moist and humid. And behind them, a lonesome alligator was following lazily in their wake.
When they found the great steel trestle, it was still standing.
"Looks okay to me," Remo said. "Maybe we're in time."
Chiun said nothing. He was waving to the alligator as it followed them to shore with lazy swishes of its tail.
The craft beached on a bank, and Remo hopped out to secure it. Chiun waited patiently in the stern for Remo to pull the boat nearly out of the water. Only then did he deign to step off onto dry land.
The alligator decided to join them.
"Better watch the lizard, Little Father," Remo cautioned.
"Better that the lizard watch me," said Chiun, turning to face the waddling saurian.
The alligator crawled out on his stubby legs and made a determined lunge for Chiun. Chiun watched him approach, his hazel eyes curious.
"This is an inferior specimen."
"Compared to what?" said Remo, eyeing the long, eerie span over their heads.
"The royal crocodiles of Upper Egypt!'
"If he gets hold of your ankle, you'll think differently."
That seemed to be the alligator's intent. He kept coming. Chiun let him get within a snout's length. Abruptly the alligator scissored open his jaws and, with a furious forward convulsion, snapped them shut.
If an alligator could show surprise, this one did.
Its lizardy eyes were gawking at the spot where Chiun stood. There was no Chiun. It whipsawed its long head. Right, then left.
And standing serenely on the creature's pebbled back, the Master of Sinanju reached forward to tap the gator on the top of its knobby brown head.
"Yoo-hoo," Chiun taunted. "Here I am."
The gator threshed. Its tail whipped back. Its jaws snapped around like a dog trying to bite its own tail. It bucked. It squirmed. It let out a rare alligator roar.
But the Master of Sinanju rode it as calmly as if it were a lumpy log, not a leathery, muscular eating machine.
"Chiun, will you stop teasing that gator?" Remo warned. "We have work to do."
"I am teasing no one. He is trying to eat me."
"Stop giving him reason to think he can."
And since it was a reasonable request, the Master of Sinanju stepped forward, slamming the gator's fanged jaws shut, simultaneously mushing its head down into the spongy riverbank.
The gator's entire body convulsed, tail slamming in anger, then determination, finally in unmistakable terror as it realized it was utterly powerless to unseat the skirted annoyance on its back.
Chiun waited for the gator to settle down. It lay flat, panting like a flattened, exhausted dog. Calmly, with a sandaled toe, the Master of Sinanju nudged the gator's ribs until it rolled over once, it legs kicking out helpless as broken chicken wings.
"Behold, Remo. A trick you do not know."
Remo ignored the commotion. He was moving through the rank undergrowth, checking the bridge supports.
So Chiun, using only his toe, nudged the helpless alligator over and over like a log, maintaining his balance with nimble steps, until the saurian rolled into the oily bayou waters with a defeated splash.
Chiun stepped off at the last possible moment.
"Good riddance to you, sandworm," squeaked Chiun.
The gator was only too eager to go away. It swam off, tired of tail and discouraged of spirit.
Chiun joined Remo, who was testing the trestle supports with his hands.
"They're solid. Let's go up."
They climbed because it was the easiest way up.
Up on the span, the tracks looked stable. They walked them to make sure. By this time night was upon the bayou. Below, the turbid waters muttered, dark and oily.
"Wonder why Smitty thinks this bridge will be hit?" Remo said.
"It only matters that he does," said Chiun.
"I don't like being way out in the boonies, out of touch, in case something happens somewhere else."
"What could happen? Smith's infallible oracles have whispered secrets to him, and we must all obey."
"Let's just hope we're on ground zero. It could be a long night."
HAROLD SMITH WAS TRYING to follow an audit trail through cyberspace.
The trouble was, trains kept crashing.
He had reasoned that the enemy was moving through the nation's telephone lines in order to attack its rail system. It was a logical deduction. Computerized airline-booking files showed no ticketed Japanese-surnamed passenger moving between the cities in question by air. Rail was too slow. As were cars.
Therefore, the Nishitsu ronin was traveling by fiber-optic cable, like a human fax. It had been the mystifying modus operandi of the Krahseevah before he had attempted to fax himself to Nishitsu headquarters in Osaka, Japan, in order to escape Remo and Chiun about three years before.
Nothing more had been heard of him since then. Smith had assumed that the Krahseevah-the name was Russian for "beautiful," which definitely did not fit the faceless white coverall garment he wore-had been unable to transmit himself via orbiting communications satellites as he did through fiber-optic cable. There was no reason to think otherwise. This new opponent's MO was different. He was engaged in acts of sabotage, not theft. And he displayed a callous disregard for human life, while the Krahseevah had never been known to harm anyone.
This was a different foe with a different agenda.
The audit trail assumed a telephone credit card was being used by the ronin to travel around. Smith was hunting for such a card.
As all over America new crashes, derailments and rail accidents were being reported, Smith input these new destinations into his exploding data base. Soon, he knew, something would bubble up. With luck only one or two phone cards were involved. The more they were used, the sooner the CURE system would make connections.