The Master of Sinanju was already up. He was transcending with the sun in his white muslin morning kimono.
"Hey, Little Father. I need to know some Korean."
"'I love you' is Song-kyo Hapshida."
"Thanks. But I already know that. How do you say 'F you'?"
Horror froze Chiun's wrinkles. "You have broken up with the most wonderful woman you have ever met or will ever meet?"
"No, I want to tell that rusty battleax off once and for all in language she'll understand."
"I forbid you to do this."
Remo's face fell. "Thanks a lot, Little Father."
Remo ran down the stairs and found an old Korean-English dictionary. It didn't have the correct phrase. Not even a reasonable facsimile.
Remo decided he had only one person to turn to.
HAROLD SMITH ARRIVED for work with the rising sun. He greeted his secretary, nodded to her routine "No messages" and brought up the system linked to the Folcroft Four in the basement of the complex.
He was not long at this when he heard a click behind him. He ignored it. The click came again.
This time, he turned around in his swivel chair.
There, on the other side of the picture window, hovered a common bumblebee. It bumped into the window.
"Impossible," said Smith.
Then the blue contact phone rang.
Not taking his eye off the bee, Smith scooped up the phone.
"Smitty, I need your help" came Remo's voice.
"Not as much as I may need yours," Smith said, his voice drained of all emotion.
"How's that?"
"There is a bee on the other side of my office window. It is trying to get in."
"The two-way window? How can a bee see through it?"
"I suspect he cannot. But as you know, the window faces the Sound. It is not visible except to boaters. Yet this bee appears fascinated by it."
"Maybe it's trying to head-butt his reflection."
"Perhaps. But it seems very determined to enter my office."
"Got any bug killer?"
"I'll get back to you," said Smith.
"When you do, look up the Korean translation for 'F you.'"
"I am not going to ask why you need that information," Smith said thinly.
"Good. Because I'm not going to tell you."
Smith hung up and buzzed his secretary.
"Yes, Dr. Smith?"
"Have maintenance bring me an insecticide fatal to bees."
"Yes, Dr. Smith."
It wasn't long before the maintenance man set the can of Deet on Smith's desk, and Smith dismissed him.
Then Smith went up to the Folcroft roof and, getting down on his stomach after doffing his gray jacket and vest, looked down over the roof combing.
The bee was still hovering at the window not four feet below. Smith could see its back clearly. It was brownish black, except for the fuzzy yellow-and-black midbody, where the wings were rooted. The fuzzy thorax was marked with a distinct skull whose tiny black hollows stared sightlessly upward.
Smith aimed the can, steadying himself, and released a jet of noxious spray.
The stuff spurted down, enveloping the bee. It bobbed off to one side. Smith redirected the spray at it. It dropped, came level and continued to buzz the window.
The can ran empty before the bee got annoyed. Then, like a tiny helicopter, it abruptly shot up to Smith's eye level.
Smith gave it a last shot and the bee, its multifaceted eyes turning white, retreated a dozen feet, blinded.
Discarding the useless can, Smith dashed back to the roof trapdoor and dropped it after him on his way down the ladder.
When he returned to his office, he was shaking.
And the bee was still there. Its tiny face was dripping foamy insecticide now. Otherwise, it was unbothered. The eyes were clearing.
"No normal bee could survive what I just subjected you to," Smith said in a low voice.
He lifted the blue contact receiver and decided that this was a crisis that required the intervention of his enforcement arm ....
Chapter 27
Tammy Terrill expected a big rambling Victorian out of The Addams Family. Or a long white lab building. Maybe even a rustic ranch or adobe fort.
She didn't expect a mud hut.
Actually, it wasn't a hut. It was too big. It was more like a wasp's nest, but it was made from dried mud. Not piled mud, but sculpted and smoothed mud. Its flowing skin was blistered with strangely shaped windows like bug eyes made of glass. If not for the fact that it was the same color and texture as a Mississippi riverbank, it might have been beautiful in a weirdly futuristic way.
"Can you believe this place?" she whispered to her new cameraman, whose name was Bill. Or maybe Phil. He had come down from the Baltimore affiliate.
"Takes all kinds," said the cameraman.
"Okay. Let's see what we can see."
They circled the hive. It was dotted with glass blisters. There was a front door and a back. In back, there was some kind of shed made of steel. From the shed was coming a strange humming.
"Sounds like bees," whispered Tammy.
"Sounds like sick bees."
"Or killer bees who haven't been able to kill as much as they like," suggested Tammy.
"Better leave it alone, then."
"I'm more interested in what's inside this big hive thing."
"I want no part of any break-in."
"No law against shoving a camera up against somebody's window and taping away," Tammy argued.
Bill-or Phil-shrugged. "I'll go along with that."
They picked a window at random. Creeping up to it, they pressed their faces against the chicken-wire-reinforced pane.
What they saw inside made their eyes grow round as saucers and their jaws fall open.
"Damn! Frankenstein's lab wasn't this weird," the Fox cameraman mumbled.
"If this isn't the story of the century, I'll eat shit and like it. Now, get to taping before Wurmlinger shows up ...."
Chapter 28
The bumblebee had moved to the main entrance of Folcroft Sanitarium by the time Remo drove the rental car through the stone gates with their foreboding lion heads on either side.
Folcroft was in a state of lock-down. No one could get in or out. And through the car telephone, Harold Smith was sounding nervous.
"Find that thing and crush it!" Smith was saying. "We cannot afford to call attention to the organization."
"Relax, Smitty. You run a sanitarium and you have an extermination problem. The exterminators are here. We'll take care of it."
"Hurry," said Smith.
Remo drove up to the main door, and the hovering bee seemed to take almost instant notice of Remo and Chiun.
It was completely white now, carrying a coat of drying insecticide as if it had just emerged from a happy bubble bath.
It flitted before their windshield, regarding them with what looked like cataract-gazed eyes.
"Okay," said Remo, "let's take this guy."
Chiun lifted a calming hand. "Wait. Let us observe it for a time."
"What's to observe? It's another of those superbees. Our job is to kill it and turn the body over to Smith."
"No, our task is to survive our encounter with this devil in the form of a bee."
"That, too," Remo agreed. Turning off the engine, he settled back in his seat.
They watched as the bee grew increasingly curious, zipping to Remo's side window, around the back, then to Chiun. It butted its head against the glass at several points.
"It wants in," Remo muttered.
"No, it desires us to step out."
"Just say when."
Chiun was stroking his wispy beard. "We must foil its evil intentions, Remo."
"Hard to believe a bee has any intentions, evil or whatever."
The Master of Sinanju said nothing. His eyes were intent upon the hovering bee. They studied one another for several moments, then gradually, imperceptibly, Chiun slipped his fingers up to the small wing window on his side of the car.