"Remo," he undertoned, not moving his lips.
"Yeah?" said Remo, equally stiff lipped.
Chiun wrapped ivory fingers around the window latch. "When I say jump, you will jump from the vehicle as quickly as you can, taking care to slam the door behind you, also as quickly as you can."
"And what are you going to do?"
Instead of answering, Chiun flipped open the wing window and squeaked, "Jump!"
Three things happened in very quick succession. Remo jumped from the car. The bee slipped through the open window, and the Master of Sinanju simultaneously shut the window behind it and exited the vehicle.
So perfect was their timing that both doors clunked shut with one dull sound, and the bumblebee found itself trapped in the vehicle with no escape. It went into a frenzy of aerial acrobatics and glass-butting.
Harold Smith came down to see it for himself.
"Behold the fruits of your power, O Emperor," proclaimed the Master of Sinanju in a lofty voice. "The assassin that sought your life awaits your tender mercies."
Smith frowned with all his lemony intensity. "It should be dead."
"This can be arranged," said Chiun.
"Yeah," added Remo. "We'll just push the car into the water and drown it."
Smith shook his head. "No. I need to examine it."
"That's going to be a trick," said Remo. "It was a trick getting it in there. Getting it out safely, I don't know about."
"There must be a way."
"There is," said Chiun.
Remo and Smith looked at the Master of Sinanju with studied interest.
"But I do not know what that way is-as yet," Chiun admitted thinly.
All three men gave it considerable thought.
Smith said, "Insects breathe by diffusion, which means air comes in through their bodies. It is not possible to suffocate it in the normal sense."
"Insecticide is out," added Remo. "You tried that."
"Ah," said Chiun.
"Ah?"
The old Korean flitted into the building and returned moments later carrying the separate parts of a Pyrex cake holder in his long-nailed hands, undoubtedly scavenged from the Folcroft cafeteria.
"I don't think that's going to work, Little Father," Remo cautioned.
"Ordinarily, what I have in mind would never work," Chiun allowed. "But you are not undertaking the task at hand, but me. I will make it work."
Addressing Smith, he said, "Emperor, seek a place of shelter from which you may enjoy this display of the power you control so artfully."
Smith retreated to a position behind the glass door and watched intently.
"Remo, when I say open the door, you will open the door," Chiun said, eyeing the agitated bee.
"What about shutting it again?" Remo asked.
"It will not be necessary."
And the Master of Sinanju stationed himself at the side door where the bee was most active. Remo grabbed the door handle and set himself.
Chiun lifted the cake holder and its Pyrex bell in either hand like a musician about to clash together a pair of cymbals.
"Now!"
Remo yanked open the door.
The bee obligingly bumbled out. And was captured.
It was a near thing. The cake-holder sections came together with an unmusical crack. But when Chiun uprighted the cake holder, the bee was buzzing around the interior in angry, frustrated orbits.
Smith came running back down, and Chiun presented the cake holder to him. Smith took it gingerly in both hands.
"Thank you, Master Chiun. Now come inside."
They took the elevator to the administration floor, and Smith informed his secretary to inform the guard staff that all was well.
"The killer bee has been captured," he said, rather unnecessarily inasmuch as Mrs. Mikulka's wide eyes followed the Pyrex-protected bee until the point it disappeared into Smith's office.
Inside, behind closed doors, Smith set the cake holder on his desk.
The still-dripping bee orbited a few more moments, then settled down to stand tensely on its multiple legs.
"It looks like an ordinary bumblebee," Smith was saying as he took a red plastic object from his desk. He flipped it, and a red-ringed magnifying glass slipped out. Holding it by the combination lens protector and handle, Smith trained it on the quiescent bee.
As if equally curious, the bee obligingly stepped closer- giving Smith a better view. Its foamy feelers quivered and dripped.
"This is a bumblebee," Smith said.
"Wurmlinger said it was a drone," said Remo.
The bee turned around once and mooned Smith. The gesture of disrespect was entirely lost on Smith.
"I see a stinger," he breathed. "Drone bees do not possess stingers."
"That one does," Remo declared.
"Clearly," said Smith, returning the magnifying glass to his desk drawer and shutting it.
Dropping into his ancient, cracked leather executive's chair, Harold Smith addressed Remo and Chiun while not taking his eye off the bee, which had turned around to regard him with tiny blind-looking orbs.
"This is not an African killer bee or any genetic mutation of one. It is a common honey bee drone equipped with a stinger."
"And a brain," added Chiun.
"Not to mention a death's-head on its back," Remo said.
Smith frowned deeply. "Somehow, this bee was sent here to spy on me. The only way this could have happened is if it were able to communicate with the bee you killed in California."
"Get that body yet?"
"No. It has not been recovered from the crashed 727."
"I don't see how bees can talk across three thousand miles of country," Remo said.
"Somehow, there is a way they do."
"Don't bees talk to one another by touching antennae?"
"You are thinking of ants," said Smith.
"I thought bees operated the same way."
"No, they communicate by giving off chemical scents, as well as via aerial acrobatics such as the honey dance."
"Where did I get the idea they touched feelers?" Remo wondered aloud.
"I do not know. Nor can I imagine how we will discover the truth."
"Why not ask the bee?" suggested the Master of Sinanju.
They looked at him, their faces growing flat as plaster.
"You speak bee?" countered Remo.
"No, but if the bee was able to read the address of Fortress Folcroft in California and impart this intelligence to the bee we have captured, they must speak American."
"That's crazy!" exploded Remo.
"If you do not care to try, I will," sniffed Chiun.
Remo backed away with an inviting bow and flourish of one arm. "Be my guest."
The Master of Sinanju hiked up his golden kimono skirts and addressed the bee in the bell jar.
"Hearken, O foiled one. For I am Chiun, Master of Sinanju, royal assassin to the court of Harold the First, current Emperor of America, in whose merciless toils you have found yourself. Before you are consigned to the cruel fate you so richly deserve, I demand you divulge all you know of the plot against Smith the Wise. Failure to do so will result in a beheading by a dull, rusty headsman's ax. Cooperation will grant you the boon of a sharp blade and a swift, painless death."
Remo snorted. "You can't behead a bee."
"Shush," said Chiun with a double upward flourish of his expansive kimono sleeves. "Speak now, doomed insect, and spare yourself an ugly ending."
The bee hadn't moved through all of this. Not even its feelers.
Then, after twitching its wings once, it emitted a high, tiny sound.
It wasn't a buzz or a drone. Nor was it the sharp ziii of a bee in flight.
Remo and Chiun leaned in. The sound was too small for Smith's normal aging ears, but there was something about it that touched their senses.
"Speak louder, O bee," Chiun instructed.
The bee seemed to make another sound.
"I feel like an idiot," said Remo, backing away.