"Well, let's open it."
Remy the chef took a short pry bar off a shelf and attacked the crate. It was held together with black metal strapping. It wouldn't budge.
Perry found a pair of wire cutters and went snipsnip. The strapping spanged apart and coiled back, snapping at him. A piece of strapping caught him on the cheek, producing blood.
"Be careful."
Remy attacked the crate with the pry bar. The lid came off with a sharp screech of nails and the groaning of stressed wood.
When they got the box open, they all saw that it was empty.
But it was still buzzing.
"What the hell is making it buzz like that?" Perry wondered aloud.
"It sounds like abeilles," said Remy. "Bees."
"I know it sounds like bees. But it's empty."
At that point, the drone of the bees that weren't there changed in character. It swelled. It seemed to fill the kitchen with an all-pervasive sound. It was all around them.
Perry smacked his right ear. It was a natural reflex. The sound seemed to have attacked his ear. Only it was short and sharp, like a mosquito.
Then Heather slapped her left bosom. It jiggled. And kept on jiggling. Silicone was like that.
Remy ripped his white starched hat off his head and began swatting the empty air around them and cursing in prickly French.
The buzzing swelled and swelled, and as it ascended the scale in an increasingly angry drone, adrenaline overcame the Chateau Sauterelle buzz and they all looked at one another.
"Let's get the hell out of here," Perry said.
"I'm with you," said Remy.
They ran for the swinging doors. No problem. The insistent sound seemed to follow them.
They got to the vault door. It had fallen shut. No problem. Remy tackled the dog wheel.
That was when the buzzing began to attack them. In earnest.
They felt it as a pricking sensation on their skin at first. Then as heat. Hot heat. Painful heat. A million tiny red-hot needles might produce such a sensation.
But when they looked at the backs of their burning hands, they could see nothing except a creeping redness. Like a rash.
Perry looked up from his red palms to his wife's shocked face. It was turning red, too. An angry, embarrassed blush. Before his eyes, her pouty red lips seemed to twitch. And from one corner dribbled something white and vaguely waxy.
"I think my paraffin injection is leaking," she said.
Then she grabbed herself with both hands. "My boobs. They're wet."
"Oh, God! A silicone leak."
Remy had his own problems. He was scratching himself like a man with a million fleas.
"Sacre Dieu! I am undone," he screeched.
Then they couldn't breathe. They gasped and they began to choke. One by one, clutching their swelling throats, they fell to the stainless-steel floor.
As his sight darkened, Perry Noto looked to his wife, and his last coherent thought was, She's breaking out in hives ...why is she breaking out in hives?
THE BODIES later identified as Perry and Heather Noto of Beverly Hills and chef Remy Asticot were found the next night when would-be patrons of La Maison Punaise flocked to the trendy restaurant to sample the delicious popcorn shrimp glowingly described in the LA. Times.
The L.A. County coroner performed an autopsy and discovered high levels of bee venom in the bodies of the three victims.
What he didn't find was evidence of bee stings or the tiny barbs usually left in the skins of bee-sting victims. He searched every square millimeter of epidermis for a full working day to discover any hypodermic mark such as a needle might make. There were no track marks.
Finally, in exasperation, he gave a news conference.
"The victims would appear to have ingested toxic levels of bee venom during their last meal," he announced. "They died of anaphylactic shock, a condition normally the result of allergic reaction to bee toxin, or from massive bee stings."
"Then why didn't the patrons also succumb?" a reporter asked.
"Perhaps they didn't eat the same foods."
"Dr. Nozoki, were traces of bees found in the victims' stomachs?"
"I am no entomologist," said Dr. Togo Nozoki, "but the stomachs of the three victims were packed with insect materials-including antennae, carapaces, legs and other such matter. Digestion had begun. And bees lack the horny outer bodies of other insects on the menu."
"Bees usually die after they sting. Why were no bees found in the premises?" another reporter demanded.
"I can only conclude that the victims ingested every morsel of the bee delicacy that unfortunately felled them."
This seemed to satisfy the media. And if the media was satisfied, the public was satisfied.
No one thought very much of the fact that L.A. Coroner Togo Nozoki himself succumbed to a bee sting several hours later. Lots of people were hypersensitive to bee stings.
Chapter 5
The Military Airlift Command C-130 Hercules turboprop transport lumbered to a jolting stop at the end of the main runway at the South Weymouth Naval Air Station. When Remo had first moved to Massachusetts a few years before, the location had been chosen because of its convenient access to South Weymouth and its many military aircraft standing ready to take Remo to any spot in the world his missions required. The base had been targeted for closure several times. Each time, Harold W. Smith had pulled his invisible strings to get it taken off the closure list.
Finally, the pressure to close the base had gotten so strong that the only way to save it was to risk showing Harold Smith's far-reaching hand.
Harold Smith didn't like showing his hand. So he had allowed it to close. It was still technically open with a skeleton staff during the final environmental cleanup, so when the hydraulic ramp lowered to disgorge Remo, he stepped off the plane thinking that this would probably be the last time he was privileged to fly out of South Weymouth courtesy of Uncle Sam.
A taxi was waiting for him courtesy of "Uncle Harold," who preferred that Remo be whisked from sight as soon as possible. The taxi took him to a shopping mall, where another taxi took over. Another Smith precaution. If Remo were to leave a trail of bread crumbs, Smith would personally eat them off the ground in the name of security.
As he pulled up before his home, Remo reflected that he wasn't looking forward to being back.
The reason why greeted him at the door while he was inserting the key.
The door jumped open. In the foyer stood a tiny Asian woman with iron gray hair and the same faded lavender quilted garment she had worn ever since taking up residence in Castle Sinanju, a former church converted into a condominium.
"Hi," said Remo, who still hadn't learned her name.
"Good riddance," the housekeeper cackled.
"I'm coming back, not going out."
"Bad riddance, then."
Remo scowled. "Chiun in?"
"In meditation room, gay-face."
"Will you cut that out!"
"You not die yet? What take you so long? Every night out on the town, and you still come back alive. Too skinny, but alive."
"Get stuffed."
"Stuff me. Change do you good."
Remo just gritted his teeth. It had been like this since the day Remo had returned home boasting that stewardesses didn't like him anymore.
"Faggot," the housekeeper had said, padding off in disgust.
Remo had tried to correct the mistaken impression. "I happen to like women."
"You supposed to love them. Coochie-coo."
"The trouble is stewardesses love me too much," Remo tried to explain.
"Too much love? No such thing."
The next time Remo saw her, she had handed him a pamphlet on AIDS prevention and a box of rainbow-striped condoms.
"Look," Remo had tried to explain, "women are drawn to me like flies to hamburger. I finally figured out a way to keep them at bay. Shark meat. I eat it by the ton. Something about it cancels out my pheromones and chases women off."