Chiun glared at him.
“Maybe a little. But I’m entitled, aren’t I?”
“Entitled to betrayal?”
“Entitled to actually use some of the authority I’m supposed to have? Entitled to being ticked off at being treated like CURE’S stupid grunt?”
Chiun looked away. “This is a filthy city.”
“You say that about every city.”
“Every city in this land is filthy.”
“Compared to Sinanju? At least we’re not wading in mud and smelling the fish rotting.”
“Smith,” Winner declared.
Smith orchestrated the lies. Smith lived in a world of clandestine operations. He lived in a shadow world.
Once, Winner dwelled in the shadow world himself, but he was a soldier then. A doer. Smith—the Smith who was responsible for the device—was never a doer. He was a watcher, a thinker, a voyeur who issued orders. Somebody, who didn’t even know who Smith was, followed the orders. They deployed the device—and it wasn’t the first such device.
Winner watched this one through the gap in the rock. This one was better than the first one. Some sort of an airship based on a weather-balloon design. It was a translucent blue that should have camouflaged it against the clear skies of Arizona. There was a small electronic pod dangling beneath, with steel claws for gripping.
It wasn’t all that sophisticated, really. Near silent compressed-air canisters jetted it along on a plotted course to whatever target could be reached with the prevailing air currents. The electronics inside would be expensive and the plastic shell would be some sort of military-grade armor.
The first device was air-dropped in the middle of the night onto a rocky hillock well outside of the village. The desert-colored electronic device had righted itself and started listening to the goings-on in the Sun On Jo village.
It didn’t listen long. Smith underestimated Winner and the entire village. Never mind that they used stealth aircraft to deploy the device; they woke everybody up. Winner sprinted in a big circle, came up behind the device and stepped on it.
This new device, he noticed, had video pickups all around it. No sneaking up on this one. That didn’t matter. Winner wasn’t even going to let it get into position.
He grabbed a rock, tossed it lightly in his hand to get a feel for its weight, then leaned around the hilltop and delivered the rock at the dangling plastic device.
It sensed him instantly and began to program evasive maneuvers, releasing compressed gas from its jets as the rock slammed into the plastic shell. The ceramic-reinforced carbon-fiber shell fell into the desert in little pieces.
The thing was designed for a direct hit, and the electronics inside were exposed but still intact. The airship was making a valiant attempt at escape.
Winner tossed the beer can next. The can hit the device and burst open. The device did the same thing that any cheap boom box would do with beer spilled into its guts—it stopped working forever.
Smith saw it happen, as well as could be expected. The eavesdropping pod’s video pickups weren’t the best, but they caught a ten-frame-a-second video of something colorful that homed in on the pod and drenched it in liquid. The final image, just prior to the impact, had a corner of the label in focus.
“O’Doules,” Smith deciphered. He tapped out the name. The response told Smith that it was an internationally marketed brand of nonalcoholic brew.
Ironic that a half-million-dollar Department, of Homeland Security long-range eavesdropping device had just been ruined with nonalcoholic beer. Smith couldn’t even have the man responsible arrested for possessing alcohol on a dry reservation.
The image flickered and the command window showed the failure of the systems. Just before the signal itself stopped coming from the airship there was a dramatic drop in the altitude indicator. The DOHS device went down. Smith didn’t delude himself into thinking that there would be anything to salvage.
The head of CURE was so frugal he was known to reuse adhesive tape, yet he had wasted a million dollars in U.S. spy technology in under twenty-four hours.
He got to his feet, opened the door to his office and sat again, preoccupied to the point he failed to notice the young man who was standing in the doorway expectantly.
“Dr. Smith? Can I come back in?”
“Sorry. I’ve finished.”
Mark Howard limped to the oddly situated second desk. He had been ordered specifically not to ask or seek information about Smith’s activities. That worried Mark. Dr. Smith didn’t keep things from his assistant. Smith trusted Howard; the simple and irrefutable reality was that if Smith didn’t trust Mark, Mark would be gone. Probably for all eternity.
So what was Smith keeping from Mark now? And why?
Two options presented themselves. One had to do with the current open wound in CURE security—Remo’s family and the tribe at the Sun On Jo reservation in Arizona. Smith would want to know exactly what the Sun On Jo knew. He would protect Mark from these investigative activities because they could have fatal repercussions. Remo wouldn’t be happy.
But Smith had to know. In some ways, Mark was surprised that Smith had kept CURE going with all the loose ends in the once airtight security wall.
That led his thoughts inexorably to the second target of Smith’s secret activities. Sarah Slate. She knew about the Masters of Sinanju, and that knowledge led her to deduce the nature of CURE, and that made her a grave risk.
Mark hoped Smith would agree to his plan to mitigate that risk.
But Mark loved Sarah Slate, and Smith knew it, and if he was planning on taking unpleasant measures, he would certainly not have involved Mark.
It made him feel sick for a moment, but he didn’t believe that was happening. Sarah had become precious to, of all people, Chiun. Harming Sarah would invite Chiun’s wrath.
Chiun killed hotel bellboys who interrupted his TV shows. God only knew what would happen if he became truly enraged. He pictured Chiun exacting his revenge on Smith—for starters. Next he would likely move on to the White House. The President and his staff would be wiped out in minutes. Where would the old Master go from there? Whoever he saw as most closely connected to the President. Not Congress. Probably the military. The Joint Heads of Staff, maybe, annihilated.
Mark was probably exaggerating the scenario in his head, but the truth was that a wrathful Chiun just might take such extreme measures. Smith understood that. Smith wouldn’t risk the stability of the nation over Sarah Slate.
Somehow, that made Mark feel much better.
Chapter 13
Winner Smith ignored his sister when he came back into the small village, and as usual that lasted for maybe two or three minutes.
“I’m not leaving your side until I know what’s going on,” she explained simply as they entered the home of Sunny Joe Roam, their biological grandfather. Sunny Joe looked up from the week-old Yuma Observer.
“I’m going to my room,” Winner stated, but a door couldn’t be closed fast enough to keep out Freya. There was shouting.
“I’m getting my own house,” Winner stated as he came out again.
Sunny Joe shrugged. “If you think it will help.” Freya gave him a confident smile. “It won’t help, Win.”
“I’m getting my own house in Ulan Bator.”
“It won’t help, boy,” Sunny Joe said.
Winner knew that it was the truth, but the truth made him even more frustrated. He started walking. Out the door, out of the village again, into the desert.
“This won’t help, either,” Freya said, keeping up without trouble and as unfazed as if they were taking an afternoon stroll. Both of them were at home in the desert of Arizona.