Smith accepted that. What choice did he have? There wasn’t anything he could do to investigate it further without sacrificing mission security. Why waste time and energy worrying about something that wasn’t apparently of consequence and over which he had no control?
That made him stop and think.
What if the entire mission were such an exercise in futility?
What if this problem wasn’t a problem at all? What if he could never solve the mystery—then what would he do?
Harold W. Smith chastised himself for digressing. The mission wasn’t just about the mystery of who pulled CURE’s strings; it was about how much the Sun On Jo knew about CURE. Once he was satisfied as to the extent of their knowledge, he could decide what to do. His first instinct would typically have been to initiate the shutdown of CURE and the annihilation of the Sun On Jo. Heartless, but necessary.
But Smith had learned then of the blood ties Remo—and Chiun—had to the Sun On Jo. He was contractually obligated to harm none of them. But what made the assassination of the Sun On Jo truly impractical was the inevitable response from Remo and Chiun. Remo would want revenge, and his revenge would come in the form of realizing Smith’s worst nightmare. He would expose CURE. He would expose Smith. He would probably expose the culpability of every President from the past thirty years. The scandal would be immense and just might be too much for the United States to withstand.
Smith couldn’t walk away from this. He couldn’t allow CURE to continue with this enormous question mark hanging over it.
His espionage wasn’t intrusive and went unnoticed with the latest EBE unit. So far as Smith knew.
He took the airship to its station. Like the station of the previous nights, it was about five miles from the actual village. Smith turned on the listening mechanism and the various sensors, and began recording everything.
This time the EBE was gone only eight hours before it signaled its return to the Yuma base and landed without incident The crew chief surreptitiously snatched off his watch, which had been clasped to a small frame strut.
After the airship was moved inside and the EBE was undergoing her postflight maintenance, the crew chief and the colonel met in private.
“Nothing on her drive again?” Simonec asked carefully, reluctant to steer the conversation immediately into the subject of their transgression.
“Nothing on her, as always.” The crew chief was reluctant to go on.
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Where’d she go, dammit?”
The crew chief’s eyes became very shifty, and it seemed an effort for him not to look around the tiny operation room for any third parties. “It’s an Indian reservation.”
“Indians? Navajo?”
“Naw.”
“Hopi? Payute?”
“One of the little tribes. Sun On Jo. Never heard of them, but they have their own federally recognized reservation not too far from Yuma.”
Simonec considered this. “Where else?”
“Nowhere else. It parked outside the one and only town on the Sun On Jo res and never moved until it was time to come home. You know, I half suspected the EBE was being used for some sort of big sting on the illegals coming in from Mexico.”
Simonec nodded. “Me, too. But then why just focus on the Indians? Maybe we’re looking at something bigger after all.”
“Maybe the Sun On Jo are a part of the White Buffalo societies. You know, redskin freedom fighters. You think the DOHS has got a line on some real terrorism brewing?”
“I think I’d like to know what is brewing,” Simonec said. “But I guess our hands are tied.” He looked right into the crew chief’s eye as he said it.
“More or less. We got another mission already on the books for tonight with the EBE, Colonel.”
“Be nice to know if they have any other targets in mind,” the colonel said, just for the sake of saying it.
“Yeah,” the crew chief said, not meaning anything by it.
“Yeah.”
Smith took the EBE by the reins that night and tested her out. She was still sluggish, just like the day before. He didn’t worry about it. She was just a prototype, after all. She wasn’t even supposed to be in the field yet.
Still, the EBE was doing a superlative job. Smith had recorded hours of conversations by every Sun On Jo in the village. The tribe as a whole was restless, probably made uneasy by the crash of the other spy ships, but there was no indication that they were aware of a third ship spying on them. Still, Smith had the sense that the people were disturbed by something unnamable.
He had hoped to overhear the people talking about their history, their theology or their legends, and he was especially looking forward to hearing Remo’s family discuss him. Even a passing reference might have provided Smith meaningful insight into their understanding of Remo and his work.
Nothing. Although restless, they kept their feelings to themselves. Many of the adults were sleepless that night of the EBE watch, but they didn’t while away the hours conversing about it. Smith jumped restlessly from one audio feed to another, searching for anything of value.
In frustration, he sent the EBE home before dawn, having learned nothing.
Chapter 23
“The natives are restless,” Mark Howard mentioned when they heard another scream from far, far away, somewhere inside Folcroft Sanitarium.
“The man sounds like he is in pain,” Sarah Slate said in concern.
“He’s dreaming. That’s Mr. Fyster. Old man from a rich family, various emotional problems. He’s been here for years, as quiet and contented as you’d imagine. All of a sudden last night he started having nightmares that woke him up six or seven times. He wasn’t the only one. Lots of agitated patients.”
They were strolling the grounds slowly, hand in hand, enjoying the night air. Sarah looked over her shoulder. “Moon’s not full.”
“Sometimes it happens this way—at least that’s what the doctors tell me. Especially in a place like this, without a lot of disturbing and loud patients that you might find in another mental health facility. I guess one of them starts screaming and sets off the others.”
They walked for a few minutes, then Sarah said, “That doesn’t sound right.”
Howard was grimacing. His leg was hurting slightly, but he had a quota to fill. His wheelchair awaited them fifty feet up the brick path.
“What else could it be?”
“You tell me, Mark,” Sarah said thoughtfully.
Mark settled into his wheelchair. “What do you mean?”
“Something is disturbing you?” she said, but she wasn’t really asking. “You’ve got something on your mind.”
“No. That’s not it. Just something—out there.”
“In the trees? In the ocean?”
“Not really.” Was she teasing him?
“In the night?”
“In the world.”
She was pushing him now, along the brick path. “Are you talking about all the bad blood on the news?”
“What are you getting at?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry. I snapped at you. I’ve never done that before.”
“So why did you?”
Sarah Slate, Mark decided, would make an excellent psychotherapist. “When I start feeling like I’m trying to tell myself something, and I can’t figure it out—I get frustrated. I guess I get grumpy. I didn’t realize until just now that I was feeling that way.”
“Mark,” Sarah said, “are we still talking about international tensions, or the patients of Folcroft?”
“I don’t know.”
Mr. Fyster screamed again. As muted and distant as it was, the sound cut through the peace of the evening and the steady hush of the Long Island tide.