Zipp sat behind his sparkling white desk, his sharply angled chin braced on one bare-knuckled fist. His free hand drummed the desk's surface.
This kind of waiting was more than tedious to an old flyboy like himself. It was made all the worse by the A #1 screw-up of them all, that PR flak, Clark Beemer.
Not that everything had been going swimmingly.
In truth at first the NASA administrator and Pete Graham had made little progress on their plan to defeat Mr. Gordons's enemies. The thing that made it most difficult was the fact that Gordons himself seemed so unstoppable. If he couldn't kill the two guys he feared, how could Zipp hope to?
At least, that had been his thinking at the outset. Of course, he had abandoned such thoughts early on. He was Zipp Codwin, after all. He was a larger-than-life hero from another age who had truly gone where no man had gone before.
As the night hours had crept toward dawn, a plan had begun to take shape. It wasn't perfect, and it might not work. But it was an old-fashioned NASA-style plan.
Of course, Gordons might not approve. Zipp was bracing himself to bear the terrible wrath of the android when something far worse than being throttled by a pissed-off robot happened. That idiot Clark Beemer had returned to Canaveral. Alone.
Something had gone wrong with the latest robbery, and the public-relations asshole had beat a hasty retreat, abandoning Gordons at the scene. Zipp didn't even have time to wring the little coward's neck, so desperate was he to get to a TV.
The news coverage about the latest spider sighting was bland and uninformative. No mention of Gordons being captured and, most important of all, no mention of NASA.
Zipp breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
The agency was safe. At least for now. But the most valuable asset he'd had in his corner since assuming the top spot at America's space organization was MIA.
Without Gordons he was dead in the water. He couldn't go forward with his plans to refinance NASA, and he couldn't help eliminate the android's enemies.
His problems were held in stasis for a few hours, postdawn. They had worsened a few short minutes before.
He had just been informed that a pair of FBI agents was on the base. Fearing the worst, Zipp refused to allow anyone else to speak with them. He ordered the men brought to his office.
He was sitting in the smothering sunlight at his desk when a sharp rap sounded at his office door. "Come!" Zipp called.
His secretary peeked her head inside the room. "Those men you wanted to see are here, Colonel," she said.
"Yes, yes," Zipp waved impatiently. "Let 'em in."
When the two men entered his office, Colonel Codwin was sure someone somewhere had gotten their wires crossed. There was no way these two could be FBI.
The first one was a skinny young guy in a T-shirt. The other was a wrinkled Asian in a kimono who looked older than the man in the moon. When they got to the desk, the young one flashed his laminated FBI identification at Codwin.
As Zipp carefully inspected it, the contents of the NASA administrator's desk caught the eye of the Master of Sinanju.
The desk was an ultramodern teardrop shape. Arranged before the blotter were dozens of model rockets. They seemed poised to launch an invasion of some tiny plastic planet.
His eyes trained with laserlike focus on the display, Chiun pushed his way past Remo. Slender fingers scooped up one of the small models.
The toy was divided into three stages. When Chiun pulled at it, two of the stages separated. When he pushed them together, they clicked back into a single unit.
Behind the desk, Zipp finally turned his nose away from Remo's ID, nodding acceptance.
"Welcome to NASA, gentlemen," he said. Standing, Zipp extended his hand. He offered a smile so strained it looked as if his underwear was six sizes too small.
Chiun ignored the administrator. He was too busy studying the rocket in his hand.
"Yeah, yeah," Remo said, interested in neither Zipp nor his offered hand. "Where do you keep your vans?"
There was a flicker at the far edges of Zipp's painful smile. "Vans?" he asked. "I think you're mistaking us for General Motors, son. We're your space agency. We don't do vans, we do shuttles, rockets and satellites."
"Look, Flash Gordon," Remo said to Codwin, "I saw the size of this joint on the way in. Unless you pinheads zoom around here in portable jetpacks, you've got to use cars to get around. Where are they, and are there any missing?"
Zipp bristled at his words. "You sure you're FBI?" he questioned suspiciously.
"We're from the less tactful branch," Remo explained. "We're the part that uses toy rockets for suppositories when we don't get the answers we want."
Zipp glanced at the Master of Sinanju. The old man had just removed the nose cone of his rocket. Chiun blew on the module, simulating wind, as he lowered the capsule for splashdown in an invisible sea.
"You gentlemen are making it difficult for me to be polite," Codwin warned.
"Look, I've met three of your vans so far," Remo said. "One blew up on me, one caused that highway pileup yesterday and the third one almost ran me off the road as it left a multiple-murder scene last night. We tracked its plate to here. Polite went out the window the minute those loons in the first van tried to barbecue me. Now what's the deal?"
Zipp's smile collapsed. "I was afraid of this," he said in somber tones as he sat back in his chair. He steepled his fingers under his razor-sharp nose. "A couple of our vehicles have turned up missing recently. I ordered an investigation. At the faster, better, cheaper NASA we do not tolerate any wastefulness when it comes to taxpayer dollars."
When Remo snorted at that, Zipp bit his tongue. "No matter what anyone might think," Codwin said, barely containing the acid in his tone, "NASA has undergone some severe belt tightening these past two decades. These days Congress is so cheap when it comes to our budget we can't afford to lose any equipment at all. Even vans."
Beside Remo, Chiun let out a whooshing sound. Guided by a sure hand, his rocket strafed the armada that was arranged for launch on Zipp's immaculate white desk. Most of the other toy models failed to survive the attack. As those few that remained upright teetered like wobbly bowling pins, the NASA administrator jumped across the desk, sweeping up the rolling rockets in both arms. A few clunked to the floor.
"I keep those here as souvenirs," he snarled at the Master of Sinanju. "Why don't you just take that one."
"They are free?" Chiun asked craftily.
"Sure," Zipp barked. "Take it."
Bending at the waist, the old Asian snatched up two of the rockets that had fallen to the floor. These disappeared inside the folds of his kimono. The first remained clutched in his hand. Spinning from the desk, he began flying it around the room. It attacked the fronds of a potted plant that sagged near a bookcase in the corner.
"You sure he's with the FBI, too?" Zipp asked.
As he spoke, another rocket tipped out of the pile in his arms, dropping to the gray carpet.
"He meets the Bureau's quota for odd-couple pairing." Remo nodded. "I had my choice between him, the superskeptical female doctor who never believes my crazy theories or the black guy who's always two weeks from retirement."
"Huh," Codwin grunted. His eyes still trained on Chiun, he drew the models across the desk, dumping most of them into a half-empty drawer. "If that's all, I have work to do. Space doesn't explore itself, you know."
"Actually, there's something else," Remo said. He dug in his pocket, removing the envelope he'd picked up at the Roadkill. Taking out one of the larger black fragments, he dropped it in Zipp's callused palm. "You have any idea what this could be?" he asked.
Codwin studied the jagged object carefully. When he touched the surface with an exploratory finger, a gunmetal-gray eyebrow rose on his lined forehead. "Where did you get this?" Zipp asked.