Smith's mouth opened a shocked sliver. A cloud of dark confusion passed across his gray features. The car sat on a mound of heaped bags and paper. All manner of metal and plastic jutted crazily from everywhere around the pile. Since it was a still image taken from above, Smith could distinctly see the backs and outstretched wings of several seagulls frozen in flight as they swooped over the piles.
Smith tore his eyes off the screen, glancing in confusion at his young assistant.
"Trash," the CURE director said, frowning.
Howard nodded. "Tons of it," he said. "It looks like a big blur from above because it's pretty much shapeless. It almost looks like that's where they're dumping everything they're bringing up to the Vaporizer."
"How?" Smith asked. "They aren't using that road. It's far too narrow and remote. And there are no others up into the hills. Besides, they are driving to the device on public roads. They would be missed if they detoured for as long as it would take them to get all the way up there."
"I know," Howard said, pursing his lips in thought. "I've tracked some of the trucks off and on today. They go from the harbor, up to the Vaporizer, dump their stuff in and then go back down." He crossed his arms, frustrated. "Unless they found some way to beam it up there from down below, it's getting vaporized, just like they claim."
Smith raised an eyebrow. "Beam?" he asked. Howard had learned this about his employer early on. The CURE director knew little about popular culture.
"From a TV show, Dr. Smith," Howard said. "They could transport matter from one spot to another." He was peering at his screen. "I don't know. I thought this might be something, but it must just be an old dump," he concluded. "It's probably stuff they've been dumping there for years. Doesn't have anything to do with the Vaporizer. Still, I'd like to know how that car got all the way out there."
He was still staring at his screen when he heard a soft hiss of air beside him. When he glanced up he saw a flush of color on his employer's normally gray face.
"The scientist you mentioned," Smith pressed urgently. "The one whose car that was. You said he was Japanese. Did you research him-specifically employment history?"
"Some," Howard said. He pulled up the file on Toshimi Yakamoto. "Not much here. Hired a year ago by the government of Mayana. Before that he worked for fifteen years for the Nishitsu Corporation of Japan. I can do more if you'd like."
Smith was shaking his head. There was a look of quiet triumph on his face.
"Of course," he said. "It all makes sense."
Mark Howard looked from Smith to the monitor, then back to Smith once more. "It does?"
The CURE director shooed the younger man from his seat. Mark Howard stood back in the tight corner as Smith sat down before the raised monitor. The older man's hands flew over the keyboard, keys clattering madly.
"I gave you some research material from our old files after you came to work here," Smith explained while he typed. "Out of necessity I condensed much of it," He finished with a flourish. "Here it is. Read this file. It's more complete than what I gave you before. Digest the broad details as quickly as you can. Skim the rest for now. When you are finished, meet me in my office."
He vacated Howard's chair. The younger man was slipping back in the seat as Smith hurried back into the hallway.
The CURE director marched back to his own office. He slipped into his own familiar chair and grabbed up the blue contact phone. From memory, he called Remo's hotel room directly.
There was no answer. He tried the number a few more times before calling the main desk. Remo and Chiun had not returned, nor had they checked out yet.
That was at least a good sign. Remembering that Rema had checked in by cell phone, Smith spun to his computer.
When he turned up the brightness an the monitor, he found the picture of Mayanan Executive President Blythe Curry-Hume smiling on the tarmac of the New Briton airport.
Feeling a stir of something in the back of his brain, Smith dumped the picture, activating CURE's tracer program.
He quickly traced the line Remo had used to report in. He was concerned to find that the phone was registered to a Russian telephone service.
Smith tried the number several times.
No answer. Knowing Remo, he had most likely tossed the phone in the trash once he was through with it.
Smith was sitting back in his chair and frowning in deep frustration when Mark Howard entered his office. The young man was shaking his head in amazement.
"You read the material?" Smith asked.
"Enough," Howard said. "You sure about this?"
Smith nodded crisply. "It all fits," he said.
Mark seemed to still be digesting everything he had just read. "How did all this end up down there?"
"I have a good idea on that, as well," Smith said, tapping a frustrated hand on his desk. "Fortunately this is not necessarily a major problem. Not for CURE anyway. As long as Remo is down there, I would like to have him confirm my suspicions before he leaves."
He reached once more for the contact phone. Maybe Remo had returned to his hotel by now.
"I can see them choosing that valley," Howard mused. "It's the perfect site. That's the exact spot where Jamestown was. No one's allowed out there."
Smith already knew the location of Jamestown. Yet it took someone else speaking the word aloud for the little nagging doubt that had been playing persistently at the edges of his mind to finally crystallize.
He dropped the blue phone. The color drained from Smith's face. His mouth went as dry as desert sand. His hands were shaking as he reached for his keyboard.
"What's wrong?" Mark Howard asked, noting with dread the sudden change in his employer's demeanor.
Smith didn't answer. His ears rang as he pulled up the photo that had been taken an hour before on the tarmac of New Briton International Airport. President Blythe Curry-Hume stood shaking the hand of the American President, sunlight glinting off his dark glasses. Smith enlarged the photo for a close-up on the face of the Mayanan executive president.
Delving into the CURE archives, Smith retrieved a picture that had been taken twenty-five years earlier. He set the old photograph next to the new one.
The instant he saw them side by side Smith felt a tightness in his chest. As if a cold hand had reached in to clench the life from his struggling heart.
The skin was darker now, but it seemed unnatural. A salon tan rather than natural pigmentation. The nose was oddly sharp, the hairline plucked back. The hair itself had been dyed jet-black. But the build and the general facial structure remained the same. The men in both pictures were even wearing the same aviator-style sunglasses.
Mark Howard had come around the desk and was peering at the pictures of the two men.
Smith had been guided by instinct. Since Remo had undergone several operations to alter his appearance since coming to CURE, Smith had also become adept at spotting plastic surgery. Mark Howard, on the other hand, had his own sixth sense, an ability to see that which others could not. That the young man saw what Smith had seen was clear.
"My God." the assistant CURE director croaked. "But Jack James is dead. That can't be him." Smith scarcely heard. His hands were on the leather arms of his chair. Deadweights at the ends of his wrists.
A peal of distant thunder rumbled in across Long Island Sound. The sound registered dully on Smith's ears.
It could not be. Yet there it was.
Jack James, the psychotic. Jack James, the murderer. Jack James, long-dead leader of the People's Sanctum, the man who had killed hundreds of his own followers at Jamestown.