Warren Murphy: Timber Line

"He isn't now?" Remo said.

"No. Somebody injected some kind of speed drug into a dozen rattlesnakes and left them in his car." Smith's mouth was white around the edges. "The snakes were wild," he went on. "The boy didn't know they were in his car until he got in. All the windows were rolled up. They all attacked him at once. Nobody could get to the body until the snakes had calmed down, which wasn't until a day and a half later. Then they had to saw away the steering post and the door on the driver's side because the corpse was so bloated from snake venom and heat."

"Sweet," said Remo. "All this over a tree?"

"A special tree," Chiun said. "A Korean tree, the most valuable in the world."

"All right," Remo said. "I'll go. I'll do whatever you want."

"And I, too," Chiun said. "I would see this tree that the Brazilians probably stole from my poor people in Korea."

Smith chose to ignore Chain's remark, hoping the old man would change his mind.

"There's a man named Roger Stacy," Smith continued. "He's the head of this copa-iba project. All he'll know is that you're a government man there to help safeguard the project. You don't have to tell him anything else," Smith said.

"What do I go as?" Remo asked. "A lumberjack?"

Smith shrugged. "I've arranged for you to go on the federal payroll as a tree reclamation technician."

"Sounds good," Remo said. "What's it pay?"

"And am I one of these tree whatever-it-ises?" Chiun asked.

"No," Smith said. "Actually, I had not expected you to go. I thought it would be too difficult to try to convince people that you were a government employee."

Chiun nodded at the wisdom of this. "Of course," he said, touching his long fingernails together. "I am too noble, too wise, too compassionate to be a menial." He raised a finger in triumphant decision. "But I will go, nevertheless. I will live in this forest camp. It is time for me to make my pilgrimage to nature, to renew the sense of oneness between man and his world. I shall go naked and alone, with nothing but the clothes on my back."

"I've never heard of that before," Remo said.

"It must be done every ten years," Chiun said. "But you are not grown up enough yet to worry about it. This will be a good chance for me to do that, and also to keep an eye on you, and to watch out for my stolen Korean trees."

Smith sighed. "The man to look for, Remo, is Roger Stacy."

Chiun said, "Remo, start packing my thirteen trunks."

The years had been kind to Roger Stacy. He was tall and lean and looked a boyish, well-cared-for forty-five years old. Since that expedition to the Matto Grosso twenty years ago, he had grown and carefully tended a Van Dyke beard. His thick, curly black hair had turned white — not gray, but snow-white — at the temples and his once-soft hands, long since grown hard and strong, were tended each week with a professional manicure.

Stacy felt at home in his office. It had been five years since he had been named a senior vice-president of Tulsa Torrent and put in charge of its copa-iba project. Twice since then, he had been offered a chance to leave the tree plantation, high in the Sierra a hundred miles north-northeast of San Francisco, and return to the corporate headquarters in Oklahoma City. But each time he had turned the offer down. After all, he explained, wasn't he one of the discoverers of the copa-iba tree? And besides, he wasn't cut out for big-city life; he was just a simple country boy who felt best when he could be close to the trees he loved and the great outdoors.

The simple country boy put his $500 handcrafted leather boots up on his massive redwood desk, smoothed out his skintight Nudies cowboy pants, rolled, then unrolled, the sleeves of his L.L. Bean wool lumberjack shirt, rearranged the navy-blue virgin-wool stocking cap he was wearing, checked to make sure his colorless nail polish hadn't chipped, and said to his visitor, "So you're O'Sullivan, the man the government sent out to solve all my problems for me."

"No," said Remo.

"No?"

"I'm not O'Sullivan. I'm O'Sylvan. Remo O'Sylvan."

"Oh," Stacy said. He took his feet down off the desk, opened its center drawer, took out a piece of paper, and scanned it quickly.

"Absolutely right. You're not O'Sullivan, you're O'Sylvan."

"You had to look at a piece of paper before you believe I know my own name?" Remo asked.

Stacy smiled at him for three seconds longer than he should, then the edges of his smile broke down into a nervous tic.

"Well," he said, and paused. "Well," he said again.

Remo sat and waited.

"I suppose the Forest Service sent you out?"

"You can suppose that if you want," Remo said.

"Did they?" asked Stacy.

"Look in your desk. Maybe you'll find another piece of paper with that fact on it."

"Probably the FBI," Stacy suggested.

Remo had decided there was something about Stacy he did not like. This was no surprise. Even on the best of days, Remo admitted to himself, he could only just barely tolerate ten percent of all those other creatures who called themselves human beings. The other ninety percent he couldn't stand at all.

"Let's get on with it," Remo said.

Stacy cleared his throat. "You know about the copa-iba?"

"More than I want to," Remo said. "It gives off gasoline for sap or something."

"Diesel fuel," Stacy said. He steepled his fingers. "Then I'm sure you understand the implications."

"Sure," said Remo. "Every greedy bastard in the world from the oily Arabs to the oil companies to the coal and nuclear people want to turn your trees into a bunch of number-two pencils."

Stacy smiled. "That sums up our problems pretty well," he said. "But lately, they've taken a turn for the worse. The snakes in the car, for instance. Nothing that I can't handle if they just leave me alone, but I guess they figured you might be able to, do something I can't." The tone of his voice made it very clear that he regarded this as quite a farfetched possibility.

"There are a lot of things I can do that you can't, Stacy," said Remo. "Now, if you're finished being a pouting wimp, maybe we can get down to business."

A cloud of rage darkened Stacy's face. He stood up and took a step toward Remo. The telephone saved his life.

It rang.

Stacy lifted the receiver.

"Yes," he said, "I see. How long ago? What's the status quo? I see. Okay. I'll be there right away."

He hung up the phone and looked back to Remo.

"There's been another incident," he said.

"What?"

"Two members of our scientific staff were shot at down at Alpha Camp. That's where the copa-ibas are."

"Dead?"

"No. One of them, a man named Brack, apparently had a slight flesh wound. He's at the infirmary now."

"Did they catch who did it?" asked Remo.

"No. They got away clean. I'm going up there now. You want to come?"

"Yes."

"What should I tell them you are?"

"Some kind of tree inspector," Remo said. "Look on that paper."

Stacy picked up the paper from his desk. "A tree reclamation technician," he read. "That's a laugh."

"I used to climb a lot of trees when I was a kid," Remo said.

"I don't think you could tell a tree from a telephone pole," Stacy said.

"Since when does that stop anybody from being a tree expert for the feds?" Remo asked. "Tell them my uncle was a ward leader in Jersey City. That'll explain everything."

Stacy sighed.

The Jeep station wagon was painted electric-magenta. For the past fifteen minutes it had been climbing up and down, but mostly up, the side of a heavily forested mountain. After four desultory efforts to start a conversation, Roger Stacy had given up and slouched into as much of a sulk as he could manage while he was driving. In the bucket seat next to him, Remo quietly watched the road and the woods.