Warren Murphy: Unnatural Selection

Turning, Smith fumbled the shears up under his arm as he reached in his pocket once more for the keys. He was heading for the corner cabinet when he caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye.

He twisted in time to see his secretary lunging. Shocked, Smith dropped the shears as Eileen Mikulka roared. A loud, inhuman sound that chilled his marrow. Mrs. Mikulka's crooked talons flew for his throat.

IN THE INSTANT before the blow landed, Harold Smith's heart thrilled as he spied the flash of yellow in his secretary's brown eyes.

She was too fast. Too slow to react, the flashing, logical part of his brain fully expected the killing blow to register. He felt the breeze on his neck.

In the instant before her claws struck, Smith was startled when another hand darted into view. With a loud slap, it batted his secretary's hand harmlessly away.

"Hold, thing of evil," a booming voice commanded.

Smith's brain was still only vaguely registering how close he had just come to mortality when his lagging vision finally spied the flash of black to his left.

The Master of Sinanju shot in beside the CURE director. In a heartbeat, he was standing between Smith and his snarling secretary. Knotted hands rose before the old Korean like tensing cobras, ready to lash out.

Remo slid in on Smith's right.

"You okay, Smitty?" Rerno asked levelly, a wary eye on Mrs. Mikulka.

"Fine," Smith insisted. He was still gathering his wits. The shock had begun to fade.

Eileen Mikulka had stepped back a pace. She hunched her head protectively down into her shoulders as she studied the wizened figure that had blocked her killing blow. She seemed to suddenly decide that he was no real threat.

Baring fangs, Mrs. Mikulka growled.

"Prepare to meet your doom!" Chiun declared, deadly hands raised.

"Don't hurt her!" Smith shouted.

Remo had to hold the CURE director back to keep him from throwing himself between Chiun and Mrs. Mikulka.

"I realize this was a favorite concubine, Emperor," Chiun said through clenched teeth. "But this one is lost. Allow me to dispatch her, and you may restock your harem with a dozen maidens more comely than she."

"No, Master Chiun," Smith insisted. "There will already be too many questions with Mark. I might be able to keep that confined to Folcroft, but if Mrs. Mikulka is killed, the police would definitely become involved. It is too risky."

The Master of Sinanju shot Smith an irritated look. The moment his head was turned, Mrs. Mikulka charged.

For a frightened moment, Smith thought his dowdy secretary's attack would succeed. But in the instant her claws should have ripped through Chiun's spindly neck, the old Asian was no longer where he had been.

Only Remo saw the perfect pirouette the Master of Sinanju executed around the charging woman. In a flash, he was beside her. As she lumbered past, a single whitened knuckle struck a point on her right temple.

Eileen Mikulka went down in a growling, wheezing heap.

Skidding on the dirty concrete floor, she came to a sliding stop at the feet of Harold W. Smith.

Smith looked up at the Master of Sinanju, his face wan. "Is she-" he pleaded.

"It lives," Chiun replied, gliding up beside Smith. His hands vanished inside his sleeves.

A low groan rose from beneath the rumpled pile that was Eileen Mikulka. Smith let out his own low sigh of relief.

"Thank God," Smith said. "We will strap her down more tightly than Mark and sedate her heavily. With luck she will pull through."

"I'll give you luck," Remo said. "You're lucky we found the loading-dock door open. Two seconds more and you would have been a midnight snack. What the hell happened here, Smitty?"

"It would appear Mark came down here after his escape," Smith said, checking the knot on his Dartmouth tie.

"We don't know where he went after. He didn't leave a trail outside to follow." Remo nodded to Eileen Mikulka. "So how did he change her? These things aren't werewolves. You said all the contaminated water was being collected."

For a moment, Smith seemed puzzled. "It is," he insisted, frowning. The light dawned. "Except-" His face blanched. The CURE director stepped hastily over his secretary's body, hurrying inside the storage room.

The refrigerator door was open. On the floor the aspirin bottle Remo had brought from Manhattan lay on its side. The cap was off. Smith's bad knee creaked like crunching cornstarch as he quickly knelt. When he shook the bottle, a single drop fell out.

"Oh, my," Smith said.

"That explains that," Remo said. "Why the hell didn't you dump that stuff?"

"I was keeping it here for testing in the future if it became necessary or until a purer form of the formula could be found. Mark knew this was where it was stored."

"Why would the Prince risk his life poisoning the Emperor's concubine when he knew that Sinanju was but a stone's throw away?" Chiun asked.

"Probably wanted her to buy some time for his escape. Mission accomplished, by the way. He's long gone by now."

"I fear that was not his purpose here," Smith said. His eyes were trained on a silver object in the corner. There were three similar, barrel-shaped devices lined up in a neat row. Only one seemed operational. Even across the room near the door, Remo and Chiun could feel the intense cold emanating from the device. A top lid had been popped open. Weird steam-like melting dry ice-rose from the open top.

While the three of them had been in the room, Remo had watched the temperature gauge on the side change. It had started at -132 and was now at -98. "What's that contraption?" Remo asked.

When Smith looked up, his angular face had grown visibly haggard. Remo didn't like the older man's tone.

"Perhaps we should discuss this in my office," the CURE director said. He didn't look Remo in the eye.

Chapter 34

"You son of a bitch," Remo growled.

They had returned to Smith's office. The CURE director had taken up his post behind his desk, hands folded neatly before him. Remo and Chiun stood in front of the desk near Mark Howard's vacant chair.

Smith had just finished telling them, in the most blunt, clinical terms possible, exactly what had been stored in the stainless-steel drum downstairs.

"You no-good, lying, cold-hearted son of a bitch," Remo repeated. Knots of rage stood out on his neck. He clenched his hands so tight his digging nails nearly drew blood.

"I did not lie," Smith pointed out. "And you were aware that we took a semen sample from you the day you arrived here at Folcroft."

"Hold the phone," Remo said, a warning finger raised. "It's not like I was awake for that particular party. You didn't even let me in on the joke until twenty years later. And that was only after I found out you'd gone off and created a test-tube son for me without even telling me about him."

Smith's lips thinned. "That child was not created as a son for you," he said tightly, clearly uncomfortable with this aspect of the discussion. "He might have been your biological offspring, but he was brought into existence as a contingency plan for CURE. In case you were killed in the line of duty, Winston was to be our fallback."

"'Brought into existence,'" Remo scoffed. "Do you even hear yourself? You jerked me around so you could jerk some other poor slob around." A thought suddenly occurred to him. "How many more are there?"

"I do not understand."

"You used artificial insemination to make one. How many more little contingency mes are running around out there?"

"Winston was the only one," Smith said.

"How do I know that?" Remo demanded. "You've had that stuff stored downstairs in deep freeze for thirty years. You could have whipped up a hundred more in all that time."

"It is my understanding that you are able to tell when someone is not telling the truth. Remo, Master Chiun, I give you my word that there was only one baby born with the aid of Remo's, er, contribution."