Warren Murphy - Waste Not, Want Not

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.

There now, shaking hands with the President. The President of the United States and dozens-hundreds-more world leaders and high-ranking diplomats were in Mayana for the Globe Summit. And their lives, perhaps the fate of the world, were in the hands of an utter madman.

And not one of them knew the truth.

Chapter 25

Remo had hoped to get a quick flight out of Mayana. Unfortunately the opening-day ceremonies of the Globe Summit tied up all air traffic in and out of New Briton. With dignitaries from around the world swarming the city, the earliest flight he could catch was the following morning.

He tried phoning Smith to speed things up, but Mayana's phone system was worth spit. After hours of trying, he still couldn't get through.

"You know, maybe we could get out of this dump faster if you showed me how to use that cell phone I found," Remo complained to Chiun after his hundredth time pressing the redial button on their hotel room phone. The hotel had given them a new phone with an actual cord that actually plugged into the actual wall, replacing the phone that Remo claimed was already broken in two when they checked in, honestly.

"What phone?" Chiun asked. The old Korean was watching the sun sink out over the Caribbean.

"Ha, ha," Remo said. "Come on, where is it?"

"I lost it."

"Right," Remo droned. He gave up, hanging up the phone. "Looks like we're stuck here tonight. What say we put our best clothespins on and go out to dinner?"

Still wearing a look of serious contemplation, Chiun nodded agreement. The two of them headed out the door.

The moment they stepped out into the hall, someone tried to shoot Remo in the head.

"What the hell?" he snarled, whirling. A bullet whizzed an inch from his ear, burying deep in the hallway wall.

At the far end of the corridor, two men in dark suits braced themselves in doorways, guns aimed at Remo and Chiun.

They seemed surprised to have missed with the first shot. Both men began squeezing off rounds. Silenced bullets sang left and right around the two Masters of Sinanju.

"I thought we were done," Remo griped, dodging bullets as he turned to his teacher. "Who are these guys?"

"They are dressed like the two braying fanatics who intruded on my peace yesterday," Chiun replied.

"I thought those guys didn't say anything."

As hot lead sliced the air around his frail form, Chiun waved an impatient hand. "They might have. I have weighty issues of my own to consider. I do not have time to entertain the wrong thoughts of every door-to-door religious crackpot who intrudes on my peace."

"Religious?" Remo asked, frowning.

Chiun was tapping his foot impatiently. "Are we eating or aren't we?"

"Smith gave us the okay to get out of Stenchburg," Remo mused. "If someone wants to kill us, they're going to have to follow us back home."

He turned to the gunmen who were still trying to shoot them. "Sorry, boys," he called to the increasingly frustrated men, "but we're officially off duty."

As the bullets ran dry, Remo and Chiun headed down the hall in the opposite direction. Leaving the baffled gunmen helplessly reloading, the two Masters of Sinanju ducked into the stairwell and were gone.

AFTER HOURS SPENT at the docks of New Briton, a tired but triumphant Petrovina Bulganin returned to her small hotel room flushed with success.

She had accomplished much more than her mission's original objective. Not only had she proved the Novgorod was behind the scow sinkings, she had also captured it. The renegade submarine had been stopped, its crew was in custody and-as a bonus-former Premier Nikolai Garbegtrov had been collected and quietly locked away at the Russian embassy.

In a serious crisis, Petrovina had both proved her own mettle and demonstrated the effectiveness of the Institute to Russia's male-dominated espionage community.

Yes, Remo and Chiun had helped. But no one need ever know the extent of the American agents' involvement. Vlad Korkusku wouldn't talk. Who would believe him if he did? The same with his men.

They would be laughingstocks if they mentioned any of what they had seen. Thrown out of the SVR. No, this was Petrovina Bulganin's victory to savor.

She pulled her suitcase from the closet floor, setting it on her bed. Removing her laptop from a zippered flap, she sat down at the small writing desk.

Since the ground lines were useless and she was now without a cell phone, her computer's satellite hookup was the only way she could check in with the Institute. As she booted up her computer, she thought of her special cell phone. Another exultant smile passed her full lips.

Even an unplanned accident had worked out in her favor. Everything about this assignment was working out perfectly.

When she checked her mail she found several urgent notes from Director Chutesov. Checking the time, she found that the first was already many hours old.

As Petrovina scanned the first note, her smile of triumph slowly faded. By the time she finished the second and third notes-written by Director Chutesov on a flight from Moscow-Petrovina's hands were shaking.

They were still shaking as she stabbed out the number to Remo's room. The internal lines worked. The phone rang and rang without answer. Woodenly she hung up.

Petrovina fumbled in the suitcase pocket where her computer had been hidden away. For a moment she didn't seem to know what to do with the pistol she pulled out. Finally she stuffed it in her belt, zipping her jacket up over it.

When she stepped numbly from the room a moment later, the usually efficient Petrovina Bulganin didn't even notice that she had left her computer on and the door wide-open.