Warren Murphy: Bamboo Dragon

"Obviously. May I bring you up to date?"

"Please do."

It was Smith's specialty, in fact—not world geography, but bringing Remo up to speed on areas where major problems had arisen, sometimes overnight. In fact, the recognition and solution of those problems was the only reason Dr. Smith and Remo came together. Viewed another way, it was the only reason Remo was alive.

Harold W. Smith was the chief officer and sole surviving staffer of what had to be the smallest and most secretive clandestine-operations unit in the world. Created by a former President of the United States who had the foresight to predict a law-enforcement crisis in America before it came to pass, the unit—known as CURE—had been specifically conceived in an attempt to "save the Constitution by unconstitutional means." Behind the double-talk was a tiny, supersecret strike force, primed to deal with enemies and problems that the law couldn't legitimately touch.

CURE was an assassination squad, and Remo was the assassin.

He worked without a net, no backup teams, support divisions, agents standing by to bail him out if things went wrong. A job like that demanded special skills, a special man, and so it was that CURE had chosen wisely, reaching out for Remo when he least expected it. The group—if such it could be called—had engineered his "death," revived him and presented Remo with an offer he could not refuse: take on the troubles of the world, or die for real, while Dr. Smith went shopping for another paladin.

So Remo took the job, and while he would have liked to say that nothing could surprise him anymore, the world still held its share of mysteries. And some of them were served up to him on a silver platter, courtesy of Dr. Harold W. Smith.

"If you were asked about the state of global exploration in the nineties, Remo, what would you reply?" Smith asked him, rocking backward in his high-backed swivel chair.

"We've pretty well disproved that flat-earth thing, unless you're one of those who think the moon walk was a sci-fi special filmed at the Nevada Test Site."

"You've been watching Oprah."

"Montel Williams," Remo said. "The smaller shows pick up a better class of flake these days."

"And otherwise? In terms of exploration?"

Remo thought about it for a moment. "Looking at your average map," he said at last, "I'd have to say, 'Been there, done that.'"

"Exactly. Looking at a map."

Smith's lips turned upward in a small, uncustomary smile. He held it for perhaps three seconds, but the silence stretched between them for a good half minute, until Remo understood he was expected to respond.

"Okay, I'll bite. What's wrong with maps?" he asked.

"They represent a combination of research and educated guesswork," Dr. Smith replied. "To start with, eighty percent of the planet is covered with water—oceans, seas, lakes, rivers. In many places, the oceans are well over six miles deep, and the average depth is about two miles. Divers rarely venture below fifty fathoms—about three hundred feet—and even then they seldom leave the continental shelf. Who really knows what's happening in the Pacific Ocean, for example? Who can say what's living down there, at the bottom?"

"Jacques Cousteau?"

Smith blinked at Remo and ignored the comment. He was on a roll. "It would appear, despite our glaring ignorance of life beneath the sea, that we've at least explored the land we live on, yes?"

"I'd say."

"Consider this—the greatest waterfall on earth is found in Venezuela, on the Churun River. Angel Falls, 3,212 feet in height. It was unknown until a pilot crashed his plane nearby, in 1937, and discovered it by accident. Thirty years later and not far away, cartographers discovered that a major mountain range, the Cerro Bolivar, had been misplaced by some two hundred miles on every map in print around the world."

"That's sloppy work," said Remo.

"But it's not unusual," Smith told him, warming to his subject. "Why, in northern California alone, we have seventeen thousand square miles that were last surveyed by land in 1859. Today, cartographers rely on aerial reconnaissance—they've even got the shuttle beaming lasers down to chart topography—but none of that says anything about what's going on beneath the forest canopy."

"In California?"

"Anywhere!" Smith answered. "We've got scientists who sit in sterile labs and tell us Bigfoot cannot possibly exist in California, when their last excursion to the area took place before the Civil War. Imagine, Remo!"

"Bigfoot?"

"An example," Dr. Smith replied. "An archetypal mystery of nature."

"Ah."

"Which brings us to Malaysia."

"More or less."

"Are you familiar with the Tasek Bera region?"

Remo thought about it for a moment, frowned and shook his head. "I must have missed it."

"You and damned near everybody else," said Dr. Smith. "It's sixty-five miles due east of Kuala Lumpur as the crow flies, but sixty-five miles in the Malaysian jungle feels more like a thousand. Suffice it to say that the region is poorly explored."

"Fair enough."

"The name translates literally as 'Lake Bera,' but it refers to a much larger region, several hundred square miles of the worst swamp and jungle Malaysia can offer. The lake is a centerpiece, surrounded by the kind of wilderness white hunters used to call Green Hell."

"That's white men for you," Remo said.

The doctor's frown was there and gone, a flicker at the corners of his mouth. Smith never knew quite what to make of Remo or the changes that immersion in the secrets of Sinanju wrought between one meeting and the next.

"What do you know about uranium?" Smith asked him, shifting gears.

"Expensive, toxic, not approved for costume jewelry," Remo said. "I couldn't tell you who discovered it."

"Klaproth," said Dr. Smith, "in 1789. He's not our problem at the moment."

"I'm relieved to hear it."

"You are aware, I think, that weapons-grade uranium is not the most abundant element on earth."

"It rings a bell," said Remo.

"Hence the current seller's market in a world where everybody wants the Bomb," Smith said. "If you have access to uranium in quantities, you've got it made."

"Until your stash is confiscated by the government."

"Precisely." Dr. Smith seemed pleased. "Which leaves uranium prospectors in a kind of legal no-man's-land. They have to find the stuff—no easy job, at that—and try to sell it off for what they can before the nearest sovereign moves to seize the property and add it to existing stockpiles."

"We were getting to Malaysia," Remo interjected.

"Quite. About four months ago, a freelance expedition made its way into the Tasek Bera, looking for uranium where no man's gone before, that kind of thing. Officially, they were a group of birders. Phony papers from the Audubon Society, the whole nine yards."

We're coming to the punch line, Remo thought, content to wait and listen while the doctor spelled it out. He would receive his marching orders soon enough.

"The team was out of touch for thirteen weeks," said Dr. Smith. "That's verging on excessive, even for a jungle expedition, but security is paramount in operations of this type. You don't want anybody listening when you report a major find."

"Okay."

"Eight days ago," Smith said, "some natives found a member of the expedition wandering along the Pahang River, ten or fifteen miles above the Tasek Bera. Terrence Hopper was his name, a veteran prospector with several major strikes behind him. Africa, Australia, South America."

"Uranium?" asked Remo.

"Most recently," Smith said, "but Hopper's hunted everything from oil to gold and platinum. Not much on formal schooling, but he had a major reputation in the field."

Past tense. That meant the man was dead, and Remo would not be required to send him on his way.