Warren Murphy: Feeding Frenzy

Remo stepped on a patch of dry grass and weeds with his shoe. The underbrush crackled.

"One match would get rid of all the bugs and this ecological sinkhole too."

Chiun gasped. "We are assassins, not arsonists. Would you shame the art?"

"Would you rather chase spiders into next Tuesday?" Remo countered.

The Master of Sinanju stroked his wispy beard thoughtfully.

"I will turn my back. What you do or do not do shames your ancestors, not mine."

Remo grinned broadly. "Fine with me. I don't even know my ancestors."

Remo picked up a dry twig, found another, and knelt in a particularly dry patch of brush. He tried the old Boy Scout trick of starting a fire. After ten minutes, he had a hole in the ground on two well-worn twigs.

He found a piece of hard rock and held one in the brush. With the edge of his other hand, he began chipping off pieces. Sparks flew. One started smoldering in the grass and Remo blew on it until he got fire.

He stood up and stepped back.

"I think I did it," he called over to Chiun.

"I am not looking," replied the Master of Sinanju. "To look is to accede. I am ignorant of any disgraceful behavior.

The fire was going good now. It leapt and spread outward. Spiders scurried. They were fast. The flames were faster.

"Okay, let's get out of here," said Remo.

It took two or three hours, but Nirvana West was a conflagration, kept from enveloping the surrounding hills by fire trucks and helicopters dropping orange fire retardant chemicals.

Surveying the scene from a nearby hill, Remo and Chiun were confident they had gotten them all.

"I think we're leaving Nirvana West in better shape than we found it," Remo said happily.

Chiun cast his eyes skyward. "I know nothing of what this uncontrollable white is saying," he informed his ancestors.

They were walking back to their car, which they had parked in a secluded area, away from everything, when a black hearse pulled up.

A desiccated voice asked, "Is this Nirvana West?"

"What's left of it," Remo said.

"Where are the dying?"

"There aren't any."

The hearse door popped open and the last person Remo expected to see in Nirvana West emerged. He wore black. His round-brimmed hat was black. As was his string tie. He was a tall, hollow-cheeked cadaver of a man, with dry skin and quarrelsome birdlike eyes.

"I have come a long way to assist them in their final agony," said the disconsolate voice of Dr. Mordaunt Gregorian.

"You know," said Remo, his eyes going hard, "I've been hoping to meet up with you for a long, long time."

Dr. Mordaunt Gregorian shifted his quick black eyes from Remo to the Master of Sinanju.

"You do not look well," he told Chiun.

Chiun lifted his chin proudly.

"I have the strength of a lion and the heart of an eagle."

Dr. Gregorian looked back at Remo and said, "Alzheimer's. Very sad. I will be happy to ease him to the other side. For a modest one thousand dollars. Less than the cost of a common vasectomy."

And Chiun gasped like a startled old maid.

Remo moved then. He grabbed the man's shoulder and squeezed. Instantly. Dr. Gregorian's eyes popped out in his gaunt face and he went down on his knobby knees.

"This is for all the little old ladies you keep snuffing," Remo growled, lifting his hand.

A thin wrist blocked the blow before it could begin. Chiun's.

"He's mine," said Remo.

"He is not!" snapped Chiun. "He is not to be killed. "

"We've had this argument before. He's a ghoul."

"I'm a licensed pathologist," gasped Gregorian, his eyes closed in pain. "Retired."

"He performs a service," said Chiun.

Remo glowered. "Not good enough, Chiun."

"And he is not an assignment."

"So? He's a freebie."

"If the House of Sinanju performs service without proper compensation, then word will get out and no gold will be offered to us."

"Take it up with Smith."

"Remo, do not be an amateur."

Remo hesitated. There was cold fire in the Master of Sinanju's eyes.

And because he respected his teacher above all others, Remo gave Dr. Mordaunt Gregorian a final squeeze that left him squirming in a spreading pool of a bodily fluid that was not blood.

"Some day," Remo vowed, walking away, "I'm going to get to waste him."

"And if Emperor Smith so decrees it, I will be the one to dispatch that ignoramus," Chin spat.

Remo looked surprised. "What changed your mind?"

"I do not care that he eases the suffering of those who choose to hire his services, vile as they may be. But did you hear the pitiful price he quoted for my life? One thousand dollars, Remo. Paper money. Not even gold. The man obviously has no idea who he wished to snuff."

And despite himself, Remo laughed as he started up the car.

Chapter 24

Harold W. Smith sat before his computer screen. On it he had typed the names of the key players in the problem of Human Environmental Liability Paradox. His analytical mind found working with tables very productive as a focusing tool.

He went down the list.

It had all begun with Brother Karl Sagacious, now deceased. He appeared to be a fool who stumbled across fool's gold.

Theodore Magarac, alias Brother Theodore Soars-With-Eagles, was now deceased too. It no longer appeared to be likely that Magarac had done away with Sagacious. But someone had murdered him, Lee Esterquest, and all the remaining members of People Against Protein Assassins at Nirvana West. But who?

Jane Goodwoman, also dead, was never much of a suspect, despite Remo's suspicions.

The loss of Dale Parsons, the CDC pathologist, was more troublesome. Even if Smith could somehow get out the word of the truth behind the HELP scare, without a credible spokesman wielding hard evidence there was no turning back the thunderbug mania. All over the country, teenagers and people seeking to lose weight without going on starvation diets were eating thunderbugs. It was ridiculous. And here was a United States senator, attended by a pack of media hounds, vowing to expend unguessed sums of taxpayer moneys just so people could go on eating an unsafe bug, instead of counseling against the cheaper and more reasonable solution of not eating the thunderbug in the first place.

Where was everyone's common sense?

Now that Smith knew the truth-that Ingraticus Avalonicus was not the source of HELP-it was just as important that the facts come out. Those people were slowly starving themselves by eating a worthless nugget of undigestible protein.

Which brought Smith back to the central problem. Who was behind HELP?

Senator Ned J. Clancy remained the top suspect. There was no doubt that he was tied into it all. His mother's nurse, Nalini Toshi, clearly controlled the exotic but venomous spiders that were--or seemed to be-responsible for the actual HELP, in reality not a virus, or a disease at all. But a subtle toxin, administered by a spider.

Was Nalini the mastermind? If so, what was her motive?

Was she a tool of Senator Clancy? If so, what could his motive be?

And there was the missing Thrush Limburger. He had been as quick as Clancy to leap on the HELP bandwagon. Except that he had been out to expose it. Or so he had claimed until his bizarre and puzzling disappearance.

Had Limburger discovered the truth? If so, who had abducted him? And where was he now? Was he even alive?

Harold Smith preferred not to think the worst. That Thrush Limburger was in fact the author of the Human Environmental Liability Paradox, and had engineered this entire scenario as a way to boost his already meteoric ratings.

Still, in some way, it was preferable to the only other probability.

Namely, that Senator Ned J. Clancy was orchestrating everything and had from the very beginning.

There remained one unknown. The Eldress. Theodore Magarac had spoken of her in his dying moments. Who was she? There was ample evidence that she was Nalini Toshi, who although young, seemed to be the last survivor of an ancient cult of assassins who killed via venomous spiders.