Warren Murphy - The Ultimate Death

Delicate long-nailed fingers floated before the Chicken King's mesmerized face. "I will wring the truth from your scrawny neck," warned the Master of Sinanju.

It took Chiun's hand one-thousandth of a second to grab the jumble of nerves on the side of Poulette's neck. It normally would have taken Henry Cackleberry Poulette one full second to respond, but his nervous system could not process the pain that quickly-though his spinal chord almost overloaded itself with the effort.

"Ducks! Flocks of them! In the secret wing!" he cried at last.

"Secret wing?" asked Remo.

"And the poison is hidden in this secret wing?" asked Chiun.

"I don't know! Could be! I'll take you there! Right now!"

Chiun released Poulette's neck with a final squeeze, leaving the Chicken King gasping in pain. "Lead us," he ordered.

Poulette rose shakily to his feet and followed the two men from his office. The tight-faced Master of Sinanju led the way.

"You people sure do take your ducks seriously," he said as he walked beside Remo. He twisted his distended Adam's apple back over his shirt collar into a more comfortable position.

"Good thing for you that you're not poisoning fish, too," said Remo, closing the door behind them.

Chapter 7

"You're lucky to be alive, Dr. Smith."

"It is probably just a minor allergic reaction, Dr. Drew."

"Hardly. You've been poisoned. And I understand there have been cases like this all up and down the East Coast."

"I am confident it is nothing serious," said Harold Smith, frowning at his green-and-white surroundings. A Folcroft hospital room.

"People are dying, Dr. Smith. I find that serious."

Harold W. Smith dragged himself unsteadily to his feet. He found his clothes, and pulled on his white shirt with pitiable difficulty. The doctor looked at him with concern. Smith tried to give a reassuring smile, but lost it somewhere in the effort. Not only was the CURE director unfamiliar with the expression, but his head had begun to swim uncertainly. The antiseptic room spun before his myopic gray eyes, and he was forced to steady himself against the wall. This from the strain of stepping into his trousers.

"You should rest for a few days," the doctor cautioned.

"I feel fine," Smith said curtly.

"Perhaps. But according to your records you have an enlarged heart and history of pulmonary trouble."

"You know full well the trouble has nothing to do with my heart," Harold W. Smith said brittlely. The trouble had begun earlier in the day, in fact.

He had ignored the styrofoam cup Mrs. Mikulka had placed on his desk while he attended to more urgent business. The woman was efficient, but she was a little too willing to accept a person's word. Smith had checked with the cafeteria personally in order to make certain Folcroft had not been billed for the missing yogurt.

He then went back to monitoring CURE's computer lines. He had begun picking up spotty wire service reports of apparently random food poisonings. There was no pattern emerging. People were succumbing in restaurants, in their homes, at picnics, and elsewhere. Smith, who looked for patterns in his raisin bran, became engrossed in finding one here.

It was a full two hours before he turned his attention to the styrofoam container on his desk.

A yellow film of grease had formed on the top where the soup had congealed. Smith broke through the surface with a metal spoon he kept in his desk drawer-disposable plastic was out of the question. Too expensive in the long run. Metal cost one lump sum, and was reusable forever.

The chicken soup below was cold. Smith spooned a bit of the broth from just below the surface to his thin lips and tasted it carefully. He licked the spoon clean, placed it neatly beside the cup, and turned back to his computer screen.

It was ten minutes before the irresistible urge to vomit overcame him. Smith grabbed the empty wastebasket from beside his desk and promptly filled it with the meager contents of his stomach.

When he thought the retching had finally abated, it began again until it seemed that nothing more could be released. Still, he could not stop.

Hastily secreting his computer terminal back inside the desk, Smith summoned Mrs. Mikulka by intercom. She found him slipping from his chair like a gray, melting snowman, and alerted the medical staff.

They immediately pumped Smith's stomach.

It was now three hours later. Harold Smith's gray head felt light, and his throat was scraped raw from the tube that had been inserted down it. His stomach felt as if a Tonka toy had been using it as a racetrack.

"If you had eaten more than a spoonful, Dr. Smith, you might not be here right now," Dr. Lance Drew said, concern on his grim features.

"I am glad I did not eat more," Smith said, without a hint of irony. He labored to tug on his gray jacket.

"A man your age shouldn't push himself so hard," Dr. Drew said solicitously. "Take a few days off. Relax."

"Thank you for your concern, doctor," Smith said thinly, closing the door-along with the doctor's protests-behind him. He then began the long trek back to the administrative wing of Folcroft.

He had to stop and lean against the wall a half dozen times for support. When he arrived at his office, Mrs. Mikulka bustled out from behind her reception desk.

"Dr. Smith, you should be lying down!"

"No!" Smith snapped, firmly. He inhaled once, the pain in his throat making the effort difficult. His voice regained its usual calm tone. "I am all right. Really. Would you please call my wife and tell her that I will be working late tonight?"

It went against her better judgment, but Mrs. Mikulka knew better than to contradict her bloodless employer. "Of course, Dr. Smith," she said, reaching for the phone.

As he sank painfully behind his desk, Harold Smith immediately called up his computer screen. A new wave of news digests had come in during his absence. All had been flagged "Top Priority." It was an epidemic now. Thousands had died in nearly sixteen states.

And it all seemed somehow tied to . . . chicken?

A distant memory tweaked at the back of Smith's consciousness. He prodded it, but nothing came to mind. He was still woozy.

He would have to trace the poison back to its source. Better put Remo on standby, he thought, reaching for the blue contact phone.

He allowed the phone to ring a total of forty-three times before he took the receiver away from his ear. There was no answer at the Edgewater condominium tower. Remo and Chiun were gone. He had no way to reach them. He calmly replaced the receiver in its cradle.

Smith returned to the incoming news digests. The epidemic seemed to be confined to the eastern seaboard and a few midwestern states.

He ran several analysis programs. None suggested an explanation, but all offered the same high-probability conclusion.

"My God!" Harold Smith muttered. "This is product tampering on a scale never before seen!"

And the two men most able to stop the menace were nowhere to be found.

Smith glanced down. On his blotter, the container of cold chicken soup and the metal spoon still sat. Allowing himself a rare "damn," Smith picked up both objects and dropped them into his wastebasket.

The loss of the spoon brought fret marks to his tired ashen face.

Chapter 8

"Look," Henry Cackleberry Poulette began reasonably, "if there's a problem with my birds-and I'm not saying there is-it didn't necessarily start here. I ship my babies out to restaurants, supermarkets-even to the Asian market."

"We got ours in a Japanese supermarket in New Jersey," Remo said.

Poulette snorted. "Those crazy Japs. I gotta ship my ducks to Tokyo just so they can claim they're Japanese exports. Their customers won't eat homegrown."

"Maybe the problem started in Tokyo," Remo said to Chiun.