“There was a window of opportunity. If someone knew something was there, knew it would not be consumed in the fire, knew it would be accessible after the fire, if they knew all those things and were prepared to go in and take it, then it could possibly have been taken. All those possibilities are unlikely.”
“Are you forgetting that the place self-destructed when it wasn’t supposed to, Smitty?” Remo said. “Somebody blew it up, on purpose. It wasn’t the lab people who worked there. They were all dead. It wasn’t the morons who killed the lab people, because Chiun and I killed them. It wasn’t you, which leaves a very small number of people in the world who even know the place existed, if you were straight with me at the time. The President? The prime minister of England?”
“Not even them,” Smith admitted.
“Who else could have done it?”
“Unknown.”
“You’re right, Remo, somebody could have somehow known of these weapons and triggered the self-destruct charges with you inside and come back to take an overlooked stash of nanobots,” Mark Howard said. “What would you have had us do about it?”
“Anything is better than nothing, Junior.”
“We dispatched the sterilization team to the site without Pentagon authorization so we could get it done faster,” Mark Howard said. “You were dealing with the threat in the Pacific. That was more important at the time. And we don’t know that this threat is caused by the nanobots.”
Remo said nothing. He did know. There were no germs involved, according to the earliest reports, and the scientists who studied the cause, who were on the scene and dying on their feet, reported evidence of active, mechanical-looking organisms in the city water. They even managed to get off hard data before their own guts were opened up from the inside.
This had all come just after the incendiary announcements from London. Parliament had finally approved the official disapproval of the Proclamation of the Continuation of the British Empire and the recolonization movement, though the initiative was being undermined by some members of parliament even before the prime minister could make the authorized announcement to the world. Still, British law was now officially governing Ayounde, Newfoundland and New Jersey, and the United States, for one, had launched its gunships and ground troops minutes later.
Remo was feeling double-talked into exhaustion. “What’s the situation now?” he asked resignedly. “In Ayounde? What about Sir Race Car Driver? He still governor?”
“He has announced that the contamination seems to have halted, but the country faces a new health crisis. The capital is littered with cadavers and there are not enough people to clean them up. Disease will begin to spread within twenty-four hours.”
“The contamination is over?” Remo asked.
“A few health workers are already arriving on the scene and they confirm it,” Mark Howard said. “They’ve even taken water samples and found it clean.”
“What?”
“They are trying to persuade other health organizations to come into Ayounde as quickly as possible, before a bad situation gets worse.”
“How can it be over?” Remo demanded.
“How would you like to go to Ayounde and find out?” asked Harold W. Smith.
“No,” Chiun said. “I think not.”
“I’m on my way,” Remo said. “What am I looking for?”
Sir Sheldon Jahn allowed the applause of thirty thousand Asians to carry him into the backstage area. He’d given them three encores. That was enough. Always leave them wanting more.
Sheldon knew show business. He’d been a superstar since the early 1970s, when he had more hit records than he could count. Now all his fans were grown up and had kids of their own and Sheldon was as popular as ever, even though he hadn’t had a chart-topper in years.
Show business made him as rich as the queen, but he was bored with it all. The concert in Hong Kong was his last ever. He was quitting show business, and embarking on a new career, at age fifty-nine.
Tonight he would become a conqueror.
It made him giggle.
Strolling through the backstage area without pausing even to change his attire, he ignored the sumptuous catering and the bevy of Chinese cross-dressers brought in for his enjoyment
“Ell, where’re you going?” It was his manager, Clarice. She was proportioned like an upside-down bowling pin and smoked Camels using a slender, ivory holder. The antique cigarette holder was worth thousands, but it made her look ridiculous.
“Out,” Sheldon replied.
“Dressed like that?” She waved her cigarette holder at him. Sheldon was still in his sky-blue sequined suit. “Who cares?”
“But darling, you haven’t eaten.”
“I’m too excited to eat,” he replied as he slipped out the rear doors and into the waiting limo.
