“You don’t understand the scope of the losses, Remo,” Mark said, trying not to sound too condescending. “The Hong Kong economy has been devastated already. It will take them years to recover from the damage they’ve already sustained. The economy of China has suffered a serious blow. The world economy is affected. If the data pipeline went down for an extended period, every business in Hong Kong would go bankrupt, and probably the PRC, and the world economy would probably be pushed into global recession.”
Remo shrugged. “That would be bad, all right. Can I go to Hong Kong now, before I say something even dumber?”
Smith pursed his lips, which gave them wrinkles like the lips of old movie starlets in too much pancake makeup. “Yes,” he decided. “Remember, please, that discretion is the word.”
Remo shrugged. “It is
“We shall remain invisible,” Chiun stated formally as he rose to his feet. “As always.”
“I’ve had enough death to last me a lifetime,” Remo said. He sounded bitter. He felt bitter. All those people who had been cheering in the streets of the capital city were now lying dead in those same streets. They were dead in their cars, and in the parks and everywhere people ought to be alive.
The Marines in the helicopter that air-lifted them into Ayounde from Sierra Leone had been wearing big suits that made them look like the marshmallow man who got toasted all over New York City in some old movie. They had been worried about Remo and Chiun going in without suits. They asked Remo time and again to change his mind. He ignored them. The old man, they thought, couldn’t even understand what they were even saying.
They smelled the dead from sixty miles outside the city, and by the time they touched down it was an overpowering stench. This was equatorial Africa. In twenty- four hours the decay was well under way; Remo didn’t want to think what this place would be like in a week.
‘It’s too quiet,” Remo said. “Makes my flesh crawl.”
“It disturbs me, as well,” Chiun remarked. “But there is death and there is death.”
“Don’t start.”
They walked. The place shouldn’t be far from the park where they had been deposited. They found the Ayounde National University and let themselves inside the building that called itself the College of Natural Sciences.
The research labs had air-conditioning. The corpses here smelled less.
Remo’s skin adjusted itself to the temperature of his environment, just like that of other people only more so, so the machine-cooled air wasn’t more comfortable to him, or to Chiun. Still, the place felt more like a human environment. It made the presence of so many dead people even more unnerving.
“This is not the work of a proper Master,” Chiun said.
“You go find some survivors to kill, then,” Remo said, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
“Somebody got up on the wrong side of the mat this morning.”
Remo halted. “Yeah, that’s it, exactly, Chiun. I’m just having a bad day. Has nothing to do with this, or the hundreds of others like him.” He thrust an open hand at some particularly gruesome remains against a hallway wall. “Her. Whatever he or she used to be. Why the hell did you say that?”
Chiun looked impassive. “Making conversation.”
“You don’t make conversation. You were trying to provoke me.”
“You are mistaken.”
Remo gave up. “Here. Ready?”
Chiun nodded. The lab door was locked from the inside. Remo applied a little extra wrist and the knob spun easily, metal bolts shearing off inside, and they stepped into a tiny research lab that was as cold as a meat freezer.
Remo shut the door, then he and Chiun stood inside and exhaled slowly, as if they were underwater, without breathing in. They allowed themselves to become cold.
Chiun thought this was a curious sensation, and he even felt a little foolish for doing it—but he didn’t dare to tamper with the unnatural horror that threatened them. He understood what they were up against, and he knew that it was probably in the room with them.
So he allowed himself to become cold. Being a skilled Master of Sinanju, he could control his body to acclimate it to his environment. He had walked under the blazing desert sun without discomfort. He had traveled above the Arctic Circle with only a windbreaker to protect him from the cold. He did this by adjusting the natural functions of his human body, but adjusted them to a greater degree than most human beings could ever believe possible.
Now, in a kind of perversion of this skill, he was purposely lowering the temperature of his skin. They could not allow their body temperature to melt, and thus free, any of the microscopic devices that they suspected were here.
Before, in Scotland, Chiun had encountered the things. One of them had looked at him, and the feeling of it was more unnatural than the feel of any demonic presence.
