“Not a who, but a place. That’s where the bloke is from, I think. The one I talked to all the time. The one who set this up for me and gave me all the instruction manuals and such. He called me a hundred times and the number was always blocked so I never knew where he was calling from, right, but two times he happened to call me from a phone in Rowester. Sounded like a house phone. Your man lives in Rowester, I bet.”
Remo was suspicious. He’d never heard of Rowester. “Tell me about it.”
“Nice place. A bunch of old families with some money and they needed to keep out the undesirables, you understand? They set up their own sort of unofficial city, but they made it kind of official in all the ways they knew how to make it. They got their own phone codes and all that, and they managed to make it a gated community, you know, keep out the rabble. Just the kind of place our man would live, if he’s from one of the old families with old money.”
Remo considered that. “So maybe we know the city our man comes from. That’s not exactly narrowing it down.”
“Wrong, mate,” Sheldon said quickly. “Rowester’s big on property and money, but there’s damn few people actually living there. Just the uppermost crusts, so to speak. Maybe a thousand people. Maybe even less.”
“Not much, but it’s the most he could give us,” Remo told Harold W. Smith.
“Remo, this could be enormous,” Smith answered.
“It could?”
“Mark’s already combed Mr. Jahn’s phone records for the past several months but without knowing what to look for. Now he’s zeroing in on the calls Mr. Jahn mentioned. Looks like he’s found them. Here we are. Sir James Wylings.”
Remo was suitably impressed at how fast the information was isolated. “Still, sounds like the kind of place where everybody is a knight or a prince or a duke of earl. We don’t know that Wylings is
There was silence. Remo heard quick exchanges between Smitty and Mark Howard. Those two bounced data off each other like silver marbles bounding around in a pinball machine. “You want me to call back.”
“It’s him,” Smith breathed. “Sir James Wylings. He’s the one.”
“What? How could you find him guilty so fast?” Remo demanded.
Smith began rattling off bits of data. Parliamentary insider. Boyhood friends with Andrew Dolan and Geoffrey Sykes, both members of parliament and actively opposed to the parliamentary efforts to condemn the recolonization efforts. Wylings had friends in high places all over the government. Including—yes, he knew Professor Roland R. Gill. Was the last one to see him alive, in fact. Gill was the mastermind behind the nanotechnology project at Loch Tweed Castle. Got drunk and drove his car into the Thames.
“Or Wylings drove him in, after learning a thing or two about Loch Tweed Castle,” Remo remarked.
“This is vital. The man is a trusted parliamentary insider without actually holding any government positions. He’s a part of parliament’s International Terrorism Defense Support Initiative. They use classified information to identify weaknesses in the infrastructure of foreign countries—ways terrorists might get in and do serious damage,” Smith explained.
“How convenient,” Remo said.
“There’s more,” Smith added. “His travel schedule. He was in Sierra Leone two days ago on unspecified business. After landing in Africa he took another short-range helicopter transport to an unknown destination, returned shortly and headed directly for England again.”
“He planted the nanobots in the water in Ayounde,” Remo stated. “He’s the one.”
“He’s in New Jersey now. The nature of the trip is unknown. His private jet is scheduled to return to London within the hour.”
“We’ll be in London to meet it,” Remo said.
Smith was quiet. No key tapping. Just breathing. “I’ll call the President and have a state of emergency declared in New Jersey. Wylings may have planted nanobots there—more likely, he staged them to deploy remotely should more global arm-twisting be required.”
“Yeah,” Remo breathed.
“Are you sure you don’t want to be in New Jersey?”
“No, thanks, Smitty. If Wylings is going to London, I’d like to go to London, too. London is one of my favorite places. Can we get there before he does?”
The answer was no. The plane chartered by Remo and Chiun was just as fast as the plane owned by Sir James Wylings, but they were farther away. “It all depends on when you leave and when Wylings leaves Newark. You still have to wrap up things with Sir Sheldon Jahn.”
“That’s—wait a sec—that’s wrapped up.”
The body of Sheldon Jahn fell heavily. Smitty heard the thump.
“We’re on our way.” Remo and Chiun hurried out of the secure communications hub, descended and emerged from the front of the building.
“Halt!” commanded an infuriated Chinese general.
“She’s all yours, Commies,” Remo announced. He and Chiun glided into the disordered attack formation of military vehicles and troops and vanished.
