Destroyer - Deadly Seeds Part 9

Maria Gonzales, carrying a Russian pa.s.sport because her country did not have relations with the United States, spoke with a French agronomist who noted his country had large farming sections with climate and soil like Ohio.

Chiun engaged several cameramen from television networks, asking why there was so much violence and filth in daytime dramas nowadays. Obviously one had replied with a sharp answer because Remo saw ambulance attendants lifting the portable TV camera from a man's shoulder and placing him on a stretcher.

Newsmen worked in shirt sleeves. The Miami County Sheriff's office wore open-necked short-sleeved shirts 93.and carried heavy sidearms, the sheriff having vowed that there would be no Mojave-type incident here in Piqua, Ohio.

"We're not like those people out there," said the sheriff.

"Out where?" asked a reporter.

"Out anywhere," said the sheriff. Sweat ran down his face like glycerin beads over packaged lard. Remo scanned the crowd looking for any possible attack on Fielding. He caught Maria's eye. She smiled. He smiled back. Chiun walked between them.

A soft breeze caught the corn in a neighboring field and made the lazy summer day smell like life itself. Remo caught an exchange of glances between a man in a Palm Beach hat and another in a gray light summer suit. They were across the field from each other. And both looked at a paunchy man with large shoulders who glanced at something in his hands, then looked at Remo. When Remo looked back, the man tucked the object into his trousers pocket and became very interested in what was happening in the field. The three men had the field triangulated. Remo sidled to the paunchy man hi the white suit.

"Hi," said Remo. "I'm a pickpocket."

The man stared straight ahead.

"I said h.e.l.lo," said Remo. The man's alligator shoes pressed into the newly turned Ohio soil under the weight of 280 pounds of muscles and flesh and a twoday growth. He had a face that had been banged here and there by fist and club and a whitish lumpy line which was the completed healing process of a long-ago blade. He was slightly taller than Remo and had shoulders and wide fists that had obviously done some bang- 94.ing themselves. His body oozed the odor of yesterday's scotch and today's sirloin.

"I said h.e.l.lo," said Remo again.

"Uh, h.e.l.lo," said the man.

"I'm a pickpocket," Remo repeated. The man's hairy heavy hand moved down to his right trouser pocket.

"Thank you for showing me which pocket I should pick," said Remo.

"What?" said the man and Remo cut two fingers down between fatty palm and hefty hip, making a neat tearing slice down the right side of the man's trousers.

"What?" grunted the man who suddenly felt his undershorts under his right palm. He grabbed for the skinny guy but when his huge hands closed on the shoulders, the shoulders were not there and the skinny guy kept on walking and looking through the trouser pocket as if strolling through a garden reading a book.

"Hey, you. Gimme back my pocket," said the man. "That's my pocket." He swung at the back of the head but the skinny guy's head was just not there. It didn't jerk or duck, it was just not there as the swing went through where it was. The two other men in the triangle moved toward the commotion. The Miami County sheriff's office moved toward the commotion.

"Anything wrong?" said the sheriff, surrounded by deputies with their hands on their sidearms.

"No," said the big man with the tear in his trouser. "Nothing wrong. Nothing." He said this by instinct. He could not remember ever telling a policeman the truth.

"Anything wrong?" the sheriff asked Remo.

"No," said Remo, examining the pocket he had picked.

"All right, then," said the sheriff. "Break it up." See- 95.ing that all his deputies were cl.u.s.tered around him, he yelled for them to get back to their positions. There wasn't, he said, going to be another Mojave Desert incident in this county.

Remo threw away car keys and some bills from the pocket. He held onto a small square paper that looked printed. It was a sketch of two men, the stiff expressionless lines of what might have been a police composite. An old Oriental with wispy hair and a younger Caucasian with sharp features and high cheekbones. The Caucasion had hair similar to Remo's. The Oriental's eyes were deeper than Chiun's and then Remo realized it was a composite sketch of himself and Chiun. The deeper eyes told him and told him who had stood over the artist telling him 'yes' and 'no' as eyes and mouths appeared on paper. All eyes looked deeper when there was direct above light, as over a pool table in a pool hall.

Pete's Pool Parlour in East St. Louis. The Caucasian's eyes weren't so deep set because Remo had not stood at the table. He waved to Chiun.

Chiun came in behind the two other men of the triangle.

"Look," said Remo, showing the card to Chiun. "Now I know you won that money playing pool. You were at the pool table. Look at the eyes."

The man in the Palm Beach hat whispered something about having somebody. The big man trotted to a white Eldorado at the edge of the crowd.

"The shading of the eyes. Yes, I see," said Chiun. "The light from above."

"Right," said Remo.

The big man without the trouser pocket eased the Eldorado over the soft ground to Chiun and Remo. He 96.threw open the driver's door, disclosing a shotgun in his lap. The door hid the gun from the sheriff's men. It pointed at Remo and Chiun.

"That could not be me," said Chiun. "It is a very close likeness of you considering it was obviously painted from memory. It lacks the character I put into your face. The other person is a stranger to me."

"Looks just like the gook," said the man in the Palm Beach hat, coming up behind them. "We got 'em. You two, get in that car and move quietly."

"This could not be my face," said Chiun. "This is the face of an old man. It could not be me. It lacks warmth and joy and beauty. It lacks the grace of character. It lacks the countenance of majesty. This is just the face of an old man." He looked up to the man in the Palm Beach hat. "However, if you could give me a large size of the white man, I would like to have it framed."

"Sure, old man," said the man in the Palm Beach hat. "How big? Eight by ten?"

"No. Not that big. My picture of Rad Rex is an eightby-ten. Something smaller. To stand near my picture of Rad Rex, but slightly behind it. Do you know that Rad Rex, the famous television actor, called me gracious and humble?"

His face sparkled with pride.

"All right," said the man with a tight-lipped smile. "You got an eight-by-ten of a f.a.g, I'll print you one of these but smaller."

"What is it, this f.a.g?" Chiun asked Remo.

Remo sighed. "It is a boy who likes boys."

"A pervert?" asked Chiun.

"He thinks so," said Remo.

"A dirty disgusting thing?" asked Chiun.

"Depends on how you look at it."

97."The way this creature-"Chiun jerked his head toward the man in the Palm Beach hat-"looks at it."

"The way he looks at it," Remo said. "Right, dirty and disgusting."

"I thought as much," said Chiun. He turned to the man in the hat who had begun to wonder why Johnny Deussio was sending all the way to Ohio to collect a couple of half-decks where there was no shortage of the mentally ill back home in St. Louis.

"You. Come here," said Chiun.

"Get in the car," said the man with the hat. Enough was enough.

"After you," said Chiun and the man with the Palm Beach hat did not notice anything and did not really feel anything and then he was being propelled over the old man's head, toward the open waiting door of the car. He slammed into its front seat. His head hit the head of the driver and his body slammed down atop the barrel of the shotgun. The driver's head snapped back and his finger jerked the trigger involuntarily. The shotgun went off with a m.u.f.fled roar.

A red whoosh of flame darted out of the car. Pellets kicked up dirt around Remo and Chiun's feet.

"Hey, fella, careful," said Remo. "Somebody could get hurt." He turned around to see if anyone had paid attention to the shotgun blast. The third man was now standing behind him, a .45 in his hand.

"In the car."

"In the car?" said Remo. "Right, in the car."

The third man went over Remo's head and landed atop the other two hulks in the front seat. But Remo did not notice that because he saw two sheriff's deputies approaching him.

98."Oh, oh," said Remo. "Let's get out of here. Get in the car, Chiun."

"You too?" said Chiun.

"Please, Chiun, get in the car."

"As long as you say please. Remembering that we are coequal partners."

"Right, right," said Remo.

Chiun was in the back seat of the Eldorado and Remo behind the wheel. The sheriff's deputies, he could see through the window, were closer now, starting to walk faster in the manner of police who aren't sure anything wrong has been done but by G.o.d they don't want anybody to go leaving the scene of the crime.

Remo chucked one of the groggy squirming bodies into the backseat.

"No," said Chiun firmly. "I will not have them back here."

"Why me, G.o.d?" said Remo. He shoved the remaining quarter-ton of flesh against the pa.s.senger's door, put the car in gear, and drove off. For a moment, in his rearview mirror, he could see the sheriff's men looking at him driving away, only slightly interested. Then his view was blocked as the body from the backseat was reinserted by Chiun into the front.

He drove out along a dirty road that crisscrossed through cornfields, feeling pretty good. The last Mojave demonstration by Fielding had lost much of its frontpage s.p.a.ce to the violence at the demonstration site; this time he had prevented that. It was the least one could do for a man who was going to save the world from hunger and starvation.

The man in the Palm Beach hat was the first to regain control of himself. Surprisingly, he found his gun still in his hand and he fought his way out of the ma.s.s 99.of arms and legs and pointed the automatic at Remo. "Okay, bright eyes, now pull over to the side and stop."

"Chiun," said Remo.

"No," said Chiun. "I will not soil my hands with anyone who defames the good name of Rad Rex, brilliant star of As the Planet Revolves."

"C'mon, Chiun, act right," Remo said.

"No."

"This isn't the one who said anything about Rad Rex," lied Remo.

"Well, you can't blame me for making such a mistake. Everybody knows all you whites look alike. But . . . ."

The man with the .45, past whom the bickering had drifted, never had an opportunity to witness its outcome. Before he could move, before he could speak again to warn this skinny punk at the wheel to pull over, there was a slight pain in his head. It never felt like more than the irritation of a mosquito's sting and he never felt anything again as Chiun's iron index finger went through his temple into his brain.

The man dropped back onto the pile of bodies.

"You lied, Remo," said Chiun. "I could tell he was the one of the evil mouth, because his head is empty."

"Never trust a white man. Particularly a coequal partner."

"Yes," said Chiun. "But as long as I am at it-" He leaned over the back of the front seat and while Remo drove, sent the other two men to join their companion, then sat back in his seat contentedly.

Remo waited until he had gotten out of sight of the demonstration area, then parked the car under a tree. He left the motor running.

"C'mon, Chiun, we'd better get back. There just 100.might be more back there, with Fielding as their target."

"There are no more," said Chiun.

"You can't be sure. Somehow, they made us as Fielding's bodyguards or something. Probably they think if they got rid of us, they get a clear shot at Fielding."

"There are no more," Chiun insisted. "And why would anyone attempt to harm Fielding?"

"Chiun, I don't know," said Remo. "Maybe they're trying to get the secret of Fielding's miracle grains. Steal the formulas and sell them. There are evil people in the world, you know."

"Remember you said that. . . partner," said Chiun.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

The last time Johnny Deuce had looked forward with antic.i.p.ation to the six o'clock news had been when the United States Senate was investigating organized crime and he'd had a chance to laugh at his old friends.

They had come on in a parade. People he had given advice to, people he had tried to straighten out, but for all the new clothes and even though they didn't carry weapons anymore and even though they had all wrapped themselves up in corporate blankets, they still had the old Mustache Pete mentality. So they wound up providing six o'clock news fodder for America while Johnny Deuce was home in his living room, trying to keep his wife's hand away from him and laughing aloud.

But this time the news was no laughing matter, not because of what was on it but because of what wasn't on it. There was a long glowing story of the Fielding demonstration in Ohio. A made-up newcaster came on in a shot taken next to the freshly planted field and talked 102.

glowingly about the great benefits to mankind from the miracle grains. He was an Ohio-based newsman and in a burst of parochial pride, he pointed out that today's planting had been a marked change from the one in the Mojave that had been sullied by still-unexplained violence.

Johnny Deuce stopped listening when the newscaster began to blather about America living up to its responsibilities to provide sustenance for the world.

He heard the weather forecast call for bad weather and then he sat in his small room thinking and it was only when the eleven o'clock news came on that he rose himself from his reverie and focused his attention again on the screen.

But there was just the same newscast. No reports of violence, no reports of Fielding's bodyguards being killed, and as he listened Johnny Deuce wasted no time coming to a truthful conclusion. The three men who had been sent to do in the hard-faced white man and the old Oriental were dead.

If they had succeeded, their work would have been on the news. That was the deductive evidence; the inductive evidence was that they had not called and Johnny Deuce had told them they had better call by seven P.M., no later, or they would have their b.a.l.l.s filled with sand.

He let the sound of the rest of the newscast drone on as he lapsed immediately back into the rest state of the last five hours, sitting languidly while his brain whirred along, formulating his plans, setting up his attack, and this time in his mind making sure it would work.

He was satisfied and convinced and he snapped out 103.

of it just long enough to catch the end of the newscast. The weatherman was on. He was a thin man with a mustache and a half-a-bag on. The forecast was still for rain.