By the time Remo and Chiun crossed the last lawn and broke through the tree cover at the shore, the boat was already halfway across the section of lake that separated the new and old cities of Geneva.

  Remo was heading for the water, but Chiun touched his arm.

  “He is too far gone,” the Master of Sinanju said. Remo stopped, squeezing his hands in impotent frustration at the rocky shore. The boat weaved through shuttle traffic and sped toward the big white shape of the cruise liner.

  “Damn,” Remo said. “Judging by the whiff in the air, that’s definitely the guy who was in St. Clair’s house. If he’d used binoculars instead of some electronic whatsit in the first place, we could have had him.”

  Chiun nodded tight agreement. He watched the distant boat through narrowed eyes before finally turning away.

  “Come, Remo,” the old man said. A long nail flicked at the holes burned in the back of Remo’s shirt. “Even the Swiss must have laws against exhibitionism.”

  Remo looked up the near-vertical hill they’d just descended. A cloud of black smoke belched high into the clear blue sky. He sighed bitterly.

  Together, the two Masters of Sinanju began the long climb back up to the burning chalet.

  Chapter 11

  Young Chim’bor feared the Sky Forest.

  It wasn’t the same as the other fears he had lived with all his life. Those were old and familiar.

  As a member of the Rsual tribe, which lived in small encampments in the dense jungles where the Jamunda River met the mighty Amazon, Chim’bor had spent much of his adolescence identifying fears—both real and imagined.

  Where Chim’bor grew up, there were fish so small that they could swim up a man while he bathed in the waters of the Amazon and kill him from the inside. There were mosquitoes that carried diseases that poisoned the mind and snakes with darting fangs and a taste for flesh.

  These were real fears.

  There were also fears of a supernatural nature. Animals that inhaled the life’s breath from tribesmen, gods that punished with torrential rain or blistering sun, shadowed ghosts armed with spears that stalked those who were alone.

  These fears were imagined.

  Some fears were a combination of both. The pulp of certain trees was stuffed with larvae that were a feast for the tribe. Others caused death the instant they touched the tongue. Legend had it that the succulent larvae had been mixed with the poisonous by tricky gods to test the Rsual men. It was a life test to see who could choose wisely.

  Another fear in a world of fears. All known. Everything—from the great white rapids in the north to the mossy valley in the south—was known to the Rsual. It was only a span of a few miles, but it was the entire Rsual world. Everything to fear within that small area had been identified and classified by tribal elders generations ago.

  To know one’s fears made one master of them. That was what made this new fear so terrifying to Chim’bor.

  The Sky Forest.

  To the Rsual, it was alien. Like one day discovering a river or rock that had not been there the day before.

  It had been brought to the land of the Rsual by whites.

  Chim’bor was fourteen when the invaders first arrived five years ago. A man by the standards of his tribe. He would never forget that first frightening day.

  Chim’bor and his brother Sor’acha had been searching for gualla near the valley far from the main village. This juicy fruit was difficult to harvest. Since it grew so far up the trunks of the trees, it took two natives to collect it.

  They were using the network of vines they’d installed when they were children. Chim’bor climbed while Sor’acha waited on the ground to catch the dropped fruit. When Chim’bor grew weary later in the day, the two brothers would switch places.

  Early in the morning Sor’acha was watching as Chim’bor stretched from tree to tree far above. Taking hold of one of the upper branches in his small hand, Chim’bor shook it violently. Green fronds rattled an angry protest, and three of the fat yellow fruit plopped to the ground.

  When Chim’bor looked down, he found that Sor’acha wasn’t there to catch them. His brother no longer stood amid the great gnarled roots at the base of the tree.

  He found Sor’acha standing a few yards away, an ear cocked to the jungle. Strange noises rumbled from the thick undergrowth of the valley.

  On callused hands and feet, Chim’bor scampered down the tree trunk. He hurried over to his brother. “What is wrong?” Chim’bor asked.

  Sor’acha silenced him with a raised hand. “The ghost faces have returned,” he whispered. He was peering intently through a gap in the brush.

  Bright sunlight flooded the region beyond. Strange for a land where sun rarely reached past the thick treetops.

  The vast valley beyond had been largely cleared over the previous season. There had been many days of toil for the whites and their earthmoving machines. The jungle canopy had been hacked down for miles within the valley. What had been dense jungle was transformed to desert.

  “You should not look there,” Chim’bor warned. Like most of the Rsual, he avoided the valley since the arrival of the whites.

  “I am the older brother,” Sor’acha replied. “You do not command me. Besides, do you not wish to know why they are here?”

  Although Chim’bor didn’t, Sor’acha was determined.

  At nightfall, they crept out of the jungle and entered the barren valley. The moon hung bright and big in the sky as they slipped across the barren ground. A man-made hill rose in the center of the valley, its top flat.

  The whites were gone. What they’d left behind intrigued Sor’acha and troubled Chim’bor.

  A small forest of trees had been planted atop the wide flattened hill. The plants were of an unnatural blue. It was as if the color had bled from the sky to stain the trees.

  The small trees were all roughly the same height—twice as tall as Chim’bor and his brother. In the bright moonlight the forest stretched off as far as the night eye could see.

  Sor’acha laughed. “Only whites would cut down trees to plant trees,” he said. He took hold of one of the saplings. It was warm to the touch.

  “This is a place of evil,” Chim’bor warned. “The whites have stolen the sky for their trees.”

  Sor’acha lingered at the edge of the new forest for a time, but there was nothing more to see. Eventually, Chim’bor convinced his brother to leave.

  They returned for the harvest six months later. Again, Sor’acha let his curiosity get the better of him. Although Chim’bor was reluctant to visit the Sky Forest of the whites, his brother insisted. The two traveled back through the jungle to the valley and the hilltop forest.

  They crossed the wide stretch of parched land that separated jungle from hill. The earth was hard-packed as they scampered up the side of the valley’s central hill. When they reached the top, Chim’bor couldn’t believe his fearful eyes.

  The trees were now as tall as the ones in the jungle far behind them. A dense forest of blue stretched across the flat hill at the valley’s center.

  “White sorcery!” Chim’bor hissed.

  Sor’acha wasn’t listening. From where they hid at the edge of the hill, he spied what looked like blue fruit clinging sparsely to the undersides of some of the branches.

  Although the whites were nowhere to be seen, there was still activity at the forest’s edge.

  Dozens of squirrel monkeys jumped and screeched at the periphery of the blue forest. They had come out of the jungle to venture across the clear-cut plain and climb the hill. Pounding the ground and hissing at air, the monkeys looked possessed by demons. None dared enter the field.

  All he saw filled Chim’bor with dread.

  “Please, Sor’acha,” Chim’bor implored. “Let us leave this place.”

  But his brother wouldn’t budge. “For all the work they have done, the fruit of these trees must be even more sweet than the gualla,” Sor’acha insisted.

  He thought they should pick some of the fruit, but Chim’bor would not be persuaded. The younger native stayed back while his older brother crept over the hill’s edge to the forest of blue trees.

  Shrieking, the monkeys scampered away from his feet, clearing a path to the woods. They flooded back in behind him. To Chim’bor, it looked almost as if the monkeys were trapping his brother in the white man’s forest.

  Sor’acha made it to the trees.

  As Chim’bor watched, his brother took the bark in his strong hands and began climbing. He cupped his feet to the rough surface, pushing off. With quick, even strokes, Sor’acha scampered quickly up.

  He was halfway to the top when Chim’bor realized something was wrong.

  Sor’acha was moving too slowly. As though he was having a hard time climbing. It looked as if he was forcing himself to go higher and higher. As he went on, the struggle to climb became more obvious. It was with great difficulty that he finally made it to the top of the tree. One hand snaked out to a piece of blue fruit.

  As his brother climbed, Chim’bor had slowly climbed up over the edge of the hill.

  Something was very wrong.

  Before he even knew it, Chim’bor was running. He was halfway to the Sky Forest when Sor’acha looked his way.

  His brother was still stretching determinedly for the blue fruit. But on his dark brown face was a look of deep confusion. His cheeks bulged as if he was holding his breath.

  When Sor’acha finally plucked a single piece of fruit from the rest of the cluster, he held it in triumph for only a second. The breath exploded from his lungs, and he let go of the trunk.

  He dropped twenty feet from the treetop, hitting the hard-packed ground below with a bone-crushing thud. Chim’bor ran through the pack of screeching monkeys. The animals parted in fear, scattering as he kicked at them with his bare feet. When he slid to his knees next to his brother’s lifeless body, a lone monkey was plucking the blue fruit which Chim’bor now saw was a small cluster of several seeds—from Sor’acha’s dead hand.

  The other monkeys immediately attacked the one with the seeds, clawing and biting at it. Shrieking, the monkey raced down the hill and across the plain. The other animals chased it back into the jungle.

  Chim’bor didn’t care about the monkeys. Sor’acha lay flat on his back, his dead eyes staring glassily up at the cluster of blue seeds in the tree high above. He had taunted the demons of the Sky Forest, and they had exacted the ultimate price.

  Had he only listened to Chim’bor. Had he only left the blue seeds to the demons of the Sky Forest.

  As the tears burned hot in his eyes, Chim’bor looked up. The instant he did, his anguish turned to terror. For, as he knelt over the body of his dead brother, a demon appeared in the Sky Forest.

  The screeching monkeys might have drawn it out. More likely it was Sor’acha’s theft. Either way, he saw a white shape slowly coming toward him.

  It vanished amid the blue tree trunks. Frozen in fear, Chim’bor heard a ragged, heavy breathing coming from among the trees.

  The demon reappeared. Closer now.

  Chim’bor’s heart pounded. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.

  The demon emerged into the light.

  It was taller than a Rsual native. It had the limbs and body of a man but no face. The demon was wrapped from head to toe in a strange white garment.

  The faceless demon loomed above Chim’bor. It struggled to breathe through an invisible mouth. When it spoke, the demon’s language sound almost like that of the whites, who had summoned it to Rsual land.

  “Sweet Georgia Brown,” the demon rasped, “what do you termite eaters think you’re doing here?”

  With the words, Chim’bor finally found his feet. More demons were coming out from the depths of the Sky Forest. Some had faces. Tanks were strapped to their backs, clear plastic covering their mouths. It no longer mattered. Sor’acha’s body was nothing. The whites and their demons could have the jungle. As more of the creatures emerged from the Sky Forest, Chim’bor ran screaming from them. When the Amazon jungle swallowed him and the Sky Forest and the faceless demons were long behind him, he still ran. He ran all the way back to his village.

  After that day, he couldn’t stay in the land of the Rsual. Chim’bor left his tribe. He fled the forest to the white man’s city, hoping distance would extinguish the flame of constant fear.

  He stayed there for five years, working at a boat-rental shop at the mouth of the Amazon. Sometimes he would pilot a charter boat himself.

  Every now and then he would hear stories out of the jungle. How the Sky Forest had claimed a few other Rsual lives. How the valley became choked with smoke for a full year, so that no one could see for miles around. And how it had been decreed that the entire region was to be avoided by all future generations of Rsual for the dark magic that had been performed there.

  Chim’bor heard it all. And stayed away.

  For a long time he and his fears lived a life of self-imposed exile. Then one day the Sky Forest came to him.

  A group of whites arrived at the docks in Macapa. They brought with them many provisions stored in bags and crates.

  He assumed they were tourists, since these were the only ones still fascinated by the Amazon jungle. If they were tourists, they were part of some strange white adventurers’ club, for all the men wore the same strange outfit. They perspired heavily in their corduroy jackets.

  Brazilian natives struggled to load their cargo into three rented boats. The last items aboard were three dozen large burlap sacks.

  Chim’bor was carrying the last of the sacks to the final boat when it slipped off his shoulder and dropped to the rotted wharf. When it hit, one stitch in a corner seam popped open and a single small object launched free. It rolled across the dock, tapping against the side of a big crate.

  The skipper of one of the Amazon tour ships had a small squirrel monkey as a pet. Before Chim’bor had even seen what came out of the sack, the monkey had scooped it up. After devouring it, the animal scurried up to the bag Chim’bor had dropped.

  Chim’bor was hefting the bag back into the air when the monkey reached out and clawed at the corner seam of the sack. The bag split open, and dozens of seeds spilled onto the warped dock.

  Blue seeds.

  When he saw them, Chim’bor dropped the sack in shock. The seam split wider. Hundreds of small seeds scattered across the ancient dock.

  “What are you doing!” one of the whites yelled. The monkey threw itself into the pile of seeds. As Chim’bor backed away, the animal was shoveling them into its mouth. It took the boot of a sailor to get the animal to stop.

  “Sweet Georgia Brown, what’s wrong with you?” the leader of the whites demanded.

  He and the others began desperately shoving the seeds back into the torn burlap sack.

  That voice. Chim’bor knew that voice. Although he hadn’t been able to see a face at the time, the man on the Macapa dock had the same voice as the demon from the Sky Forest.

  “I know we’re supposed to embrace the simplicity of the native, but I just don’t see it,” the demon said to his companions as they picked up every last seed. “Give them half a chance, and they’d be just like everyone else on this planet. With air conditioners and chlorofluorocarbon fridges in their mud huts. They’re not fooling anyone. You’re not fooling anyone,” he repeated to Chim’bor.

  Chim’bor just stood there as the demons—who now resembled ordinary men—finished gathering up the seeds into the torn sack: Pinching the corner, they pulled it carefully off the dock. They put it in the last boat, balancing it on some of the other sacks.

  Through it all, Chim’bor said nothing.

  The boats were all loaded. The head demon put the others dressed like him onto the boats. He then returned to a waiting car and drove off into the city.

  The monkey had been in hiding until now. It joined Chim’bor on the dock, jumping and screeching as the three boats pulled away into the river.

  As they chugged out into the current to begin the journey that would take them into the dark heart of the rain forest, Chim’bor looked numbly at all the provisions lashed to their decks. Tools and supplies. Food, medicine. Enough for a long, long time.

  And in the rear of each boat, burlap sacks filled with enough blue seeds to remove breath from the land of the Rsual forever. Perhaps even all of Brazil.

  Despite the oppressive heat, as he stood on the Macapa dock, alone save the company of a single shrieking monkey, Chim’bor of the Rsual could not stop himself from shivering.

  Chapter 12

  In the privacy of his office, Dr. Harold Smith was reading the latest news reports out of Geneva. A mug of chicken broth from the Folcroft cafeteria sat on a tray at his elbow, along with a plastic-wrapped packet of four small crackers. Smith was frowning at his monitor when the contact phone rang.

  He quickly put down the spoon with which he’d been stirring the hot broth and scooped up the phone. “Report,” he ordered.

  “St. Clair flew the coop,” Remo announced. “And if you thought his last method of attempted murder was kinky, you’ll love what he had for an encore.”

  “I have just seen a report about some kind of explosion that leveled his home,” Smith said cautiously. “Authorities are saying it’s some sort of gas line, although there are none in the region.”

  “Not gas-oil,” Remo said. “By the sounds of it, this gaggle of mad scientists buried tanks in the mountain to force-feed the fire. I’d say it was crazy, but everything about this cracker factory is nuts. Did you know the guys here are all running around dressed up like Sage Carlin?”

  Smith’s face grew disturbed. “I had uncovered that in my research of the CCS,” he said seriously. “Apparently, since his death a cult of personality has developed around Dr. Carlin.”

  “I’d say that’s a twist,” Remo muttered, “seeing as how Carlin didn’t have one of his own.”

  “Hmm,” Smith mused. “This could be instructive, Remo. The two methods of attack they have used thus far are suggestive of dire ecological predictions made by Carlin and the CCS through the years. It could be a pattern.”