Smith nodded. “Very well,” he said. He began to turn away when he abruptly paused. “Mark, you’ve been working nonstop since you started here. Perhaps it might be a good idea for you to take a few days off.”

  Howard seemed surprised at the offer. Before he could respond, they were both interrupted by the jangling of one of Smith’s desktop telephones. The CURE director noted that it was the blue contact phone.

  “That will be all for now, Mark,” Smith said. Howard was grateful to be dismissed. As he hurried from the room, Smith rounded the desk. Howard was shutting the door as Smith settled into his cracked leather chair.

  “Smith,” the CURE director announced into the phone.

  “Hey, Smitty,” Remo said. “I’ll give you three guesses who just escaped certain death by the skin of his teeth, and the first two don’t count.”

  Smith leaned forward in his chair. “Did something go wrong?” he asked.

  “Depends on your perspective,” Remo said. “Since I’m not a French fry right now, that Humbert Humbert guy who runs the show around here probably thinks so.”

  Smith raised an eyebrow. “Remo, are you saying Hubert St. Clair tried to kill you?” he asked.

  In the Geneva headquarters of the Congress of Concerned Scientists, Remo leaned back against Amanda Lifton’s desk. Chiun and Amanda had left him alone while he placed the call. He looked down at his tattered clothes.

  “Technically, kill,” Remo said. “Specifically, acid dip. Six of one, half dozen of the other. I think he was just going after that dingbat lady scientist, and me and Chiun got caught in the cross fire. And speaking of her, the Ivy League must have started passing out diplomas with every bikini wax.”

  “Dr. Lifton is supposed to be quite gifted,” Smith said.

  “She’s a flaky debutante with boobs till Tuesday,” Remo replied. “I doubt she could invent her way out of a bra with both hands.” He tipped his head, reconsidering. “Actually, that’s probably how she got the job here.”

  Remo quickly briefed Smith on the events in the CCS greenhouse, including the destruction of all the C. dioxas.

  “You said St. Clair was on the phone before the attack against you began?” Smith asked once Remo was finished.

  “Yeah, but I wasn’t listening to what he was saying,” Remo said. “Could have been calling his bookie. It sure as hell wasn’t his dry cleaner.”

  As he spoke, he picked up a framed photograph from Amanda’s desk. Dr. Lifton was posing with Hubert St. Clair and a half-dozen others. Although he could have picked her chests out of a lineup blindfolded, in this picture it wasn’t hard to tell which one was Amanda. The rest of them were all dressed like St. Clair. They all wore bell-bottoms and corduroy jackets. Remo frowned at the picture.

  “Must be the office Halloween party,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, Smitty,” Remo said, putting the photo down. “I don’t know what the what is here right now, but I searched the place and came up empty. That Dilbert guy flew the coop. I need you to track him down.”

  He heard the sound of Smith typing rapidly at his computer. “There is an executive committee that oversees the CCS,” the CURE director explained as he worked. “While the current director is Dr. St. Clair, he is answerable to the rest of the leadership. They could be involved.” The typing stopped. “The CCS owns a home for St. Clair’s use when he is in Geneva,” Smith said. He gave Remo the address.

  “Thanks, Smitty.” He started to hang up.

  “Remo,” the CURE director said. “Are you certain all the trees were destroyed?”

  Remo snapped his fingers. “Thanks for reminding me,” he said. Digging in his pocket, he pulled out a tiny object.

  It was as big as a pea. This was what had caught his eye in the greenhouse when the lightning struck. Remo held up the blue seed for inspection.

  “Is something else wrong?” Smith asked after the dead air had gone on between them too long.

  “Maybe,” Remo said. “Although it could just be the end of the world. I’ll get back to you.” Slipping the lone C. dioxa seed back into his pocket, he hung up the phone.

  Chapter 8

  “Where are all the seeds?” Remo announced when he rejoined Amanda and Chiun in one of the CCS labs.

  He had brought a framed photograph with him from Amanda’s office.

  The Master of Sinanju was sitting cross-legged near a big picture window that offered a breathtaking view of the snowcapped Alps. He had removed a handful of his special gold-and-silver envelopes and a stack of writing paper from his kimono folds. The old man was ignoring the scenic view, concentrating on composing another of his mysterious letters.

  Amanda was laying out a dress shirt and a pair of pants she’d scavenged from the CCS offices. “What?” she asked, looking up.

  When Amanda saw the picture Remo was carrying, she frowned. It was the photo of the C. dioxa that had been hanging on her office wall. The same one Remo had asked about when she first brought them to her office.

  “What are you doing with that?” Amanda demanded.

  “The seeds,” Remo pointed out. He held up the photo in one hand; in the other was the seed he’d found in the greenhouse. “These seeds. You said this was a picture of the latest trees. Well, in the picture they’ve got seeds. The ones that were chopped down in that nutcase greenhouse of yours didn’t have any. So where did they go?”

  Near the window the Master of Sinanju paused in his writing. When he lifted his head, his hazel eyes caught a good, hard look at the Alps.

  “I don’t like Switzerland,” the old Korean announced.

  Scowling, he returned to his writing.

  “The seeds must have been there,” Amanda said to Remo. “Hubert had the trees destroyed. It wouldn’t make sense for him to do that without destroying the seeds, too.”

  “I don’t know if you missed all the fun back there, Chesty LaRue, but Hubert was that weird-looking little troll who just tried to turn you into a silicone puddle.”

  Amanda’s pretty face puckered in annoyance. She tried pushing her shoulders forward to cave in her chest.

  “I don’t appreciate sarcasm or insults from the help,” she said unhappily. “And I’ve been thinking about all this. Something’s wrong here, I know it. But I just can’t believe that Hubert St. Clair is behind it.”

  “Believe what you want,” Remo said. “But you need to get those things checked. Your reception’s way off.”

  Remo picked up the dress shirt, shrugging it on. He rotated his shoulders. “This doesn’t feel right,” he said.

  “Well, it was the best I could do,” Amanda said, trying to pretend she wasn’t watching him dress. “That was Dr. Riviera’s. He died a month ago in a snorkling accident in the Bahamas.”

  “Your boss probably stuffed shark-nip down his skivvies, and tapped a cork in his pipe,” Remo said. He wasn’t used to long sleeves. And the shirt was too tight at the wrists. He’d have to pick up a new T-shirt.

  “The Swiss are forever professing their neutrality,” the Master of Sinanju proclaimed near the window. “Tell me, Remo, what use is there for an assassin in a land where everyone is afraid to choose sides?”

  “No use at all, Little Father.”

  Chiun nodded. “And their mountains are ugly,” he said.

  “A blight on the land. We should bulldoze them flat and make the whole damned country a parking lot for Germany.”

  A thin smile touched the old Korean’s wrinkled lips. “Sometimes, Remo, you are almost not a disappointment to me,” Chiun said.

  “I like you, too, Little Father,” Remo said. “Care to tell me what all those letters are for?”

  “Still none of your business,” Chiun replied ominously. He offered Remo the top of his bald head.

  “I have a feeling they are,” Remo muttered. He grabbed up the pants Amanda had found for him and ducked behind the open door of the lab.

  “Maybe Hubert—I don’t know—bumped the controls with his elbow on his way out the door,” Amanda said. “It could happen. He doesn’t like to touch buttons or switches. Maybe he doesn’t even know what almost happened.” Her face grew suddenly concerned. “Oh, or maybe they got to him, too!”

  “Fine with me,” Remo said, zipping his fly as he came out from behind the door. He tossed his old pants onto a table. “Someone doing my job for me for a change. I’m sick of always doing all the grunt work. We’re going, Chiun.”

  The Master of Sinanju swept up his writing material.

  Cradling an elbow in one hand, Amanda was chewing on the back of her thumbnail. “You’re absolutely sure there weren’t any seeds on the trees?” she asked, her voice very even.

  “Picked clean,” Remo said certainly. “My guess is we’ll find Hubert Appleseed wearing a tin pot on his head and spreading doomsday seeds from the back of his electric car. That is, assuming we don’t all asphyxiate first.”

  With that, Remo and Chiun left the lab. Amanda’s face had grown pale. Assuming Remo was right, with the rest of the C. dioxa team gone, she alone in all the world knew the truth of his words. When she pulled the lab door closed a moment later, Dr. Amanda Lifton’s hands were shaking.

  Chapter 9

  Remo and Chiun had taken a cab from the airport to the Congress of Concerned Scientists complex. Since they were without transportation, Amanda offered to drive to Hubert St. Clair’s Geneva retreat.

  “This is your car?” Remo asked when she led them to her economical Citroen.

  Some of the color had returned to her cheeks. She fumbled in her purse for the keys.

  “What’s wrong with it?” she asked.

  “For starters, where’s the rest of it?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with economy,” Amanda insisted. “Who needs a big Detroit gas-guzzler with a TV, a bar and a chauffeur anyway?” Her eyes welled at the memory of better days. “Not me. Excuse me, I’ve got something in my eye.”

  She turned, blowing her nose on her sleeve before turning back to unlock the car.

  Chiun sat in the front next to Amanda. Remo had to cram himself in the back on a pile of stuffed toys and with an umbrella stabbing him in the side.

  Amanda Lifton drove like someone who was used to giving orders from behind a martini glass in the back seat. When she had taken one too many corners on two wheels, Remo finally snapped the umbrella in two and threw it out the window.

  “What did you do that for?” Amanda demanded.

  “I’m not getting paid to be shish kebabbed,” he said.

  “Umbrellas aren’t free, you know,” she said. “I’m telling Daddy you owe me a new one.”

  “Take it out of your stuffed-animal budget,” Remo grumbled, knocking around the pile of toys. “What are you, five?”

  “He’s not very nice at all,” Amanda said to Chiun.

  “No, he is not,” Chiun agreed. “And since he is by nature a not-nice person, it is making it all the more difficult for him to do one nice thing for another person as is required by our traditions.”

  “He has to do a good deed?” Amanda asked. She snorted derisively. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks,” said Remo who, while Amanda and Chiun were talking, had been heaving most of her stuffed toys into the street.

  Two miles north of the city they passed the European headquarters of the United Nations. They followed the Rue de Lausanne to where it ran parallel to the shore of Lake Geneva. The snowcapped Alps held up the sky. The Mont Blanc massif cast a looming shadow over the gleaming lake.

  “You sure you know where St. Clair’s house is?” Remo asked as they headed into the hills.

  “Of course,” Amanda said. “I practically grew up in Switzerland. Abigail and I used to winter here with Mother and Daddy. I’ve been to a bunch of CCS functions at Hubert’s house. It used to be Sage Carlin’s when he was CCS head.”

  It was the name that finally jogged Remo’s memory.

  “Sage Carlin,” he said, snapping his fingers. “I knew St. Clair looked like somebody.”

  “Yes,” Amanda said uncomfortably. “Dr. Carlin was a legend at the CCS. Some of the men there sort of adopted his look after he died. I guess they think they’re kind of a living memorial to Sage.”

  “You mean they look like that on purpose?” Remo asked. He shook his head. “Trying to end the world is starting to look like the least crazy thing about that place.”

  Amanda took a sharp turn onto a winding road. The homes grew more palatial as they climbed. The more opulent they became, the more despondent Amanda grew. By the time they stopped at the gate of Hubert St. Clair’s chalet, she was practically in tears once more.

  The home beyond the fence was one of rich woods and elaborate peaks. It was perched on an outcropping. Far below, the crescent shape of Lake Geneva sparkled in the cold mountain sun.

  Porches encircled both floors of the house, one above the other. Big sheets of plate glass reflected sunlight.

  When Remo and Chiun got out, Amanda was still sniffling behind the wheel.

  “Look,” Remo said, trying to strike a sympathetic tone, “why don’t you wait here while we check this out.”

  “No,” Amanda insisted. “It’s just tough. All this money. I used to have this. This used to be me.” She straightened her proud Lifton spine. “But I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay, come. Just stay out of the way,” Remo advised.

  It was as if her tears were wired to a switch. They just stopped. The old Lifton arrogance resurfaced. “Don’t you condescend to me,” Amanda ordered. She blinked her eyes clear as she got out of the car. “You work for me, remember?”

  “Okay, okay,” Remo sighed. He turned to Chiun, pitching his voice low. “Let’s keep an eye on the flake, okay, Little Father?”

  “What did you say?” Amanda demanded. “Was that about me? I don’t appreciate whispering behind my back. Especially when you’re doing it right in front of me. If you have something to tell me, you tell me to my face.”

  Remo rolled his eyes. “I should wait in the car,” he said. “And you wanna yell a little louder? There’s a pastry chef in Munich who can’t quite hear you.”

  “You’ve got a lot of attitude for a guy who wears just a T-shirt,” she accused.

  “You should have seen him when I found him,” Chiun said. “He was a naked foundling, even whiter than he is now. Hard to believe, yes, I know. And even after all my years trying to de-white him, this is still only the best I could do.”

  “Tell you what. Why don’t you two wait in the car and I’ll go jump in the lake?” Remo snarled. With his heel he kicked open the driveway gate. The brittle lock snapped, and he stormed onto the grounds of Hubert St. Clair’s estate.

  The figure was outlined in green.

  From his boat moored out in Genfersee—the name his German forebears had given Lake Geneva—Herr Hahn watched Remo head up the driveway. The other two, which Hahn knew were the woman and the elderly Asian, trailed him up to the house.

  The two men didn’t walk so much as glide. Their grace had been apparent on the security cameras at the CCS, but it was far more obvious here, where he wasn’t actually seeing their features. Here, they were only warm green ghosts moving with inhuman grace across his glowing monitor. A beautiful, perfect symphony of movement.

  “What are you?” Herr Hahn asked the ghosts on his screen.

  After the events at the greenhouse he was being even more cautious than usual. Hahn had assumed they would come here in search of Hubert St. Clair. He had already been given orders to destroy the house and all its contents. He had lingered a little longer in the hope that his assumption was correct. Now that they were here, he felt a fresh tingle of excitement. So new a sensation he wanted to savor it.

  There wouldn’t be much time to do so. In a few moments they’d all be dead, and Herr Hahn would have to satisfy himself once more with ordinary targets.

  His ample stomach continued its thrilling butterfly dance in concert with the boat’s rocking motion as the three green ghosts climbed the porch steps.

  THE GRAVEL PATH LED from the driveway around to the back of the chalet where the broad deck looked out over the lake. Remo was first onto the porch. When Amanda followed Chiun up, she managed to make four steps squeak three times and nearly put an eye out on a hanging potted plant.

  “Did your father disown you because you were a klutz?” Remo asked.

  “No,” Amanda snapped back as she stilled the swaying plant with both hands. She suddenly frowned. “Why? Did Daddy tell you that was why?”

  “No,” Remo said. “And be quiet.” He was glancing around the area.

  Lake Geneva was a living postcard photo, shimmering in the early-afternoon sunlight. Pleasure boats bobbed gently while Mouettes Genevoises—the small motorboats that shuttled between the old and new cities of Geneva-skimmed the silvery surface. A lone cruise ship carted tourists on camera excursions north to Montreux and Chillon. And somewhere down there, Remo sensed the distinct pressure waves of some kind of mechanical equipment directed at them. “You feel that, Little Father?”

  Chiun nodded. “Whatever it is, it is farther away than most detection devices.”

  “Spying at a distance,” Remo sighed. “Welcome to the future.”

  “Why?” Amanda asked. “What is it?” She was squinting around the back of the house.

  A cold wind blew up the steep mountainside. Farther down, a road snaked across the hillside. Here and there, a few rooftops peeked out between frozen rock and winter trees.

  “Nothing,” Remo answered. “We’re just being watched is all.”

  Amanda gripped his arm. “Where?” she whispered, worried once more about joining the deceased ranks of her fellow CCS scientists.

  “Can’t tell really,” Remo said. “The waves are focused as they come at you, but they break down over distance. My guess would be the lake. It’s coming from that direction, and it’s got a clear shot up at the house. Mountains are way too far for us to feel anything.”

  Turning from the lake, he headed for the door. “You’re still going in?” she asked. “Don’t you want to get whoever’s down there?”