“It is very puzzling,” Wurmlinger murmured.

  “Maybe it crawled back out,” Tammy suggested.

  Wurmlinger shook his head. “Impossible. It should have been in its death throes after all that happened.”

  “Tell that to the damn bee,” grunted Tammy, dousing her minicam.

  At that moment, a man poked his head in the open office door and Tammy did a double take. He had pronounced cheekbones and extremely deep-set eyes. One hand held the door, and it was backed by a wrist like a two-by-four.

  “Do I know you?” Tammy blurted.

  “Were you ever a flight attendant?” asked the man with the very thick wrists.

  “No.”

  “Then probably not.”

  The man showed his ID card and said, “Remo Teahan. Center for Disease Control. This is Bruce Rhee.”

  Tammy took one look at the elderly Asian who entered next and said, “I know you, too!”

  “Remo, it is Tamayo Tanaka,” the Asian flared in a familiar voice.

  Remo looked more closely. “Oh, yeah. I didn’t recognize her without the phony Japanese makeup. I thought they drummed you out of network news when your Geisha wig fell off on camera.”

  “I’m with Fox now,” Tammy said defensively.

  “Then I was right. Drummed out.”

  “Hey, we’re the cutting edge in the next century news. All the Generation Xers watch us instead of those stuffy bleeding ponytails on the majors.”

  “Wait’ll you turn forty,” Remo warned.

  Tammy shook her blond head stubbornly. “Never happen.”

  “We’re looking for Dr. Wurmlinger.”

  Wurmlinger actually raised his hand. “I am he.”

  “Gotta talk to you. In private.”

  “And this is about what?”

  “We’re looking into these bug killings. We think there’s more to it than bee stings.”

  Unnoticed by everyone, a pair of feelers emerged from the right eye socket of the hanging skeleton specimen. They quivered.

  Remo went on. “This is starting to look like a serial killer bee is on the loose.”

  “Serial killer bees! What a great lead,” Tammy rejoiced.

  “Shut up,” said Remo, who was making up his theory for the sake of cutting through objections.

  “Are you suggesting a serial killer is employing bees?” asked Dr. Krombold.

  “Maybe,” said Remo, who was suggesting no such thing.

  The bee’s entire head emerged and looked at Tammy with its compound eyes like black bicycle reflectors.

  “This is the story that will make my career,” she was saying. “I can hardly wait to tell the world. Never mind my generation. Just call me Blond Ambition.”

  At that, the bee launched itself toward Tammy. It landed atop her hair, crimped its plump abdomen and inserted its vicious little stinger into the exact apex of her skull.

  “Ouch!” she cried, smacking the top of her head. Too late. The bee slipped past her snatching hand.

  Then realization hit her. She began doing a syncopated version of the macarena.

  “I’ve been stung! Oh, my God, I’ve been stung! And I’m going to die. God, I’m going to die. I can feel myself dying.”

  Remo stepped in, both hands coming together. He had the bee between his hands.

  Slap.

  “Got him!” said Remo.

  “No, you did not,” said Chiun, his hazel eyes sweeping the room. He brought his nails up into a defensive posture, turning with each sweep and tumble of the bee’s flight.

  “I had him,” Remo insisted.

  “You missed.”

  “I can’t miss. I had him dead to rights.”

  In a corner, Tammy was searching her hair, trying to locate the site of the bee’s attack. “Someone help me. Somebody suck out the poison.”

  “That is for snakebite,” Wurmlinger said, completely unmoved by events.

  “What do you do for bee stings?”

  “You have not been stung,” Dr. Krombold assured her. “That is a drone honey bee. It is stingless.”

  Then the bee proved him wrong by alighting on his hand and stinging him viciously. Krombold let out a snarl.

  “I have been stung,” he announced, more in annoyance than anger.

  “Are you allergic to bee stings?” asked Wurmlinger, coming over and taking his hand.

  “No. I have been stung many times without incident.”

  Wurmlinger used his eyeglass lens on the sting site. “I see no barb.”

  “I can assure you I was stung. It was quite painful.”

  Then Krombold started to turn red in the face and wheeze.

  “You are going into anaphylactic shock,” Wurmlinger said disappointedly. “This is impossible. You couldn’t have been stung.”

  Dr. Krombold nodded his agreement with Wurmlinger’s professional diagnosis of anaphylactic shock but shook his head vigorously at the sting assessment.

  Clutching his throat, he lumbered to a wooden chair and sat down, where he went into urgent respiratory distress and then cardiac arrest. With a final convulsive shudder, he deflated like a burst football.

  “Is he dead?” Tammy gasped from her corner.

  Remo and Chiun, swiping at the airborne bee, were too busy to reply. Wurmlinger strode over to the coroner and examined him with clinical disapproval.

  “Yes, he is dead.”

  “Why aren’t I dead?” asked Tammy in a funny, low-to-the-floor voice.

  “You are not allergic.”

  “But he said he wasn’t allergic, and look at him.”

  The weird low quality of her voice brought all heads turning her way.

  Tammy had stood herself on her head in a corner. She was supporting her body with her flat-to-the-floor hands.

  “What are you doing?” asked Remo.

  “Standing on my head.”

  “We can see that. Why?”

  “So the bee poison in my scalp will drain out,” Tammy explained.

  “That will not work,” Wurmlinger said.

  Abruptly, Tammy somersaulted to her feet. She grabbed Wurmlinger by his smock lapels. “I’ll pay you to suck out the poison! I’ll put you on TV. I’ll do anything.”

  If the prospect of a blank check with Tammy Terrill’s name on it interested Helwig X. Wurmlinger, he gave no sign. After a twitchy pause, he pulled free and returned his attention to Remo and Chiun.

  They had the bee surrounded. It was describing loops, turns, chandelles and other aerial acrobatics over their heads. Remo kept trying to catch it between his hands while the old Korean was clearly attempting to slice it in two with extended fingernails. They were good techniques, but they failed utterly.

  The bee was swifter than any drone Wurmlinger had ever before seen. And it seemed to be getting faster by the second. It would hang like a bumble in one spot, as if baiting the pair to strike. Then as hands blurred toward it, it would drop or dart or pirouette out of range. It was very striking. The bee showed signs of intelligence. There was certainly cunning and forethought, at least.

  “Do not kill that bee!” he sputtered.

  “Why not?” asked Remo, switching to his fists. He let fly as if to sucker punch the bee from behind.

  “That is no ordinary bee.”

  “No fooling,” said Remo.

  “It appears to be intelligent.”

  “Well, it is fast.”

  The bee swooped. Spinning, it dive-bombed Remo. Remo feinted. The bee barrel-rolled out of the way. Recovering, Remo backhanded it smartly.

  The bee was nimble. It came close to escaping, but it flew out of harm’s way into harm’s way. A slashing fingernail like a thin ivory dagger caught it.

  Helwig Wurmlinger heard the tiny clip as one of the bee’s wings came off in midair.

  Buzzing, the bee dropped, fought to regain airspeed and struck the floor.

  Landing on its feet, it spun in a frantic circle as if seeking escape. The skirted figure of the old Korean got between it and the door. Remo stepped up behind it.

  “We got you now, you little bastard,” Remo growled.

  “Don’t hurt it,” Wurmlinger urged.

  “It tried to kill us,” Chiun hissed. “It must die.”

  As if the bee understood every word, it suddenly took off. Remo dropped one Italian loafer in its path. It scooted around it. Remo repositioned his foot, blocking it again.

  Each time, the bee moved around it.

  Helwig Wurmlinger watched in slack-jawed fascination. Bees, he knew, moved in random patterns. They didn’t move toward goals, except toward their hives or food sources.

  This bee appeared to be moving toward the dropped minicam, whose light was still blazing through its broken protective lens.

  “Peculiar,” he said.

  Chiun indicated the bee’s fuzzy black-and-yellow thorax with a long fingernail.

  “Behold, the face of death,” he intoned.

  Wurmlinger bent at the waist and blinked at the yellow markings on the black thorax. They formed a pattern he had seen before. On moths. It was a tiny but very symmetrical skull, or death’s-head.

  “I have never seen a death’s-head marking on a bee before,” he breathed.

  “Take a good look,” Remo growled. “You won’t see it again.”

  Helwig Wurmlinger started to protest. Before the first word could take shape, the bee gave a last convulsive effort and leaped over Remo’s blocking shoe.

  And jumped into the hot bulb.

  With a sputtery sizzle, it died.

  The smell that arose with the tiny grayish black mushroom cloudlette stank amazingly for such a small thing.

  Wurmlinger pinched his long nose shut with his spidery fingers and said, “It committed suicide.”

  “Bull,” said Remo.

  But the cold voice of the Master of Sinanju cut the room with a brief intonation. “It is true. The bee killed itself.”

  Remo made his voice scoffing. “Why the hell would a bee up and kill itself?”

  “Because it is not a bee,” returned the Master of Sinanju cryptically.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Bees,” Remo Williams was insisting, “do not commit suicide.”

  “That one did,” Chiun retorted.

  Tammy Terrill decided to put in her two cents. She hadn’t resumed her standing-on-her-head position after she failed to gain Dr. Wurmlinger’s assistance.

  “Hey, they commit suicide every time they sting someone, don’t they?”

  “It’s not the same,” Remo said. “And you stay out of this.”

  “I will not,” she said. Then, apparently remembering that she had been stung, suddenly turned the color of yesterday’s oatmeal.

  “Oh, my God. Am I still dying?”

  “Die in seemly quiet if you are,” Chiun hissed.

  “Let me examine you,” Dr. Wurmlinger said.

  “Will you suck the poison out?” Tammy asked anxiously.

  “No,” Dr. Wurmlinger answered.

  Tammy sat down, and Wurmlinger began massaging her blond head with his spindly fingers.

  “What are you doing?” she challenged.

  “Feeling for the bump.”

  She winced. Her scalp winced, too. “It hurts.”

  “The sting of a bee is painful, but of short duration,” Wurmlinger told her.

  As he quested about among Tammy’s roots, Remo and Chiun continued their argument.

  “No bee in its right mind would commit suicide,” Remo was saying. “They’re not intelligent. They don’t think like we do. That’s why they sting. They don’t know they’re killing themselves by stinging people.”

  “That not-bee deliberately ended its life,” Chiun insisted.

  “Why would he do a thing like that?”

  “To avoid capture and interrogation at our hands.”

  “Not a chance in hell, Chiun.”

  “I am afraid I must agree with you,” Wurmlinger commented, fingering Tammy’s roots aside to expose a reddish swelling.

  “Which one of us?” asked Remo.

  “Both.”

  “See?” Remo said to Chiun. “He’s an expert. He knows about bees.”

  Chiun stiffened his spine. “He knows about bees, not about not-bees. Therefore, he does not know what he is talking about.”

  “He’s an etymologist,” Remo argued.

  “Entomologist,” corrected Wurmlinger.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Entomology is the study of insects. An etymologist studies the roots of words.”

  “I stand corrected. Now correct him,” said Remo, pointing to Chiun.

  But Wurmlinger had already focused the entirety of his attention on the site on Tammy’s skull where a reddish bump was rising, angry and dull. It was at the exact top, along the depressed sagital crest.

  “Ah.”

  “Is the stinger still in there?” Tammy moaned.

  “No, there is no stinger.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “You are in no danger,” Wurmlinger said.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because you are breathing normally, and the wound did not penetrate your skull.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it is exceedingly thick.”

  Tammy, her eyes rolled up as if she could somehow peer over the top of her own head, made a notch between her pale brows and asked, “Is that good or bad?”

  “It’s not usually considered a compliment to be thick of head, but in your case, it has saved your life.”

  “What about the poison?”

  “I see no sign of venom or infection.”

  “Suck it anyway.”

  “No,” said Wurmlinger, stepping back in disgust. Tammy’s eyes flew to Remo. “Suck me.”

  “Bite me,” said Remo.

  Tammy’s blue eyes flared. “Hey, that wasn’t nice!”

  “It’s called tit for tat,” returned Remo, who then resumed his argument. “That bee was just a bee, only more stubborn than most bees. You know about being stubborn, Chiun. Not to mention mule-headed.”

  Chiun’s almond eyes squeezed down to knife slits. “You are the stubborn one.”

  Remo addressed Dr. Wurmlinger. “You’re the bee expert. Are they naturally suicidal or not?”

  Rudely, Wurmlinger walked between them as if they weren’t there and got down on one knee next to the minicam. A faint curl of fading smoke was still wafting upward from the broken bulb. Wurmlinger found the Off switch and doused the light.

  “This is most peculiar,” he said after a moment.

  “What is?” asked Remo.

  “I see no remains.”

  “Of what—the bee?”

  “Yes. There are no bee remains.”

  “He got zapped,” Remo contended.

  “There should be some matter remaining.”

  They all gathered around the minicam, which was still emitting a wisp of what looked like cigarette smoke.

  Tammy grabbed her nose. “Smells like burning garbage.”

  “Smells like fried bug to me,” grunted Remo.

  “A bee is not a bug,” Wurmlinger said, grimacing as if suffering a personal insult.

  “It is a not-bee,” said Chiun. “Why will no one accept my words?”

  “I am not familiar with that species,” Wurmlinger muttered. He was on his knees now and sniffed around the lamp with his eyeglasses held before his sharp nose.

  Wurmlinger poked and prodded and attempted to scrape some smoky residue from the flash reflector, but all he got was thin black soot.

  Frowning like a twitchy bug himself, he climbed to his long, spindly feet.

  “There is nothing left,” he said in a small, disappointed voice.

  “It was a very thorough suicide,” said Chiun.

  “The bee did not immolate itself,” Wurmlinger explained, snapping out of his mental fog. “It merely sought a light source it mistook for the sun. You see, bees navigate through sighting the sun. Any bright light in an indoor setting will confuse them. He sought escape. The light drew him. And, sadly, he perished.”

  “Better luck next bee,” said Remo, who then drew the Master of Sinanju aside and said, “Cover me. I’m going to call Smitty.”

  “Do not tell him about the not-bee.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that is my discovery. I do not want you hogging all credit.”

  Remo looked at the Master of Sinanju dubiously. “Chiun, the not-bee theory is all yours.”

  “See that it is,” said Chiun, who then turned his attention to the shambles that was the office.

  As Remo slipped out the door, the Master of Sinanju was poking about the room with all the focused concentration of an Asian Sherlock Holmes, searching for clues while Tammy piped up with a question.

  “How can bees have sex? Don’t their stingers get in the way?”

  Wurmlinger’s voice brightened with interest.

  “The male bee,” he said, “invariably dies in the act of procreation.”

  “Cool beans,” said Tammy.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Dr. Harold W. Smith was a logical man. He lived in a world that, despite testing his sense of order, ultimately made sense. Or, sense could be made out of it.

  Smith had grown up during the Great Depression, although to a family of means. It had been a dark time, and Smith hadn’t escaped the meanness and frugality. Nor had the following decade, with its global war, been any better. Nor had the 1950s and the Cold War been a golden age, as some nostalgic writers liked to purport.

  But in retrospect, all of those times made sense to Smith. He first began to notice the world going out of kilter in the early 1960s. Over the course of that decade, things began to shift. At first, it was subtle. Much of it eluded him for a long time.

  Then one day, during the Vietnam conflict, Smith was watching the television, and nothing he saw made sense. Not the long-haired, bearded protesters trying to levitate the Pentagon with the dubious power of their minds. Not the smug politicians determined to prosecute an undeclared war with doubtful aims. Not the veterans of a prior Asian war, still scarred by conflict, yet willing to encourage a new generation to follow a doomed path.

  Eventually, he adjusted. Not easily. After a while, Harold Smith came to a realization that helped his peace of mind. And it was this: any man blessed with sufficient years will ultimately outlive his time.