Unpopular Science

“We’ll monitor their position on GPS, simple enough,” Fastbinder reported. “One of zee planes will make the flight to Barcelona, and then vee’ll know.”

“Yeah,” said his caller. “Then we’ll know! Ouch!” There was a fumble and the phone was recovered a moment later. “Scraped my foot on the carpet. Jesus, that burns! What’s the spook doing?”

“Decomposing,” Fastbinder reported.

“Aw, hell, did you have to kill him!”

“It did the job. Your friends showed up.”

“Makes me uncomfortable, though, killing CIA agents.”

Fastbinder didn’t reply.

“Well, whatever. Let me know when something happens.”

Fastbinder hung up, but he was dialing the phone again within five minutes.

“Already?” asked the man on the line excitedly. In the background was the sound of running water.

“They must have high-priority clearance,” Fastbinder said. “My motion sensors picked up increased movement on the aircraft just minutes ago, and already it is pushing back.”

“Ahhhh! Just got my feet in some water. Damn, that feels good. Your bug is not gonna get squished when the wheels are pulled in?”

“Unlikely. There is enough space in zee wheel well. The aircraft is taxiing.”

“Already? Can I just stay on the line and maybe we’ll know right away where it’s going.”

“As you wish.”

Fastbinder ignored the distant sounds of splashing water and sighs of contentment. “Zee aircraft is in the air.”

“This the first one or the second one, anyway?”

“The Raytheon Hawker, which my son assures me is capable of transcontinental transport.”

“He know his stuff?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. What’s it doing now?”

“Turning onto its flight path.” Fastbinder was watching the GPS feed from the device and, as the wheels were pulled in, his eyes locked on the data feed. Only so much transmitting power could be packed into the miniaturized electronics in the centipede, and they kicked in as the aircraft left the vicinity of the ground-based retransmitter that had been relaying the centipede signals thus far.

All Fastbinder needed was a minuscule data stream, just enough for a GPS read. And he got it.

“Vee have them,” Fastbinder reported happily. “They’re on a flight path to the eastern Iberian Peninsula.”

“That’s where Barcelona is, right?”

“Correct.”

“All right!” There was a heavy splash. “Oh shit, that hurts! Shit! Keep me posted, Fastbinder. I got a spill to clean up.”

Fastbinder hung up, and only then did he realize his son was standing at his shoulder again.

“Sorry, Pops, I couldn’t resist checking it out. Way to go.”

“Thank you. Jack.”

“But that Herbie is a real dweeb, isn’t he?”

“Dweeb does not begin to describe him.”

Chapter 9

Chiun observed Remo thoughtfully as they took the cleanest available taxi to the Casablanca airport. After five minutes, Remo caved. “What? What did I do?”

“I was considering that you have become soft, my son.”

“Marshmallow soft or down-comforter soft?”

“Complacent soft. You have lost your respect for danger.”

“What danger?” Remo demanded.

“Exactly! You do not see the danger that is around you every day, every minute. I cannot be your sense of caution, Remo.”

The old Korean Master spoke with such serious intent that Remo stopped to think about it. “Chiun, I am not careless.”

“Careless and incautious are not one and the same,” Chiun explained, his brow vaguely troubled. “While you have become Master of Sinanju, while you are a skilled and powerful assassin, I fear for you because of your lack of humility.”

“I’m careful.”

“Not careful enough.”

Remo shrugged, not sure what he should say. “I’ll work on it.”

“It is not a matter of actions but of attitude. You are not afraid enough.”

“Little Father, you taught me to master fear, to experience it and make use of it.”

‘Yes, but I speak now of the fear you must carry upon your person, be it nothing more than a speck of fear, a mote of fear.”

“How do I get this speck?”

Chiun looked away. “I cannot teach you how to feel, only how to process what you feel. This speck is for you to find and cultivate, but heed me in this, Remo—a speck of fear will serve you well.”

“You should have seen the thing. It was at least ten inches long,” Mark Howard said excitedly as they boarded the aircraft.

“Lucky you, you got to stay inside the nice plane. We had to go out and live it.” Remo said.

“You see any bugs?”

“The bugs decided Casablanca was too dirty. They all got grossed out and migrated to someplace more hygienic, like Sierra Leone,” Remo said.

Mark Howard wasn’t satisfied with Remo’s reaction. He had been entirely amazed by the size of the many-legged bug he had glimpsed crawling around on the tarmac. But Remo shrugged it off as if it were nothing.

Well, Remo had traveled extensively, and to some of the worst parts of the world, and had likely seen all kinds of ugly insects the likes of which Mark could only imagine. He wasn’t going to make himself look like more of a neophyte by going on about it.

Still, the image of the thing stuck in his head. He wasn’t especially creeped out by it so much as he was, well, bothered by it somehow.