Unpopular Science

“Course, if humor matters, then you geezers are both minutes from the grave. Smitty, if you’re gonna chew me a new one for taking unscheduled coma time, then let’s get it over with.”

Smith tightened his mouth. “Remo, we have much to discuss, but it can wait. We know who’s behind all of this.”

Mark Howard pushed a color eight-by-ten photograph at them. “Jacob Fastbinder III.”

“He’s ugly, but what makes him guilty?”

“He’s got a very interesting history,” Howard said. “It goes back to World War One.”

“Oh, cripes.” Remo grabbed his head. “Do I really have to hear it? Especially now? Little Father, can’t you give me a mercy nerve pinch to make the throbbing stop?”

“I’ve tried. As I said, Remo, the hurt was deep….”

“Okay, let’s go get him.” Remo stood up. “Where we going?”

Mark gave him a brochure.

Fastbinder’s Museum Of Mechanical Marvels On Historic Route 66

In Scenic New Mexico!

“Oh, brother,” Remo said, and left the office without walking into the doorjamb, although it was a near miss.

Smith looked worriedly at Churn. “Should he be in the field, Master Chiun?”

“The time for concern is done. He will recover, Emperor, and perform his duties without fail. He is muddled now, still in the clutches of his extended slothfulness. I predict it will have passed before we arrive in the land of the Recently Annexed Mexico.”

Smith nodded. “Master Chiun, I’d have to say you don’t sound too certain of your own words.”

Chiun snapped out of his own lingering distraction, and his self-anger simmered like a pot of gruel that had been bubbling on the fire for too many hours.

“The Master of Sinanju is never uncertain, Emperor, as you well know.”

Then he followed Remo out the door. Quickly.

Chapter 44

The phone bleated eight times, stopped, then started up again. Finally the sleeping man groped for it and pulled off the receiver. He sat up, manipulated his face vigorously and looked around. The hotel room didn’t help him out. Every hotel room in the Middle East looked alike. He glanced at his wrist, found it empty and finally located his watch on the bedside table. The tiny window told him it was Thursday.

“If it’s Thursday, this must be Cairo.”

Oh, yes, now he remembered arriving in Cairo from Qatar and getting drunk, alone, in his room at the Hilton.

So who would be calling him in his room in the Cairo Hilton?

“Hello?” he said finally into the phone.

“It is Fastbinder.”

“Mr. Fastbinder, have you heard from your son?”

“I have.”

“Oh, thank God,” breathed Senator Herbert Whiteslaw of California.

“You are so fond of Jack?” Fastbinder asked.

“I was worried something horrible had happened to the boy.”

“Something horrible did happen. He was two days hiking across the floor of the ocean to get back to zee dry land. He is exhausted. He will fly back home day after tomorrow.”

“I can imagine.”

“What is it that you have set us up against precisely, Mr. Whiteslaw?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have come to you for help, Fastbinder.”

There was a pregnant pause. “If zees men ever learn the identification of you or me, then we are as good as dead. They seem to be gifted with some outstanding abilities.”

“You’re telling me. I’ve seen them in action, remember?” Whiteslaw flipped on the light and began hunting for his bottle. He almost groaned in disappointment when he found it on the counter, empty. There were disgusting tongue smears inside the neck of the bottle.

“Jack thinks he has a way to neutralize zees two,” Fastbinder said.

“What? Really? How?”

“This he could not explain to me clearly, so I am certain, the explanation would be entirely lost upon you. Sufficient to say these two have a Achilles’ heel, unique to them, and Jack believes he knows how to use it.”

“Well, that’s great! We still have a green light on the plan then, do we?”

“It will be delayed,” Fastbinder reported.

“No, no, no. Fastbinder, there’s no time for delay. My strategy is based on a timeline that I can’t control.”

“Senator Whiteslaw, we must be empowered to defend ourselves against these men in case they come for us. We will delay. Until Jack can build this defensive system. Until such time, we cannot risk further exposure.”

Senator Whiteslaw groaned. “So I’m sitting here pretending to be an undercover agent in the Middle East while your goofy high-school kid finds time to invent new weapons technology? I’m not encouraged. Fastbinder.”

“It will take little time. A few weeks, perhaps.”

“Weeks, huh? He doesn’t need to go to college first?”

Fastbinder’s accent thickened. It always did when he was agitated. “Herr Whitezlaw, you underestimate Jack. He is the greatest mind in four generations of Fastbinders. He is an engineering genius. The world has never seen the like of him.”

“Yeah, but he’s got a girlfriend, so it balances out.”

“You need not depend on Jack. Go elsewhere for assistance.”

“You need me, Fastbinder,” Whiteslaw barked. “As much as I need you.”

Fastbinder chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” the senator asked.