The studios of Enigmas, Unlimited were less impressive than Remo Williams expected them to be. Tucked into a strip mall between a Chinese take-out and a check cashing facility, a glass door was lettered in a nondescript font that drew no attention.
Through the door was a small foyer where another door, locked, prevented unwanted visitors. Remo politely rang the doorbell. Twice. Then he gave the doorknob a sharp tap with his index finger and heard the lock mechanism inside chink as the tumblers fell out of their confinement, allowing the door to swing open.
“Remember,” Chiun whispered, “Emperor Smith has demanded you take the leader’s head.”
“That’s not what he said,” Remo muttered. “Smith just doesn’t like anything he perceives as a hole in security. I’ll take care of it.”
Coming to the end of the narrow, carpeted hallway, they passed through another doorway, opening into a much broader room where the Internet entrepreneurs were busily work. Ziggy hunched over a monitor editing together clips of video, while Ted and Diana argued about something. They stopped when they noticed Remo and Chiun enter the room.
“There he is,” Chiun said, loudly. “Go plug his hole.”
“Not in the contract,” Remo said under his breath as Ted flushed. “Where are you going?” he asked when Chiun turned away.
“I am seeing a man about a dog,” he replied blissfully, as he made his way over to Ziggy’s editing station.
“Mr. D’Cantrill,” Diana called out, walking over to greet him. “We didn’t think we’d be seeing you again.”
“Not that we’re not glad you’re here,” Ted added enthusiastically. “What can we do to you? I mean, for you,” Ted sputtered.
Remo ignored the Freudian slip. “Actually, I came to see the other one,” he said. “Wilma? Helga?”
“Hilda,” Diana affirmed. “What do you want with her?” she asked suspiciously.
“Something she said while we were on the phone the other day,” he said. “About the algae?”
“You mean how it’s not the algae,” Ted offered helpfully. “Yeah, that was…”
“That was a brilliant bit of analysis from our team,” Diana finished. “Anyway, Hilda’s very busy right now, but I’ll tell her you came by. How did you get in here, anyway?”
“Door,” Remo said, indicating the hallway with a tilt of his head, as Hilda entered the room.
“We’re still working on solving the professor’s alien abduction story, though,” Ted said from behind them, trying to shoehorn himself into the conversation. “It’s a real mystery. Especially since now we don’t know what caused the bridge to collapse.”
“But we know it wasn’t algae,” Remo offered. “Because…?”
“Logic,” Hilda said confidently. “I took several water samples from the site. The ones from near the collapse were full of concrete-eating algae, so they definitely seemed to be the culprit. At the time, anyway.”
“But now you have another theory?” Remo prompted.
Hilda shook her head. “Not about what brought it down. I obviously don’t believe it was aliens.”
“Although we’re definitely hinting strongly at that in the show,” Diana said. “We hope to be able to do a follow-up, but so far there haven’t been any other sightings, and the other bridge collapses in the news? Well, they seem too…”
“Dangerous,” Ted said meekly.
“Contrived,” Hilda said. “I don’t care what the reports say about the Memphis collapse, the EPA is wrong. There’s no way the algae took down the Black Hawk Bridge, and I’ll bet it didn’t take down this one either.”
Remo’s patience was wearing thin. “Why?” he asked, gritting his teeth in what he hoped looked like a friendly smile.
“The other water samples I took,” Hilda said. “All came from upstream. And none of them had any algae in them.”
“So it couldn’t have been floating down the river and just stopped at the bridge?” Remo asked.
“There wasn’t any downstream either,” Hilda said. “It’s almost as if the algae developed right there on the spot. But even if it did, the stuff I collected doesn’t live long in cold water. Maybe long enough to deteriorate the outer layer of concrete, even substantially, but nowhere near the amount of time it would take to destabilize the support pylons. It would have to be considerably warmer for the algae to have a significant effect like that.”
Remo thought about the EPA lady in Memphis, the one in the leather. She had been working on the downstream side of the rubble. He suspected he finally had a human face to put behind the disasters.
“Hypothetically speaking,” Remo said, “is it possible the algae might have appeared on the site after the collapse?”
“It’s what I’m considering,” Hilda said. “There’s no way, given the time of the collapse and the moment of our arrival, that the algae we collected was there anywhere near the time the bridge went down. The collapse might have stirred up algae living on the bottom of the river, beneath the mud, where it was insulated from the colder temperature of the river water.”
“That’s a good theory,” Remo muttered. It made more sense than someone adding algae to the disaster sites afterward.
“Hilda’s the best,” Diana said brightly, her hand settling on Hilda’s shoulder.
“Be glad this didn’t happen in a more tropical area,” Hilda said, looking slightly uncomfortable with Diana’s hovering. “In warmer climates, this stuff could chew concrete down to powder.”
“Interesting,” Remo said, recalling the chunk of Black Hawk concrete he had carried in his pocket to Smitty. “Thank you, both of you. You’ve been very helpful.”
“Make sure the TSA spells our names right,” Diana said.
“You bet,” Remo winked. “And you!” Remo stepped past the girls to Ted, gripping his shoulder tightly. “You keep on making those Internet hearts throb, you hear?”
Ted flushed hotly as Remo’s hand clasped his arm. “Yes sir,” he said, with a squeaky hitch in his voice. “I hope you’ll stop in again, sometime? Maybe our other investigations might turn up something useful? You know?”
“Absolutely,” Remo said enthusiastically. He put his other hand on Ted’s chest. “Man, look at you. How much do you work out?”
“A little…every morning,” Ted managed to stammer out.
“It shows,” Remo said. “Keep it up!” He patted Ted’s back one more time and strode toward the door. “Chiun,” he called. “Time to go.”
Chiun waved him off impatiently as he finished his conversation with Ziggy, taking a paper from the disheveled hipster before finally choosing to join Remo.
“Why were you mauling the gay one?” Chiun whispered as they entered the hallway.
“I needed his phone,” Remo said. “What did you take from the other guy?”
“This is a pathway to my retirement,” Chiun said, exhibiting the paper he had lifted from Ziggy. “I cannot always be babysitting you through your contracts, you know. Someday I should like to enjoy my golden years.”
“And that kid is some kind of a retirement expert?” Remo asked.
“He is an expert on the Great Danishes,” Chiun replied. “And so shall I be, when I breed them.”
“Chiun, we’ve been over this,” Remo disclaimed. “We are not breeding dogs.”
Chiun stopped at the broken doorway. “You have seen the size of these things,” he said. “They are enormous. And all muscle,” he added.
“Yes, they’re giant eating, clawing, peeing, and pooping machines,” Remo agreed.
“A Vietnamese family could subsist for a month on just one of these fine creatures!”
“Wait,” Remo exclaimed. “You’re planning on breeding Great Danes…as livestock?”
Chiun smiled beatifically.
“Chiun, you can’t breed Great Danes for dog meat,” Remo continued as they exited into the parking lot. “The last thing in the world we need is a bunch of PETA picketers outside our house. Hold on a second.”
Slipping his hand into the front pocket of his chinos, he produced the phone he had taken from Ted moments earlier. Curling his fingers around it, he forced the casing to bend inward as easily as if he were squeezing a stick of warm butter, cracking the touch sensitive glass into shards and splintering the internal circuit boards. He tossed the collection of useless parts behind the tire of a parked SUV, where it could be easily spotted by anyone looking for it later. “There,” he said. “Hole plugged.”
Chiun sniffed. “I do not know why you hate the Vietnamese,” he said, oblivious to Remo’s actions.
“Me?” Remo asked. “You hate the Vietnamese more than anybody!”
“Not true,” Chiun said. “I hate the Chinese more, and whites most.” His said this without rancor or inflection, as it was a simple statement of fact, one not open for debate or challenge.
“But you still hate the Vietnamese,” Remo said.
“The unfortunate origins of a person do not enter the mind of the Master of Sinanju when conducting business,” Chiun said. “If they have gold, one can look past shortcomings for which they bore no personal responsibility.”
Remo sighed. “You’re still not raising Great Danes for food,” he said, getting into the rental car. “Or for any other purpose, either.”
“Give me one good reason why I may not,” Chiun demanded.
Remo looked into the glinting slits of vellum of the Master of Sinanju, adamant in their decision. “Because it’s illegal to raise dogs as food in America, Little Father,” he said.
Chiun’s face fell, and Remo almost felt sorry for him. “This cannot be so,” he said.
“Honest Injun,” Remo said. He was pulling his facts out of thin air, and hoped he was correct.
Chiun huffed and joined Remo in the car. He sulked in the passenger seat on the way to the airport, muttering only once as they passed a Burger Queen. “Oh, certainly, you can do it,” he muttered to the fast-food restaurant. “But the Master of Sinanju is to be denied. I see now the crooked path of corporate America.”
He was silent the rest of the trip.