Dr. Harold W. Smith was not a man for puzzles. Puzzles represented unwanted wrinkles in the order of the universe, demanding to be smoothed out.
The rash of bridge collapses was such a wrinkle—a puzzle he had to solve. He had been inclined to believe the disasters were, indeed, tied to the destructive algae reported by the EPA. But there were also the bridges that had been taken down by explosives. It didn’t escape Smith’s notice that those particular bridges were abandoned.
Then there was Remo’s conviction that the algae was a red herring—seemingly backed up by what he had reported from those publicity-seeking blogger kids in California. Smith pursed his lips. Loath as he was to take the advice from a group of self-promoting Internet sleuths, he had to admit there was a logic to the reports. But if it was not algae, and it was not explosives, then what was it?
Smith pressed a recessed button under the lip of his desk, causing a keyboard to noiselessly ascend from beneath, while simultaneously activating the monitor positioned beneath his desk. His fingers typed commands, and a map of the United States was displayed. He entered in all the different bridges that had fallen. He was disturbed that the CURE computer suggested that he add the Golden Gate Bridge to his map. A few key taps brought Smith a recently-filed EPA report, showing the same strain of algae had been found in the San Francisco Bay, and indicating slight superficial damage to the concrete supports of the suspension bridge before the algae had died off.
He sat back and looked at the plotted points, seeking a pattern but finding none. He eliminated the Calumet River and Euharlee Creek bridges as irrelevant. They did not match the overall pattern. He similarly eliminated the Golden Gate, since it was still standing and was likely to remain so.
What remained were bridges along the Mississippi River, which would make sense if it were truly pollution-based algae. But the presence of the algae in California was too convenient, and the algae was proven not to live long enough to traverse the length of the river from Black Hawk to the Helena Bridge connecting Helena, Arkansas to the casino in Lula, Mississippi.
Something nagged at the back of his mind, and he felt there was some pattern that he should be seeing. As usual when he found himself in deep concentration, he was interrupted by the intrusion of Remo Williams, followed by the Master of Sinanju, Chiun.
“Remo,” Smith said. “I thought you were staying in California until I contacted you.”
“He could have stayed,” Chiun replied huffily. “I, however, would not stay with him.” He made a show of looking away from Remo as he gracefully flowed into a cross-legged position on the floor.
“And I couldn’t leave him alone on an airplane in the mood he was in without risking an international incident,” Remo explained.
Smith was used to the squabbles between Remo and the Master of Sinanju. They were the cross he had to bear to have the invaluable services of Sinanju at CURE’s disposal. But just once he would have liked to see the two work together without tension, even if only for a week.
“Master Chiun, how may I be of service to you?” Smith asked.
Chiun raised his chin with a pout. “I am humbled by your gracious offer, oh great Emperor Smith, but it is I who serve you,” he said. “Alas, the problem is with my unworthy son, about whom it would seem nothing can be done.”
Smith looked to Remo, who shrugged helplessly.
“He won’t let me have a dog!” the Master of Sinanju said accusingly.
“That seems unreasonable,” Smith said. “Some people find pets therapeutic, particularly those who have put in as many years as has Master Chiun.”
“I won’t let him raise dogs,” Remo interjected.
Smith nodded. “I see,” he said. “Well, as a hobby—”
“For food,” Remo said. “I won’t let him raise dogs for food.”
Chiun turned his head toward Remo with a fierce expression, his eyes narrowed to deadly slits.
“Ah,” Smith said, adding nothing more. He was used to the Master of Sinanju’s unusual quirks. They had begun with Chiun’s insistence that Smith was an emperor, as Sinanju had only ever been hired by royalty, and Chiun needed Smith to be royal to allow himself to be contracted by CURE to train Remo.
“I tried to tell him it’s illegal,” Remo said plaintively. “But he doesn’t believe me.”
“It’s illegal,” Smith said flatly.
Chiun’s anger deflated with a slump of his shoulders.
“See, I told you!”
“In New York,” Smith added.
“Wait, what?” Remo rounded on him, incredulously. Chiun sat at attention, his eyes alight as he gazed up at Smith with intense interest.
“Also in Virginia, Georgia, Michigan, California, and Hawaii,” Smith said.
“Not helping, Smitty,” Remo growled.
“We can move,” Chiun said, hopefully. “Connecticut is nice.”
“I thought meat was not in the Sinanju diet,” Smith said. “Is this some exception of which I am currently unaware?”
“He doesn’t want us to eat them,” Remo said. “He wants to raise Great Danes, and sell them as livestock to the Vietnamese.”
“Also South Koreans,” Chiun said, raising a single finger to make his point. “If you are going to present my case to the emperor, present all of it.”
Smith rubbed his temples. The pink antacid was calling to him from its hiding place in his drawer. “Could we talk about this later?” he asked. “I’ve been going over the data from the bridge collapses, and have come to the conclusion that Remo is correct. This cannot be the result of destructive algae.”
“Somebody pinch me,” Remo said. “Smitty agrees with me on something.”
“This presents us with a new problem,” Smith continued. “If these are not a string of natural disasters, then we must conclude that they are man-made. But aside from two demolitions using explosives on abandoned bridges, all we know about the others is that they occur along the Mississippi.”
“Like someone’s trying to unzip the country,” Remo said.
Smith steepled his fingers and pursed his lips. “If this continues, it would seem to have that effect. It would certainly have a lasting impact on ground transportation,” he said. “But where is the profit? And we still have no idea how they are breaking down the concrete supports to drop the bridges.”
Chiun sighed melodramatically. “I have told you already what broke the concrete,” he said.
“I know, I know,” Remo said. “‘The bridge fell on it.’ But what made the bridge fall?”
“That is simple,” the Master of Sinanju said. His face beamed with a smile of superiority. “It came apart.”
Smith cleared his throat. “While bridges are, on the rare occasion, disassembled to be relocated elsewhere, such things take months, and a team of people.”
The Master of Sinanju rose and held his hand over Smith’s desk. From the voluminous folds of his kimono sleeves fell a handful of metal hex nuts the size of walnuts, along with bolts and rivets. It seemed impossible for Chiun to have concealed them without his sleeves bulging. “Behold, fallen yet unbroken pieces of your river spans.”
Smith picked one up and examined it, not even bothering to ask how Chiun had moved so much metal through airport security.
“These are from the Memphis site?” he asked.
“That one you hold, oh beneficent emperor, came from the span of the black hunting bird,” Chiun replied with a slight blow. “These others are from city which took its name from its Egyptian better.”
Remo stood and peered over Chiun’s shoulder. “Looks like junk to me,” he said.
Smith held up a bolt. “It is not uncommon to find loose nuts and bolts at a collapse,” he said. “However, it is more likely one would find broken bolts with the nuts still attached to them. And this,” he said, holding up a rivet, “is impossible.”
“Looks like a stainless steel di— Ow!” Chiun elbowed Remo in the ribs before he could complete his sentence.
“When a bridge is dismantled,” Smith continued, “the nuts and bolts can be taken apart. But the rivets have to be cut with a special rivet cutter.”
“Makes sense,” Remo said, making a show of rubbing his side and glancing hurtfully at Chiun.
“But this rivet is uncut, as are the others here,” Smith indicated the scattering of metal parts on his desk. “These rivets appear to have been remolded and pulled back through their holes.”
“Could you do that by heating them up?” Remo asked.
“Potentially,” Smith asked. “But cutting them is more expedient. A rivet can’t be reused.” He pondered the pieces.
“Something else is bothering me,” he said after a moment of silence. “The first bridge to fall was in Helena, Arkansas. If something ecological were truly causing all this, it would make sense that waste and algae would flow downstream, which would mean the northern bridge collapses should have happened first. In fact, as the Black Hawk Bridge was much older than the Helena Bridge, one would expect it to have weakened more quickly due to its age.”
“Always judging weakness by age,” Chiun muttered in Korean, while simultaneously nodding in agreement with Smith.
“So what I’m hearing is that these things are definitely being orchestrated,” Remo said. “Which means they’ll only get worse. So who can make it stop?”
Smith was forced to say the three little words he hated the most. “I don’t know,” he said. “It would be helpful if we had any witnesses to the events.” He tapped at his keyboard, searching for police logs and security interviews. “Hmm,” he said. “Perhaps we could be our own witnesses.”
“Huh?” Remo asked eloquently. “Chiun’s the inscrutable one, Smitty. From you, it’s just weird.”
Smith indicated the monitor. “The Helena Bridge was built to direct traffic across the state lines to Lula, Mississippi—specifically to the casinos, which are illegal in Arkansas. Such ventures quite naturally take security seriously. One of their surveillance cameras had a view of the bridge before it went down.”
Smith queued the video to play. To the average observer, it appeared that the bridge was there, and then suddenly began to fall. However, Remo Williams was not the average observer, and his Sinanju-trained eyes were able to detect what others had missed.
“Holy crap,” he said. “Chiun’s right.”
Chiun raised his chin and smiled beatifically. “So many things would go so much faster for you if you would simply begin with this truth and move forward.”
“Smitty, you’re not going to believe this,” he said. “The nuts and bolts and everything else? They were the first things to fall. All of them, at once. The bridge fell because there wasn’t anything holding it together. What could do something like that?”
Smith viewed Remo skeptically. “You’re certain of this,” he asked.
Remo shot him a look. “Smitty, I can tell you where your next three liver spots are going to crop up before your dermatologist. I can pitch a penny at the left wing of a housefly a hundred yards away.”
Harold Smith weighed Remo’s testimony. He knew Sinanju had given Remo unquestionable talents. “I believe you saw what you say you saw,” Smith amended. “The questions remain, though, as to who, how, and why.”
Remo frowned. “There’s the answer to your first two questions,” he said, pointing to Smith’s computer monitor. “And I’ll bet we’ve solved the deputy’s missing person case, too.”
On the video, barely perceptible in the grainy surveillance footage, a figure walked away from the bridge, toward the casino. His movements were measured, almost unnaturally so. Only Remo and Chiun could see the placid expression on the otherwise emotionless face, the slightly cheerless grin and the lifelike, yet completely lifeless, eyes.
Chiun groaned. “The thing that never dies,” he lamented.
Smith raised a questioning eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”
“You wouldn’t recognize him,” Remo responded. “The last time you saw him, he was a female nurse and you were laid up in the hospital in a room set to explode if the weight inside it changed.”
“This explains the 500-pound footprints in the professor’s carpet,” Chiun said. “His inner workings are heavy.”
Smith took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, as he recalled his encounter with the survival machine. “Mr. Gordons,” he said, as the figure continued to walk without breaking pace until it was out of frame.