Dr. Quake

San Aquino’s business leaders pay monthly protection money after small tremors demonstrate a controlled earthquake threat. Harris Feinstein makes one $2,000 payment, then refuses further contributions and goes to Washington with geologist Silas McAndrew; both are murdered at the Cowboy Motel, and Sheriff Wade Wyatt helps conceal the deaths. McAndrew’s memo reaches CURE, whose origin the narrator attributes to a young, unnamed President. Remo Williams returns from the Caribbean and investigates as store owner Remo Blomberg, with Chiun accompanying him. A targeted tremor destroys migrant workers’ shacks and kills people. Local Mafia leader Don Fiavorante Pubescio seeks the earthquake secret. During an attack at the farm, Chiun kills Palermo and Albanese, while Remo kills Gummo Barussio; Pubescio then sends Manny the Pick Musso after Remo.

After suspecting banker Les Curpwell of running the extortion, Remo finds him fatally injured by an attack and learns he was a CURE asset; Remo recognizes his earlier mistake. Wyatt is blackmailed with photographs of a motel encounter involving an unnamed woman and ordered to demand federal money. The President authorizes a ransom, though the dialogue gives conflicting totals; Remo recovers the delivered cash. Remo kills Musso at a car wash. He infers that Quake’s twins, Jacki and Jill, used their smaller water-lasers to kill men they lured sexually, and their later conversation strongly implies that they killed Wyatt and framed Remo, though those killings occur off-page.

The twins prepare their devices to trigger a major quake. Remo buries them by redirecting pressurized water into the fault, then finds that Dr. Quake’s enormous machine—not the twins’ smaller units—is driving a continuing earthquake. Chiun breaks the giant machine, killing Quake; the narration leaves the fault’s future uncertain. Remo concludes Quake was on CURE’s payroll, while Smith replies that he does not know everyone on it.