Chinese Puzzle Page 5

  The man’s addled mind began to sort the fact of the gringo still alive, and he said: “You deserve to live, gringo. You deserve.”

  “Good night, compañero,” Remo said softly.

  “Good night, gringo. Perhaps another time over a drink.”

  “To another time, my friend.” And Remo saluted the driver with death.

  “Are you sure he’s dead?” Smith asked.

  “Up yours,” Remo said, and pushed the driver’s body out of the car and got behind the wheel. “Get in,” he said roughly.

  “You don’t have to be rude.”

  Remo started the car and backed over a few bodies in steering around the two parked cars, back onto the black road. He picked up speed and turned onto the road to the airport. He did not drive as other men did, either too quickly or puttering slowly along. He maintained a computer-even pace on springs he did not trust and with an engine in whose power he had little faith.

  The car smelled of death. Not decayed death but a smell Remo had learned to recognize. Human fear. He did not know if it had come from the driver, or if it came now from Smith who sat quietly in the rear seat.

  When he pulled up to the airport, Smith said, “It’s a business that makes you sick sometimes.”

  “They would have done the same to us. What makes you sick is that we live on others’ deaths. I’ll see you again, or I won’t,” Remo said.

  “Good luck,” said Smith. “I think we’re starting without the element of surprise.”

  “Whatever would make you believe that?” Remo asked, and laughed out loud as Smith took his luggage and departed.

  Then Remo drove back to the Nacional.

  He would still have to face Chiun. And it might have been easier for him to die on the side road.

  But again, as the little father had told him: “It is always easier to die. Living takes courage.”

  Did Remo have the courage to tell Chiun that he would be instrumental in bringing about peace with China?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SHE WAS A VERY LITTLE GIRL in a very big gray coat from which her delicate hands poked out, lost in the immensity of the cuffs. The two hands clutched a little red book.

  She wore big rimmed round eyeglasses that reinforced her oval eggshell face and made it appear even more frail and more loveable. Her black hair was neatly combed back and parted in the center.

  She appeared no older than 13 and was definitely airsick and probably frightened. She sat in the front of the BOAC jet, not moving, determinedly looking forward.

  Remo and Chiun had arrived at Dorval Airport in Montreal less than a half hour earlier. Chiun had gone onto the jet first, hiding behind a business suit and a gold badge of identification. As soon as they had brushed past the stewardess, Chiun pointed to the sick little girl and said:

  “That’s her. That’s the beast. You can smell them.”

  He went to the girl and said something in what Remo assumed was Chinese. The girl nodded and answered. Then Chiun said something that was obviously a curse, and showed his identification to the girl.

  “She wishes to see yours also, this little harlot of the pig sty. Perhaps to steal it. All her people are thieves, you know.”

  Remo showed his identification and smiled. She looked at the picture on his ID, and then at Remo.

  “One can never be too careful,” she said, in excellent English. “Would you please show me to the room for women? I am rather ill. But I shall overcome it. Just as I overcome the rudeness and reactionary vilification of your running dog.”

  “Dung of dung,” answered Chiun. His hazel eyes blazed hate.

  The girl managed to lift herself up and Remo helped her down the gangway steps as she struggled under the coat. Chiun followed uncomfortably. He wore black American shoes and his beard had been shaved close. He had shocked Remo back at the Nacional in San Juan when Remo had first posed the question. But Remo should have known that by now he should not be shocked by Chiun.

  “I can read English also,” said the girl. “To destroy imperialism, one must know its language.”

  “Good thinking,” Remo said.

  “You may be an iron tiger in the short run, but you are a paper tiger in the long run. The people are the iron tiger in the long run.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Remo said. “That’s the ladies room,” he said, pointing to a sign she had missed on her march from the gangway.

  “Thank you,” she said and handed him the little red book. “Treasure this with your life.”

  “Sure thing,” Remo said, taking the plastic bound book. Then she spun as if on parade and, still entrapped in the large gray coat, marched into the ladies room. Remo could have sworn he saw her take toilet paper from her pocket before she entered.

  “You are already reading the propaganda of that little wanton seducer,” said Chiun, looking triumphantly and at the same time disdainfully at the book.

  “She’s just a kid, Chiun.”

  “Tiger cubs can kill. Children are the most vicious.”

  Remo shrugged. He was still grateful that Chiun had come. And still surprised. After all, there was the San Francisco incident.

  They had been bringing Remo’s mind and body along slowly after an overpeak that almost became a burnout, when the President announced the impending visit by China’s Premier.

  Chiun was already disturbed because the Wonderful World of Disney had been preempted for the President. Remo was working on his deep breathing, looking out at the Golden Gate Bridge, trying to see himself running across its suspension bands and breathing accordingly.

  Chiun had worked Remo back into shape very well and very quickly, which was not surprising since he had devoted his life to that sort of thing, starting his own training at 18 months. When he had begun training Remo, he had informed him that he was 26 years too late to do anything serious but he would do the best he could.

  Mentally, Remo was going down the far side of the Golden Gate bridge, when he heard a shriek.

  He quickly floated into the living room. Chiun was making hostile, oriental sounds at the television set from which the President spoke in his usual dull and precise manner, always appearing more sincere when he abstained from trying to show warmth or joy.

  “Thank you and good night,” said the President, but Chiun would not let the image escape, and he fractured the picture tube with a kick of his foot, the main tube imploding on itself before showering the room with splinters.

  “What did you do that for?”

  “You fool,” said Chiun, his wispy beard quivering. “You pale faced fool. You imbecile. And your President. White is the color of sickness and you are sick. Sick. All of you.”

  “What happened?”

  “Stupid happened. Stupid happened. You are stupid.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You did not have to do anything. You are white. That is deed enough.”

  And Chiun returned to the console to smash the wood top of the set with his left hand, and with his right hand caved in the right side, leaving the left corner of the cabinet rising like a steeple. For that, he smashed his elbow down, shattering it into splinters.

  He stood in front of the split wiring and wood and shards of glass and triumphantly spit down upon it.

  “China’s Premier is visiting your country,” he said, and spit again.

  “Chiun. Where is your sense of balance?”

  “Where is your country’s sense of honor?”

  “You mean you’re for Chiang Kai Shek?”

  Chiun spit again at the remains of the television set. “Chiang and Mao are two brothers. They are Chinese. You cannot trust the Chinese. No man should trust Chinese who wishes to keep pants and shirt. The fool.”

  “You have something against the Chinese?”

  Calmly Chiun opened his hand and looked at his fingers. “My, you are perceptive tonight. My training has done well by you. You perceive even the faintest vibration. You soar to ultimate understanding.”

/>   “Okay, Chiun. Okay. Okay.”

  But it was not okay.

  The next night, while passing the third Chinese restaurant, Chiun spat for the third time.

  “Chiun, will you cut that out?” Remo whispered, and for a reply, drew a deft elbow in the solar plexus that might have sent an ordinary man to a hospital. Remo let out a grunt. His pain seemed to make Chiun feel better because Chiun began humming as he shuffled along, waiting for the next Chinese restaurant to spit at.

  Then it happened.

  They were big, perhaps the biggest bulk of men Remo had ever seen up close. Their shoulders were at the tip of his head, and they stretched broad and wide, their bodies came down straight and sturdy like three large cigarette machines. Their shopping bag size heads were connected to their shoulders by what medically would be called necks, but more accurately were only swollen growths of muscle tissue.

  They wore blue blazers with Los Angeles Bisons patches on them. There was one crew cut, a greasy longish job, and an Afro. They must have weighed nearly a half ton.

  They stood there in front of the glass window of the furniture store singing in harmony. Training camp had obviously ended and they were out for a night on the town. When in good and joyous faith, made more joyous by booze, they accosted a wizened old Oriental, none of them had intended at the time to end his professional football career.

  “Hail, brother of the third world,” sang out the giant with the Afro.

  Chiun stopped, his delicate hands resting, clasped before him. He looked at the black man and said nothing.

  “I hail the President’s decision to welcome your premier, a great leader of the third world. The Chinaman and the black man are brothers.”

  Thus ended the wonderful career of defensive tackle Bad Boulder Jones. The newspapers the next day said that in all probability he would be able to walk again within a year. His two companions were suspended for a game and fined $500 each. They both insisted to the police and to the press that a little old Chinaman had picked up Bad Boulder and thrown him at them.

  Coach Harrahan, according to the press, said that he was not really a strict coach, but this sort of heavy drinking was ruinous to a team. “It has already permanently injured one of the great defensive tackles in football history. It is a tragedy, compounded by an obvious lie.”

  While the coach was sorting his problems, Remo was sorting his own. He was getting Chiun the hell out of San Francisco and on to San Juan, where one night he was forced to ask a favor he thought Chiun would never grant.

  Chiun was resting in his suite where he was listed as Mr. Parks and Remo as his manservant. Smith had just gotten off to a safe return to headquarters. The only way to ask it was to ask it.

  Remo asked it.

  “Chiun. We must guard the life of a Chinese person, and attempt to save the life of another.”

  Chiun nodded.

  “You will do it?”

  “Yes, of course. Why not?”

  “Well, I know how you feel about Chinese, that’s all.”

  “Feel? What is there to feel for vermin? If our lords who pay our sustenance wish us to watch and protect cockroaches, then we do just that.”

  Chiun smiled. “Just one thing,” he said.

  “What is that?” Remo asked.

  “If we are supposed to get any money from the Chinese, get the money fast. Before you do anything. Just the other day, they hired some people from my village and had them do most dangerous tasks. They not only did not pay them, they attempted to dispose of them.”

  “I didn’t know the Chinese Communists hired the people of your village.”

  “Not the Communists. The emperor Chu Ti.”

  “Chu Ti? The one who built the forbidden city?”

  “The same.”

  “What do you mean, the other day? That was 500 years ago.”

  “A day in the memory of a Korean. Just be sure we get paid first.”

  “We will.” Remo was again surprised when Chiun willingly agreed to trim his beard for the assignment.

  “When you deal with vermin, it makes no difference how you look,” Chiun had said.

  And now they waited outside the ladies’ room at Dorval Airport. The late September rain played on the windows and had cut chillingly through their light summer suits. They would have to purchase fall clothes as soon as possible.

  “She is probably robbing the washroom of soap and towels and toilet tissue,” said Chiun, smiling.

  “She’s been in there ten minutes. Maybe I’d better check,” Remo said.

  So taking out his Special Services badge which came with the identities Remo and Chiun had been given by Smith, Remo stormed into the ladies’ room, announcing “Health inspector, ladies. Be just a minute.” And since the tone was correct and officially distant, no one had protested but left quickly.

  All but her. She was piling up paper towelling and stuffing it in her great coat.

  “What are you doing?” Remo asked.

  “There may be no towels or paper in your country. There is plenty here. Plenty. Paper in every stall.”

  “There’s paper all over the United States in every stall.”

  “In every stall?”

  “Well, except when someone forgets to fill them up.”

  “Aha. Then we take a little. I brought some with me from Peking.”

  “Toilet paper?”

  “Preparedness for a task is the doing of the task. He who does not prepare a task by looking at it from many sides is destined to stumble on one side. Be prepared.”

  “You a girl scout?”

  “No. The thoughts of Mao. Where is the book?” She looked at him anxiously.

  “It’s outside with my partner.”

  “Have you read it yet?”

  “I’ve only had it ten minutes.”

  “Ten minutes can be two most valuable thoughts of Chairman Mao. It could liberate you from your imperialistic, exploitative ways. And also your running dog.”

  Remo grabbed the young girl firmly but gently by both shoulders.

  “Look, kid,” he said. “I don’t care what names you use for me. If it gives you kicks, all right. But watch what you call Chiun. ‘Running dog’ and ‘imperialist lackey’ are not fitting words for a man three or four times your age.”

  “If the old is reactionary and decadent, it must be buried, along with all the other anachronisms afflicting mankind today.”

  “He’s a friend of mine,” Remo said. “I don’t want him hurt.”

  “Your only friends are the party and your worker solidarity.”

  The young girl said that, waiting for approval. She did not expect two sharp stinging pains under her armpits. Remo kept his thumbs working, rotating, pressing the flesh up into the joint. Her delicate almond eyes went almost round with pain. Her mouth opened to scream and Remo switched one hand to her mouth.

  “Listen kid and listen close. I do not want you insulting that man outside. He deserves your respect. If you are unable to give that, at least you may avoid disrespect. I would suggest that he knows more about the world than you and if you would just shut up for a moment, you might learn something from him.

  “But whether you do or not is no concern of mine. What concerns me is your lack of manners, and if you mouth off just one more time, kid, I’m going to grind your shoulders into mush.”

  Remo pressed his right thumb in even deeper and felt her body tighten even more. Her face contorted with pain.

  “Now we have had our little dialogue,” Remo said, “and we have formed our revolutionary consensus. Correct?”

  He released the hand from her mouth. She nodded and gasped.

  “Correct,” she said. “I will show the old man respect. I will take one step backwards, so that I may take two steps forward at a later date. I am allowed to speak the truth to you, however? Without fear of aggression?”

  “Sure, kid.”

  “You are a shithead, Remo whatever-your-name-is.”

  She had
begun to rebutton her great coat, using maximum energy on each large button. She had obviously remembered his name from the identity cards Remo and Chiun had flashed.

  “Not an imperialistic, oppressive, reactionary, fascistic shithead?”

  “A shithead is a shithead.”

  “All right, Miss Liu.”

  “My name is Mrs. Liu.”

  “You’re married to the general’s son?”

  “I am married to General Liu and I am looking for my husband.”

  Remo remembered the small picture from briefing. General Liu’s face was hard and weather beaten, with strong lines cut in the bitterness of many long marches. He was 62 years old.

  “But you’re a kid.”

  “I am not a kid, damn you. I am 22 and I have the revolutionary consciousness of someone three times my age.”

  “You have the body of a kid.”

  “That’s all you decadent westerners would think about.”

  “General Liu didn’t marry you for your revolutionary consciousness.”

  “Yes, he did, as a matter of fact. But you wouldn’t understand that.” She buttoned the top button with defiance.

  “Okay, let’s go. Look, I can’t call you Mrs. Liu for obvious reasons. You can’t travel under that name either. It’s already been proved we’ve got a system like a sieve. What do I call you?”

  “Lotus Blossom, shithead,” she said with ringing sarcasm.

  “Okay, don’t be funny,” said Remo, holding open the door of the ladies’ room and receiving stunned stares from passersby.

  “Mei Soong,” she said.

  Chiun was waiting with his hands behind his back. He was smiling sweetly.

  “The book,” said Mei Soong.

  “You treasure the book?”

  “It is my most valued possession.”

  Chiun’s smile reached for the outer limits of joy and he brought his hands before him, containing paper shreds and red plastic shreds, the remnants of the book.

  “Lies. They are lies,” he said. “Chinese lies.”

  Mei Soong was stunned.

  “My book,” she said softly. “The thoughts of Chairman Mao.”

  “Why did you do that, Chiun? I mean, really Chiun. That’s really rotten. I mean there was no reason to do that to this little girl’s book.”