He lightened the pressure on the shoulder and the driver said “Right. You got a deal, gringo.”

  “Are you sure that’s wise?” Smith asked.

  “Why kill someone you don’t have to?”

  “But he’s the enemy. Perhaps we should just dispose of him, grab the car and run?”

  “You want me to get out now and let you handle it?”

  “No,” said Dr. Smith.

  “Then if you would, sir, shut up.”

  Just before a green sign directing them to the airport, the driver turned right onto what appeared to be a long black unlit road, penetrating a misty green swamp. He drove for a mile, then turned off onto a dirt road underneath hanging trees. It was a dark green misty night.

  He stopped the engine. “This is where you die, gringo.”

  “It’s where one of us dies, companero,” Remo said. Remo liked him, but not so much that he didn’t knock him out by releasing his shoulder, leaning forward, and driving a hard index finger into his solar plexus. Okay, Remo thought. Good for at least two minutes.

  Two sedans began to pull up behind them, parking ten feet behind the cab, side by side.

  Remo could see their onrushing headlights in the mirror and then they stopped. He pressed Smith’s head down roughly. “Stay on the floor,” he growled. “Don’t try to help.”

  He slid out of the right hand door. Four men poured out of each car, one group approaching the back of the cab from the left, the other from the right. Remo stood behind the cab, between the lines of the eight men, his hands resting behind him on the cab’s trunk.

  “You’re all under arrest,” he said. The eight stopped.

  “What’s the charge?” one of them answered, in precise English. In the light of the headlamps, Remo could see he was a tall heavy man with a bony face, wearing a snap brim hat. His answer marked him as the group’s leader. That was what Remo wanted to know. He had use for him.

  The man repeated, “What’s the charge?”

  “Reckless dying,” Remo said. He leaned his weight back onto his hands, then with a push of his arms and a leap his lower body flashed through the air. The polished tip of his right shoe crashed into the Adam’s apple of the first man on his right. His feet hit the ground, his hands still on the trunk of the cab, and without stopping, he spun about on the trunk of the car and repeated the action, flashing out with his left foot at the man closest to him on the left. This shoe too was christened in the Adam’s apple. The action had occurred so quickly that both men fell simultaneously, their throats crushed, death on its way.

  Remo moved off the trunk of the cab in between the three-man rows, and the six men charged. One fired a shot, but Remo made it miss, and it landed in the stomach of a man charging from the other side. He teetered, then fell heavily.

  The remaining men moved together in a kaleidoscope of arms and legs and bodies, flailing, reaching out for Remo. They dropped their weapons in the close quarters, hoping to use their hands. But their hands captured only air, and Remo moved through them, in the classic patterns 1500 years old, as if travelling through a different dimension of space and time. Their hands closed on air. Their lunges enveloped each other. None touched Remo and he spun through them, performing the ancient secrets of aiki, the escape art, but aiki made deadly through performance by a killing machine.

  He fractured a skull here, perforated a kidney there, with an elbow crazed a temple into shattered jaggers of bone.

  Six were down and done. Two were left, including the leader. Remo moved directly now and faster because if they regained their composure, they would know he was a clear target for their bullets. Pulling his blows, he knocked out the two remaining men with hiraken blows to the side of the head.

  He propped the two living men against the back of the cab and called “Doctor Smith.”

  Smith’s head appeared in the rear glass of the cab, then he climbed out through the door Remo had left open.

  “Look around,” Remo said. “Recognize anyone?”

  Smith looked at the two men that Remo had propped up against the trunk of the cab. He shook his head. Then he walked around, through the glare of the two cars’ headlights, turning over men’s bodies with a toe, bending closer sometimes to see a face. He walked back to Remo.

  “I never saw any of them,” he said.

  Remo reached up and touched his thumbs to the temples of the two men, and gave a rotating squeeze. Both groaned their way into consciousness.

  He allowed the leader to be aware of the man on his left. Then Remo leaped into the air, and came down full force with a steely elbow on the top of the man’s skull. Just as quickly, Remo brought out gray bloodish matter in his hand.

  “You want to go like this?”

  “No,” said the leader.

  “Okay. Who sent you?”

  “I don’t know. It was just a contract from the States.”

  “Good night,” said Remo and sent the man on his eternal way by driving a knee into the man’s right kidney.

  He and Smith walked to the front of the cab. The driver moaned.

  “Can we let him live?” Smith asked.

  “Only if we hire him.”

  “I can’t do that,” said Smith.

  “Then I’ve got to kill him.”

  “I knew these things had to be done, but…”

  “You wipe me out, sweetheart. What do you think those numbers I phone in mean?”

  “I know. But they were numbers.”

  “They were never numbers.”

  “All right. Do what you must do. World peace.”

  “It’s always so easy to say,” said Remo. He looked into the driver’s black eyes. “I’m sorry, companero.”

  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, companero,” 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?

  7

  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 pigsty. 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 Chuin. His hazel eye 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 palefaced 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 first. 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 five hundred 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.