“No, thank you. I’m saving it until I get married,” Remo said, as he began to scoop up large armfuls of papers and jam them into the plastic garbage pail in the corner of the room that served as a wastepaper basket.
“Will you marry me?” she asked.
“Not today,” he said. “Today I’ve got to get a haircut. Anyway, I thought you girls didn’t believe in marriage. No more nuclear families. Zero population growth. All that.”
“See. There you go again. ‘You girls.’ Talking about us as a group. All women are to you are sex symbols. It’s not right you know. You’re as counterproductive as the bitch. You missed a piece under the bed.” She sat back, bare-assed, on the desk, and lifted her feet out of Remo’s way.
Remo leaned down and got the piece of paper out from the carpet of dust under the bed. “Where would the dirty, counterproductive bitch be in New York?”
“I don’t know,” the roommate said. “She said something stupid.”
“What was that?”
“She said, watch out for the dead animals. And she was giggling. I think the bitch was on the nose candy again.”
“Oh, the bitch.”
“The dirty bitch.”
“Oh, the dirty bitch,” Remo agreed. “If I got my hands on her, I’d teach her a thing or two.”
“You would?”
“You bet.”
“Well, she belongs to this group. I bet you could find her there.”
“What kind of group?”
“It’s some kind of counterproductive revolutionary group. It would have to be counterproductive to have Joan Hackett in it.”
“What’s the name of it?” Remo asked.
“People United to Fight Fascism.”
“Don’t tell me,” Remo said, “They call it PUFF.”
“That’s right.”
“Where is it?”
“Someplace in the Village, but exactly where I don’t know.”
“What’s your name?” Remo asked.
“Millicent Van Dervander,”
“Of the dog food Van Dervanders?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll never look at a dog biscuit again without thinking of you.”
“You’re too kind.”
“It’s my basic nature,” Remo said. “Listen, if I get time after my hair cut, you still want to get married?”
“No. You already have the room clean. Why get married?”
“Why indeed?”
Back at their room in the Hotel Guild, Chiun sat watching the last of his television shows.
“Come on, Chiun, we’re going back to New York.”
“Why?” Chiun said. “This is a very nice town. A place where you and I could settle down. And the hotel has cable television and I get many more channels than we do in New York City.”
“We’ll come back when they pave Garden Street,” Remo said. “Anyway, New York City is very near to Brooklyn.”
“Brooklyn is not all that important now,” Chiun said sadly. “There are other things.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the dead animals.”
“Of course,” Remo said. “I forgot. The dead animals. But you forgot the PUFF.”
“The PUFF?”
“Yes,” Remo said, “didn’t you know. That comes before the dead animals. First fat, then thin, then PUFF, then the dead animals.” He turned away with a malicious grin.
Chiun sighed behind him. “Let us go to Brooklyn,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BACK IN NEW YORK finding PUFF was not so easy as Remo had expected it to be. There was no reference to it in the files of the New York Times, no handprinted sign on the main bulletin board of the New School for Social Research, not even a mention in the classified persons of the Village Voice, the East Village Other or Screw magazine.
Finally, Remo gave up. After wasting the better part of a day, he called the special number.
“Smith here, is that you, Remo?”
“If you’d wait a minute, I’d tell you who was calling. You feeling all right?”
“Yes, yes,” said Smith impatiently. “What have you found out?”
“Nothing. But I need some information. Do you have anything in those damned computers on an organization called PUFF?”
“PUFF? Like in magic dragon?”
“Yes, PUFF. People United to Fight Fascism or Freedom or some damn thing or other.”
“Hold on.”
Through the open phone, Remo could hear Smith mumbling, and then moments later, the clattering whoosh as the computer printout on his desk was activated.
Then Smith was back on the line.
“PUFF,” he read. “People United to Fight Fascism. A lunatic fringe revolutionary group. Only several dozen members, mostly student children of rich parents. No known officers, no regular meeting dates. Last meeting was held six weeks ago in empty room over The Bard, a cocktail lounge on Ninth Street in the Village.” He stopped reading and asked, “Why do you want to know this?”
“I’m thinking of joining,” Remo said. “I hear the dues are tax deductible.” He hung up before Smith pressed the point; Remo did not want him blundering around with more men and getting in his way.
After Remo had hung up, Smith spun around and looked out at the Sound. Smart-ass Remo would never understand. The conference on anti-terrorist accords was to be held in three more days. The pressure was mounting. Despite all Chiun’s nonsense about typhoons, suppose the hijackers struck again? Suppose there were other terrorist acts? The President himself was on the telephone every day, needling Smith about the lack of action. The pressure was building, building, building. Well, Dr. Smith knew how to handle pressure. He had handled it all his life. PUFF, eh? Smith wheeled back to his desk and began to jot notes down on a pad, notes that would send CURE’s far-flung apparatus into operation against this organization called PUFF. It must be dangerous. He would flood the field with men. It might be a link to the terrorists. Let Remo be a smart-ass. “I hear dues are tax deductible.” Oh, yes. Let him be as smart as he wanted. When Dr. Smith resolved the whole problem through CURE’s other resources, then perhaps Mr. Remo Williams would see that he wasn’t all that irreplaceable. And if he didn’t see that, well, then, perhaps the point would have to be made more strongly.
With a slight smirk that looked ill at ease on Smith’s drawn and dry face, he jabbed the point of his pencil down into the yellow pad, punctuating his anger with Remo, with CURE, with the President, with his country. But most of all, with Remo.
The object of all this indignation was, by then, on his way through the door of the lush cooperative apartment that CURE kept on the lower East Side of New York, Chiun trailing along in his wake.
“Is it?” Chiun asked.
“It is,” Remo said.
“A visit to Brooklyn?”
“No,” Remo said. “A lead on that Hacker girl.”
“Oh, that,” Chiun said. “Must we?”
“Yes, we must. Chiun, I promise you. A solid gold promise. When we’re done, when we’ve got some time, we’ll get to Brooklyn and see Barbra Streisand’s house.”
“Her ancestral home,” Chiun corrected.
“Her ancestral home,” Remo agreed.
“That solid gold promise could be tin,” Chiun said.
“Why?”
“You may not be around to fulfill it. And then, what would happen to the promise? What would happen to me? Is it really likely that Dr. Smith would drive me to Brooklyn?”
“Chiun. For your sake, I’ll try to live.”
“One can but hope,” Chiun said, quietly closing the door behind him.
The Bard was a noisy bar and restaurant, in a narrow side street near one of the Village’s main drags. It was crowded and smoky when Remo and Chiun entered and the smoke was not all latakia. Chiun coughed loudly.
Remo ignored him and led the way to a table in the back corner from which he could watch the street outside, and also keep an eye on any people
entering or leaving the bar.
Chiun sat down on the hard wooden bench facing Remo. “It is obvious that you do not care enough about my fragile lungs not to bring me here. But at least open a window for me.”
“But the air conditioning’s on,” Remo protested.
“Yes. And it pumps into the air minute quantities of freon and ammonia gas that rob the brain of its will to resist. The air of the street is better. Even this street.”
Remo looked at the window. “Sorry. These windows don’t open.”
“I see,” Chiun said. “So that is the way it is to be.” He turned to look at the window, all small panes set into steel frames, and nodded. “I see,” he said again, and even though Remo knew what was coming, he could not react fast enough to do or say anything to stop Chiun’s hand from flashing out, and pronging a steel-hard index finger against the corner of a window, neatly blasting out a piece of the wired glass, almost an inch square. The piece of glass fell outside with a muted tinkle and Chiun, now feeling very satisfied with himself, slid across the wooden bench and put his face close to the hole in the window and breathed deeply.
He turned back to Remo. “I found a way to open it.”
“Yes, I see that. Congratulations.”
Chiun held up a hand. “Think nothing of it.”
Then the waitress was at their table, young, dark haired, pretty, mini-skirted, and more interested in who they were and what they were doing there than in taking their order.
“We’re Cheech and Chong doing field research,” Remo said.
“Yeah,” she said, twisting her gum inside her mouth, “and I’m Shirley MacLaine.”
Chiun turned and squinted at her. “No, you are not Shirley MacLaine,” he said, shaking his head with finality. “I saw her on the magic box, and you lack both her manners and her simplicity.”
“Hey, watch it,” the waitress said.
“What he meant was,” Remo said, “that you’re obviously a much more complex personality than Shirley MacLaine and that you don’t waste time in those ritualistic niceties like doing ballets with good manners, but instead you let it all hang out in a symphony of truth and forthrightness.”
“I do?”
“Yes,” Remo said. “We noticed that as soon as we came in.” He smiled at the girl and asked, “Now, what kind of juice do you have in the kitchen?”
She smiled back. “Orange, grapefruit, lemon, lime, tomato, carrot and celery.”
“Would you mix us up large glasses of carrot and celery juice?” Remo asked.
“Macrobiotic, huh?”
Chiun looked pained. “Yeah,” Remo said. “The latest thing. Mixed together, they let you think in the dark.”
“Hey, wow,” she said.
“And no ice,” Remo said.
“You got it”
When she had left, Remo upbraided Chiun. “Now I told you we’ll go to Brooklyn when we’re done. You’ve got to be a little more civil.”
“I will try to live up to your nation’s high cultural standards, and not let it all hang out in a symphony of truth and forthrightness,”
But Remo was no longer paying attention. His eyes were on a group of four who had just entered The Bard and were moving quickly through the dining area, alongside the bar, and then into a passageway that led somewhere into the back of the building. The first three were nondescript bomb-thrower types, a typical enough sight in the Village. Actually, so was the fourth, but with a difference. She was Joan Hacker. She wore tight jeans and a thin white sweater, a large floppy red hat and a black leather shoulder bag. She looked determined as she marched ahead behind the three men. Chiun turned and followed Remo’s eyes.
“So that is the one?”
“Yes.”
Chiun looked and said, “Be wary of her.”
The girl had gone now into the back and Remo looked at Chiun questioningly. “Why? She’s just a nit.”
“All empty vessels are the same,” Chiun said. “But some have milk poured into them and some poison.”
“Thank you,” Remo said. “That makes everything clear.”
“You’re welcome,” Chiun said. “I am happy I was able to help. Anyway, just be careful,”
Remo was careful.
He was careful until the waitress had brought back their juice, and careful to ask directions to the men’s room which he knew was in the back, and careful that no one was looking when he got into the corridor, then darted up a flight of stairs.
He was careful at the top of the steps to stay outside the door and careful not to miss a word Joan Hacker said, or a gesture she made.
This was made immeasurably easier because none of the geniuses of the impending revolution had bothered to close the door to their meeting room and Remo could see clearly through the crack.
There were a dozen of them, all squatting on the floor, eight men and four women, and the only one standing was Joan Hacker. Their attention was riveted on her, as if she were Moses carrying the tablets down from the mountain. Remo could tell by looking at her that she gloried in the attention paid her; at Patton College, no one had listened to her, but here she was a very important person indeed.
“Now you all know what the plan is,” she said. “No deviation will be allowed from it. It has been worked out on the highest levels…the very highest levels of the revolutionary movement. If we all do our part, it will not fail. And when the history of the Third World’s rise is written, your names will loom large among those who were the makers of history.”
Those, God help him, Remo thought, were her exact words. She seemed a little unsure delivering them, and he realized immediately why. They were someone else’s words that she had memorized and was now reciting.
“I’ve got a question,” a young woman said from the floor. She was skinny and buck-toothed and wore a too-large white sweater.
“Questions are allowed in our new order,” Joan said.
“Why Teterboro?” the girl asked. “Why not Kennedy or LaGuardia?”
“Because we are walking before we run. Because we must show our strength. Because we were told to,” Joan responded.
“But why?”
“Because,” Joan shrieked. “That’s why. And questions are counter productive. You either are or you aren’t. You either do or you don’t. I don’t like questions. Our leaders don’t like questions. All my life, people are always asking me questions, and well, I’m not going to answer them any more because what’s right is right, whether you understand it or not.” Her face was livid. She stamped her foot.
“She’s right,” one man said. “Questions are counter productive,” thereby proving that he would rather bang Joan than the girl with buck teeth.
“Counter productive,” another voice called. “Yes, down with counter productivity,” came another.
John Hacker beamed. “Now that we’re all agreed,” and she underscored all, “let us proceed with our revolutionary fervor to do what must be done in the never-ending fight against fascism.”
There was a collective nod of agreement from the audience and they began rising to their feet Remo moved back slightly from the doorway to assure that he would not be glimpsed.
The thirteen people in the room milled around, everyone trying to talk at once, and Remo retreated downstairs, after first assuring himself that there was no other exit from the room.
As Remo reentered the dining section of The Bard, he saw Chiun spot him in the mirror. Chiun immediately leaned over toward the window, and when Remo arrived at the booth, Chiun had his nose near the small hole in the glass. He was gasping as if he were a fish.
Remo, who knew that Chiun could live for a year inside a barrel of pickles without drawing a breath, said, “You know what you’re breathing? Pizza crust and raw clams and baclava.”
Chiun recoiled from the window. “Baclava?” he said.
“Yes,” Remo said, “baclava. You start out by grinding these almonds and dates into a paste. Then you get a big pot of honey and gobs and gob
s of sugar and…”
“Hold. Enough,” Chiun said. “I will take my chances in here.”
Remo looked up and saw the first people from the meeting beginning to leave. He perched on the edge of his bench, ready to move when he saw Joan. She arrived three minutes later, the last of the group, and he got up and intercepted her in the doorway.
“You’re under arrest,” he whispered in her ear and when she turned, startled, and recognized him, he smiled.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m on special assignment for the Patton College library.”
She giggled. “I really ripped them off, didn’t I?”
“Yes. And if you don’t have a drink with me, I’m going to run you in.”
“All right,” she said, again the revolutionary leader. “But only because I want to. Because I’m supposed to tell you something and I’m trying to remember what it is.”
He led her back to the table and introduced her to Chiun, who turned a withered smile in her direction.
“Excuse me for not arising,” he said, “but I lack the strength. Was that polite enough, Remo?”
Joan nodded graciously to the old man, wondering for a moment what Remo was doing with the representative of the Third World and wondering if Chiun were Chinese or Vietnamese, and then abandoning the wonder as unworthy of a revolutionary leader.
“What are you drinking?” Joan asked Remo.
“A Singapore Sling,” Remo said. “The latest thing in health drinks. Like one?”
“Sure, but not if it’s too sweet. I’ve got this terrible toothache.”
Remo called the waitress, motioned for her to refill his and Chiun’s glasses, and said, “And another Singapore Sling for Madame Chiang here. And not too sweet.”
“Still pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Joan Hacker asked, leaning forward and setting her bosom down onto the table top.
“No more than I have to be. Have you picked your targets yet?”
“Targets?”
“Targets. The bridges you’re going to blow. Isn’t that why you left school? To come down here and blow up the bridges? Paralyze New York. Seal it off from the rest of the country. Then direct the Third World revolution that will topple it from within?”
Terror Squad Page 9