Profit Motive td-48

by Warren Murphy

  "Heh, heh, heh."

  "What is worth three heh's?" Remo asked. "I was just thinking of how predictably foolish you are," Chiun said. "You thought I wanted that seat, and so you plop your big fat white body down the plane like a flying squirrel to try to deprive me of it. But I knew you would do that. And I laugh because I did not want that seat. In aircraft like this one, I like this seat. I like to be on this side of the plane. Now, don't you feel like an imbecile, Remo? Aren't you even a little bit annoyed that I find you such a cause for amusement? Heh, heh, heh. Who would want to sit on that side of the plane?" Remo saw the old Oriental's eyes on him, little laugh Unes wrinkled in the corners as he chuckled.

  "Heh, heh, heh."

  "Good," Remo said. "I'm glad you got the seat you want because this is the one I want."

  "It is yours, Remo. Take root in it. I have the seat I want," Chiun said.

  Oscar, the chauffeur, came up the gangplank of the plane and went forward into the pilot's cabin. The door closed behind Reva Bleem, and almost instantly the jet began taxiing away from the hangar.

  Remo wanted to be alone with his thoughts, but a few moments after the plane lifted off, he was alone with Reva Bleem.

  "Do you two always argue over airplane seats?" she asked as she sat next to Remo.

  "No. Seating's not important. Not to me anyway."

  "Nor to me," Chiun called out from across the aisle. "I don't care where anyone sits as long as it is not here in my favorite seat. This is my favorite seat I love it here."

  "Why don't you let the old gentleman have his seat without all this bickering?" Reva asked Remo.

  "Shut up, will you?" Remo said. "Next thing, he'll have you running errands for him." He half rose in his

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  seat, watching Chiun from the comer of his eye. He just did not trust the old Korean. But Chiun's eyes were looking away from him, out the window, carefully watching the wing of the plane for any incipient signs of stress or fracture.

  Remo pursed his lips in annoyance, then brushed past Reva Bleem and walked to the front of the plane and slid into a seat there. Within moments, Reva was sitting next to him.

  "Where are you from?" she asked. "I don't know a thing about you."

  "Everywhere and nowhere," Remo said.

  "That's not much of an answer," she said.

  Remo got up and brushed by her to sit on the other side of the plane. Reva followed him.

  "Are you trying to avoid me?" she said.

  "What gave you that idea?" Remo said. He moved again and she followed.

  "Will you two cattle stop stomping around this craft?" Chiun snapped. The voice came from the left side of the plane, and when Remo looked back, Chiun was sitting in Remo's seat over the left wing. He smiled at Remo before going back to inspecting the wing.

  Annoyed, Remo slumped against the window. Reva Bleem pressed her bosom against his left upper arm as she leaned toward him.

  "Why are you being so unpleasant?" she asked.

  Remo moved away from her breast. "Unpleasant? Who's unpleasant, goddammit?" Remo said. "All right. I'm unpleasant." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "I've got to find this stupid bacterium, and that's all your fault, you and your damned tax loss, and what the hell am I going to do with it when I find it? Punch it? And I've got him on the snot back there because he wants to go to work for somebody else and he's getting so he can't tell the difference between a plum and a pear."

  "Can too," Chiun called out. "It was a pear."

  "How long have you two been together?" Reva said, pressing her breast against Remo again.

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  "A hundred years," Remo whispered back.

  "Two hundred," called out Chiun. "It seems like only a hundred to him because he has enjoyed it so. And he repays those two centuries of pleasure with treachery and denial of a poor man's only wish."

  "See?" Remo said. "On the snot. Because I won't go to work for some guy who's probably promised him Barbra Streisand, a new Betamax, and forty dollars worth of junk jewelry."

  "Who would you rather work for?" Reva asked.

  She was pumping. Remo knew, but before he could answer, Chiun called out again. "He would rather work for other ingrates like himself and for emperors who do not know what emperors are supposed to do or even how to be emperors. He wants to defend his Constitution. I ask you, can the poor people of my village eat a defended Constitution?"

  "Those lowlifes could eat rocks, as long as they didn't have to work for them," Remo said. He turned back to Reva and said, "His poor village has a higher standard of living than Westport, Connecticut. Ingrates."

  "Your responsibility," Chiun said.

  "No, your responsibility," Remo said. "Never mine."

  "How like a white man," Chiun said. "All the character of a peeled boiled potato."

  Remo snorted and turned back to the window.

  "I guess you don't feel much like talking," Reva said.

  Remo snorted again.

  "Go ahead and talk," Chiun called out. "I've got this good seat and I'll watch the wing. Heh, heh, heh."

  The plane landed on a narrow sliver of concrete that Remo supposed had been designed for an Arab air force because it stretched for ten miles in either direction, making safe allowances for pilot error of up to 6,000 percent.

  When he got off the plane, Remo saw nothing in all 129

  directions but sand, and a narrow new road heading out over a hill. A Rolls Royce waited on the road.

  Remo waited until Chiun joined him at the head of the plane's steps. "So this is it, Chiun, huh? Your great Hamidi Fareemi Areebi tradition, or whatever the hell you call it? Another name for freaking sand."

  "There can be tradition in a desert of sand as well as in a city of buildings and people. There can be no tradition only in the heads of mongrels who remember no past and therefore have no future," Chiun said.

  "You mean me by that, I guess," Remo said.

  "Do not talk to me, Remo. I am ignoring you from now on," Chiun said.

  "Come on," said Reva Bleem. "That's our car."

  Walking toward the big sedan, Remo had a chance to look over Oscar, Reva's driver, for the first time. He was a tall, husky man with a smooth bald head that disappeared into ripples of neck muscles. His face was acne erupted and scar pitted. He held open the rear seat door for Reva. Remo started to get in after her, but Chiun brushed by him onto the wide seat.

  "Move over," Remo said.

  Chiun asked Reva, "This person with the lumpy face is your servant?"

  "He's my chauffeur."

  "Remo, ride in the front with the other servant," Chiun said. He turned back to Reva. "We had a servant once—a British butler. But Remo killed him for no reason at all."

  "You know, Chiun, I love you when you're like this," Remo said.

  "Sit in front," Chiun said.

  Remo waited in front while Oscar went back onto the plane to carry back Reva Bleem's four liquor boxes, which he put into the trunk of the Rolls.

  "And my trunks?" Chiun asked the driver.

  "They will follow us by truck when it arrives," Oscar said.

  Chiun nodded. "It will be on your head if they do not," he said.

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  The heavy car moved off slowly and inexorably, like a rubber ball starting down a gently sloped hill. Before long, it was humming along the absolutely level road at 90 miles an hour.

  "Where are we going?" Remo asked, turning toward the back seat.

  'To see the sheik."

  "Which one?"

  "Sheik Abdul Hamid Fareem," Reva said, which didn't really tell Remo mucL All their names sounded alike, and they all looked alike, and in a band they attacked America as bloodthirsty imperialists while cutting the hands off anybody who stole a loaf of bread because he didn't have the good fortune to own an oil well.

  "I can't wait," Remo said.

  "That is the first intelligent thing you have said since we left that island of white wax," Chiun said.

  "
Why?"

  "Because the Hamidi family have been royalty in this part of the world for centuries. Noble, enlightened, loved-by-all royalty."

  "That means they hired one of your ancestors and paid their bill," Remo said.

  "That means they are truly noble, Remo. You would not understand it." He pointed out the right window into the distance, and Remo turned to see what he was pointing out.

  "There is their capital city of Nehmad," Chiun said. "Right where the scrolls of history said it would be." He closed his eyes and recited from memory. "A marvelous clean city of towered parapets and minarets, with streets of tile and wall paintings encrusted with precious stones."

  "There's no minarets or parapets" said Remo, who assumed they meant some kind of pointed things on buildings. "Look at that city. It's a bunch of big, ugly, flat apartment buildings."

  "You can turn everything into dross," Chiun sniffed. 131

  "We'll see when we get there just how wonderful these Hareemis are," Remo said.

  "Hamidi," Chiun said.

  "We're not going to the city," Reva said.

  "Why not?"

  "The sheik Abdul Hamid Fareem lives in the desert."

  "Why?" Remo asked.

  "I read about him," she said. "He thinks Arabs were not meant to live in cities, that cities weaken the blood."

  "See, Remo," said Chiun. "That is respect for tradition."

  "That is stupid," said Remo. "Why live in a tent when you can live in a building?"

  "Because these are kings and princes and royalty," Chiun said heatedly.

  "And that means they should live in a tent? If an Arab prince should live in a tent as a mark of honor, then you should live in a cave. A hole in the ground in Sinanju. But you live in a house. How do you explain that?"

  And because it was a compliment that Remo had paid Chiun, as an expression of his respect, Chiun mumbled only, "I do not choose to speak of it anymore. Please, Remo, you're giving me a headache."

  The Rolls Royce buzzed past the wall surrounding the city of Nehmad, as the road widened and then as it shrunk again into two narrow lanes out into the trackless, endless sand.

  Reva kept asking Chiun questions. How long had he known Remo? Where had they met? What did they do together? Who did they work for? Chiun kept looking out the car window and finally said, "Please, dear lady, do not ask me to talk about things that pain me. Just know that it was the worst day of my life when first I set eyes on that white thing."

  The city was out of sight, far behind them, when the road began a slight rise. When the limousine crested, Remo saw a city of tents a few thousand yards away

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  from the road, in a declivity between two long, sloping sand dunes. Behind the cluster of tents was a large oasis, perhaps two acres in size. Women and men moved through the trees toward a central clearing in the green spot. Against the vast expanse of sand, the oasis looked like an emerald laid on a wrinkle-free sheet of brown butcher's paper.

  Oscar pulled slowly off the roadway, and the Rolls sank softly into the sand. From the right, coming from the oasis and the tents, Remo saw a man leading a camel. The camel was bedecked with a stone-studded leather saddle.

  As they all got out of the car, Reva said, "Oh dear. They sent only one camel." She turned toward Remo and Chiun. "When I get there, I'll have them send back more camels for you too. It's such a long walk in this heat."

  Remo grunted. Chiun silently folded his arms.

  When the Arab leading the camel drew near them, he stopped and bowed from the waist, then touched his waist, chest, and forehead in the traditional greeting.

  Reva stepped forward toward the camel. But suddenly the Arab looked past her and recoiled as if she were unclean. She stopped and he pointed past her to Chiun, who stood silently, holding in his hand a miniature golden sword with a curved blade and a red ruby in the handle.

  "All right," Remo said to Chiun in a hoarse whisper. "What is that piece of crap?"

  "It is the sign of Hamidi royalty," Chiun said. "And never again ask what I carry in my steamer trunks."

  A few moments later, Reva and Remo were trudging through the sand as the Arab led the camel, with Chiun perched atop, back toward the village. Oscar remained behind by the Rolls Royce.

  Looking down the five feet toward the top of Remo's head, Chiun said in Korean, "You know, Remo, I have never really liked riding on camels."

  "Try walking."

  Chiun shook his head. :'It will not do. We are to 133

  meet a prince, and the Master of Sinanju must arrive in proper fashion."

  "Chiun, I'll tell you before we even get started. I'm not making any deals with this guy, whoever he is. I don't care what he offers you, how much shlock jewelry or fat-faced women. I'm here to find that bacteria crap and get rid of it. Anything else, forget it."

  "Must you always talk business?" Chiun asked. "That is so mercenary." His camel moved away from them as they neared the village.

  "I take it you're annoyed that he's riding and you are walking," Reva grunted to Remo. Her milk-white skin was beaded with perspiration, and her spike-heeled shoes seemed to screw themselves into the loose sand with every step.

  "You might say that," Remo said.

  "Why not just reach up, then, and pull him off?" Reva said. "You're bigger than he is."

  "That's true," Remo said. "There are a lot of things bigger than he is. Bags of leaves. Packing boxes. Blow-up dolls. And most people."

  "I don't understand."

  "They've all got just about an equal chance of getting him off that camel," Remo said.

  "As big as you are?" she said.

  "Lady, you don't understand and you never will. Forget it."

  "You're telling me that you're not stronger than he is?"

  "I'm telling you that when he doesn't want to be moved, he won't be moved. Strength has nothing to do with it."

  "Well, what does?"

  "Tradition, lady. Thousands of years of it. And you don't know gnat's breath about it, so forget it."

  "Now, you talk about tradition. But when he talks of it, you make fun of it."

  Remo lowered his voice to make sure that Chiun, fifty yards ahead of them, could not hear him. "That's different. He's always talking about other people's tra-

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  ditions, and they're mostly crap. I'm talking about his tradition, and that's something else. He is tradition. Even though I don't want to hear him talking about it all the time."

  "That doesn't make any sense," she whispered back.

  "He never makes any sense," Chiun called out.

  The camel stopped fifteen yards before a large tent set up in the corner of the encampment, its back against the initially sparse grass of the oasis. One entire side of the tent was open, and the pathway to the tent was lined on both sides by forty Arabs in long robes.

  The camel driver dropped the animal's reins and ran into the tent. A moment later, he came back and brought the animal to its knees so Chiun could dismount. There was a handclap from inside the tent, and the forty Arabs in robes dropped to their knees before Chiun and placed their foreheads against the sand.

  When Remo came to his side, Chiun said, "Now you'll see people who know how to act."

  A man stepped from the tent. He was tall, in his early fifties, burly but shapeless in his flowing red and brown striped robe. The hands that jutted from the sleeves of the robe were knotted and strong looking. The man's face was weathered with the genes of the Arab and the aging of the sun.

  He walked toward Chiun, Remo, and Reva, a smile laid over the deep creases of his brown face. He stopped before them, then bowed and touched stomach, chest, and forehead in an Islamic greeting.

  "Salaam aleikim, Master of Sinanju," he said. "After, lo, these many years, we feel one of our brothers has returned to our midst."

  Chiun returned the greeting. "Salaam aleikim," he said.

  "Shalom," said Remo.

  Sheik Fareem looked at Remo, and Chiun said, "We
had best speak English in front of the child. He knows not your language."

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  "Our land still rings with the glory of the deeds of your illustrious ancestor," the sheik told Chiun.

  "And in our ancient scrolls you and yours are written of as wise and honorable rulers," Chiun said.

  "What is this all about?" Reva asked Remo. "What scrolls?"

  "It's too long to explain," Remo said. "But basically what this is all about is that Chiun's great-granduncle killed somebody for these wogs, and they paid their bill in full."

  "Oh," she said.

  "And these are your friends?" the sheik asked Chiun, nodding toward Remo and the woman.

  "Actually, no," Chiun said. "The white man is . . ." He paused, then stepped forward to whisper to the sheik. Remo heard him say, "He's really a servant, but he doesn't like to hear that. He is of no consequence because he understands neither tradition nor obligation." Chiun stepped back. "I do not know who or what the woman is, except she flew us here in her plane."

  Sheik Fareem nodded. "She shall be treated with the greatest courtesy, then. She shall be allowed in the tent with my wives and concubines. A great honor for a Western woman."

  He turned to the men and waved them up from their knees, when Reva approached him and spoke. "Your Excellency, I am Reva Bleem. I am from the Puressence Company."

  The sheik's face wrinkled and then opened in a look of understanding. "Oh," he said. "I see. Then you may sit with us, woman."

  He turned from her as if she were particularly uninteresting and reached out a hand for Chiun's elbow. "Now, Magnificence, you must partake of our hospitality. You and your servant and the woman."

  "You are gracious, Excellency, to open your tents to such as them. But then the Hamidi family has always been gracious."

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  "Is this almost a wrap?" Remo asked. "Can we get out of this sun someday soon?"

  "Of course. My tent is yours," the sheik said. He snapped his fingers, and one of the men behind him stepped forward and tossed a long cloak over Reva Bleem's shoulders. She looked surprised but tied it closed at the throat.

  As they walked toward the tent, she asked Remo, "What's that about?"

  "Who knows?" Remo said. "Probably some nonsense about not showing your legs in the sheik's presence or something. Ignore it."