Suddenly she felt a grip on her arms like a giant vise. It was Remo.
"Where are you going?"
"To find you. Where were you? You didn't go up to Rabinowitz. You didn't risk him, did you?"
"You mean the greatest guy in the world?" said Remo, smiling.
Chapter 15
"Just joking," said Remo.
"You bastard," screamed Anna, swinging at Remo's head. It looked like she hit, but she hadn't. She had only touched his face with her blow. "How could you scare me like that? How could you do something so insensitive and stupid and useless?"
Remo thought her anger was even funnier.
"You're such a man. You're such a real man," screamed Anna. "What a stupid, stupid joke."
"I thought it was good, too," said Remo.
"Do you know that if you are lost, everyone is lost? Do you know what's going on? Do you know what I found out?"
"How should I know? You haven't told me yet," said Remo. He looked up toward the command post. He saw Chiun leave, and by his very first step, Remo understood there was trouble now worse than anything Anna Chutesov might have uncovered.
"Rabinowitz is in the process of taking over your country. He's not frightened anymore. The world has become a game to him. He might start some war somewhere now just for the fun of it, and there's nothing we can do here. We're helpless."
"We might be more than helpless," said Remo. "We might be dead. We've got to get out of here."
Anna glanced up to where Remo was looking. Chiun, his friend, had just left the headquarters. He was walking slowly.
"He's coming after us."
Anna looked closer. Chiun seemed to be strolling. "How can you tell?"
"Look at his walk," said Remo.
"I can't tell any difference."
"You're not supposed to," said Remo. "He's ready to kill. And it may be me."
"Why?"
"Dunno. Maybe Rabinowitz figured out why we're here. Maybe he's after you, not me."
"We can't do any good here anyhow. Let's run." Remo saw the eyes of Chiun. Did the little father know? Was this some other mind that was coming to do battle? Did Chiun perhaps think Remo was just some other target? There was no anger in the face. Remo had been taught that anger robbed one of power. Anger was usually a result of weakness, not strength. And it caused such damage to the nervous system. To relax was the efficient way to use the powers of the human body.
"There is a way to finish off Rabinowitz," said Anna. "But it's not here. It's in Russia."
"Why didn't you think of it there?" asked Remo.
"Because I didn't have time and I didn't think I'd need it. I had to get here right away. I thought I could defuse Rabinowitz. I thought maybe we could even destroy him if we had to. I see now, we can't. I saw it in that command post."
"What are we going to find in Russia?"
"The secret to his powers. I am sure they are in Dulsk. I found something that men always miss."
"There are no women in Russia? They didn't miss?" asked Remo. He took her arm and guided her out into the road.
The staff car with officers and a driver didn't stop until the driver was pulled out of the window as the car passed Remo's grip. The car stopped. One of the officers declared Remo under military arrest, and another officer helped that officer regain his feet after Remo and Anna were off in the car.
Remo did not look forward but kept his eye on the rearview mirror.
"We can outrun him, right?" asked Anna.
Remo laughed.
"Is that another joke?" she asked.
"No. No, we can't outrun him in this car on these roads."
"Then why are we driving?"
"It's hell trying to bring you through a jungle."
"I thought you enjoyed it. You were touching me tenderly. "
"I was holding you up and moving you forward and I was touching you that way so you wouldn't break," said Remo.
The man in the black kimono reached the road, and there he placed two feet wide apart and then, so all the world could see, slowly like two sedate windmills, brought his long fingernails out from his sleeves and in a wide arc swung them above his head and then down sedately into a folded-arms position.
"Damn," said Remo, and Anna saw his face pale and his lips tighten.
"What's wrong?" she said.
"I hope he doesn't think it's me here."
"Why?"
"Chiun just gave me the Master's Challenge to the Death if I ever come back."
"But you've got to come back. We're not going to Russia not to come back. We're going to Dulsk to get hold of the mechanism that will destroy Vassily and his powers once and for all."
"I'm not going to kill Chiun to do it. If I could."
"You have to. It's for the world."
"That is my world back there, telling me he'll kill me if he ever sees me again," said Remo.
"Maybe we can break Vassily's hold on him," said Anna.
"You don't think so," said Remo.
"How do you know?"
"You didn't say it like you meant it. Well, let's get on with it."
Getting into Russia was not nearly as difficult as getting out. Nobody ever tried to break in, least of all from its surrounding countries. Anna insisted they not go through formal channels on the entrance even though she had the highest clearance. They reached Dulsk in a day.
"It would have taken us a week, if the Russian government authorized speedy entrance," she said. "I don't know why your intellectuals find communism so attractive. Couldn't they imagine everything run by your post office?"
The road leading to Dulsk was like a strip of asphalt through Kansas, a rutted strip of asphalt. Anna kept looking at the road and then at the map and then saying, "Good, I thought so."
"You mean it's a big deal to find someplace here?"
"No, no. I came from a village not unlike Dulsk. And yet, I think it was very much unlike Dulsk. I am hoping it was unlike Dulsk."
She looked up ahead.
"How far can you see, Remo?"
"Farther than you."
"What do you see ahead on the road?"
"Road," said Remo.
"What kind of road?"
"Like the one we're on. Asphalt."
"Wonderful. I thought so. I thought so."
"What's wonderful?"
"The answer to Vassily Rabinowitz' powers. They just may not be so exceptional. I want to warn you now, threaten no one in the village, and absolutely do not let anyone know I am an official of the Russian government. We will say we are friends of Vassily Rabinowitz, who has sent us. That is the only reason we are entering Dulsk. Do you understand?"
"Not a word," said Remo. What could a road have to do with an answer to extraordinary hypnotic powers?
On the side of the road, Remo stopped at what looked like a farm stand. He didn't know they had them in Russia. Several tractors sat in the fields, with men sleeping on them. In one small dark patch of earth several people labored with perspiration dripping off them.
"Those are private lots. The tractors are part of the collective. We send them new tractors every year because the old ones rust."
"Don't they oil them?"
"Sometimes, but basically they just drive them out into the middle of the field to look as though they are busy, and if a government official comes along they start them up again. Many of those tractors have never been in first or second gear since they drove them there."
"It looked automated," said Remo.
"It is. Some genius of a man came up with a report that automation does not improve farming. He should have said that it does not improve farming in Russia."
At the roadside stand, Anna bought some potatoes and bread and a piece of meat wrapped in an old used slab of wax paper.
She smelled the meat.
"Almost fresh," she said. "Good meat."
"Why are you buying that?"
"You want to eat dinner, don't you?"
"They don't have re
staurants?"
"Certainly they do. Do you want to drive to Moscow?" The roadside stand was actually a converted tiller which someone had found could hold vegetables if all the blades were flattened. It also prevented it from rolling around and made it quite steady.
Remo looked at the meat. He shook his head. He didn't want to eat dinner.
With every asphalted mile of road passing underneath their car, Anna became happier. She even sang Remo some of the songs from her childhood. He could see she loved her country, even though it was populated by fifty percent men. The male population did not bother her. It was the way it ran things that bothered her.
"What is so important about an asphalt road?" Remo asked.
"Ah," said Anna. "You would not see it because you're an American, precisely because you're an American."
"Right. I don't see it. A road is a road."
"In America, Remo. But in Russia, a dirt strip is a road. A muddy length of roughly flattened area without trees is a road. A bumpy asphalt strip here is a major highway."
"So? So there's a major highway to Dulsk," said Remo.
"That is where I have you at a special disadvantage. Do you know what Dulsk produces?"
"Sure, every American studies the economy of Dulsk in grade school," said Remo. The car they were using was a rackety oil-leaking imitation of an American 1949 Nash, a car that had not survived the competition. It was communism's claim that they were more efficient because they didn't produce a hundred different kinds of things when one product would do.
In a way they were right. It did make sense. But the reality was that there were very few cars in Russia and they all stank. As Sinanju always maintained, logic was not the greatest strength of the human mind.
"Even if you lived in Russia, Remo, you would know of no major thing that ever came out of Dulsk. Dulsk is one of our many backward little villages, without electricity, without paved roads, and which tourists are never allowed to visit."
"But we are on a paved road," said Remo.
"Exactly. How did Dulsk manage to get one? More important, on this major road, why was there no major battle fought between us and the Germans in World War II?''
"The front moved back and forth here many times, Remo, but I have yet to read a report of a major battle."
"So?"
"So use your brain, Remo, even if male hormones are flowing through it," said Anna. "Think. Think. What are we here for? Why do we come to Dulsk to find a way to stop Vassily Rabinowitz? Why have I been saying the answer is here?"
"Yes," said Remo.
"What sort of an answer is this 'yes'?"
"It's the one I got."
"It doesn't fit the question."
"I didn't even get a chance at my question," said Remo.
There was no radio in the car, but he was sure there was nothing worth listening to in Russia, anyway. Then again, maybe there was. What else did they have?
"The answer to our problem is that everyone in Dulsk has this ability. I am sure of it now. Everyone is born with it. "
"Great, out of the frying pan into the frying-pan factory," said Remo.
"Not necessarily," said Anna. "They would be just the ones to tell us how to stop their Vassily. That's why we are coming as his friends. Do you see?"
"I see we are going to a village where we are going to see a hundred Chiuns and a hundred of whoever is important to you. That's what I see."
"Hah," said Anna, slapping Remo on the shoulder. "We will see what we will see."
She ran a smooth hand over his leg. "Where is your erogenous zone, Remo?"
"In my mind."
"Can I get to it?"
"No. "
Slowly she unbuttoned her skirt. She couldn't catch his eye. She buttoned it back up.
"Perhaps I should go in first," she said.
"I don't speak Russian," said Remo. "What'll I do if they put you under?"
"You could come in after me."
"Let's go together."
"Why?"
"I want to be there. We win or we lose. I can't do much around here without you," he said. "Then again, I might not want to do much around here without you."
Dulsk itself looked like an awfully poor Midwest town. But Anna explained that for Russia it was unusually rich for a town that offered so little to the state. There was no iron foundry or electronics plant. No major defense establishment. Just a peaceful little village with churches, a synagogue, and a mosque. And there was no KGB office anywhere.
"I knew there wouldn't be. I knew it," said Anna. Across the street a man in a white blouse, high boots, and dark pants glanced at Remo.
"You, stranger, come here," he said.
"Yes, little father," said Remo. It was a good thing Chiun was here too, because Remo didn't really speak Russian. Of course he could get by if he had to. Chiun was always working on him to improve his language.
"Sir, sir," called out Anna in Russian to the man whom Remo was calling Chiun. "We're friends of Vassily Rabinowitz. Please. Please. We mean you no harm."
"That one is very dangerous," said the man.
"Can you release him?"
"I am afraid."
"You can always do that to him again, can't you?"
"Oh yes, whenever I am afraid again."
"You mean it works automatically when you are afraid."
"Yes, pretty miss. And I cannot turn it off."
"Chiun," said Remo to the man, "why the Master's death challenge?"
"What is he talking about?" asked the man. "I don't speak English."
"A Master never challenges his son," said Remo in English.
"He sounds dangerous. I know he is dangerous," said the villager.
"Do you know what he's talking about?" asked Anna. The man shrugged.
"I won't fight you. Of course I won't fight you," said Remo in English.
And then turning to Anna, he asked: "Where'd Chiun go?"
"He was never here, Remo. You have been talking to this man, and we've learned a lot. They transmit whatever they need to survive into your mind."
"Okay," said Remo. "But where's Chiun?"
"He was never here, Remo."
"I know he was here. He was more here than he's ever been. "
"No. This man needs you to believe that for his survival. It's automatic. It's the greatest survival mechanism I've ever seen in a human being."
"If you have come to help Vassily, let me take you to his mother. The poor woman has been grief-stricken since he left."
Mrs. Rabinowitz lived in a thatched cottage with a small garden in front. She was visiting with some other women. They sat around a pot of tea. Anna wiped her feet on a brush mat at the entrance. The door looked as though it had been hand-carved.
"I still feel it was Chiun," said Remo.
"That's what makes the whole situation so dangerous. And yet you might be the first who has come out of this. You understand it wasn't Chiun?"
"I have to tell myself that," said Remo. The two were invited in and now Anna said:
"Hi, Mama." But Remo didn't understand it. It was in Russian.
"Remo, I'd like you to meet my mother," said Anna.
"You've threatened one or two of those women," said Remo. "I doubt your mother is here."
"She's visiting," said Anna.
"Don't you remember what we were here for?"
"Well, maybe my mother can help," said Anna.
"Ask your mother or mothers if any of them speak English."
Anna spoke in Russian again and three women nodded. "Look," said Remo. "There's a big danger to the world, and one of your boys is causing it."
"Vassily," said one woman, round-faced as the rest. "What has he done now?" she said in English.
"He's gone to America, and he's taking it over," said Remo. "He's already started one war."
"What does he want with a war?"
"I dunno. He wanted a war. Anna understands him better. She's all right. She's Russian. She wants to help."
"There are Russians and Russians," said all the women. "What kind of Russian?"
Remo shrugged.
"Is she from the government?"
"She thinks they're all idiots," said Remo.
"Did you see where my mother went?" asked Anna in English.
"She was never here," said Remo.
"Now I know how powerful this thing is," said Anna. "She was more real than my own mother."
"So you think the government is run by idiots," said one of the women.
"They're men, aren't they? Look. We have a real problem going on here. Vassily Rabinowitz, who went to the parapsychology village, has gone on to make lots of trouble. America and Russia are about to go to war. I don't know what the idiots are going to do in Moscow but I suspect now that there is going to be another arms buildup or something even more useless. And in America, Vassily is in the process now of taking it over."
"That's Vassily's problem. We never get harmed by wars," said Vassily's mother.
"You will by this one. You can't convince an atomic weapon you are close relatives or teachers," said Anna.
"You mean those bombs that blow up countries?" asked another woman.
"The very kind," said Anna.
"Vassily was always a troublemaker," said his mother. "Not meaning to be insulting, Mrs. Rabinowitz, Vassily was everyone's problem."
"That's why he left," said another woman.
"He was different," said another.
"Maybe you could tell me something about these powers," said Anna. "I suspected everyone had them when there were no histories of battles around here. Every patrol must have thought they had stumbled onto their home towns."
"Something like that," said one of the women.
"And when I saw the asphalt road coming in here I assumed the commissar for the district thought he had relatives here as well as the production leaders."
"Something like that," said another woman.
"Everyone in this village has these powers, don't they?" said Anna.
"Something like that," said another woman.
"I guess it's a natural survival attribute of Dulsk," said Anna.
"Nothing like that," said one of the women.
"It's a miracle," said another.
"It's a blessing. It's kept us all safe, and if Vassily hadn't left, we'd still all be safe."
Look Into My Eyes td-67 Page 21