He looked at Chiun, looked toward the Norman ramparts of Euro Beasley and back at Chiun again. "Guess it was a dud, huh?" said Remo.
Before Chiun could answer, the entire park suddenly erupted in a dozen synchronized balls of consuming flame. They dropped to the ground because there was nothing else they could do, and waited for the end.
A rolling wave of heat mixed with cinders and a napalmlike smell came up the road, and except for the sudden lack of oxygen, it was tolerable.
"Wonder what happened?" Remo said, getting to his feet.
"THE FRENCH never armed the bomb," said Harold Smith when Remo called him from a roadside telephone.
"It was a bluff?" asked Remo.
"We may never know. Whatever their intentions, the decision not to arm the device came very late in the event."
"Nonevent, you mean."
"We may have Jerry Lewis to thank for averting disaster."
"Jerry Lewis?"
"When the French minister of culture announced the deadline to surrender the park, Lewis issued a statement vowing never again to set foot in France should the French ultimatum be carried out."
"They backed down because a freaking comedian threatened to boycott them?" Remo exploded.
"Mr. Lewis is revered over there. Also, it appears that the president of France interceded."
"With whom?"
"With the minister of defense. Apparently there are elements there more loyal to the culture minister than the government itself. Those elements are being purged even as we speak."
"The culture minister ordered a nuking?"
" 'Inspired it,' might be the more precise term. He has been arrested."
"I would hope so. The guy tried to nuke his own country."
"Actually the charge was violating La Loi Tourette."
"Huh?"
"Er, it appears he personally wrote the ultimatum leaflet and used an outlawed word that had a French equivalent."
"What word is that?"
"Nuke."
"Let me get this straight. The French minister of culture was arrested for using the word nuke, not for trying to use a nuke?"
"It would appear so."
Remo squeezed the roadside telephone receiver for a long, strange moment.
"Ze French, zay are a fonny race," he muttered. "So what blew up Euro Beasley, if not the French?"
"You say you smelled napalm?"
"Yeah. I know that smell from Nam"
"Someone inside the park activated a self-destruct program. It is the only possible explanation."
"But who?"
"Remo, are you certain Sam Beasley is dead?"
"Decapitated. It's better than dead."
"Because a helicopter lifted off from Euro Beasley over an hour ago. French police helicopters gave chase but lost it."
"Could have been anyone."
"Spotters say a man resembling Uncle Sam was seen in the cockpit."
"Probably that nephew of his. What's his name? Roy?"
"Robert. I have no computer audit trail showing he has left the country, Remo."
"Uncle Sam is lying back there in the castle in two unequal parts. Trust me. Right, Little Father?"
"Except that we could not find the head."
"What was that?" asked Smith.
"Nothing."
"Was something said about Uncle Sam's head?"
"Chiun said he couldn't find Uncle Sam's head. We had him cornered and he greened us, but Chiun got him before we blacked out. When we woke up, he was sitting on the floor without his head."
"Did you look for it?"
"Who had time? We were about to be nuked."
"Remo, I want you to go back and be certain Uncle Sam Beasley is dead."
"Too late. The castle is ashes by now."
Smith sighed. "At least the technology was destroyed with it."
"What about this guy Cheatwood?"
"Who?"
"Rod Cheatwood. He invented the hypercolor laser. Said all he was trying to do was come up with a foolproof TV remote-control finder, but the Beasley Corporation turned it into something else."
"There must be no repetition of this event."
"How about we just wipe out his memory?"
"Wipe out whose memory?" Rod Cheatwood asked from the side of the road.
"And get back as soon as you can," said Smith. "Americans are still persona non grata in France."
"I am Korean," said Chiun, "and welcome everywhere."
Remo hung up and walked over to Rod Cheatwood. He took the hypercolor lasers from his hands and squeezed them until they popped and imploded to shards of plastic and microchips.
"You didn't tell us you built a second cybernetic eyeball."
"Of course I built two. A radio-animatronic robot needs two, doesn't he?"
"Fair enough. You're not a bad guy, just foolish. So we're not going to kill you."
"I appreciate that," Rod said. "Really."
"We're going to wipe out your memory so you're not a danger to anyone's national security."
"Can you wipe it out back to 1986?"
"Why then?"
"So I can watch every episode of 'Star Trek: the Next Generation' all over again fresh."
Remo looked at Rod Cheatwood a long moment and said, "It's your memory." And while Rod Cheatwood closed his eyes, a goofy smile coming over his face, Remo tapped him in the exact center of his forehead. Rod crumpled to the ground, and the Master of Sinanju crouched down and began whispering into his ear.
"You will forget you were ever born."
"Hey, that's not what I promised him!"
"That is why I am making certain this cretin troubles us no more with his idiocies."
When the Master of Sinanju was through, he stood up and said, "What about her?"
"Might as well break the happy news." Remo knelt down, lifted her head off the ground and massaged the back of Dominique's neck.
Her eyes snapped open, and she found herself being held off the ground by a strong hand at the back of her neck. She was looking into Remo's dark brown eyes.
"Good news. We didn't get frapped. "
"Non?"
"Jerry Lewis saved us."
"Jairy? Jairy is here! Where?"
"But he's gone back to America. He promised never to darken your shore again if France didn't patch things up with the U.S.A."
"EUD," Dominique corrected.
"It's my country. I'll call it whatever I want."
"And you are in my country and should observe our cultural prerequisites."
Remo released her head. It went bonk! on the asphalt of the road. Dominique sat up holding her skull.
"We are going now," said Chiun. "You will remind your masters of my warning. Sinanju stands by the throne of America. Let there be no further trouble between your emperor and mine."
Dominique picked herself up off the road. "I will do zis for Jerry. But only for Jerry."
"Just as long as you do it right," said Remo, looking around for a car to borrow.
He spotted the Pare Euro Beasley RER train stop.
"You know, Little Father. I'll bet we can get to London by train faster than it would take us to book Air France out of here."
"I have always enjoyed trains. Did I ever tell you about my first train ride? It was before you were born, of course."
"Tell me about it on the train," said Remo.
And barefoot, they started off.
Chapter 32
Two days later Remo answered the ringing telephone in his Massachusetts condo.
"Remo, Smith."
Remo glanced over to the Master of Sinanju, who sat on a reed mat in the far corner of the tower meditation room, writing on a parchment scroll held flat on the floor with jade beads at each corner. "What's the latest?" he asked.
"The President of the US. and his French counterpart have agreed to a summit to discuss outstanding Franco-American issues."
"I didn't know there were any left."
"The
re is tentative agreement that French will be more widely taught in US. secondary schools and universities."
"That's an awfully big concession. Think of all those poor kids repeating French I over and over again."
"In return, France has lifted all restrictions on English-speaking visitors to their country. Provided Euro Beasley is defanged and renamed Beasleyland Paris."
"Sounds like our side caved in-again."
"That is not important. All that matters is that the crisis is over, and with Uncle Sam Beasley dead, we can only hope the Beasley Corporation goes back to being nothing more than an entertainment industry."
"Any news from that quarter?"
"There are rumors of an internal shake-up. CEO Mickey Weisinger has been demoted, and Beasley nephew Bob has assumed operational control in actuality, if not title."
"Just so long as Sam Beasley remains dead."
There was a long pause on the line.
"You have no ill feelings over having liquidated him?"
"I didn't do it. Chiun decapitated him."
From across the room, a squeaky voice called out, "You broke his heart. Therefore, you dispatched the beloved Uncle Sam."
"He wasn't dead when you lopped off his head, so you killed him."
Chiun's head snapped around, his hazel eyes hot. "That is slander!"
"It's the truth, and you know it."
Chiun shook his goose-feather quill in the air, spattering the walls with black droplets of ink. "The truth is what is written in the true histories of the House of Sinanju, not what actually happened."
"You'd better not be hanging Beasley's death on me in your freaking scrolls," Remo warned.
"I am the victor. The victor writes the histories. Therefore, I will write as I wish."
"Yeah? Well, I'm thinking of starting my own set of scrolls."
"It does not matter what you write," Chiun sniffed.
"We'll see about that."
"Because you will write junk in junk American," cackled the Master of Sinanju. "And no descendant of yours or mine will be able to read such drivel."
"Why not?"
"Because in only a mere two or three thousand more years, yours will be a dead language."
"Did you hear that, Smith?" Remo called into the telephone.
But Harold W Smith had already hung up.
So Remo hung up and walked over to the Master of Sinanju, determined that history tell his side of the story.
EPILOGUE
History recorded that the Franco-American Conflict of 1995 lasted but three days and both began and ended with the bombing by French warplanes of Euro Beasley.
The combatants, as combatants always did, patched up their differences at the cessation of hostilities, signed meaningless treaties, awarded chestfuls of medals to the deserving and undeserving alike, promised future cooperation and exchanged hostages.
No history book, however, recorded the fate of the instigator of the conflict. No history book ever knew his name.
Mickey Weisinger knew his name.
He walked into his office the morning after the last day of the conflict and noticed a workman scratching his name off the office door.
"What the hell's going on?"
"You're now the second-highest-paid ex-CEO in America," said an affable voice he knew only too well.
It was coming from inside his office. Mickey entered.
Bob Beasley was seated comfortably at his desk.
"Who gave you authority to take over?" Mickey shouted.
"Uncle Sam gave me the authority. I speak for Uncle Sam. Always have, always will."
"Uncle Sam! Isn't he dead? I wean, nothing's official, but I was monitoring the transmissions from France. And you came back alone."
"Not alone," drawled Bob Beasley, laying a hand on an insulated box resting on his desk-formerly Mickey Weisinger's desk. There was a small pressurized tank attached, and on it stenciled a word Mickey didn't normally associate with tanks: LOX.
"He's not dead?"
"Well, let's say he's not anything right at the moment."
"Say what?"
"Our medical people tell me I dipped him in liquid oxygen in time to prevent brain death. All we need is a suitable body to hook him up to, and the Sam Beasley Corporation will be back to business as usual."
And Bob Beasley turned the insulated box around, exposing a clear window on the other side. The window through which stared the frozen one-eyed head of Uncle Sam Beasley.
Behind him Mickey Weisinger heard the office door shut with a flat finality that meant no escape. None at all...
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The Color of Fear td-99 Page 25