There were happy smiles all around.
"And I think I hate you most of all," Remo added, pointing to a woman with a particularly nasty tongue and only three teeth. She seemed delighted to have been singled out by the new young Reigning Master.
She sneered through her jack-o'-lantern dental work at the rest of the villagers.
"Now beat it," Remo said, motioning with both hands like a farmer scattering chickens. "If I have to look at your ugly faces for two more seconds, I'll have to start drinking again." As the villagers turned back to the center of town to resume their longstanding tradition of doing absolutely nothing, Remo wandered over to Chiun. "Can we go now?"
The old Korean was conversing with an elderly woman who had stood separate from the other villagers. She was nodding intently as she listened to his instructions.
"In case of emergency, you may use the telephone in the Master's House to reach the Emperor of America," the old man was saying. "He will locate me."
"I understand," the woman replied.
"She already knows about the phone, Little Father," Remo said. Kye Pun waited near him. "Let's shake a leg."
Chiun ignored him. "And the burner in the basement," he told the woman. "It must be checked every day."
"As you wish, I will do," she said.
"Little Father?" Remo insisted, touching the old man on the elbow. "She knows the drill. It's time to go."
The old man's frown lines deepened. At last he nodded. He offered the crone a bow. She gave one to both Chiun and Remo in turn before turning back for the village.
General Kye Pun hurried up the weed-lined path before the two men.
"You don't have to worry. Hyunsil will do fine," Remo said as they walked along behind the North Korean general. "She already knew most of the stuff from Pullyang."
Chiun nodded. "Her father taught her many of his duties before he passed on. However, it is important that she make no mistakes, for she is the first female entrusted with the duties of caretaker."
"Gotta break that glass ceiling sometime," Remo said.
The long path led to a wide, four-lane highway. The strip of blacktop seemed as out of place in the Korean countryside as a yellow racing stripe up a pig's back.
A car waited for them on the road. Kye Pun held the door, ushering the two Sinanju Masters into the back before sliding in behind the wheel. In another minute they were speeding down the empty highway.
When they got to the airport in Pyongyang, Remo was surprised by the crowds. There were soldiers lined up as if for review, as well as many government officials.
Remo assumed they had driven into the middle of some big Commie block party commemorating the invention of the airplane by Karl Marx. His eyes grew flat when he saw Leader-for-Life Kim Jong-Il on the reviewing stand in the middle of the crowd. The North Korean leader was smiling nervously as Remo's car drove through the parting throng.
"Holy cripes," Remo complained. "It's for me."
"Take it while you can," Chiun advised from the seat beside his pupil. "As the new Reigning Master this is likely the only time you will be heralded on your way like this."
"New Reigning Master, my foot. Kim is just happy to get me out of the country. This is his party, not mine."
The car stopped between the reviewing stand and the waiting North Korean plane. It was the premier's own plane, not the Iraqi jet on which Remo had flown to Korea four months earlier. His stolen plane was still being repaired. From what he'd seen of the technical skills of the North Korean people, he'd give them another million years to fix the broken jet engine, give or take a hundred thousand.
Kye Pun raced around to open Remo's door. Schoolchildren threw flower petals from woven baskets onto the red velvet carpet at Remo's feet.
"I'm surprised they don't have a goddamn brass band," Remo groused to Chiun as they stepped up the carpet.
The minute the words were out, a brass band marched around the side of the terminal playing something that sounded like John Philip Sousa being sucked up a tin whistle.
On the platform, Kim Jong-Il's anxious smile stretched wider. The shock of hair bestowed on him by cruel nature and crueler genetics stuck straight up in the air. Sweat beaded on his broad forehead. He waved a frantic pudgy hand for the band to cut the music. The reedy tootling petered out.
"Your unworthy cousins bid farewell to the new Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju," Kim Jong-Il announced. "Would that you could stay with us forever, but we understand that your awesome responsibilities must take you from our midst. Any words that the Reigning Master would bestow on us in departure would be drops of honey on our unworthy ears."
Remo looked up at the Korean leader. His eyes settled blandly on the fat man's standing-up hair. "Buy an effing comb," Remo said.
He made a beeline for his plane.
Kye Pun's worried eyes darted wide apology to the North Korean premier as he ushered Chiun to the waiting jet.
Their flight to the South had already been cleared. It was a short hop across the thirty-eighth parallel. At the airport in Seoul, General Kye Pun got them to the gate of their commercial flight and waved them gladly on their way.
From the plane's window, Remo saw the general weeping tears of joy as the plane taxied from the terminal.
When they were airborne, the Korean peninsula slipping in the wake of the rising plane, Remo snapped his fingers.
"I should have told them to make sure they keep my Iraqi jet hangared for me," he said. "Just because I'm not in town anymore doesn't mean I want them stripping it for spare parts or boiling the seats for soup."
"They will not damage your plane," Chiun replied. "They would not dare. You are the Reigning Master of Sinanju."
This time, almost for the first time, he said it without sarcasm. Chiun was sitting by the window, careful eyes trained on the gently shuddering left wing. Remo smiled at the back of his teacher's age-speckled head.
He felt good. Here he was, sitting beside his teacher on a plane while Chiun studied the wing to make sure it didn't fall off during takeoff. It was business as usual. He had spent the past four months worrying for nothing. Things hadn't changed as much as he had feared.
When the plane leveled off at cruising altitude, Chiun turned from the window.
"Move your feet," he insisted. The old man scampered around his pupil, forcing Remo to vacate his seat.
They switched places, Remo settling in by the window, Chiun taking the aisle seat. It was a familiar drill that Remo normally found annoying. This day it made him smile.
"What are you grinning at, imbecile?"
"Nothing. This is just nice is all, Little Father."
Chiun's hazel eyes narrowed. "What is?"
"Me, you. Together again. Just like old times."
"When you are my age you may think wistfully of old times. Only dying insects wax nostalgic for last week."
"Don't rain on my parade. Which, by the by, Kim Jong-Il nearly threw for me back there. Everything's coming up Remo. I feel so good I don't even care about whatever's up with Smitty and you and that contract stuff you won't tell me about." He raised a brow. "You want to tell me about it?"
"No."
"Okay by me," Remo said sincerely. "I'm just glad things are finally getting back to normal. You're here, the world's back in order, God's in his heaven and everything's just hunky-dory with me."
Chiun fixed his level gaze on his pupil. "Only the white parts of the world are ever in disorder," he droned. "And do not drag in whatever god it is you people bend your knees to this week. As for me, where else would I be? I cannot be allowed comfortable retirement when I am needed so desperately. You might be the Master of Sinanju, Remo Williams, but I am the Master of Garbage."
He grabbed a passing male flight attendant. "You," he demanded. "Go and inform the inebriate who pilots this air carriage to take care, for he has some very important cargo."
"Sir?" the young Korean asked, confused.
"You're not going to sour my
mood, Little Father," Remo warned, "so you might as well give it a rest."
The old man ignored him. "I am a famous scientist of garbage," he confided to the flight attendant. "En route to an important conference."
The young flight attendant's face lit up. "Are you going to the Globe Summit in Mayana?" he asked.
"Is that the ugly name of the place we are going?" Chiun asked Remo over his shoulder, face puckering in displeasure.
"Not helping you out," Remo said. In his seat pocket he had found a magazine that he was pretending to read.
"The name does not matter," Chiun said to the flight attendant. "The only thing that matters is that I go there to unveil my prize specimen of garbage to a horrified world. And there it sits." He held out a bony hand to Remo. "I call it 'Hamburger in White.' Do not get your hands too close to its ravenous mouth," he cautioned.
"Oh," the young Korean said, the light of understanding dawning. He offered the sort of smile flight attendants were trained to give to senile old passengers. "How nice. If you will excuse me, I have to help get the meals ready."
He slipped cautiously away from the strange little man.
"If you're trying to get my goat, it won't work," Rema said once the young man was gone. "I'm happy and that's that." He contentedly rattled his magazine.
Their plane brought them to Mexico City. From there a connecting flight took them across the Gulf of Mexico to the Caribbean Sea and the tiny South American country of Mayana.
For both flights, Chiun grabbed random flight attendants and lavatory-bound fellow passengers to inform one and all that he was a noted garbage scientist. When asked what this entailed, he confided that he mostly studied Remo. Remo did his best to ignore the old man's stage whisper. In his head he kept repeating to himself that this was better than the alternative.
Remo had hoped the old Korean would have exhausted his little joke by the time they landed at Mayana's New Briton International Airport. His hopes were dashed when they entered the terminal and Chiun raised his pipe-cleaner arms high into the air.
"I am Chiun, noted garbageologist! " he announced to the throngs of harried travelers. "Behold! My lab specimen!" He stepped aside to allow Remo into the terminal.
"Okay, okay, you've had your yucks," Remo snarled. "Now do us all a favor and cram it."
A thin smile of satisfaction toyed with the corners of Chiun's papery lips.
Chiun stayed in the main concourse while Remo went off in search of their false identifications.
He had spoken to Smith for instructions once in the air. He found an airport storage locker, located the counter to get the right key, then broke the key off in the lock and had to rip the door off the locker. There was a sealed shipping envelope inside. Tearing it open, Remo dropped both envelope and locker door in the trash before rejoining Chiun.
Hands tucked deep in his kimono sleeves, the old Korean was standing at the edge of a small crowd that had gathered near the terminal doors. He and the rest of the group were listening to a young man in a business suit.
"What are you doing?" Remo asked as he came up beside his teacher.
"Working," the old man replied. "Hush."
The man at the front of the crowd noticed Remo. "Oh," he said. "I assume you're Dr. Chiun's associate. I'm George Jiminez, deputy finance minister."
Jiminez checked Remo's and Chiun's identification. Satisfied, he wrote their names in felt-tipped pen on two sticky name tags, which he handed to them just as he had to the others in the group. Remo stuck his on a potted plant. Chiun stuck his to the side of a passing woman's American Tourister suitcase.
At the front of the group, Jiminez was entering their cover names into his pocket organizer. With a satisfied smile, he slipped the small computer into his pocket.
"If that's everyone, we can begin our tour of the Vaporizer site," he said.
He led the group outside to a waiting bus.
"This is just a cover," Remo whispered as the rest were getting on the bus. "Do we really want the nickel tour?" He noted that most of the others looked like nerdy scientists.
"If there is a charge, you pay it," Chiun replied. "I forgot my purse in Sinanju." Hiking up his kimono skirts, he climbed aboard the bus.
The front seats had already filled up. The only ones open were in the rear. Chiun stopped dead near the empty driver's seat, a flat look on his leathery face. Remo didn't have to ask what he was thinking.
"The cool kids always sit in the back," Remo suggested tactfully.
Chiun gave him a baleful look. With swats and shoves, he promptly expelled the seated men from the front, bullying them down the aisle and into the back.
When George Jiminez boarded the bus a minute later, he found most of the tour group cowering in fear in the back of the bus. Chiun sat directly behind the driver's seat, his face a mask of pure innocence. Remo had reluctantly taken the seat next to him.
The confused deputy finance minister got behind the wheel. Pulling away from the curb, the bus headed off into the hills above New Briton.
Remo glanced toward the back of the bus, where the group of wheezing scientists were reliving junior high. A few were sucking on asthma inhalers.
"Why didn't you shake them down for their milk money while you were at it?" he whispered.
"They should thank me for building strength of character," Chiun sniffed.
"Yeah, I'm sure they'll do that right after they finish pissing their snow pants." He was watching the scientists through narrowed eyes. There appeared to be faces from around the world in the group. "They've got a regular League of Geek Nations going on here," he commented.
"That would explain the stink," Chiun replied. Remo knew what he meant, although the men on the bus were not the source. The smell had been strong ever since they left the airport terminal. It was the combined stench of hundreds of garbage scows moored just offshore. They had seen the boats from the window of their plane.
A major highway out of the city took them into the sloping hills above the bay. New Briton Harbor sparkled in the brilliant white sun. A finger of land formed a seawall at the mouth of the wide bay. In the Caribbean Remo could see the eyesore of Garbage City-scows as far as the eye could see waiting to be called to land.
And then they were gone. Boats, sea and harbor vanished behind thickening jungle foliage. Signs along the road warned that they were entering a restricted area.
"We're nearly there," George Jiminez promised over his shoulder.
"Why are the signs in English?" Remo asked.
"Mayana is an English-speaking country," Jiminez explained. "We were a British protectorate until the 1950s. Many British citizens emigrated here."
"That is doubtless what attracted Smith's friend here," Chiun observed. He had a sharp eye directed on the men in the back. One had strayed over an invisible line. The old Korean scowled him back over it.
"Huh?" Remo asked.
"The one you and Smith were discussing," Chiun said. "The British enjoy their cults. If it is not Freemasons, it is Druids-if not Druids, Anglican Catholics. Smith's friend must have felt right at home here."
"Ye-es," George Jiminez said slowly, color rising in his cheeks. "You're referring to the Jamestown tragedy. Jack James was American, not British. And I'm sorry, but that's not a topic we like to discuss." Jaw clenching, he turned full attention on the road.
"Nice going, Little Father," Remo whispered. "Anyone else you want to tick off at us?"
The old man's hazel eyes were still trained on the back of the bus. He was watching one man in particular-a nervous-looking Asian.
"The day is young," Chiun replied ominously. His suspicious gaze never wavered.
Chapter 9
Mike Sears was not good under pressure.
He should have been able to keep up a confident front. After all, as the official mind behind the Vaporizer, the world now considered him a genius. But he just didn't seem to have the confidence to pull it off.
Not that he was an intellectual sl
ouch. His credentials were top-notch. He had been hired as a developmental scientist for Lockheed after graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early 1980s. He had worked on some of the new tiles, as well as the remodeled booster system for the space shuttle after the Challenger disaster. From there he had gone on to help develop new titanium Mach shields for the Air Force's top secret Aurora Project.
Such important work should have given him at least some grace under fire. But the stress of the Vaporizer project, getting the device up and running, and now the busloads of experts and foreign officials who were being hauled hourly up to the site for demonstrations-it was all becoming too much for him to handle.
Mike Sears felt a grumble of nervous bile in the pit of his empty stomach as he stood in the cramped room.
"Grid four, section thirteen," Sears said into a microphone. The words echoed across the Vaporizer pit.
Sears was in the control booth above the Vaporizer. The booth was nestled in a niche carved into a small hill. On a monitor screen he watched a man in a white lab coat scurry over the removable scaffolding on the unit's black wall.
"Four, thirteen," the man responded.
The speaker next to Sears crackled with static. A residual effect of proximity to the device. "D-four," Sears said.
Through a remote camera, Sears watched his assistant as he worked on the Vaporizer. The man was Japanese. His dark black hair shone in the sun.
Toshimi Yakarnoto had been uncomfortable going into the machine ever since it had gone online. His face betrayed his anxiety as he inched along the interior wall.
Yakamoto found the problem nozzle and went to work on it with a tool that resembled a pair of tiny forceps.
Sears spun in his chair. Sharp green images on another computer screen offered a three-dimensional image created by sensors buried in the frictionless black walls.
"Careful," Sears warned into the microphone. "You've gone too far."
Yakamoto readjusted the nozzle again. Even on camera, beads of sweat were visible on his broad forehead. They rolled down his anxious face.
"Is better now?" he asked hopefully.
In the control booth the computer image showed the problem nozzle in perfect alignment.
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