The next cab to come along actually slowed down when it saw them.
Reverend Jackman started for it. He saw the back seat was empty. His face exploded in pleasure.
"Hey, thumbsucker!" he called. "I got us a lift!"
Don Cooder looked up from the curb where he sat performing surgery on his ripped thumbnail with a small penknife.
"What say?"
"It's empty. Get your thumb out of your hole and your ass over here.."
Cooder shot to his feet. In a flash, he was beside Jackman.
"We go to airport, savvy?" Jackman was saying to the driver.
Don Cooder shoved him aside, saying, "You don't say 'savvy,' you idiot. This is Irait. You say 'wallah'!" He turned to the driver. "You, take us to the airport. Wallah!"
The driver regarded them through a dense mesh veil. For the first time they noticed that the figure behind the wheel was shrouded in the native costume of a Moslem woman.
"I thought women weren't allowed to drive in this country," Reverend Jackman muttered.
"That's down in Hamidi Arabia," Cooder retorted. He addressed the silent driver. "You! Maddas Airport. Got that? Maddas. Mad Ass. Savvy?"
"La! Maddas," said the driver. The shrouded head nodded eagerly.
"Great!" said Don Cooder. "She understands. Let's go."
They piled in back.
The cab got under way, tires squealing.
"This is great," chortled Reverend Jackman. "You done good. When I'm president, I might just have a place for you in my administration."
"President? You're dreaming. You're pass."
"You just lost a chance to be my press secretary," Reverend Jackman sniffed. "I'm a shoo-in next time. All I need is the black vote. That's almost forty percent if I can get them into the voting habit. Brother minorities, like the spies, wops, et cetera, should fetch me fifteen percent. Then I got the NOW vote. That's thirty-five percent. Those who watch my talk show. I got a two share. That's what? Two million? We'll call it four. I figure that's three percent of America. Then the liberals. Twenty percent for sure. And those who admit being liberals. A quarter of a percent."
"That's almost one hundred and fifteen percent!"
Reverend Jackman smiled confidently. "In like Flynn."
His smile went south when he noticed that the aircraft lifting off could not be seen through the windshield past the driver's head.
"Must be a lull," he remarked.
"Sure hope they didn't run plumb out of gas," added Cooder. "Gas has been drying up all over this town faster than cow piss on a flat rock."
Over the engine mutter they heard the continual roar of takeoffs.
Don Cooder looked out his window and Reverend Jackman his.
They saw no aircraft, although the intermittent roar continued.
Their eyes met, grew wide, and all at once they snapped their heads around to look out the rear window.
There, framed in the bouncing glass, was a climbing string of aircraft. They were all shapes and sizes. Large air buses. Small private ships. Even a couple of helicopters. It looked like the fall of Saigon.
Their heads whipped back around and they began accosting the silent driver.
"Hey, you! Islam. You're going the wrong way."
"Driver, turn around. You turn around right now. That's a direct order. I'm an American anchorman."
Don Cooder reached out to grab the driver's shoulder. He snagged instead the hood of the black garment. It came away in his grasping fingers.
"Now you done it," Reverend Jackman whispered. "I think what you just done is against the law in this place. In fact, it's practically rape or something."
"I don't care. I'm going to the airport. Wallah! Wallah! Turn around."
The driver did turn around finally. But not the way they expected. After braking the car abruptly, throwing Reverend Jackman and Don Cooder slamming facesfirst into the front-seat cushions, the driver himself turned around in his seat.
A vaguely familiar visage showed a broad smile and the manhole-size muzzle of a shiny pistol.
"Bass!" he said. They took that to mean "Settle down." They weren't far off.
After they had stopped bouncing back and forth in their seats, Reverend Jackman's eyes seized upon the face of the driver.
"You know," he hissed, "this guy ain't a he. He's a she."
Don Cooder swallowed. "Does she--I mean he-kinda look like Maddas Hinsein to you?"
"Kinda. But everybody in this neighborhood looks like Maddas."
Don Cooder licked his lips. "Maybe. But this guy really, really looks like of Mad Ass."
"Can't be. He's dead."
The cab started off again.
"If that ain't Mad Ass," Reverend Jackman wondered, "why ain't he taking us to the airport?"
"Don't say that. Don't even think it."
"I can't help it. My eyes are telling me one thing and my brain another."
The two men fell silent for several moments. Then Reverend Jackman offered another disheartening observation.
"Don't look now," he muttered, "but that's the Palace of Sorrows up ahead."
"You know any prayers?" asked Don Cooder.
"No. I do sermons, not prayers. There's no money in praying. Look at Mother Theresa. Can't hardly feed herself on what she earns praying. I ask you, what kinda life is that?"
Chapter 11
Sheik Abdul Hamid Fareem was worried.
When he had wanted the U.S. to strike Irait first, they had hesitated, preferring to defeat Maddas Hinsein and his criminal hordes with sanctions. As if such dealings would not increase the Shame of the Arabs' appetite.
When Maddas had apparently been assassinated before a global television audience, Sheik Fareem had breathed a sigh of relief. He understood how it was in Irait. Maddas Hinsein ruled absolutely. His death would break the Iraiti will. Sheik Fareem saw the fine hand of Sinanju in these occurrences. Had he himself not greeted the white Master of Sinanju who was called Remo, and assisted him in entering occupied Kuran?
And there he was, attired as if a genie out of the Arabian Nights, extinguishing the Tyrant of Irait before all the world. It was good. The crisis had passed. The Americans had, for once, done the correct thing. They had sent the greatest assassin in all the world to work their will.
Yet in the aftermath, the U.S. President had immediately ordered his forward troops to mobilize for a bloody liberation drive into occupied Kuran, against all reason. Did he not understand that this was no longer necessary?
It was fortunate that his adopted son, the prince general, had had the foresight to revoke this command. It had bought them time.
Allah, as always, had provided. First with the immediate release of the hostages, and then with the mysterious secret offensive plans of the Iraiti invader.
The winds of war were being blown away like the sands of the desert. Soon there would be peace.
Then further word had come from Washington, in the form of a private communication from the President himself. It had been hand-delivered by the U.S. ambassador. The text was brief.
"The one known to you as Chiun requests an audience. He will arrive shortly."
Upon reading these words, Sheik Fareem looked up, his wizened old face screwing into a dry pucker of confusion.
"What madness is this?" he muttered, stroking his beard. "Master Chiun is dead."
He ruminated upon this, drinking watered yogurt and fingering ivory worry beads, and decided the only answer was an unfortunate one. He was in league with the deranged. First they wanted war. Then they did not. Now they claimed to be sending him a dead man.
The sheik made a phone call. He was told that the personal aircraft carrier commissioned for his adopted son was still three years away from completion.
"I will pay triple if you deliver by Wednesday," the sheik implored.
"Impossible," said the shipyard supervisor. "You don't crank out an aircraft carrier like a stock car."