Chiun saw them too.
"What is that?" he said. He walked away from the athletes toward the far line.
Remo followed him. "It's a line. Come on, Chiun, we've got to go."
"Not yet," Chiun said. "If there is a line, it means there is something good at the end of it. I know about lines, Remo. I have seen this before. We will stand in this line."
"Come on, Chiun. Whatever they're selling, you won't want. Let's hit it."
"Nonsense," Chiun said. "You never really learn anything, do you, Remo? I tell you, there is something good at the end of this line."
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Remo sighed. "You wait in line. I'll go up front and see what they're selling."
"Yes," Chiun said. "Do that and report back to me." As Remo walked away, he called out: "And check the price."
"Yes sir," Remo said.
At the end of the line, there was a counter that looked like an American newsstand with a hand-painted sign in Russian over it. Remo could not read the sign but he could see what the people were buying: cigarettes. English cigarettes, Players, in a cardboard box. One pack each.
"Cigarettes," he told Chiun.
"I don't believe it," Chiun said. He folded his arms. "Why would anyone wait in line for cigarettes?"
"Because it's hard to get foreign cigarettes in Russia and Russian cigarettes taste as if they're made from cow flop. Take my word for it, Chiun, they're selling cigarettes."
"That is terrible. What a tragedy."
"Yes."
"If we had known cigarettes would have been such a hit, we could have brought some with us and sold them," said Chiun.
"Next time maybe," Remo said.
They walked back toward the line of American athletes slogging slowly toward the waiting buses. As he glanced around, Remo noticed that almost all of the Americans were being accosted by young Russians. He could hear some of the words. They were being offered hard cash for their blue jeans, cash for their Mickey Mouse sweatshirts, money for loose cigarettes they might have, money for gum or candy or digital LED watches.
"Next time we come, remember to bring cigarettes," Chiun said definitively. "And a lot of the other junk these people seem to want."
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"I will," Remo said. He had read stories about Russia's sacrificing consumer interests to spend money on defense, but they had been just words to him until he had seen for himself how that policy translated into reality for the Russian man on the street.
That impression was reinforced as they rode through Moscow on buses. Everywhere, Remo saw lines, stretching out the front door of stores and halfway down the block. And he saw people carrying out their precious packages after having successfully outlasted the line. A few packs of cigarettes. Pantyhose. One woman carried a brassiere in her hand and her face was set in a look of tigerish triumph.
Remo and Chiun were assigned a room together in a large cinderblock building that was inside the miles of fencing that surrounded the Olympic village built just outside Moscow.
As they stepped inside the room, both felt the vibrations immediately. Remo looked toward Chiun but Chiun was already walking toward the far wall where there was a lamp alongside one of the small bunks. With the side of his hand, Chiun slapped at the base of the lamp and ripped it from the wall. He reached in among the tangled wires and brought forth a little silver disc.
"So much for the hidden microphone," Remo said. "But . . ."
"You are correct. There is more," Chiun said. Over a large dresser against the side wall was a four-foot-high mirror. Remo felt, sensed without understanding why, some vibration from the mirror. As he went toward it, Chiun was ahead of him. The Oriental felt along the right side of the mirror. Remo thought it odd that the mirror was anchored directly to the wall and not to the dresser.
Chiun ran his long thin fingers along the right edge of the mirror. When he reached the top of the
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wood frame, he nodded to himself and with a sudden splash outward of his fingertips, broke off the top right corner of the mirror. He looked at it and tossed it toward Remo, who caught it, turned it over, and saw that that section of the mirror had been made of one-way glass. He looked at the bare wall exposed by the broken glass. A small camera lens was built into the wall. Chiun reached his fingertips toward the wall. He caught the metal frame housing the lens between two fingers and squeezed. The metal slowly bent shut. Inside the little tube of metal, Remo could hear the glass lens being cracked and shattered to powder.
"There," said Chiun. "Now we are alone."
"Good," said Remo. "You come here often?"
"What?"
"Forget it," Remo said. "It's a thing people say in the States. At singles bars." When he saw Chiun's blank look, he shrugged and shook his head. Forget it. You had to be there."
"Something is on your mind," Chiun said, "that you are so intent on playing games these days."
Remo dropped onto the single bed near the window. He knew he had his choice of the two beds because Chiun slept on the floor on an old grass mat. He had to admit it to himself that Chiun was right on the mark. Something was on Remo's mind. Josie Littlefeather. He tried to put her out of his head.
"Now that we're here," he said, "we've got to keep our eyes open for terrorists." He looked out the window at the gray Russian sky. It reminded him of Smith's personality. "I wonder how they're going to try to get into the games."
"The story is told by the Greatest Master Wang," Chiun said.
Remo groaned. "Please, Chiun. No fables."
"How quick you are to label history a fable," Chiun said. "Didn't you just ask a question?"
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"Yes. I wondered how the terrorists were going to get into the games. I didn't ask what the Great Wang had for dinner two thousand years ago."
"It was longer than that," Chiun said. "And you know what they say, don't you?"
"What do they say?"
"They say that those who do not remember history are condemned to have to listen to it more than once. The Greatest Master Wang was a great athlete, as are all Masters of Sinanju. But of course, the Greatest Master Wang, being the Greatest Master, was also the greatest athlete in the history of Sinanju."
Their room was three stories up. Remo knew he could open the window, jump to the ground, and live. But that would not change his fate. It would delay the inevitable. Remo figured he could change his name and run away. He could hide among the Bedouins of northern Africa for ten years. And when he decided to return to the States, one whiter night, at 2 A.M., when he walked into a hotel room in some dismal southern state, Chiun would be there, sitting on the floor, and he would say: "As I was saying, the Greatest Master Wang was the greatest athlete of all the Masters of Sinanju." And he would go on without missing a beat as if nothing had happened.
Remo decided to get it over with now. He pretended to listen.
"This was before the time of these Western games, these Olympics as you call them.
"In those days, there was a sporting competition held in Korea among the many cities. And it happened that two of these cities were constantly at war with each other, even though they called a truce during the games because the games themselves were a tune of great good will among men.
"So, one night, while the Greatest Master Wang was home, eating a soup of fish and rice of which he was most fond-he cooked this soup with a very
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spicy red pepper which grew then in that part of the country. A nice soup, with a special warming character. Still, not intrusive. It was-"
"Chiun, please," Remo said. "Skip the soup and do the story."
"You care nothing about beauty," said Chiun.
"I care nothing about soup."
"At any rate, the people of the first city came to the master and said to him that they wanted him to ingratiate himself with the rulers of the second city so that he could compete on the second city's behalf in these athletic games. Do you understand so far?"