Remo wiped his hand on Muffin's shirt. Forty yards away, Chiun was still marching resolutely off.
"I saved your life," Remo yelled. "I really did. He was going to shoot you and I saved you."
And Chiun's voice wafted back toward Remo.
"Blow it out your ears," called the Master of Sin-anju.
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was the next-to-the-last day of competition. The bombs had been removed from the American athletes' quarters without incident. The Russian secret police had announced that they had apprehended the terrorists, but refused to give details beyond their announcement that "again the forces of reactionary racist capitalist imperialism had succumbed to the superior intelligence and dedication of the Soviet socialist system."
And Remo had not spoken to Josie Littlefeather since the day he had lost his race.
But he was sitting near the bench as her competition was slowly winding down to its final day. Josie had continued to stun the crowd by scoring nothing but tens on the balance beam. She was far ahead in that contest, and her score on the beam had kept her respectably close with an outside chance for a silver medal in the overall gymnastic competition.
Remo watched as Josie applied rosin to her hands and approached the beam. She mounted it cleanly and performed brilliantly, and Remo saw, by the confidence with which she moved, that the imaginary red line down the center of the imaginary wide wooden bar was still there in her mind.
Her dismount was perfect. So was her score. All tens. Just one more day to go for the gold.
As she came off the floor, she was surrounded by
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reporters who wanted to talk to her. Remo saw someone in the crowd pushing the reporters back, making room for her. His stomach fell when he saw who it was. Vincent Josephs, the sports agent, who had wanted to sign up Remo and manage his career.
Remo saw Josephs walk toward the arena exit and the press tent. Josie Littlefeather followed him, ignoring the questions of the trailing pack of reporters.
Remo tagged along. He wanted to hear her tell her story about how winning the gold medal would bring pride to her tribe of Blackhand Indians.
When Remo entered the tent, he almost bumped into Vincent Josephs, who was checking to make sure that all the major press outlets were represented.
"Stand in the back, kid, and don't talk," he told Remo. "This tent is for winners."
"She hasn't won yet," Remo said.
"It's a chip shot," Vincent Josephs said. "Tomorrow is a breeze."
Josie saw Remo standing in the back of the tent and when his eyes met hers, she quickly looked away. With Josephs at her side, she began to field the reporters' questions. She remembered all the answers she had been taught.
Her uniform, made by Lady Bountiful, fit perfectly and gave her the freedom for her championship performance.
She owed her conditioning to krisp-and-Lite breakfast cereal, which she had eaten every day since childhood.
She protected herself against slipping by using Shur-Fire Rosin, the stickum of champions, and when she wasn't competing, she liked to rest around the wigwam in her perfectly comfortable, wanning Hotsy Totsy Slippers by Benningham Mills, made of the new wonder knit, More-on.
She never mentioned Remo, which did not hurt his
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feelings. She never once mentioned winning the medal for the Blackhand Indians, which did hurt Re-mo's feelings.
Remo waited by the entrance to the tent so Josie would have to pass by him when they left. Reporters wanted her to come outside, and do a couple of handstands and cartwheels for publicity photos. She would be America's first woman gymnast gold medalist in history. The only way she could lose tomor-roe would be to fall off the bar and stay off.
He blocked Josie's way as she came toward the tent entrance.
"Congratulations," he said. "I'm sure all the folks back home on the reservation will be proud of you, even if you did forget to mention them."
She tossed her long hair back over her shoulder and stared at him, as if he were an autograph hound bothering her in a restroom.
"You were right," she said, "when you said that if I could work my way off the reservation, so could they. I have an opportunity now with Mr. Josephs to make a name for myself."
"And a lot of money," Remo said.
"Right. And a lot of money and there's no law against it. Maybe I'll see you around, Remo. Now, the photographers are waiting."
Vincent Josephs went ahead of her and as she passed Remo he reached out and delicately touched her lower back.
She turned. "What was that for?" she asked. She felt strangely uncomfortable. She knew he'd only touched her lightly, but for some reason she could still feel it and it seemed to be spreading through her body.
"You'll never forget that touch, Josie," said Remo. "It's very special. Any time you try to perform any kind of gymnastic move, you'll remember that touch. When you mount a balance beam, you'll think of it,
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and when you do, you'll think about that beam and you're going to know it's not two feet wide with a red stripe down the middle. You're going to remember that it's only a piece of wood, four inches wide, and every time you try to climb on it, you're going to fall off, right on your lovely ass."
She frowned at him. "You're crazy," she told him, not wanting to believe it.
Suddenly, Vincent Josephs was back.
"Hey, honey, come on outside. They want some pictures, you know, handstands and flips and stuff. C'mon, let's go tantalize them . . . champ."
She hesitated.
"Go ahead, Josie," said Remo, with a cold smile. "Go do a few flips and handstands for them. And for me and the folks back home."
Josephs grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the tent and Remo walked out behind them, then turned and walked away.
Behind him, he heard the photographers laugh. He turned to watch.
Josie tried a handstand and lost her balance and fell over.
The photographers chuckled and Vincent Josephs laughed it off.
"Just nerves, fellas. Come on, Josie, put on a show for the boys."
She looked up and her eyes met Remo's. She looked apprehensive.
She tried to do a cartwheel, a children's exercise in a schoolyard, and fell heavily to the ground.
The photographers laughed and Remo walked away, back toward the room which he and Chiun would soon leave for a plane to London.
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In the fifth floor room at London's Dorchester Arms, Smith was trying to talk, but Chiun sat silently in the middle of the floor, arms folded, eyes staring into eternity, and Remo was watching the women's gymnastic competition on television.
"So it has ended reasonably well," Smith said. "The explosives were all removed, and the Russians have decided not to protest against our obviously having sneaked some agents into the games without their permission."
He got the feeling he was talking into an empty cave. Chiun did not move, not even so much as flickering an eyelid. Remo remained glued to the television set. An announcer, presumably chosen for hyperthyroidism, was shouting: "Now, here's the surprise star of the games. Josie Littlefeather. This little red woman hasn't been anything but perfect since she first set foot on the balance beam here in Moscow. All tens."
And homing in on his voice was the voice of a young woman commentator who was herself an ex-athlete but tended to forget it in the flood of gee-whizzes and wows which made up her broadcasting vocabulary. "That's right, folks," she said, "and, gee whiz, all Josie's got to do right now is score an eight . and she's got this balance beam competition all locked up."
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"Scoring an eight shouldn't be hard, should it?" said the male commentator.