"Now it's question-and-answer time," Remo said.
Smedley wanted to bolt, but before he could even take a single step, Remo had grabbed him by the hand. Remo pinched the fleshy web between Smedley's thumb and forefinger.
The pain was awful. Blinding. Worse than anything Thomas Smedley had ever experienced in his entire life.
"Eeeeeeaaaahhhh!" Thomas Smedley shrieked.
"That's level one," Remo explained as he squeezed. "It goes to one hundred. If you make it to fifty, you get a bonus of an umbrella suppository. Who do you work for?"
Remo increased the pressure. He made it as far as level one and a half before Thomas Smedley fell blubbering to his well-tailored knees.
"Source!" Smedley shrieked. "I work directly on order from Sir Guy Philliston."
"Philliston sent you to kill me?" Remo asked.
Smedley nodded. "I believe he was following orders from higher up." He gasped at the pain in his hand. "Please, go down from level one hundred. I can't bear it."
Remo scowled. "One hundred? I backed off before I reached two. What kind of girlie spy are you anyway?" He released the Source agent's hand.
With a disgusted look on his face, he collected the two sections of Smedley's umbrella. He wondered briefly after pulling the sword from the wall if it meant he now had to rule this damp sponge of a country. He hoped not. The climate was hell on leather loafers and he doubted he could get used to the stench of haggis blowing in from Scotland.
He slipped the gleaming silver sword back in the standard umbrella with a click.
Panting, Smedley pulled himself up on the Bentley's grille. "I've got a slight problem with pain," he admitted as Remo toyed with the umbrella. "It showed up on some of my early Source tests. Never had cause to worry about it before. Nasty bit of luck."
"No kidding?" Remo said. "How'd you score for getting umbrellas stuck through the head?"
He stuck Smedley's umbrella through Smedley's head.
If dying with a dumb look frozen on his face could have been judged high on the Source entrance exam, Thomas Smedley would have gotten perfect marks.
Remo opened the umbrella and gave it a little spin. It was still spinning above the head of Britain's former top assassin when he left the secret garage.
Chapter 8
Remo found the Master of Sinanju waiting for him in the back seat of a taxi out in front of the Steen Hotel. The driver was of Middle Eastern descent. He wore grimy white pajamas, a swatch of cloth on his head that looked like he'd mugged a dog for its sleeping blanket, and a surly, suspicious expression. When Remo slid in beside Chiun he noticed that the cabbie seemed to take particularly keen interest in him in the rearview mirror.
"Okay, what's the deal here?" Remo demanded of the Master of Sinanju as the car pulled into traffic. "If you are referring to the cost of this carriage ride, you may work out the details with our driver," Chiun said. "I forgot my purse at home."
"Bull," Remo said. "And don't get cute. That hat bastard said he was sent by Guy Philliston to kill me."
"Really? How interesting."
"Yeah, real interesting. Interesting, too, how that babe who was dying out on the sidewalk-you know, the one you went to help by stopping that can of spraying poison-showed up downstairs as healthy as a horse."
Chiun waved his hands in praise before his weathered face. "Thank the awesome ministrations of the Master of Sinanju, deliverer and banisher of death, for restoring life to her ravaged body. All hail splendiferous me."
"Ditch the sales pitch. She was fine and you knew it. This is part of the game. We didn't fly all the way to England just so you could look up an old girlfriend. That guy in the bowler said Source was getting orders to kill me from someone higher up." He tapped the back of the driver's seat. "Hey, Gunga Din. Drop us off at Buckingham Palace."
They were heading away from the palace. The cabbie gave no sign that he even heard Remo.
"I have already told him to take us to the airport."
"No way I'm leaving without an explanation. First the queen tries to kill me, then she has Philliston send someone to do it for her. If you won't spill the beans, she will. Buckingham Palace," he ordered the driver. "And don't spare the camels."
"He cannot understand you," Chiun stated. "He speaks Pushtu and understands very little English." The Master of Sinanju said something to the driver in a language that Remo didn't understand. The man didn't nod, didn't say a word. He continued to stare at Remo in the mirror. There was a look of hate in his dark eyes.
"Did you just say 'Heathrow' in the middle of that gobbledygook?" Remo demanded.
"We are going to the airport."
"No way, Jose. Not unless you're willing to let me in on what's going on." He noted the look of determined silence on his teacher's face. "Okeydoke."
He smacked the driver on Fido's bed linen. "Buckingham Palace. You've gotta speakie enough English for that. Big house? Nice old lady in a frump dress lives there? Take us there now."
Across the seat, the Master of Sinanju pursed his lips. "Why must you always be so difficult, Remo?" he asked, a hard edge creeping into his voice. "Why can you not simply sit back and enjoy our most holy tradition?"
"Our most holy tradition is cash up front," Remo said, annoyed now with both the Master of Sinanju and the cabdriver, who was still ignoring his orders.
Remo was about to order the cabbie back to the palace once more when the taxi suddenly swerved sharply in traffic.
They were on Westminster Bridge. Traffic hummed along. Remo looked up in time to see the driver leaping over the seat at him, a wild glint in his dark eyes.
The cabbie had a knife in his hand, clutched in white knuckles. That wasn't all.
The man had lit a match a moment before. When Remo absently noted the sound, he had assumed it was for a cigarette that he was going to have to pluck from the stubble of the man's face and toss out the window. But he saw now it was not a cigarette between the driver's lips. A fat red stick of dynamite was clenched between the cabbie's yellowing teeth. The lit fuse sputtered rapidly down.
"What the hell?" Remo snarled as the driver tried repeatedly to stab him. Remo dodged the thrusting blade. The knife made a mess of the upholstery of the back seat.
"Death to the infidel!" the driver yelled in garbled English. He slobbered around his stick of dynamite. "I thought you said he couldn't speak English," Remo demanded of the Master of Sinanju.
"That?" Chiun asked. "Oh, they pick that phrase up like litter off the streets of Kabul."
The cab began to slow in traffic. The instant it did, a bounce came hard from behind. The rear bumper of the taxi had been tapped by a fast-moving truck, propelling the taxi forward in a more-or-less straight line. Tires squealed. A horn honked angrily.
In the rear Remo hardly noted the noise or the jostling. His face had grown very cold.
"Kabul?" he asked. "Like Afghanistan Kabul?"
"Death to America!" the driver said, saliva dripping from the end of his dynamite. When he spoke, he almost lost the hissing stick. He had to pause in midstab to reposition the dynamite. He clenched the far end in his molars.
"There is only one Kabul," Chiun answered. "The world has not excreted enough dung that it has need of another."
The driver was frustrated beyond understanding. Face glistening sweat, he continued trying to stab Remo, but only managed to shred the back seat. His frantic mind realized it didn't matter. The American was seconds from death. There would not be satisfaction from seeing him die by the knife, but the explosive would do the job the blade could not.
Even as the man was attempting to stab him, Remo noted the burning fuse. The driver gave one last jab with his blade when Remo finally nodded.
"Okay, that's long enough," Remo announced when the fuse was mere seconds from burning completely away. He promptly plucked the stick of dynamite from the cabdriver's mouth.