"What if Squirrelly gets herself killed?"
"It is very simple. She will be reincarnated once again. And now that I have set her on the proper path, in her next life she will begin as the forty-seventh Bunji Lama, as is her birthright, without the burden of this wasted white interlude."
"I don't believe that crap."
"No, you believe other crap. You believe in goodness and justice and a gaudy bolt of cloth called a flag because it is a different pattern and color from the bolts of cloth of other countries. In Vietnam you were willing to throw your life away because fat men in starched uniforms told you it was the correct thing to do. You are willing to die for a slice of your mother's apple pie, and you without even a mother. Are these not the fables of your ignorant youth?"
The Master of Sinanju's pupil looked pained and said nothing.
"You believed in these things," the Master went on in a less stern tone. "But you remember Lu the Disgraced. And you have heard the voice of Shiva emerge from your own throat."
"Shove it."
"And this is why you are so angry and troubled. You do not understand these things. You wish to bury them in the dead part of your mind. But you cannot. You are still a child in marry ways. It is very sad."
"The hell it is."
"Spoken like a true child. Now be silent. The California news is coming on. Perhaps there will be tidings of interest."
Chiun picked up the remote control that lay in his lap and pressed the On button. The blow-dried head of a local television anchor appeared on the screen. He began speaking in the clear, bell-like tones of those native to the California region of America.
"Topping our news this evening, the Chinese crackdown on Tibet is in its ninth week and the secretary general of the United Nations is calling for Beijing to put an end to martial law and withdraw her troops. Reports of secret executions cannot be confirmed, but refugees continue to carry out of the beleaguered former kingdom horrific tales of murder, torture and other human-rights abuses. From his exile in India, the Dalai Lama has issued a statement that is widely seen as a mild rebuke. And in Beijing a statement attributed to the Panchen Lama has urged the Tibetan people to lay down their arms and cooperate with the people's republic."
"Who's the Panchen Lama?" asked Remo.
"A tool of Beijing. It is his destiny to hand up the Tibetan people into oppression."
"Same old story," muttered Remo. "The UN will fart around until it's too late to help the people on the ground."
"Whites do not care about Asians," sniffed Chiun. "Forceful words will be spoken in ringing voices, but in the end no hands will be lifted."
"No argument there."
"In other news," the newscaster was saying, "the manager for Squirrelly Chicane, award-winning actress, author and advocate of past-life experiences, has declared herself the forty-seventh Bunji Lama and announced that she will go to Tibet and reason with the Chinese military leaders there."
"News travels fast," Remo grunted.
"It is to be hoped that it also travels far," said the Master of Sinanju in a distant voice.
Remo regarded Chiun with a questioning eye, but he pretended not to notice.
Chapter 12
Denholm Fong was doing his morning tai chi exercises when the faxphone began tweedling.
He let the air flow out of his stomach as he extended his right arm, brought his left hand back and planted both feet on the ground. He refused to break his rhythm, even though it was the unlisted faxphone that was emitting sound and paper.
Fong stepped in a circle around the walled-in patio of his Bel Air home that he had purchased for cash, he told his neighbors, from the sale of his first screenplay, Shanghai Cats.
It was an excellent cover story. Southern California was filled with writers making handsome livings off spec screenplays that were optioned and never produced. And so, after moving into Bel Air, Denholm Fong made it a point to periodically throw a party celebrating his latest "sale."
That no film was ever made mattered not at all to Fong's neighbors. They accepted it as business as usual. This was Hollywood, where no one was rejected without compensation.
The trouble was, it had begin to chafe Denholm Fong's ego. People really were making crazy money in this strange country of America writing screenplays that producers paid fabulous sums for and that ended up collecting dust in filing cabinets.
Denholm Fong took to writing screenplays for real. Why not? All his neighbors were doing it. And the unlisted faxphone seldom sounded these days. His true business had been quiet. The biannual stipend from Beijing covered living expenses, but not the boredom that vexed Denholm Fong's days and nights.
It had been so long since the unlisted faxphone had rung that Fong had at first no reaction. He waited for the sounds to cease, then he brought his exercises to an end and walked limber and casual into the house.
There was a single sheet of plain paper in the faxphone output box. He picked it up. It was simply a copy of a Reuter's report that had been faxed from a number in Hong Kong so that there was no phone record of communication between Beijing, China and Denholm Fong-a Chinese-American living in Bel Air, California, who had entered the U.S.A. in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre to claim asylum, dropped out of UCLA after two terms and now listed "screenwriter" on his 1040 Form.
The article was in Cantonese. It was brief. It reported, in the clipped deadpan prose of newspaper copy the world over, that the American actress Squirrelly Chicane had claimed the title of Bunji Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet who had last died in the early 1930s. She planned to go to Lhasa as soon as Chinese authorities processed her visa.
There was no cover sheet. No instruction, coded or otherwise. The Chinese Intelligence Service was too clever for that.
The fax transmission might have been simply an amusing clipping sent by one cousin to another across the gulf of the Pacific Ocean. Self-explanatory. Good for a laugh. No reply necessary. Trust you are living the good life in America, cousin.
And so Denholm Fong read it over once, neither smiled nor frowned and let it fall casually from his fingers into a waiting wastepaper basket. No surveillance camera, no hidden CIA microphone, no suspicious spy could possibly divine the fact that China's top assassin-in-residence in the United States had been notified of his next victim.
Denholm Fong dropped into the executive chair before his dormant computer and began calling around.
"Squirrelly? It's Denholm. Listen, darling, I heard the wonderful news. What a part! Congratulations. What's that? A party? I'd love to come. Of course I'll bring a friend. Ciao. "
Click.
"Cousin Nigel? Hello, It's Denholm. My dear friend Squirrelly Chicane is throwing a party tonight, and I'd like you to accompany me. Would you be good enough to tell a few of the others? I'm trying to finish up my latest script. It's called Katmandu Cats. Yes, I'm still mining the cat thing."
Hanging up, Denholm Fong booted up his computer. If he stayed focused, he might be able to finish a working draft of his latest script before Squirrelly's party started. Surely the party would be packed with eager producers who just might give it a read once the hostess had been shoveled into a body bag.
After all, this was Hollywood, where even sudden death didn't get in the way of business. Unless, of course, you happened to be one of the suddenly dead.
It was, the Hollywood community agreed, one of the best parties anyone had thrown in a long, long time.
Even after the terrorists came and tried to slaughter the hostess. Some of the invitees were later heard to say that the terrorists were the best part.
Everyone who was hot that week had been invited. They crammed Squirrelly Chicane's Malibu beach house, percolated in and out of the guest house to indulge in various encounters and vices, then spilled out onto her private beach.