"Possible foreign money influx, unsettling prices on Midwest grain exchange. No recommendation."
It paused. Then:
"Aircraft company near bankruptcy now appears solvent again. Investigate potential ties with Arab oil countries."
Such reports moved across his desk all day long. They were the day-to-day essence of his job, Smith reminded himself. The important things. Things that could affect America's security, its position in the world.
Maybe he had been wrong. Maybe Remo should get off this Divine Bliss Mission business right away. He may have overreacted in assigning him in the first place.
Smith looked down at the computer, again silently forming letters under the glass panel.
"Policeman's slaying in Midwest apparently linked to battle for control of crime syndicate in that part of country. Crime figures have close connections with several United States senators, and certain immigration bills affecting those crime figures have been introduced by those senators."
Now that was important, Smith thought. Crime had even reached its tentacles into the U.S. Senate. That was a case perhaps for Remo's talents.
The computer kept forming letters.
"Suggest pressure upon senators, to get them to lift political protection from mob figures."
Probably the right approach, Smith thought. And probably the next assignment for Remo.
The computer kept printing.
"All praise the Divine Blissful Master. Bliss be his."
And Smith shuddered.
And 2700 miles away, across the nation, Martin Mandelbaum was also shuddering, with outrage.
He would read them the goddam riot act. That was for sure. He would ream them up and he would ream them down. How could they? For Christ's sake, how could they?
As he walked along the polished marble floors of San Francisco's central airport terminal, he got angrier and angrier.
Who was that fat-faced little punk?
Along every wall, on every column, on every litter basket, everywhere in his nice clean terminal was a poster of this fat-faced, fruity-looking boy with a half-assed fuzz of a mustache. Who the hell was he?
Under the color picture were a few lines of type. They read:
HE IS COMING.
TUESDAY NIGHT.
KEZAR STADIUM.
ALL ARE INVITED.
ADMISSION FREE.
Who the hell was HE?
And how the hell did all these goddam posters get into Martin Mandelbaum's beautiful, clean airport?
HE, whoever HE was, had some fine frigging nerve, and the maintenance men who worked under Mandelbaum's direction were going to hear about it.
Mandelbaum angrily yanked down one sign from a stone pillar and marched into the corridor that led to his office.
"Good morning, Mr. Mandelbaum," said his secretary.
"Get everybody," he growled. "Everybody. Broom pushers, toilet scrubbers, wall cleaners, painters, plumbers, everybody. Get 'em in the meeting room in five minutes."
"Everybody?"
"Yes, Miss Perkins, fucking everybody."
Mandelbaum went into his office, slamming the door behind him. He would ream ass. As he had in World War II as a top sergeant, as he had on his way when he got his first civilian job that put him in charge of two other people, as he had while he worked his way up the bureaucratic ladder, as he had all his life.
It was just not possible that vandals had sneaked into the airport during the night and plastered it with posters of HE. Mandelbaum looked at the poster in his hand.
What a stupid-looking creep. Why the hell hadn't his maintenance men seen them defacing the airport?
"HE," Mandelbaum said out loud to the poster, "keep outa my frigging airport."
He hacked in the back of his throat and put a glemmy squarely between the eyes of Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor, the Blissful Master, then threw the poster in the waste-paper basket beside his desk, and began pacing up and down, counting to himself the five minutes he had to wait.
It was worth the wait. It was beautiful. He reamed up and he reamed down. One hundred and forty men sat there in stolid, embarrassed silence as Martin Mandelbaum told them what he thought of their efforts to keep the airport terminal clean, along with a few suggestions concerning the morality of their mothers and the lack of virility of their reputed fathers.
"Now get out of here," he finally said. "Get out of here and get down every picture of that fat-faced fucking frog, and if you see anybody else putting up any more of them, call the cops and have the bastards arrested. And if you want to beat the shit out of them first, that's all right too. Now get out of here." He looked around and saw his second-in-command, a red-faced, retired Irish cop named Kelly, sitting quietly in a front row seat. "Kelly, you make sure the goddam job is done right."
Kelly nodded, and since Mandelbaum's speech was not exactly calculated to inspire open discussion, the 140 workers silently got to their feet and headed out the door of the big auditorium-style meeting room. In masses they swept through the main terminal building ripping down the pictures of Maharaji Dor.
"What'll we do with these?" one man asked.
"I'll take them," Kelly said. "I'll get rid of them. Don't rip them. Maybe I can sell them for junk." He chuckled and began to collect the posters, piled up into his outstretched arms.
"I'll get rid of them, boys," he told the workers who were going through the building like a swarm of ants devouring a scrap of meat. "Don't leave even a single one. We don't want the Jew on our backs again, do we?" And he winked.
And the workers winked back despite the fact that they knew a man who called Mandelbaum "the Jew" behind his back would have no compunctions about calling them "the nigger" or "the spick" or "the wop" behind their backs.
His arms were full, but the terminal was whiskbroom clean when Kelly, sweating under his load of cardboard posters, walked from the main terminal area toward the back of the building where the workers' lockers were.
He set the pile of pictures on a wooden table in the deserted locker room, and with a key opened a tall gray standup locker in the corner.
The door opened. Taped to the inside of it was a poster of Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor.
Kelly looked around to see that there was no one else in the locker room, then leaned forward and kissed the picture on the befuzzed lips.
"Don't worry, Blissful Master," he said softly, "the Jew will not prevail against your wonder."
He put the piles of posters into the back of the locker very carefully. After Mandelbaum went home, he would return for them and put them back up.
Just as he had last night.
CHAPTER NINE
"You surprised me, kid. You didn't look like the patriotic-American type," said Remo.
Joleen Snowy ignored him. She remained kneeling on the ground at the foot of the steps leading from the Air India jet, kissing the blacktop surface, her arms extended full in front of her as in supplication, her butt raised winsomely toward the plane.
"Oh, wondrous America," she moaned. "Land of all beauty and bliss."
Remo looked at Chiun, who stood beside him.
"Oh, marvelousness of the West. Oh, repository of that which is good."
"See," said Remo. "A patriot."
"Beauteous beneficence. Vessel of purity," Joleen wailed.
"I think she overdoes it," said Chiun. "What about racism? What about Gatewater?"
"Just details," Remo said. He grabbed Joleen by her right elbow. "Okay, kid, up and at 'em."
She stood up straight, very close to Remo, smiling into his face, and under the silver stripe down her forehead and the darkening eye makeup, the face of a very young woman could still be seen. "I just want to thank you for bringing me to this great land."
"Well, shucks," said Remo modestly. "It's good, all right, but it's got its faults. Even I've got to admit that."
"It has no faults," said Joleen petulantly. "It is all perfect."