"You mean sex and like that?" asked Remo.
"Partially. And about women, good and bad."
"I don't want to hear about it."
Chiun bridged his fingers before him as if he had not heard Remo. "Now if you were able to select any woman in the world to be with, who would you choose?"
"Ludmilla," said Remo.
Chiun shook his head. "Be serious. I mean any woman in the world, not just a woman who is so desperate that she is willing to be seen with you. Let your imagination run amok. Any woman. Name her."
"Ludmilla."
"Remo. There are beautiful women in the world, even some with straight eyes. There are intelligent women and loving women. There are even some quiet women. Why would you pick this Russian tank truck driver?"
"Because."
"Because why?"
Remo hesitated for only a split second. "Because I love her," he said.
Chiun lifted his eyes upward as if requesting God to pay close attention to the problems Chiun had to deal with in this life.
"Does she love you?"
"I think so," said Remo.
"Has she stopped trying to kill you yet?"
"Pretty soon now."
"Pretty soon now," Chiun mimicked. His voice grew sincere and concerned. "Remo. Do you know who really loves you?"
"No. Who?" asked Remo, wondering if Chiun were going to let down his defenses. For once.
"Smith," said Chiun, after a pause.
"Bullshit," said Remo.
"The president of the United States. The automaker."
"Horse dung," said Remo. "He doesn't even know my name. He calls me 'those two.' "
Chiun yelled, "The people of Sinanju."
"Hogwash," Remo yelled back. "They don't even know I'm alive. If they can tolerate me, it's because I have something to do with those lazy slugs getting their gold shipment every November."
Chiun paused. He looked ceilingward as if gathering the courage to give Remo the name of one more person who really loved him. He looked back. "There is no point in discussing something with someone who can talk only in barnyard terms."
"Okay. Does that mean our discussion of the birds and the bees is over?"
"We did not once mention birds and bees, just other barnyard animals," Chiun said.
Remo rose. "I've got something to do."
"What is that?"
"I've got to buy a present."
"It is not my birthday," Chiun said.
"It is not for you," Remo said, walking to the door.
"See if I care," Chiun called. "See if the one who really…"
Remo paused. "Yes?"
"Never mind," Chiun said. "Go."
After picking up a bank draft for fifty thousand dollars at the American Express office, Remo went to a small jewelry shop on the Rue de la Paix.
The asking price for the diamond ring was forty thousand dollars, but by shrewd maneuvering, hard bargaining, and his incredible knowledge of the French language in which the negotiations were carried out, Remo managed to get the price up to fifty thousand. He pushed the bank draft over the counter to the French proprietor who had eyes that looked as if two hardboiled eggs, had perforated his face, and a mustache that seemed to have been drawn on with one stroke of a woman's eyebrow pencil. The jeweler put the draft into the cash register quickly.
"Do you want it gift wrapped?" he said, in the first English he had spoken since Remo entered the shop.
"No. I'll eat it here. Of course I want it gift wrapped."
"There is a two dollar charge for gift wrapping."
"Throw it in for free," Remo suggested.
"I would like to, but…" The man shrugged a Gallic shrug. "You know how it is."
"You know how this is too," said Remo. He punched the no-sale button on the register and plucked out the fiftythousand dollar bank draft. "Goodbye."
"Wait, sir. In your case we make an exception."
"I thought you might. Wrap it," Remo said.
When he presented the eight-carat stone to Ludmilla, she tore the paper, opened the box, looked at the ring, and threw it across the room.
"I already have diamonds," she said. "Do you think I would take a gift from a man who lies to me?"
"Okay, now I'll tell you the truth. I love you. I want you to come to America to live with me."
Ludmilla hissed at him. "Soooo, you think I give up my homeland that easily. Never. I am a Russian."
"Do you love me?"
"Maybe."
"Then come to America with me."
"No," Ludmilla said.
"My secret is in America," Remo said.
"Yes?" Ludmilla said.
"There is a spring there, a special water that makes any man invincible."
She came to his arms, and, without trying, he found himself flushing with warmth.
"Oh, Remo. I am glad you have at last told me the truth. Where is it, this spring?"
"In Las Vegas. That is a city," Remo said.
"I have never heard of it," Ludmilla said.
"It has much water," Remo said.
"And when do you want to go there?" she said.
"Tomorrow."
"Tonight," she said.
Remo kissed her lips. "Tomorrow," he said. "I have plans for tonight."
She looked at him with velvet eyes. "All right, tomorrow."
After Remo left, Ludmilla recovered the diamond ring from the floor. From a mother-of-pearl jewelry box in her top dresser drawer, she took a jeweler's loupe. She held the lens up to her eye and examined the ring carefully.
Only a VVF, she thought, a Very Very Fine. She noted a small carbon dot in the back of the stone. Worth no more than thirty thousand retail. But the American had probably paid forty thousand for it. Americans were such fools.
She put the ring in her jewelry box and then went to the phone to make a long distance call.
CHAPTER TEN
He was not going to the building at Dzerzhinsky Square. This time he was going to the Kremlin itself, and Marshal Denia decided not to wear his ribbons. He decided he was right when he saw the four men facing him. They wore dress uniforms with rows of ribbons on their chests. Each of them owned more ribbons than Denia had, and if he had worn his, it would have been a small admission that he was somehow less than them. By wearing none, he admitted only that he was different from them.
He looked at the clumps of ribbons on the four chests, each looking like an ear of Indian corn worn over the heart. Military decorations, he thought, were a tribute not to bravery or competence but to longevity. The best and bravest soldiers he had ever seen had often not lived long enough to earn even one ribbon. In their youthful pride, they would have laughed at these four cadavers who stared now at Denia and demanded explanations of his "curious performance."
"Curious, comrade?" Denia asked the chairman of the board of inquiry. "The Treska has demolished America's most secret and powerful spy organization in Western Europe. In the process, true, we have lost some men. But we are continuously training new men to replace them. In months… weeks, we will be back at full strength, while the Americans will never again put such a force in the field."
He said it and did not believe a word of it. Neither apparently did the chairman, a wizened old man with a face like cracked desert mud.
"And what guarantee do we have," the old man said, "that our new force will not be obliterated just as our last force was? What have you done about this?"
"I have isolated the special American agent who worked such damage on our men. I have infiltrated the entire apparatus. Soon we will have the answer to this riddle."
"Soon is not good enough."
"Soon is as good as it can be," Denia said, trying unsuccessfully to keep the edge from his voice. He looked to the other men sitting behind the stark wooden table in the small basement room. "In operations like ours, one occasionally encounters the unusual. You must study it before you can destroy it." One of the men on the panel had been a leader in Russia's scorched-earth policy when the Nazis invaded during World War II. Denia spoke in his direction. "It must be like the first foot soldiers ever to encounter a tank in battle. It would have been easy to run away. Or to panic and throw stones at the tank. But it was wise to watch and learn the monster's weaknesses. As our glorious people did against the Hitler hordes."