That was it. He rose from the sofa and kissed the startled woman on her cheek.
‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘Absolutely beautiful.’
‘Attractive, maybe,’ said the woman, ‘but beautiful, no. Now I have a granddaughter, she’s beautiful. Are you married?’
CHAPTER TEN
The Bade County Airport was crowded and all flights to Puerto Rico were booked because of two days of weather delays.
Remo smiled at the reservations clerk who had said she would try to get him out on a flight the next day, and she said: ‘You’re cute.’
‘So are you,’ Remo said. ‘We ought to check this thing out when I get back from Puerto Rico. But you’ve got to get me on the next flight.’
‘Let’s check it out tonight,’ said the clerk in airlines blue. ‘You’re not going to Puerto Rico tonight.’
‘Not even a standby?’
‘Every flight tonight has at least a half dozen standbys. You’ll never get off tonight.’
‘Put me on standby,’ said Remo. ‘I feel lucky.’
‘All right. But you’d be better off at my place. That’s real lucky.’
‘You bet,’ said Remo, winking. Who knew if she voted in Miami Beach or not, and if he should be with his candidate, whoever he might be, and she saw him, she just might vote for that candidate. Now he knew why Chiun loathed politics. You had to be pleasant to people.
She gave him the flight number and Remo checked out the waiting area. It was packed. Good. He saw the doors to the loading platform where a uniformed clerk stood taking registrations and tickets. Good.
Remo spun around and went back down the aisle until he saw a waiting gate which was not in use. He ducked into it and went to a loading door which was locked. He cracked his way through it as if it were designed to be cracked by any passerby, and then was out into the rain-squawl remnant of the passed hurricane. Field lights blinked in the distance and he could see the coloured lights over the control tower. How ironic, he thought. If CURE were still functioning, he would only have to phone Smith and he could get an Air Force plane if he wanted. And here he was trying to beat one of the peasants out of a seat on an economy special to San Juan.
He waited in the night rain getting soaked, until an operations attendant in white uniform with plastic ear protectors and baseball cap pulled over his head trotted toward one of the hangars.
Like a wind at midnight, Remo was out onto the slick asphalt and he took the man with a short slap at the back of the head, not enough for concussions but enough to put him out. The man hadn’t even begun to crumple when Remo spun him around, back toward the gate door he had cracked through. Remo helped him out of his white coveralls, baseball cap and earphones. Remo rolled the man to where asphalt met siding and squeezed into the coveralls, pulling them on over his own suit jacket and pants. Then he put on the earphones and cap and was ready.
He moved along the side of the building counting doors until he got to his Puerto Rican flight. He was standing there when the doors to the airstrip opened.
‘This flight 825 for Juan?’ he yelled in the area.
A few passengers, waiting for him to get out of their way so they could go to the plane, mumbled yes. The ticket taker came from behind his counter and looked at Remo in the disdainful manner visited on people who work with their hands, by those in white shirts who make less.
‘This is improper,’ said the clerk.
‘Improper, hell. Is this flight taking off?’
‘Of course it is.’
Remo whistled low and shook his head.
‘They never listen. They never listen. All right, let them save two thousand bucks a flight. Let them save it.’
The clerk, a smooth-faced tedious compendium of propriety, raised his hands to shush Remo.
‘Sure. Let everybody know but the passengers,’ Remo said.
‘Will you shut up?’ whispered the clerk angrily.
‘Won’t make no difference,’ Remo said loudly. ‘That jet hits five hundred feet, there ain’t gonna be anybody around to complain. Pheew. Nobody.’
‘What’s your name?’ demanded the clerk.
‘Just the guy who tried to save the lives of innocent people. We’ve had these engines in and out of the shop and we’ve been lucky. But in this weather, no luck is gonna carry this cheap outfit.’
Remo turned to the passengers. A young mother cradled her child in her arms.
‘Look,’ said Remo. ‘A little baby. For saving two grand on a crummy flight, a little baby. And his mother. You bastards.’
With that, Remo pulled his head back in, slammed the door behind him and went back the way he came. He peeled off his coveralls and dropped them on the still sleeping figure of the airlines man.
When Remo returned to the ticket counter, he was pleasantly surprised. There was a sudden rash of cancellations for his flight.
‘Lucky,’ Remo said.
‘You sure are,’ said the girl. ‘I don’t understand it.’
‘I live clean,’ said Remo squinching the rain from his hair.
A few people looked at him closely but none of the passengers on the ‘doomed’ flight to San Juan recognized him as the flight attendant, whose emotional outburst had left the plane with a half dozen empty seats.
When the plane landed, Remo caught a cab to a large fish packer, a specialist in frozen fillets, who assured him that he packed for many major American brands.
But could the man ship on delivery? Was he reliable?
‘Absolutely, sir.’
Remo wasn’t sure. He was in the hotel business and he had to be sure of deliveries. If the man could guarantee him immediate air shipment, Remo might consider him for really large regular orders.
‘In twelve hours, you can have any order you want.’
Fine, Remo said. Tomorrow morning would be fine. He picked out the fish he wanted, and insisted that cartons be marked with an X painted red. Right now. On all fifty boxes. Now Remo wanted them shipped inside outer cartons with a good amount of dry ice.
‘We know how to ship, senor.’
Perhaps, but Remo knew what he wanted. He wanted red X’s on the outside boxes also.
The packer shrugged. Remo gave the man the last of his money and said he would pay the rest in the morning.
‘Cash?’ asked the packer suspiciously.
‘Of course,’ Remo said. ‘We’re in a fast business. We only pay our regular suppliers by checks.’ Remo realized that made no sense at all, but he could tell that the packer thought there might be something slightly illegal about Remo’s business, and the packer liked that. He liked it so much, he added a little charge to the shipment.
‘For speedy delivery, senor.’
Remo feigned mild outrage, the packer feigned mild innocence, and the deal was consummated.
When he left the packer, Remo had only enough money left for a cab to the new hotel strip just outside San Juan. For some strange reason, he felt suddenly hungry when he was unable to buy food. He had not wanted for anything since he was recruited.
Remo felt the hot sun of San Juan and let the hunger linger. That felt good, because he had been trained to control his hunger as he controlled his muscles and nerves. He enjoyed the pains in his stomach until they became un-enjoyable and then, as he had been taught years before by the Master of Sinanju, he brought relaxation down his chest and into his stomach.
The Japanese Samurai, Chiun had said, pretended they had eaten a meal and in this way tricked their minds into tricking their stomachs. This was a bad way to deal with hunger because it was an untruth, and he who loses the truth with himself becomes blind in a small way, and to be blind was to die.
In Sinanju, the masters knew their bodies and would not tell them lies. Hunger was the body telling the truth. Do not deny the pain, but accept it and leave it. You have the pain, but not as something that bothers you.