Bonelli snarled. "Okay, kid. You had your chance. No more Mister Nice Guy." He rifled through his trouser pockets and pulled out a grenade. "You leave now, or I pull the plug."
"Like this?" Remo said, snatching it away from him and pulling out the pin.
"What'd you do that for? Throw it, quick."
Remo tossed the grenade up in the air absently and caught it behind his back. "Nah," he said. "I'm tired of throwing." He tossed it up in the air again. Bonelli leaped up, but Remo caught it just above Bonelli's reach.
"Give me that." '
"What for?" Remo asked, juggling the grenade in one hand.
"I'll throw it," Bonelli said, sweat pouring down his face.
"I've got a better idea," Remo said. "You eat it." He stuffed the grenade into Bonelli's mouth and shook his hand. "Nice to meet you. I'll keep your offer in mind."
Then he flipped Bonelli into the air and the man fell, eyes bulging, on a direct course with the truck below. The crates had afl been loaded. The back of the truck
22
was sealed, and the two workers were sitting in the cab up front, its motor running.
Good timing, Remo thought as Giuseppe "Bones" Bonelli landed on top of the truck and blew to fragments.
For a moment, the air was filled with a miasma of white powder containing shards of splintered wood. Then the sky was ciear again, and blue and cold, and Remo climbed down the building, singing an old Korean tune.
Chiun was singing the same tune when Remo walked into the Manhattan motel room they shared. The lyrics, translated from the Korean, went something like: "O lovely one, when I behold your gracious ways, your beauty, like the melting snow of spring, makes my heart weep with tears of joy." He was singing it while gazing at himself in the mirror, arranging the folds of his gold brocade robe. He swayed as he sang, causing the white wisps of hair on his head and chin to move softly. In the background, the television blared a commercial, in which a foul-tempered ten-year-old girl refused to let her younger brother use the family's coveted toothpaste, while her mother smiled on benignly.
"What is this racket?" Remo said, switching off the television.
"Lout," Chiun muttered. He jumped off the dresser, where he had been sitting, and seemed to float to the ground. "Who can expect a white man to appreciate beauty?" He turned the television on again. "O lovely one, when I behold your gracious ways. . ."
"Look, Little Father, if you're going to sing, don't you think it'll be less distracting without the TV?"
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"Only a pale piece of pig's ear can be so easily distracted. Besides, there is nothing worth watching on the television."
"Then why do you have it on?"
Chiun sighed exasperatedly. "I have it on because there is going to be something worth watching. Anyone can see that."
The screen now showed a boxy, cheaply constructed compact automobile racing down a hill to the accompaniment of an orchestra.
"What?" Remo shouted above the din of the William Tell Overture.
The automobile drove off the screen and was replaced by the venomous stare of an Oriental newswoman who looked as if she ate babies for breakfast.
"Oh, it is she," Chiun said breathlessly, his long-nailed hands fluttering to his chest as he drifted into a lotus position in front of the set.
"This is Cheeta Ching welcoming you to the WACK NEWS UPDATE," she snarled. "It's really bad news tonight," she added, her flat features twisting into a malevolent grin.
"O lovely one. O gracious person," Chiun rhapsodized.
"Oh, cut me a break," Remo said. "This is what's worth watching? This vicious harpy?"
"Out," Chiun commanded. "You do not deserve to be in the same room as the beautiful lotus blossom Miss Cheeta Ching. You who prefer the cowlike teats of Western giantesses. You who prefer the vacuous stares of round-eyed, white-skinned fools like yourself."
"I, who prefer just about anything to Cheeta
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Ching," Remo said. As he left the room, Cheeta was spewing out the terrible events of the day with grisly delight.
"Police have still not identified the participants in the grotesque murder of Secretary of the Air Force Homer G. Watson, known to Third World circles as a warmongering capitalist pig. Watson was executed in his home early yesterday by one or more assailants using what might have been a flame thrower, police report. The flame thrower theory was based on localized fire damage in the victim's Maryland home. Watson's charred and mutilated corpse was identified through dental records. Police report that everything possible is being done to locate the perpetrators of the murder, but so far, no clues are available. As a final note, we at WACK salute the valiant freedom fighters who so efficiently eliminated the Air Force bureaucrat with a hearty 'Well done, boys.' "
"Oh, Mr. Remo," the girl at the motel's reception desk called crisply. "There's a message for you." She picked a neatly folded piece of paper out of Remo's room slot. "Call Aunt Mildred," she read primly. "That is all the message says. You are to call Aunt Mildred."
"Smitty's back to Aunt Mildred again," Remo mumbled.
The girl clapped her hands over her ears. "We are not concerned with the private lives of our guests, Mr. Remo."
"Fine. Do you have a pay phone here?"
"You have a phone in your room, Mr. Remo."
"I know. I'm not allowed in there."
"I told you, we are not interested in the private lives of our guests. Why don't you use the phone in your room?"
"I don't want to use the phone in my room. I want to
25
use a pay phone. Now teil me where the pay phone is."
"Oh, all right." She pointed an icy finger down the hail.
As Remo turned the corner, he saw her scurry to the switchboard and rearrange the wiring on it. He walked into the phone booth and lifted the receiver. As he had expected, the faint sound of breathing emanated from the other end, where the girl was listening in.
He pitched his voice low. "In five seconds I'm going to grab that pretty woman at the switchboard and tear ail her clothes off," he rumbled.
There was a little shriek from the other end before the line went dead. The receptionist's skirt billowed in the wind as she ran out the door.
Remo caught her before she hit the sidewalk. "Okay, what's the idea?"
"I-I don't know what you're talking about," she said. "Are you really going to tear all my clothes off?"
"You were listening in on my phone call. Who do you work for?"
"Nobody."
"Who?" He grasped her hand more tightly.
"Okay, okay," she said testily. "It doesn't matter, I suppose."
"Who is it?"
"I don't know. That's the truth. Somebody called me and asked me to monitor all the phone lines. The ones in the rooms are easier, but I can get the pay-phones, too, with a little switch on the wires."
"What for?"
"Who knows? He just wanted me to write down anything anybody said about the army, the navy, or the air force. I get twenty dollars for every item I send in to the computer information center in Albuquerque."
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"Computers?" Remo asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yes. He said I'd get a government check.! figured he was from the CIA or the FBI or something like that."
"What did this guy sound like?"
"Sound? Well, kind of-lemony,! guess. That's the only way to describe it. Sort of like your Aunt Mildred."
"All right," Remo said with disgust. Smith had struck again. For an operation as minuscule in size as CURE, Smith had tentacles reaching into every corner of every city in the world. "Forget it. I didn't mean to scare you." He walked down the street.
"Hey, wait a minute," the girl called after him. Her face was a caricature of disappointment. "Aren't you going to rip off my clothes now?"
"Later," Remo said.