"No chance," said Scheisskopf. "Never."
"Don't be hasty," Remo said. "I convinced Freddy."
"Never," Scheisskopf snarled again. "We march for freedom and for the rights of white men everywhere. We march against the race-mixing ..."
"Goodbye," said Remo.
He grabbed Freddy by the nightstick and dragged him into the room. The two biggest Na-
29
zis came at Remo, waving billy clubs. He hit them with Freddy and they went down in a lump.
The next two came at Remo with lead-filled blackjacks. He moved between the two of them, spinning between them, moving forward and back, closer and farther away and, when they both knew he was in range, they swung at him with wild roundhouses. Remo moved low, beneath the plane of their swings and, like a shot and its immediate echo above him, he heard the twin splats as each of them slammed the blackjack into the other's skull, with the old reassuring sound of temple bones being crushed and splintered.
Remo nodded and moved out from between them, as they fell forward, locked on each other for a moment, then slid loose as their two bodies thumped onto the floor.
Obersturmbannfiihrer Ernest Scheisskopf was backing into a corner. In front of him, he held for protection a Muhammad All vs. Superman comic book. A large black "X" had been drawn through Ali's face on the cover.
"You get away, you," he squeaked. "I'll call the police. I'll tell."
"Look, Ernest," Remo said. "Don't get upset. Don't just look at it like you're dying."
"How should I look at it?" Scheisskopf said.
"As one giant leap for mankind," Remo said.
When he was done, Remo tidied up, then left, pulling the broken door back into the door opening behind him. It was three miles to his house at Compo Beach and he decided to run back. He hadn't had any exercise in a long time.
30
Chiun was as Remo had left him an hour earlier, sitting in the center of the floor, a large piece of parchment on the floor in front of him, a quill pen poised over an ink bottle as if ready to strike. There was not a word on the paper.
"What was it tonight, Chiun?" Remo asked, pointing toward the blank parchment. "People playing their radio too loud in Venezuela?"
"I worried so much about you, it was not possible to work," Chiun said.
"Worried about me? You called them creatures in brown shirts before. You didn't sound impressed."
"Don't bicker," Chiun said. "It is taken care of?"
"Of course."
"Good," Chiun said. "These Nazis are vile things."
"Not these tonight. Not anymore. And since when are you down on Nazis? If the House of Sinanju could work for Ivan the Terrible and the Pharaoh Ramses and Henry the Eighth, why not Nazis? Or wouldn't they pay your price?"
"The House of Sinanju refused to work for them. Just the opposite. We volunteered our services to get rid of their leader. The one with the funny mustache."
"A freebie? Sinanju?"
Chiun nodded. "There are some kinds of evil that cannot be tolerated. It is not a frequent thing we do to volunteer our services, because if I do not get paid, the village does not eat. But this one time we did and the lunatic heard that the House of Sinanju was coming so he took poison.
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Untidy to the last, he managed to kill his female companion first." Chiun spat his disgust.
"I will never get any work done," he said, "since you seem determined to chatter at me. I'm going to sleep."
"Sweet dreams," Remo said.
It was a glorious day for a parade. The sun rose, bright and busy, burning off the morning residue of Connecticut's long winter chill.
The Boston Post Eoad in Westport was lined with thousands of people carrying baseball bats, empty bottles, tomatoes, and tire chains. The American Civil Liberties Union had called for volunteers from all over the country and there were four hundred lawyers running up and down the projected line of march reading from court orders that there must be no violence. No one paid any attention to them.
There were three hundred police in full riot gear. Parked along the parade route were four ambulances and two morgue wagons.
Hawking their way up and down the parade route were peddlers selling American flags. Some of the more adventurous had stocked a small supply of Nazi armbands for sale, but so far they had received no requests for them.
The planned Nazi parade had everything.
Except Nazis.
Remo noticed this when he drove to the luncheonette to pick up Ghiun's copy of the Daily Variety. At the house, he gave Chiun the Variety and turned on the television. It was an hour past the scheduled time to start the parade and some
32
of the press had finally gone over to the Nazis' house on Greens Farms Road.
The television air was filled with bulletins. The Nazi cadre had been murdered during the night. The bodies of the six brownshirts, including one who was partially flattened, had been found imbedded in an inside wall of the house. They looked like fish trophies, one reporter said. Their bodies had been arranged in two interlocking triangles, the traditional Star of David.
"This is terrible," Chiun said.
"I thought it was kind of neat," Remo said. He smiled as he heard that the Zionist Defense League had claimed credit for the killings.
"A disaster," Chiun said.
"I thought it had touches," Remo said. "I liked the idea of the Star of David."
"Silence. I am not talking about your stupid games. Did you see what Variety said today?"
"What did they say?"
"They said that Robert Redford is out in Colorado making speeches about Sun Day."
"Good for him. Everything needs a little encouragement once in a while."
"And Paul Newman is practicing to race an automobile in Florida."
"Ummmmmm," said Remo, watching the television pictures of the Nazi house on Greens Farms Road.
"Why are they not here?" Chiun demanded.
"I don't know, Chiun," Remo said.
"Why have I been here for months eating seafood soup that I hate, waiting to see them?" Chiun asked.
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"Don't know," Remo said.
"I have been deceived."
"It's a deceitful world."
"Only this part of it," Chiun said. "Only the white part of it. This would never happen in Sinanju."
"Nothing happens in Sinanju," Remo said.
"If I ever see Newman and Redford, I will peel them like grapes," Chiun said.
"Serve them right."
"Even worse," Chiun said. "I will not let them star in my epic."
"That'll teach them."
"I'll get someone else," Chiun said.
"Good," said Remo.
"I'll get Brando and Pacino," Chiun said.
"Good for you. Don't take this lying down."
"I won't. Oh, the perfidy of it all," Chiun said.
"That's show biz," Remo said.
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CHAPTER THREE
Dr. Rocco Giovanni walked into the attached garage of his small house in Rome and opened the trunk of his Fiat. He noticed the car's dark blue paint starting to purple, and he hoped he could get another year out of it before it turned so bizarre a color he would have to get the auto repainted.
Inside the trunk was a leather doctor's bag. It was old and beaten. The black leather, despite careful and frequent oiling by Dr. Giovanni, had begun to crack and there were thin tan lines on the bag where the leather's innards had begun to show. The bag had been a gift to him when he graduated medical school almost twenty years earlier and he had carried it with pride ever since.
It was the bag he carried on those three days a week when he worked in the clinic for the poor he had built in one of Rome's worst slums. He slammed the trunk lid shut.
Inside the car, he started the motor, listened to it cough hesitantly, then with obvious reluctance come to life.
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He breathed the small sigh of relief he always breathed when the car started.