The foreman slipped the battery off the back of his phone. The shrill screech of his nerves immediately dissipated.
They were calling from Battle Creek, Michigan, but they might have all sorts of resources at their disposal. The foreman forgot about his new clothes. He just left, fast.
He drove out of Baton Rouge and didn’t stop until he was into Alabama, where he purchased rubbing alcohol at a truck stop. He rubbed down the phone with the rubbing alcohol, then burned it on the roadside with the rest of the alcohol.
He got in his car and drove for hours, then burned the car, too, in the bay of an unattended do-it-yourself car wash in St. Louis. He walked through the night until he reached a bank on the opposite side of the city. His safe-deposit box was there with papers for a new identity.
But he was still the foreman. That’s all he ever really was, no matter what the paperwork claimed. The foreman was famous and yet the foreman was like a shadow. He was too good, too clever, too gifted with his own special sense of self-preservation.
He could never, ever be caught.
Chapter 42
“He’s in Baton Rouge,” Mark said. “He disabled the phone. Must know the jig is up.”
“We have what we need from the MacBisCo networks,” Smith added. “Once Sherman MacGregor’s software is made public, it will be clear who was behind the ESN game fixing. That should dampen the international saber rattling.”
Remo hung up the phone. “Guess we’ve no more use for you,” he announced.
“You have two great faults,” Chiun said. ‘You are an insidious cornmonger and a despicable coward.”
“I deserve jail,” MacGregor said sincerely.
Remo grimaced harshly. “You deserve something more…what’s the word I’m looking for, Little Father?”
“Extreme?”
“Right.”
“Showy?”
“Maybe.”
“Ostentatious?”
“I prefer poetic.”
“Your brand of poetry comes from the walls of public washrooms.”
“Please arrest me,” Sherman MacGregor pleaded.
“Can we tour the factory?” Remo asked.
Chiun’s eyes went wide. “No, Remo, don’t do this.”
“Listen to him!” MacGregor urged.
“He is an incurable corn addict,” Chiun explained. “His very dreams are of the saccharine sweetness of the harlot vegetable, corn.”
“I’m not an addict,” Remo said. “I haven’t had corn in years and never dream about it.”
“You speak of corn in your sleep like you would speak to a lover.”
“Now you’re making up stories, and I don’t want to visit the factory to munch on cornmeal,” Remo said, putting an arm around Sherm MacGregor’s shoulders and walking him out of the office. The building was silent. It was 5:25 and nobody cared enough to work late anymore. “We won’t go near the corn, I promise. What I want to get a closer look at is that Nugget compressor thing of yours. We saw it earlier and I can tell you, that thing really is extreme.”
“Oh, lord,” MacGregor gasped.
“A waste of time,” Chiun squeaked.
“But poetic,” Remo said.
Chapter 43
They were at Folcroft in time for a late dinner. It felt almost good to be back there. Almost like coming home.
But not quite that nice, really. Folcroft wasn’t home. The sterile condo in Connecticut wasn’t home. Chiun’s monstrous recreational vehicle wasn’t home, either.
Remo didn’t know what home was, but for now, Folcroft would do. There were things to take care of. A new contract to negotiate. A parrot to interrogate.
“It’s the bird from Union Island,” Remo said. “What’s it doing here?”
“I know not,” Chiun said truthfully, regarding the bird curiously.
They had been to the Caribbean vacation spot called Union Island months and months ago. Chiun struck up a conversation with one of the tropical birds in the open-air aviary in the resort lobby, only to find out that it didn’t belong to the hotel. It had simply flown in one day and made itself at home.
When Remo and Chiun left, the parrot followed them to the airport. Remo was sure Chiun planned on taking it with them back to the States, and he didn’t want another pet. Chiun’s pets were always a disaster for Remo.
But they left the island without the bird, and Remo forgot all about it.
“Are you certain it is the same bird?” Sarah Slate asked.
“Yes, it is the same,” Chiun said in the gentle voice he reserved for two humans on the planet: Sarah Slate and Freya. “I recognize the pattern in its pupils.”
“It sure looks like it made the flight from the Caribbean to New York,” Mark Howard said. “I’m surprised it survived the journey.”
“Yes,” Chiun agreed.
Remo was getting impatient. “Hey, Chiun, what’s going on? Don’t you find this a little weird? It’s a big purple bird that flew thousands of miles to find you at a place it has never been before. That’s not usual.”
“Nothing about the bird is usual,” Sarah said. “I think it’s intelligent.”
The parrot chose that moment to recite a limerick about a woman, with angina, as well as other interesting anatomical novelties.
“That’s intelligent? That’s not even very funny,” Remo pointed out.
“Waste not my time” Chiun said to the bird. “Speak to me your message if you have one.”
The bird demanded food.
Chiun sounded like a spinster schoolmarm. “I hope you have not crossed the eastern coast of this continent simply for trail mix. I do not have trail mix, I do not consume trail mix and I shall not take the responsibility of providing you with trail mix.”
The bird was silent. Sarah presented it with a palmful of nuts and dried fruit, which the parrot picked at. Then it fluffed up and sank down on the chair back that was its perch.
“I guess it’s taking a nap,” Sarah said sheepishly. “It said those things, Chiun. Really.”
“Of course, I do believe you. And it shall say those things again, and when it does I shall consider the words. Until then, what more can I do?”
As they left the suite, the bird flapped across the room. Chiun gave it a glare. The bird flapped away frantically, just before it touched the old man’s bony shoulder, and settled instead on Remo’s.
“You inviting yourself over to live with us?” Remo asked it.
“Bring the trail mix,” the bird said. It wasn’t a request.
Mark Howard brought over a chair, as there was no furniture in their suite that offered the bird any kind of a perch.
“Polly’s not staying on Remo’s shoulder, got it?”
The bird ignored him, but flapped to the chair back when it arrived. Its sprained leg seemed to be getting stronger, and it hunkered down for a nap.
“Chiun,” Remo said, “I need to know something about one of the old Sinanju Masters. Something that is not in the scrolls.”
Chiun’s look was a mixture of delight and suspicion. “You have searched the scrolls?”
“The ones we have with us,” Remo said. “But I’m sure it’s not in any of the histories I’ve read.”
Chiun was still suspicious.
“It’s about Yeou Gang’s sleazy reputation. How come it was forgotten in just one generation? I mean, was there a war or some catastrophe that wiped out all the kings and emperors of the time?”
Chiun was quietly surprised that Remo had seen this missing detail in the story. “There was no catastrophe,” he admitted.