Chiun personally supervised the loading of his trunks, promising great rewards and issuing serious threats in regard to the safety of the fourteen ancient pieces of luggage.
"Don't let him go," Smith yelled to Chiun, who scampered like a fluttering flag around his trunks.
"Glory to Emperor Smith," said Chiun before disappearing through the door toward the boarding ramp.
Smith turned, felt himself rudely pushed aside by the oncoming members of the Third World International Youth Conference, and then found himself facing Remo.
"Remo, you've got to take this oil assignment. It's critical."
Remo focused his eyes on Smith, as if he were seeing him for the first time. "Smitty, you listen to me. I know who's behind the murders."
"Then why don't you go get him? Why are you going on vacation?"
"First, I'm not going on vacation. Second, I don't have to go get him. He will find me. No matter where I go. Good-bye."
Smith rushed back to the terminal desk.
"Where's that plane going?" he asked an Air France clerk.
"Officially and diplomatically to Paris, because it is not allowed to fly directly to Lobynia."
"But that's where it's going, correct?"
The clerk smiled knowingly.
Smith felt relieved. Remo must know something, or else why would he go to Lobynia. The assassins must have been in Baraka's employ. He started to go, feeling satisfied, then he turned. "Could I see the passenger list, please?"
"Certainly, sir." The clerk held forward the list.
Smith had felt good when he had learned the plane's destination. Now as he read the passenger list, he smiled one of his rare smiles. For there, at the bottom of the list, was a name he knew well. Clayton Clogg. The president of Oxonoco Oil.
CHAPTER NINE
"I hope we get skyjacked."
The girl had to shout to be heard over the noise on the plane, and she shouted with an exuberance that was reflected by very erect breasts under a thin white tee shirt.
"Don't you?" she asked Remo.
"Why?" Remo said, still staring past Chiun out the window of the aircraft. Chiun had insisted upon a window seat so that he could watch the engines fall off in time to say his prayers to his ancestors.
"That is the only way I will get my prayers said," Chiun had complained. "If I wait for you to tell me anything, I will never find out anything."
"Damn it," Remo had said, "I didn't know you want to know about Lobynia. How was I supposed to know about some contract the House of Sinanju has had for a thousand years? Do me a favor, will you? Write down who you've got contracts with and I'll hire a clipping service to keep track of them for you."
"It is too late to go making wild promises or excuses," Chiun had said. "I see that I will just have to do everything myself." One of those things was to be sure he had a window seat, and now he sat there, staring resolutely at the wing of the plane which Remo saw appeared to be on securely.
"Why would you like to be skyjacked," Remo repeated, louder this time, so he could be heard over the noise and music and shouting from the front part of the plane.
"It'd be exciting," the girl said. "And besides we'd be doing something. Really doing something. Like we'd be taking part."
"Part in what?"
"The struggle for liberation. The third world. Didn't you ever hear of them? Palestinian refugees. People who want back the land the imperialistic Zionist pigs have taken from them. Accursed Jewish devils. Do you know they took the best land? They have forests and lakes and land that grows things."
"The way I understand it," Remo said, "when the Israelis took it over it was just sand. There's no shortage of sand in the area. Why don't the refugees get their own piece of sand and make something grow on it?"
"Aha, see. You've fallen for that swine Jewish propaganda. Those trees were there. Anyone who says otherwise is a CIA stooge. My name is Jessie Jenkins. What's yours?"
"Remo."
"Remo? Remo what?"
"Remo Goldberg."
"Why are you going to Lobynia?" The girl seemed unconcerned that Remo's name was Goldberg. "Are you going to our Third World International Youth Conference?"
"I don't know," said Remo. "I'll have to check my tour guide. I think on Monday I'm doing the desert from two till four. Tuesday I've got sand inspection all day, and Wednesday I'm going to look at Lobynia's tree. Thursday we've got dunes. I don't know if I've got time for the youth conference. Lobynia is so full of things to see. If you like sand."
"You should really try to go to our rally. It'll be exciting. Young people from all over the world there in Lobynia to strike a blow against imperialism. To raise our collective voices high in the cry for international peace."
"And of course this international peace starts by wiping out Israel?" said Remo.
"That's right," came a man's voice.
Remo turned away from the window for the first time to look toward the voice. First his eyes lit upon the girl. She was black, her hair wildly afroed, her skin as smooth and sleek as anthracite. Her features were delicate and precise. She was a beauty in any color.
Behind her, on the other side of the aisle, was the man who had spoken. He wore bib overalls, a dirty tee shirt, and a Roman collar around his neck, above the tee shirt. He looked, Remo thought, like a white parody of a zombie.
"You say something, monsignor?" Remo asked.
"No, not monsignor. Just a simple parish priest. Father Harrigan. And I have suffered."
"That's terrible," Remo said. "No one should have to suffer."
"I've suffered," the priest said, "at the hands of those reactionary elements in our church and in our society who do the bidding of the bloodsucking, imperialist warmongers."
"Like Israel, right?"
"Right," said Father Harrigan, looking downward with a sad expression which he had obviously developed by resolutely feeling sorry for himself. "Oh, those Zionist swine. I'd like to burn them."
"Somebody tried that," offered Remo.
"Oh?" said Harrigan, as if he had never heard of anyone bold enough to steal one of his own, his very own ideas. "Well, whoever he was, if he had done it right, we wouldn't have had all this trouble."
Remo nodded. "I feel sorry for those two hundred million Arabs being picked on by those three million Jews."
"Damned right," said Father Harrigan. "And this won't be settled until we do it with blood."
He nodded his head for emphasis, his carefully coifed gray curls splashing down over his face. He directed his washed-out blue eyes away from Remo and back toward the front of the plane, where other delegates to the Third World International Youth Conference were disrobing each other in the aisles to the tuneless slapping of one guitar.
Remo turned back to Jessie Jenkins, looked her over and pegged her age in the late twenties.
"You're a little old to be traveling with this gang, aren't you?"
"You're only as old as you feel," she said, "and I feel young. Oh, I wish we would be skyjacked."
"No chance of that," said Remo.
"Why not?"
"Why? If the skyjackers robbed everybody on the plane, they wouldn't get twenty cents. And if they held all of you for ransom, the world would cheer, laugh, and tell them not to hold their breath. Skyjackers would have more sense than to nail this plane. The whole passenger list isn't worth capturing."
The black woman leaned closer to Remo. "There's a man in the back who's worth something."
"Oh?"
"Yes. Clayton Clogg. He's president of Oxonoco."
Oxonoco. Remo had heard of that. Right. From Smith. Smith thought Oxonoco might be involved in the murders of the scientists. Remo was about to turn to look at Clayton Clogg, when Jessie said, "But you didn't tell me why you're really going to Lobynia."