"Of course," said Remo. "It's simple. The blacks hate the whites. The whites hate themselves. The Orientals hate everybody. Still to be heard from are the white Ainu of Japan."
Chiun nodded solemnly. "I thought that was what had happened. Tell me, why do they all come this great distance to confide that they do not like each other? Could they not send each other letters?"
"Aha," said Remo. "They could, but they have no guarantee that you would deliver them yourself, and therefore no guarantee that the letters would arrive. It is simpler this way."
Chiun nodded again, this time unconvinced. "II you say so," he said.
"And why didn't Colonel Baraka contact us last night?" asked Remo.
"He is considering my proposal," said Chiun. "We will hear from him."
The two left their seats, having seen enough of brotherhood in action, and went downstairs to return to their hotel room, but in the first floor they were caught up in swirling pockets of small groups of delegates who were engaging in meaningful dialogue with each other by shouting simultaneously at the tops of their voices.
Remo was for pushing through and out into the sunshine, but he was restrained by Chiun's hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw that Chiun seemed to be interested in one of the conversations which pitted two Orientals against two blacks against two whites. Chiun slid between two of the participants to listen.
"America is the cause of the problem," said one of the Orientals.
Chiun nodded in agreement, then turned to a black who said, "Whites can't be trusted."
Chiun thought this a most worthwhile sentiment.
So, too, did the two whites who insisted that there had been nothing on the earth to rival America's villainy since Darius.
Chiun shook his head.
"No," he said, "Darius was very good."
The six arguers looked at the source of the new voice.
Chiun nodded his head up and down for emphasis. "Darius was very good. The world would be very good, if Darius still reigned. It was not my fault that he was deposed by the Greekling."
"That's right," said one of the blacks. "It was Alexander that done in old Darius."
"But what about the pharaohs?" shouted one of the white boys, a pimply-faced repository of insecurity, inferiority, and acne.
"At least they knew how to deal with the Jews," said one of the Orientals.
Chiun nodded. "They were all right," he said. "Especially Amenhotep. He paid right on time."
Even in this conversation, that comment seemed to make no sense, and the six young men stopped to look at Chiun.
"It is true," Chiun said. "Amenhotep paid right on time. Long live his memory. And Louis the Fourteenth too."
"What are you talking about?" asked one of the Americans. "You sound like a stooge for the corrupt King Adras. Long live Baraka."
"No," Chiun said. "Adras's ancestor was slow in paying. Otherwise, Adras would again have his throne. If he had, he would answer his mail. Long live Adras."
"Phooey," said the pimply American.
This guaranteed the wisdom of Chiun's position to the two blacks, who joined with Chiun in shouting, "Long live King Adras."
The two hundred and fifty other arguing delegates who had remained thought they were missing something when they heard voices raised louder than their own, and they stopped to listen to the words.
Then, lest they be left out of some very important new movement that could bring a new day of peace of the world, they picked up the chant. "Long live King Adras."
"Long live King Adras."
"Long live King Adras."
They vied with each other to shout the loudest, and soon the Triumph Building resounded with their voices and their echoes.
"Long live King Adras."
"Long live King Adras."
Chiun was leading the cheers as if he were an orchestra conductor, waving his hands in front of him.
Remo turned in disgust and bumped into the very bumpable body of Jessie Jenkins.
"Now that you've got us back to endorsing the monarchy, what's next? Feudalism?" she asked.
"You'll be lucky if he stops at that," Remo said. "How did your dinner go with Baraka?"
"Well, for a man with such a reputation as a woman user, he lost."
"Oh?"
Jessie laughed and the motion rippled her breasts under the light purple top she wore.
"It must have been that note I gave him. The one from you."
"Oh, you did deliver it?"
"Sure. I told you I would. Anyway, I gave it to him. He read it and ran out of the room as if his tail was on fire. Then he came back ten minutes later and ushered us out. Before the ice cream."
"That's interesting," said Remo, who found it interesting. If Baraka had taken the letter to show someone, that someone was probably Nuihc. It would mean he was staying right in Baraka's palace. Why? He was probably waiting for the right moment to move against Chiun and Remo.
"Anybody offer to buy your oil secret yet?" Jessie asked a little too conversationally.
"I've had a few nibbles. And speaking of nibbles, what are you doing tonight for dinner?"
"After the day's rioting is over, we get marched back to our barracks. There we are fed as guests of the Lobynian state. Then we go to sleep. No deviations will be permitted," she said, mocking a deep Nazi accent.
"How about skipping it and having dinner with me?"
"Love to. But I can't get out." To his look of surprise, she added, "Really. We're not permitted to leave the camp."
"Maybe Chiun's right in pushing monarchy. People's democracy seems to have everything except democracy for people," he said.
"No gain without pain," suggested Jessie.
"If you could get out, would you have dinner with me?"
"Sure."
"Be at the main gate of your place at 8:30pm sharp."
"They've got guards who look like they'd appreciate nothing better than a chance to shoot you."
"Don't tell them my name is Goldberg," said Remo, and turned away to look for Chiun.
Chiun was approaching him now. The walls and ceiling of the building still resounded with cheers for bonnie King Adras.
"I think we have done enough for today," said Chiun.
Remo could only agree.
At the same time in Lobynia, there was another kind of agreement, this between Colonel Baraka and Clayton Clogg.
At Clogg's invitation, the two men had driven forty miles out into the desert to a mammoth oil field, the main depot to which more than two million barrels of oil daily from Lobynia's eight hundred wells was pumped for storage, and then for shipment by tanker to the rest of the world.
Clogg's black limousine had stopped near the depot, and he told his chauffeur to go for a walk, despite the bone-melting one hundred and thirty degree desert temperature.
"Before you ask," Baraka said, "I will not take steps to end the embargo on oil to your country."
"Fine," said Clogg. "I don't want you to." The look of surprise on Baraka's face passed quickly.
"Then what do you want?" he asked, not deferentially, but not rudely either.
"To ask you a question. What are you going to do with your oil"
"There will be buyers," said Baraka, detesting this pig-nosed American who instantly had put his finger on the weak spot in the "Arabian salami" tactics.
"Yes," Clogg said. "For a while. The Russians of course will buy to try to hurt the West. But eventually they will have stockpiled and will stop buying excesses because their economy will not stand the drain."
"There is Europe," said Baraka.
"Yes. And Europe will buy your oil until the American economy starts running down and then theirs starts running down. Oil is needed for vehicles and manufacturing and Europe must follow there where America goes."
How like Clogg, Baraka thought, to forget the other uses of oil. The human uses. Heating for homes. The generation of electricity. On his mind were only vehicles and manufacturing. He was so American-industrialist he would have been a cartoon, had he not been too ugly to be a cartoon. Baraka looked out at the acre after acre of storage tanks, oil derricks, complicated equipment, almost all of it operated by computers built by the American oil companies, but he said nothing.