With a slight smirk that looked ill at ease on Smith's drawn and dry face, he jabbed the point of his pencil down into the yellow pad, punctuating his anger with Remo, with CURE, with the President, with his country. But most of all, with Remo.
The object of all this indignation was, by then, on his way through the door of the lush cooperative apartment that CURE kept on the lower East Side of New York, Chiun trailing along in his wake.
"Is it?" Chiun asked.
"It is," Remo said.
"A visit to Brooklyn?',
"No," Remo said. "A lead on that Hacker girl."
"Oh, that," Chiun said. "Must we?"
"Yes, we must. Chiun, I promise you. A solid gold promise. When we're done, when we've got some time, we'll get to Brooklyn and see Barbra Streisands house."
"Her ancestral home," Chiun corrected.
"Her ancestral home," Remo agreed.
"That solid gold promise could be tin," Chiun said.
"Why?"
"You may not be around to fulfil it. And then, what would happen to the promise? What would happen to me? Is it really likely that Dr. Smith would drive me to Brooklyn?"
"Chiun. For your sake, I'll try to live."
"One can but hope,'! Chiun said, quietly closing the door behind him.
The Bard was a noisy bar and restaurant, in a narrow side street near one of the Village's main drags. It was crowded and smoky when Remo and Chiun entered and the smoke was not all latakia. Chiun coughed loudly.
Remo ignored him and led the way to a table in the back corner from which he could watch the street outside, and also keep an eye on any people entering or leaving the bar.
Chiun sat down on the hard wooden bench facing Remo. "It is obvious that you do not care enough about my fragile lungs not to bring me here. But at least open a window for me."
"But the air conditioning's on," Remo protested.
"Yes. And it pumps into the air minute quantities of freon and ammonia gas that rob the brain of its will to resist. The air of the street is better. Even this street."
Remo looked at the window. "Sorry. These windows don't open."
"I see," Chiun said. "So that is the way it is to be." He turned to look at the window, all small panes set into steel frames, and nodded. "I see," he said again, and even though Remo knew what was coming, he could not react fast enough to do or say anything to stop Chiun's hand from flashing out, and pronging a steel-hard index finger against the corner of a window, neatly blasting out a piece of the wired glass, almost an inch square. The piece of glass fell outside with a muted tinkle and Chiun, now feeling very satisfied with himself, slid across the wooden bench and put his face close to the hole in the window and breathed deeply.
He turned back to Remo. "I found a way to open it."
"Yes, I see that. Congratulations."
Chiun held up a hand. "Think nothing of it."
Then the waitress was at their table, young, dark-haired, pretty, mini-skirted, and more interested in who they were and what they were doing there than in taking their order.
"We're Cheech and Chong doing field research," Remo said.
"Yeah," she said, twisting her gum inside her mouth, "and I'm Shirley MacLaine."
Chiun turned and squinted at her. "No, you are not Shirley MacLaine," he said, shaking his head with finality. "I saw her on the magic box, and you lack both her manners and her simplicity."
"Hey, watch it," the waitress said.
"What he meant was," Remo said, "that you're obviously a much more complex personality than Shirley MacLaine and that you don't waste time in those ritualistic niceties like doing ballets with good manners, but instead you let it all hang out in a symphony of truth and forthrightness."
"I do?"
"Yes," Remo said. "We noticed that as soon as we came in." He smiled at the girl and asked, "Now, what kind of juice do you. have in the kitchen?"
She smiled back. "Orange, grapefruit, lemon, lime, tomato, carrot and celery."
"Would you mix us up large glasses of carrot and celery juice?" Remo asked.
"Macrobiotic, huh?"
Chiun looked pained. "Yeah," Remo said. "The latest thing. Mixed together, they let you think in the dark."
"Hey, wow," she said.
"And no ice," Remo said.
"You got it."
When she had left, Remo upbraided Chiun. "Now I told you we'll go to Brooklyn when we're done. You've got to be a little more civil."
"I will try to live up to your nation's high cultural standards, and not let it all hang out in a symphony of truth and forthrightness,"
But Remo was no longer paying attention. him eyes were on a group of four who had just entered The Bard and were moving quickly through the dining area, alongside the bar, and then into a passageway that led somewhere into the back of the bidding. The first three were nondescript bomb-thrower types, a typical enough sight in the Village. Actually, so was the fourth, but with a difference. She was Joan Hacker. She wore tight jeans and a thin white sweater, a large floppy red hat and a black leather shoulder bag. She looked determined as she marched ahead behind the three men. Chiun turned and followed Remo's eyes.
"So that is the one?"
"Yes."
Chiun looked and said, "Be wary of her."
The girl had gone now into the back and Remo looked at Chiun questioningly. "Why? She's just a nit."
"All empty vessels are the same," Chiun said. "But some have milk poured into them and some poison."
"Thank you," Remo said. "That makes everything clear."
"You're welcome," Chiun said. "I am happy I was able to help. Anyway, just be careful,"
Remo was careful.
He was careful until the waitress had brought back their juice, and careful to ask directions to the men's room which he knew was in the back, and careful that no one was looking when he got into the corridor, then darted up a flight of stairs.
He was careful at the top of the steps to stay outside the door and careful not to miss a word Joan Hacker said, or a gesture she made.
This was made immeasurably easier because none of the geniuses of the impending revolution had bothered to close the door to their meeting room and Remo could see clearly through the crack.
There were a dozen of them, all squatting on the floor, eight men and four women, and the only one standing was Joan Hacker. Their attention was riveted on her, as if she were Moses carrying the tablets down from the mountain. Remo could tell by looking at her that she gloried in the attention paid her; at Patton College, no one had listened to her, but here she was a very important person indeed.
"Now you all know what the plan is," she said. "No deviation will be allowed from it. It has been worked out on the highest levels . . . the very highest levels of the revolutionary movement. If we all do our part, it will not fail. And when the history of the Third World's rise is written, your names will loom large among those who were the makers of history."