Dammit, Teterboro was important, no matter what silly proverb Chiun came up with at any given moment.
That hijacked plane to Egypt had been important and so had the skyjacking over California. Any terrorist activity now was important, when the nations of the world were so close to working out an agreement to cut down terrorists in their tracks. Chiun just didn't understand.
Remo knew that he, himself,, didn't hold out too much hope for the antiterrorist pact ever being the panacea that Smith seemed to think it was. Still, that was a decision for Remo's government to make. It was his job to try to see that the agreement was carried out.
Teterboro was tucked away in suburban New Jersey, only minutes from Manhattan.
Remo pulled into a parking spot alongside the fence that separated the hangars from a small side street, and walked through an opening in the fence onto the field. There were no guards, no security, no one to ask him who he was and what he was doing there. The airport was made for ripping off.
Remo was walking toward the control tower when he saw it. A Red Cross wagon was parked near the tower, its side doors only ten feet from the entrance to the tower.
A stakeout. Someone inside watching. But who? Friend or foe, Remo wondered, afraid that he already knew the answer.
He darted into a hangar, and moved through it, then into another hangar, and another, and finally exited somewhere behind the Red Cross truck. From the shadows, he looked the track over carefully. The windows were extremely shiny glass, obviously one-way mirrors and he could see no one in the cab. Casually, he strolled up to the side of the wagon and pounded on the two closed doors.
"What do you want?" came the lemony, puckered voice that Remo had come to know and hate.
"I'm new in town," Remo yelled, "and I want my brochure on local places of interest."
"Go see your Chamber of Commerce," came back Dr. Smith's voice, muffled by the closed doors.
"I will not. This is a welcome wagon, isn't it? Well, you just come out of there and welcome me to town." He pounded again. Inside he heard the shuffling of steps. He continued to pound.
Finally the door opened a crack. Dr. Harold W. Smith's beady eyes peered out, saw Remo, and did a double-take.
"It's you," he said.
"Of course," Remo said. "Who did you expect? The Man from Glad?"
"Well, come in," Smith said distastefully, "and stop that bellowing out there." Remo shared the feeling of distaste; Smith was interfering again.
Remo moved into the small van. There were three other men there besides Smith and they were carefully scanning the field in all directions. They did not even bother to turn their heads to look at Remo.
Smith pulled Remo toward the back of the wagon and said, "How'd you get here?"
"I drove."
"I mean, how did you find out?"
"Oh. From the people at PUFF. They're involved in it, you know."
"Yes, I know," Smith said.
His voice oozed disgust and Remo said, "You're not really sore that I'm here, are you? I can just as soon leave."
"No. As long as you're here, stay and watch. Maybe you'll learn something about how a professional operates," Smith said.
"How'd you find out about it?" Remo asked. "One of them talk?"
"Yeah. Some skinny little thing with buck teeth,, She was only too glad to talk. She thought the whole idea was stupid. Where is Chiun, by the way?"
"He's back in New York," Remo said. "I think he's working up a new supply of proverbs for next week."
"Proverbs?" Smith asked offhandedly, him attention fixed on a pile of papers on a small table in front of him.
"Yeah, you know, things like 'when two dogs attack, one barks, but the other bites.'"
"Dogs?" said Smith, not paying attention, resenting any distraction from the numbers he was reading on a long yellow pad.
"Yes. Dogs. You know, ungrateful curs. Bite the hand that feeds them. Carriers of dirt and disease. Rabies spreaders. Dogs."
"Yes," Smith said. "Hmmm,, that's right. Dogs."
One of the men in the front of the van called, "Mr. Jones! They're coming!"
Smith wheeled and ran to the front of the van. Remo shook him head. Jones, he thought. What an original alias.
"How many are there?" he heard Smith ask.
"Six of them," the man replied, his face still pressed to the darkened one-way window. him voice had that flat Midwestern label that FBI agents wear, "Five men and a girl"
"I want to see the girl," Remo said, walking to the front of the cab.
"You would," Smith snarled,
Remo looked between Smith and the agent and saw the six hippie types approaching. He recognized the girl from yesterday's PUFF meeting, but was disappointed that it wasn't Joan Hacker. It was time to wring the truth out of her.
They came closer now to the tower, skulking in the high-noon daylight, their attempts at being inconspicuous making them look like a marching band.
The three FBI men moved away from their windows and took up positions alongside the twin doors of the Red Cross van.
Smith watched the group from the window. "Be alert, men," he hissed. "When I tell you, open the doors, jump out and collar them."
Remo shook his head. Stupid. The place for the agents to be was inside the control tower, to cut off the six hippies. Suppose one got loose and got inside? Remo shook his head again.
"Okay, men, on your toes now," Smith said.
"Ready?" He paused. "Okay. Now!"
The three agents flung open the doors and jumped out onto the black asphalt. "Federal Bureau of Investigation," one called. "You're under arrest."
The sk hippies turned-shocked, and then five reluctantly raised their hands. But the sixth ran through the door of the control tower, heading for the flight of stairs. With a bound, Remo was out of the cab, through the agents and their captives, and then inside the control tower.
The youth who had bolted had a gun and he pegged a shot at Remo on the narrow stairwell leading up to the nerve center of the tower.
Remo made it miss and then was on the youth who never had a chance to fire another shot.
"All right, Fidel," he said. 'The war's over."
He collared the youth by the neck and beard and began to drag him down the stairs. Just as he shoved him outdoors into the bright summer sunshine, the youth began to laugh. Loud. Uproariously. Eye-wetting gales of laughter.
"What's the joke?" Remo asked. "Let us all in on it."
"You think you have caught someone," the youth said through his laughing. "But the revolution will go on. You have caught the barking dog. And now, another shall bite."
Inspiration. Suddenly, Remo realized what Chiun had meant. Remo and Smith were here, wasting their tune on a harmless dog. But there was another dog out there, somewhere, with teeth, and he was about to bite.
"Smitty," Remo yelled. "Quick."
Smith looked pained that Remo had blown his cover name of Jones, and even more pained when Remo grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to the back of the van, away from the ears of the curious FBI agents. "Quick. Is there something else going on today? Something to do with the terrorist pact?"
Smith hesitated and Remo said, "Hurry, man, or you're going to have a disaster on your hands."
"The three officers who are working out the agreement are meeting secretly today in New York," Smith said. "Finishing it up for tomorrow's meeting at the U.N."
"Where are they meeting?"
"At the Hotel Caribou."
"What time?" Remo asked.
Smith glanced at him watch. "Just about now," he said. "Room 2412 at the Caribou."
"Does this thing have a phone?" Remo asked, nodding toward the van.
"Yes, but..,"
Remo jumped into the van, got a mobile operator and called him apartment. The phone rang. And rang. And rang. Please, Chiun, be in a good mood. Don't break the instrument in half because someone dares interrupt "As the Planet Revolves." Please, Chiun, answer.