"I might in turn ask, since when have you questioned my decisions on the correct way to handle things?" Smith said stiffly.
"Since you've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off," Remo said. "Look, if you had told me in advance that the colonels were meeting today, we would have protected it. But we didn't know. And so we almost bought the farm. But now, we do know that the formal conference at the U.N. is tomorrow. So why don't you just go back to Folcroft and count paper clips? Chiun and I will take care of the conference."
"How?" Smith asked drily. "When you don't even know what way an attack might come?"
"I'll tell you how," Remo said. "I'm going back after Joan Hacker this afternoon, and I'm going to squeeze her like a lemon until she talks. I should have done that before. And then we're going to wrap up this whole thing."
"Absolutely not," Smith exploded. "You are going to do precisely what I say and what I say is do not, repeat do not, go blundering around. You might force the terrorists into some unpredictable action that we will not be able to control."
"And you'll be able to control anything else, I suppose?" Remo said. "How? With those goddam computers?"
"If you must know, I expect that those goddam computers, as you call them, will have enough information for us tonight, to absolutely guarantee the safety of tomorrow's formal conference. We are questioning every one who was at the PUFF meeting at The Bard. Scraps of information, names, dates, relatives and friends. Our computer will decipher it for us."
Chiun, who had sat quietly through the argument, looked at Smith and shook his bead sadly.
"A typhoon does not register on a computer," he said softly.
"Oh yes," Smith said. "You and all this nonsense. What is this business about a typhoon? What is this business about dead animals? I'm tired of hearing about them."
"They are legends, Dr. Smith, and that means they are true."
"Then what do they mean?"
"They mean that two typhoons may yet confront each other. They mean that the danger will come in the place of the dead animals."
"Typhoons? What two typhoons?" Smith snarled.
"Don't look to me for help," Remo said. "He won't tell me either." Chiun turned his back, indicating the lecture was over. Smith's face grew red with rage.
"Remo. You're off this case. I'm taking full control from now on in."
Remo shrugged. "Suit yourself," he said. He flopped back on the sofa, kicked off his loafers and began to leaf through a copy of Gallery, looking at the pictures. "Just be sure you do as good a job as you did today in protecting those three colonels," Remo said.
Angrily, Smith turned and left, slamming the door shut behind him.
"Poor Smith," Remo said aloud to himself. "He's gone off the deep end. Worrying about those paper clips and the cost of pencils and my expense account -it's finally all numbed his brain."
"No," Chiun corrected. "He is on the edge, but I see signs that he will be soon well again."
"Now how can you see that?"
"Never mind. I can see it," Chiun said. "Soon he will resume his life as if this period had never existed."
"Can't come too soon for me," Remo said. "He's nasty enough when he's well."
"In the meantime, however," Chiun said, "he has relieved you of duty. May we not now just depart from this place to a place of clean air? Perhaps Brooklyn?"
"You don't really think, do you, Chiun, that I'd walk away from this assignment?"
"No," Chiun sighed. "I did not suppose you would. Loyalty often transcends common sense."
Some day, this loyalty would be given where it belonged, to the House of Sinanju, which made this white man into a pupil of Sinauju. Some day, there would be a new Master of Sinanju, if misplaced loyalty did not get him killed first.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The waitress at The Bard remembered Remo. No, the girl who had conked out at his table had not been back. But the waitress would keep an eye out for her and if she could have Remo's phone number at home, why, she would be sure to call in case the girl showed up.
Next on the list was a phone call to Patton College to Millicent Van Dervander. Why, certainly, she remembered Remo.
"Are you coming back to Patton?"
"Why? Is your room dirty again?" he asked.
"No. But you and I could mess it up some."
Then followed the announcement that the bitch had not come back, but she had called. No, she didn't even apologize. All she had wanted was an address from the desk phone book she had left behind.
Whose address?
Let me look it up. It was the phone number of a dentist. She had lost a cap from her tooth. Millicent hoped the dentist would sew her mouth shut.
"Yes. Here it is. Dr. Max Kronkeits," and she gave Remo an address on the upper West Side.
Dr. Kronkeits' nurse was forty-two years old, had a tendency to weight, and liked to be home on time. She was just getting ready to leave when the young man showed up. He made it very clear that while the foolish world might have one opinion, his own personal opinion was that women should be substantial, not frail wispy things that threatened to evaporate when touched. Because, of course, women were made to be touched. Strangely enough, he conveyed all this information to her without saying a word, just by him look.
When he got around to saying a word, it was to ask about Joan Hacker. Miss Hacker, the nurse informed Remo, had called and was now on her way. Dr. Kronkeits was going to recap an upper right frontal bicuspid.
Remo explained to the nurse that he was from the FBI, that it was important that Joan Hacker not know that he had been asking for her, that when the case was over, Remo would come back and explain to the nurses perhaps over a drink or two, just how it had worked out and how helpful the nurse had been. Of course, secrecy now was essential.
And so it was that Remo was waiting near the front door of the West Side apartment building in which Kronkeits had him office when Joan Hacker arrived. An hour later she came out, and Remo began following her on the other side of the street. She wore tight jeans and a thin, white, floppy blouse, and she smiled as she walked down the street. Remo noted this was the most common reaction of people who are putting distance between themselves and a dentist's office.
She walked along Central Park West for three blocks, Remo casually strolling along with her, pace for pace, then she turned into a street in the high eighties. She sauntered down the street, happily swinging her red shoulder bag, and then turned into a small coffee shop in mid-block.
When Remo entered the shop, Joan Hacker was sitting at a table in the back, anxiously drumming her fingertips on the red formica table top, glancing over her shoulder at a door in the rear.
She hardly noticed Remo when he sat down across from her.
"Back again," he said. "This time for some answers."
"Oh, you," she said. "Why don't you just leave me alone? I've got things to do."
"And I'm not going to let you do any of them," he said.
She stopped drumming on the table and met his eyes. "You are really a ridiculous reactionary," she said. "Do you actually think you can stop our glorious revolution?"
"If your glorious revolution means rape and baby killing, then I can try."
"You can't make an omelette without breaking the eggs," she said.
"Particularly when your brain is scrambled to begin with. Now some answers. What's going to happen tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow?" She laughed. "Tomorrow every one of those delegates to the antiterrorist convention is going to be killed. Every one." She seemed almost pleased to tell him. "Isn't that glorious?" she asked.
"Murder glorious?" he said.