"Perhaps."
"I can't believe there are that many trained assassins who are petty robbers too," Remo said.
"Perhaps they are not trained assassins. Perhaps there is another reason," Chiun said.
"What reason?" asked Remo.
"We will see," Chiun said, and turned away to check the passengers on the plane. He liked being a flight attendant, provided passengers did what they were told. What he liked best was ensuring their safety, telling them what they should do in the event of a crash.
"The wings are always falling off planes like this," he would say. "When it happens, make your essence not part of the plane, but part of the pull of the planets."
"Yeah? And just how do we do that?" asked a rotund woman in the smoking section.
"Change your filthy eating habits first," said Chiun, who then decided that there would no longer be a smoking section on his just Folks flights. Instead, he told them to occupy their time with reading material. He passed out petitions and brief excerpts from an Ung poem praising the first petal of the first flower on the first morning of the new dawn.
"I don't like that flowery crap," said one young man. "I'd rather smoke." Chiun showed him how he really didn't need a seat beak to stay transfixed to his seat. He did it with the young man's spinal column, and instantly the youth's appreciation of poetry rose. He loved the poem.
Chiun said he did not want the young man to appreciate the poem because he was being forced to appreciate it, because then he would not really appreciate it at all. The youth swore over and over again that he was not being forced. There were tears in his eyes.
Chiun visited with passengers. He especially appreciated parents' tales of their children's ingratitude, and called Remo over to listen to many of them.
And then Remo noticed a young blond woman with milkmaid skin, very interested in an elderly gentleman who was going on about the meaning of spastic fabrics in a nonspastic world, as he called it.
Everyone around that seat was dozing, having been put under by the interminable Ung poetry. Except for the girl. Her blue eyes were wide, gaga with the wisdom of not trying to market nonspastic fabrics in a spastic world, and vice versa. The man was obviously a salesman of some sort. Remo knew this because the man talked in terms that could have been used reasonably only by Napoleon or Alexander the Great.
The man had New England and South America. He would control Canada. He wouldn't move into Europe because that was held too tightly.
Remo figured out that these were the man's sales areas. He never did quite figure out what a nonspastic fabric was, although he got the impression that it was used somehow in zippers.
Remo thought he recognized the girl. He looked at the passenger list and saw her name was Holly Rodan. He asked to speak to her privately.
"Don't be too long, honey," said the salesman. Remo brought the young woman up to the well between the cockpit and the seats. The copilot came out to talk to him.
Remo said, "I'm busy."
"Look, I'm a pilot and you're a steward. You're not even in uniform. You are going to make me a cup of coffee, do you understand?"
Remo twisted the copilot's arm in the shape of a handle, stuck his head into the coffeepot, then delivered him back to the cockpit soaking wet.
"You are now a cup of coffee," Remo said.
Remo tried to talk to the young woman, but a passenger came up into the well wanting a drink. "Speak to the other one," Remo said.
"He said to talk to you."
"What do you want?"
"I want a rum fizzle. Do you have a rum fizzle?"
"Take whatever you want," Remo said.
The passenger poked around in the liquor bin. Holly said she wanted to go back to her seat. She asked nicely and she was answered nicely. No.
"I don't see any rum fizzles," the passenger said.
"Take what's there," Remo said.
"Can I have a vodka and rum?"
"Sure. Take it and go," Remo said. "Can I have two?"
"Take them. Go."
"Two of them?"
"All of them," Remo said.
"Are you really a steward?" Holly asked Remo. She was not afraid. She had Her on her side.
"Sure," said Remo. "I've even seen you before. On this flight."
"Not on this flight," said Holly. "This flight only began a half-hour ago." It was a perfect answer. She liked putting people in their places. Mother had taught her how. It was the only thing her mother had ever been good for.
Remo suggested that now, since the coffeepot wasn't using the hotplate, she might like to sit there.
"You can't talk to me like that. There are regulations. You'll get fired."
"All right," said Remo.
"That's it?"
"Yup," he said.
"Nothing else?"
"Go back to your seat."
She did, and Remo watched her go. There was something wrong with this young lady. He wondered if Chiun had noticed it, but Chiun was busy with several people who were agreeing with him that workmanship throughout America was becoming shoddy. The true professional was a thing of the past. Chiun nodded sagely and pulled another petition from his kimono: "STOP AMATEUR ASSASSINS."
Remo let Holly Rodan get off the plane with the man she had been fawning over, but just as she was about to be picked up by some young friends, Remo moved in on the car and told the salesman to get lost.
The man threatened to call the police. Remo noticed his wedding ring and said, "Good. And call your wife too."
"Talk about a semischeduled airline. I've never seen such bad service," the salesman said.
"He has a right to come with us," said Holly. "We want to give him a lift."
"Give me a lift," said Remo.
"We don't want to give you a lift."
"We'll give him a lift," said the man in the front seat.
"We're not giving this son of a bitch a lift," Holly said. "I've got the other man who wants to go with us, and we're not giving this one a lift. He's a lousy stewardess and I wouldn't give him a lift to hell in a handbasket. "
The young man in the front seat did not try to reason with her, as her mother had, nor did he seek, as her father had, to understand the deeper meaning of her complaints. He did not attempt, as her teachers had, to establish a bridge of understanding.
What he did was far more effective than anything else that had ever been practiced on her. He slapped her in the mouth. Very hard.
"We would be happy to give you a lift, traveler," she told Remo.
"Much obliged," he said. "You people travel much?"
"Only when we have to," said the man next to the driver. The airport was Raleigh-Durham and they asked Remo if he wanted to go to Duke University or Chapel Hill.
"I just want to talk," Remo said.
"We like to talk too," said the passenger in the front seat. His hand rested over his shirt pocket and Remo knew that the pocket contained a weapon, although all that he could see was a yellow handkerchief.
They stopped the car near a small woods to have a picnic. They said they were hungry and had, in fact, been describing the odors and tastes, the crispness of fried chicken, the succulence of lobster in butter, the smooth richness of chocolate in the throat. When Remo thought about these things, his stomach became queasy, but he said nothing because, they obviously were trying to work up his appetite.
They parked the car and walked with Remo along a little path to a clearing, where they opened a picnic basket.
"Excuse me," said the man who had been sitting next to the driver. "Can I get this around your throat?"
"Sure," said Remo. So the handkerchief wasn't hiding a weapon. It was the weapon. The others grabbed his legs and hands. The handkerchief became a cord and circled his neck and then closed and tightened. Remo counteracted the contraction with neck pressure. He did not fight it with his muscles. He just lay there with people sprawled across his arms and legs.