"Nine. And that's it."
"For this special emergency, your will overrules the very tides," Chiun said.
"Something is wrong with Remo," Smith said again, "and we need him. This danger has just gotten worse, and he's not willing to do anything about it."
"It will be done," Chiun said. "What will?"
"What is needed to be done," Chiun said, and such was the authority of his voice and the grace of his body and movements that Smith, at that moment, believed him. Why not? This was Sinanju, and it had not survived for thousands of years because these people did not know their business.
"Did Remo tell you what this case is all about?" Smith asked.
"In his halting way," Chiun answered. "He is only eloquent when speaking about injustices done to my village."
"Someone is killing people who fly aboard aircraft. Now, you might think the number of deaths small-" Smith did not get a chance to finish the sentence because Chiun spoke first.
"The deaths themselves are unimportant. Robbers and murderers do not make roads unsafe or impassable. They kill only a few at worst. What makes a road impassable is that people believe it is. If travelers come to believe they cannot move with safety, they will cease to use your roads. And this country's roads are in the sky."
"It is a danger," Smith agreed.
"More than a danger," said the Master of Sinanju. "It is the end of civilization. Goods would not travel, and neither would ideas."
"We've just been lucky so far that the news media haven't picked up on it," Smith said. "Do you think you can get Remo to understand why this is important?"
Chiun said, "I will try, Emperor," but he did not know if he could. However, he did know he would not be the one to let this civilization die, because he was the Master of Sinanju who had been contracted to save it. Failing would be too much shame to bear and would humiliate him in the eyes of all the ancestors who had gone before.
Chiun would have to tell Remo something that he had hidden for all these years. He would have to tell him about the shame of Sinanju, about Master Wu, who lost Rome.
And then he would have to find out exactly what was bothering Remo.
A. H. Baynes liked to run a tight ship, and his staff had standing orders to show him any paperwork that was out of the ordinary. So when the request was received in the mail asking for a refund on the year-round consumer-fare ticket, he thought it was worth looking into. It was the only year-round consumer-fare ticket that had been sold by just Folks, and he looked at the letter and saw it had been bought by a small religious community in New Orleans.
He instructed his New Orleans area manager to find out why the refund was being sought.
A week later, the area manager had not been heard from. When his paycheck remained uncashed, this strange incident came up on Baynes's computer terminal.
For the first time, Baynes noticed the area manager's name, and wondered where he had seen it before. He checked it with his computer and found out.
The area manager had advised him once by note that he was going to track the stranglings just in case anyone tried to sue just Folks Airlines for the deaths.
Baynes was about to put it out of his mind and forget it when his attention was called to a news clipping. The area manager's body had been found. His face was blue from the last horrible moments without air, his pockets had been emptied. He left five-his wife, three children, and an ailing mother.
Another murder, and there had been nine others in the past few weeks of people who had not been flying just Folks. Quietly, Baynes programmed his computer to find out who had purchased tickets on overseas flights after which passengers had been strangled and robbed.
On every flight after which there had been a murder, Baynes saw the name of the same ticket purchaser: it was the little religious group in New Orleans that had just asked for a refund on its just Folks tickets.
It was immediately clear to Baynes. He had found the passenger killers. It was someone connected with that religious group. And what they had done was equally clear: first they had flown just Folks, killing passengers. And then they had moved up in the world, flying bigger and more expensive airlines, and killing and robbing richer passengers. Since the first death involving an overseas airline, there had been no more murders of just Folks's passengers.
He felt exultant. He had figured it out, and those two idiotic investigators from the NAA were still out there somewhere flying just Folks, and they hadn't figured out anything yet. So much for free enterprise versus government, he thought.
For a moment he considered letting the government know of his findings immediately, and then he paused and considered some more. He certainly wasn't going to rush toward some public acclaim before thinking everything through. He had not gone to Cambridge Business College so that he could forget its most important lesson: how can I make some profit out of this?
He phoned the ashram in New Orleans and asked to speak to its spiritual leader.
"We are most sorry. The Holy One cannot answer the telephone. He is communing in his holy office."
"Tell the Holy One that if he doesn't commune with me on the phone, he'll be communing with the police in person. I know what you people are doing to airline passengers."
"Hello," came the high-pitched voice of an Indian a few moments later. "How can the blessings of cosmic unity be bestowed upon your consciousness?"
"I know what you're doing with airline passengers," Baynes said.
"We bless the whole world with our mantras."
"I don't want your blessings," Baynes said.
"Have a mantra. No charge. I'll give you a free one over the phone and call it even."
"I want to know how you do what you do," Baynes said.
"Dear kind sir," said Ban Sar Din. "If I should be doing something of an illegal nature, I certainly would not discuss it over the telephone."
"And I certainly wouldn't put my neck within grasp of any of you people."
"Stalemate," said Ban Sar Din.
"The police can probably break the stalemate," Baynes said.
"We fear no police. We serve the cult of Kali," Ban Sar Din said.
"A religious thing?" Baynes said.
"Yes."
"Then you don't pay taxes. Everything above overhead is profit."
"How American to think of money in connection with holy work," said Ban Sar Din.
"How Indian to turn holy work into murder," said Baynes. "Do you know the number of the New Orleans police? Save me a dime."
A compromise was struck. Baynes would come to New Orleans and he would meet Ban Sar Din, alone, in a public restaurant, and they would talk.
Agreed. "Travel safely," Ban Sar Din said.
"You better believe it. I'm flying Delta," said Baynes.
In the restaurant, Baynes got right down to business: "Your gang is killing travelers so they can rob them."
And Ban Sar Din, who recognized a kindred spirit when he encountered one, said, "You think this is easy? You don't know what the hell I've been living with. These people are nuts. They don't care about anything except a statue I have in the ashram."
"They're your people, aren't they? They call you the Holy One."
"I can't control them. They don't care about money, they don't care about living well, or even, damn it, about living. All they want to do is kill."
"Why do you hang around, then?" Baynes asked.
"I do make a small profit, a living so to speak, sir," said Ban Sar Din.
"You mean you have people who will go out and kill for you, risk their lives for you, take money off corpses, and give it all to you."
"I guess you could say that," said Ban Sar Din. "But it is not all as rosy as it might seem to be."
"Ban Sar Din, you now have a partner."