'I knew it/' Bootsy said. She turned to her fellow crew members and flashed a set of the most perfect caps her meager paycheck could afford. 'I told you,' she said with a superior tone.
Another stewardess, a twenty-eight-year-old molded-plastic beauty with lacquered hair and a nose that had been rhinoplastied nearly to extinction, put on a pouty expression. 'I knew it was European,'
she complained, as if this somehow gave her extra points. Her name tag identified her as Mindy, and she turned to the steward behind her for verification of her claim.
He, like Bootsy, was in his early thirties and, continuing the similarities, shared her strong physical attraction to the plane's copilot. The tag on his starched white blouse announced him as Brion.
His carefully plucked eyebrows furrowed as he looked the old man in 21B up and down. 'I never would have guessed Swiss. It's a little rougher than that, isn't it? No offense,' he added hastily.
The passenger squirmed in his seat. 'Please, I am very tired.'
'Of course you are,' Bootsy said in a motherly tone. She shooed Mindy and Brion away.
'It still sounds sort of German to me,' Brion said as he and Mindy picked their way back up the aisle.
'I'm sorry about them,' Bootsy said once they were gone. She sat in the vacant seat beside the darling little man and placed her hand on his jacket sleeve. 'They're really awfully, awfully nice. Except sometimes.' She laughed as if she had just said something terribly amusing.
'It is our burden to endure the imperfect,' he agreed. 'Tell me, how soon will we be arriving in New York?'
She checked her watch. 'Oh, another hour. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?'
He raised a hand. 'I am fine.'
'Then I won't bother you anymore.' She patted him on the arm and stood. She carefully smoothed the wrinkles from the front of her uniform skirt.
'You have lovely eyes,' said Erich von Breslau.
He considered himself an authority on eyes, having removed many sets of them from a large number of screaming, nonanesthetized patients.
'Why, thank you,' Bootsy gushed. She batted her glued-on horsehair eyebrows.
'They are very beautiful. Very blue, aren't they?'
He breathed deeply, considering. 'Tell me,' he said after a moment, 'are you a religious person? If you don't mind my asking?' He tipped his head and stared into her beautiful blue eyes.
Bootsy sucked in a mock-guilty hiss of air.
'Oooh, you got me. Not really in a strict sense. But my mom was a Baptist. My dad was Jewish.'
'Oh.' Though he tried to mask it, there was a strange coolness in his tone.
She wasn't sure what she had said to offend him.
'Not Orthodox,' Bootsy said quickly. 'He was Re-formed. He didn't run around with the curly side-burns or anything. We ate pork and everything. But with me and my brother, my folks didn't want to force us into anything— you know, they didn't want to upset either family—so they waited and let us decide what to do when we were eighteen. I guess I sort of decided on nothing really.' She held up her hands. 'That's not to say I'm not religious. I am. In my own way.'
'How nice for you.'
Bootsy beamed. 'It is, isn't it? Look, I've got to make my rounds, but I'll be back. Don't you worry.'
She touched the darling little man on the arm once more, reassuringly, and headed up the narrow aisle.
Dr. Erich von Breslau looked down at his sleeve where the Jewess had placed her hand. Though no difference was visible to the naked eye, he knew there now was one. He made a mental note to burn the jacket he was wearing once he reached New York.
14
'Yuck, this is disgusting.' Remo had already dumped the body of the young programmer into the back of the white van and he was searching the surroundings for anything Chiun might have left lying around in his usual earnestness. He found the head-less body of Ron Stern sitting in some bushes on the side of the road. He hefted the body into the air, careful not to get any of the drying blood on his T-shirt.
'You might have done a neater job,' he complained. He tossed the body into the back atop the others. 'Where the heck did you throw the door?'
He began picking his way through the nearby thicket.
Chiun stood at the side of the road. He seemed rooted to the asphalt. His face was etched in stone.
'You might show some gratitude,' he sniffed.
'For what? You know, if I'm not picking up after you, I'm traipsing off on some autograph expedition.'
'And you do neither well. The door is in that direction.' A slight upturn of his delicate chin indicated that Remo should search the thicket farther down the road.
Remo found the van door a hundred yards away wedged in between a cluster of maple trees. He trotted back up the road and jammed the door back into place. The hinges were ripped, gleaming metal shards. He used his fingers to twist and knead the steel into some kind of usable shape.
He stood back and placed his hands on his hips.
The door was crooked. He shook his head. 'I hope that holds.'
Remo walked around front and climbed into the cab. Chiun slid in beside him.
'You are welcome,' the Master of Sinanju declared softly.
Remo gripped the steering wheel and sighed deeply. There was only one way to silence the Master of Sinanju. 'Thank you, Little Father,' he said. He didn't glance right, but stared straight out the windshield at the midnight blackness.
'It was nothing,' Chiun said.
'Give me strength,' Remo muttered. He drove the van around to the front gates of Folcroft.
At this time of night, the guard on duty was generally either sound asleep in his shack or off somewhere else, probably chatting up one of the night-shift workers. Though Harold Smith would ordinarily not put up with such a lax attitude toward work as administrator of Folcroft, as head of CURE he occasionally found the man's incompetence useful.
Unchallenged, Remo drove the van around the back of the administrative building. He backed it up against one of the old, unused loading platforms.
He climbed down from the cab and stepped out from the small alcove in which the truck was nestled.
The lawns behind Folcroft were moist with dew.
They rolled downward to the edge of Long Island Sound. A decrepit boat dock rocked almost imperceptibly on the undulating surface of the water.
Chiun joined Remo at the front of the truck.
'Mission accomplished,' Remo said. 'Now, do you want to tell me the big secret on how to block out that interface signal?'
Chiun nodded. 'I will tell you, Remo. But you must promise to adhere strictly to my words, for to ignore them surely invites death.'
Remo agreed.
Chiun first glanced around the darkness of the loading-dock area, making certain there was no one near. Satisfied there were no eavesdroppers who might overhear his words, Chiun drew Remo down to him and leaned in close, so that his lips were a hairbreadth away from Remo's ear. When he spoke, Remo felt the warmth of his breath.
'The secret to avoiding the demon signal of the air. That is what you wish to know?'
'Yeah,' Remo said.
Chiun pitched his voice even lower. Remo had to strain to hear.
'Do not be stupid.'
Chiun straightened back up. There was a slight playfulness in his hazel eyes.
'Why doesn't that surprise me?'
