"But whether you do or not is no concern of mine. What concerns me is your lack of manners, and if you mouth off just one more time, kid, I'm going to grind your shoulders into mush."
Remo pressed his right thumb in even deeper and felt her body tighten even more. Her face contorted with pain.
"Now we have had our little dialogue," Remo said, "and we have formed our revolutionary consensus. Correct?"
He released the hand from her mouth. She nodded and gasped.
"Correct," she said. "I will show the old man respect. I will take one step backwards, so that I may take two steps forward at a later date. I am allowed to speak the truth to you, however? Without fear of aggression?"
"Sure, kid."
"You are a shithead, Remo whatever-your-name-is."
She had begun to rebutton her great coat, using maximum energy on each large button. She had obviously remembered his name from the identity cards Remo and Chiun had flashed.
"Not an imperialistic, oppressive, reactionary, fascistic shithead?"
"A shithead is a shithead."
"All right, Miss Liu."
"My name is Mrs. Liu."
"You're married to the general's son?"
"I am married to General Liu and I am looking for my husband."
Remo remembered the small picture from briefing. General Liu's face was hard and weatherbeaten, with strong lines cut in the bitterness of many long marches. He was 62 years old.
"But you're a kid."
"I am not a kid, damn you. I am 22 and I have the revolutionary consciousness of someone three times my age."
"You have the body of a Md. "
"That's all you decadent westerners would think about."
"General Liu didn't marry you for your revolutionary consciousness."
"Yes, he did, as a matter of fact. But you wouldn't understand that." She buttoned the top button with defiance.
"Okay, let's go. Look, I can't call you Mrs. Liu for obvious reasons. You can't travel under that name either. It's already been proved we've got a system like a sieve. What do I call you?"
"Lotus Blossom, shithead," she said with ringing sarcasm.
"Okay, don't be funny," said Remo, holding open the door of the ladies' room and receiving stunned stares from passersby.
"Mei Soong," she said.
Chiung was waiting with his hands behind his back. He was smiling sweetly.
"The book," said Mei Soong.
"You treasure the book?"
"It is my most valued possession."
Chiun's smile reached for the outer limits of joy and he brought his hands before him, containing paper shreds and red plastic shreds, the remnants of the book.
"Lies. They are lies," he said. "Chinese lies."
Mei Soong was stunned.
"My book," she said softly. "The thoughts of Chairman Mao."
"Why did you do that, Chiun? I mean, really Chiun. That's really rotten. I mean there was no reason to do that to this little girl's book."
"Ha, ha, ha," said Chiun, gleefully and threw the pieces into the air, raining the thoughts of Mao in very small pieces over the entrance to the ladies' room of Dorval Airport.
Mei Soong's soft lips began to crinkle and her eyes moistened.
And Chiun laughed the louder.
"Look, Mei Soong, I'll get you another little red book. We have loads of them in our country."
"That one was given me by my husband at our wedding."
"Well, we'll find him and we'll get you another one. Okay? We'll get you a dozen. In English, Russian, French and Chinese."
"There are none in Russian."
"Well, whatever. Okay?"
Her eyes narrowed. She stared at the laughing Chiun and said something softly in Chinese. Chiun laughed even more. Then he said something in return in the same language. And Mei Soong smiled triumphantly and answered. Each response, back and forth, became louder and louder until Chiun and Mrs. Liu sounded like a tong war in a tin kettle.
They raved on that way at each other, the elderly man the young woman, as they departed the gates of Dorval Airport with ticket clerks, passengers, baggage men, everyone turning to stare at the two shriekers. Remo desperately wished he could just run away, and trailed behind pretending he did not know the two.
Above was a balcony packed three deep with people staring down at the trio. It was as if they had box seats to a performance.
And Remo, in despair, yelled up at them:
"We'll go to any lengths for secrecy."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dr. Harold W. Smith read the reports that came in hourly. If he had gone home to sleep, they would be stacked a foot high in the small safe that was built into the left side of his desk. If he stayed in his office at the Folcroft Sanitarium overlooking Long Island Sound from the Westchester shore, they would be brought into his office and quietly placed in front of him by an assistant.
That assistant believed he worked on a scientific program so hush-hush that it did not have a name. Smith's personal secretary was under the impression she worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation on a special undercover team.
Of the 343 employees at Folcroft Sanitarium, the majority believed they worked for a sanitarium, although there were very few patients. A large portion of the employes were certain they knew. Because of computer banks underground, they were certain they worked for an international scientific-marketing firm.
One employee, an ambitious young genius, had attempted to crack the computer's program for his own personal use. He reasoned that if he could gain access to the secrets of the giant computer bank, then he could use his information to make a fortune in the market, or in international currency. After all, why such secrecy unless the secrets were worth fortunes?
Being a bright fellow, he realized the secrets must be worth fortunes because, on just a rough estimate, it cost Folcroft $250,000 a week to operate.
So in little steps he began to make contact with other facets of the computer operations, in addition to the section in which he quite legitimately worked.
And within a year he began to see a picture emerging- of hundreds of employees gathering information, of profiles of criminal networks, espionage, business swindles, subversion, corruption. A computer portrait of illegal America.
It definitely was not marketing, although his small computer function had led him to believe that since it dealt with the New York Stock Exchange.
It puzzled him. It puzzled him all the way to his new assignment in Utah. Then one night, it struck him exactly what Folcroft was about. It struck him approximately 24 hours before he met a man in Salt Lake City. A man whose name was Remo.
For a day, he was the third employee of CURE who knew for whom he worked and why. And then he was intertwined with the shock absorbers at the bottom of an elevator shaft, and only two employees, Dr. Smith and a man named Remo, knew for whom they worked and why. Which was the way it was supposed to be.
Now the hourly reports were showing that perhaps the danger of exposure was imminent again, something that Smith had dreaded since the early formation of CURE years before.
He had dozed at his desk the night before, and awoke with the first salmon shimmers in the cold gray dawn, crowning the darkness of Long Island Sound. His oneway window to the sound collected early morning dew around the edges although he had been assured that the thermal windows would not do such a thing.
His assistant had just quietly deposited another report in front of him when Smith opened his eyes.
"Bring me my electric razor and my toothbrush, please," he said.
"Certainly," said the assistant. "That special clearing section is working very smoothly, sir. I must say this is the first information clearing center to work so smoothly while not knowing what it was doing."