When the plane was airborne, a stewardess came from behind the galley wall and looked over the first-class section.
When she saw Remo, she reached a hand up and opened two more buttons on her blouse. She was a tall brunette, long-legged and slim, and her candy-striped blouse was pulled tight over a full bosom.
"That stewardess is looking at you." Terri sniffed at Remo.
"Probably she's just trying to see to the end of her chest. Quite a set of chest, actually," Remo said.
"If you like cows," Terri said.
"For two days, you've been telling me to love cows. Now, all of a sudden, something's wrong with cows?"
"You're disgusting," Terri said.
The stewardess came to their seat and leaned forward over Remo's aisle seat so he could see into the dark valley of her cleavage.
"Can I get you anything, sir? Anything at all?"
"I'll have tea," Terri said.
The stewardess ignored her. "Sir? Anything?" she asked Remo again.
"No thank you," Remo said.
"Tea," said Terri.
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"Oh, come on," the stewardess told Remo. "There must be something you want. Maybe you'd like to see the galley where we fix meals. It's just up there. Come on. I'll show it to you." She took Remo's hand but he extricated himself from her grip.
"No, that's all right," he said, smiling at her.
"The washroom," she said. "You'd like to inspect the washroom. Come on." She took his hand again. "I'll show the washroom to you. Show you how the door locks."
"No, thank you," said Remo.
"Tea," said Terri.
"Come on," the stewardess said. "There's got to be something you want." She leaned over farther, exposing more of her bosom. Terri turned away and looked out the window in disgust.
"Something. Anything. I'll get you a pillow."
The stewardess reached into the overhead compartment, standing on tiptoe and pressing her belly against the side of Remo's face as she rooted around in the overhead luggage section. Remo turned to Terri and shrugged helplessly. Terri stuck out her tongue.
The stewardess slipped the pillow behind Remo's head.
"It's a nice pillow. Not as nice as the ones I have in my apartment, but all right. You should try the ones in my apartment. It's all right. My roommate's out of town."
Remo said, "Thank you. Maybe some other time."
Terri said, "Tea."
"The stewardess said, "Here, let me brush those crumbs off your lap."
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"I don't have any crumbs on my iap."
"I'm sure I saw some. Right there."
The stewardess brushed Remo's lap.
Remo sighed and reached behind the young brunette, placing his hand on her back, feeling the vertebrae of her spine.
"It think it's the fifth," he mumbled to himself. "Fifth or sixth. Chiun. Is it fifth or sixth?" he called out, as the stewardess continued brushing his lap.
"On a cow, it doesn't matter," Chiun snapped back, not turning away from the window.
"Hooray for common sense," Terri said.
"Fifth," Remo mumbled. "I'm sure it's fifth." He pressed his left index finger into the flight attendant's back. Her hands froze in position on his lap and a look of tranquillity came over her face.
Remo touched her cheek with his hand.
"Later," he said gently. Carefully, he turned her around and gave her a tiny push down the aisle toward the front of the plane.
As if she had no will of her own, she walked away, pausing to rest, leaning against a seat, then unsteadily lurching down the aisle.
"That was awful," Terri told Remo. She looked at the stewardess who was leaning against the bulkhead wall, her face wreathed in a smile. She seemed unable to move.
"What'd you do to her?" Terri asked.
"I just gave her something to remember me by. It was the only way to get her off me. You saw."
"How did you do it?"
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"I don't know. I touched a nerve. You want one?" Remo asked.
"Keep your hands to yourself, you lecher."
"Just asking was all," Remo said.
Terri watched the stewardess. She had been leaning with her back against the wall, and slowly her feet slid out from under her. In a moment, she was sitting on the plane's floor.
"That's incredible," Terri said.
"It's a pain in the ass is what it is," Remo said. "Women sense it and they just won't leave me alone."
"I'll leave you alone. You know, you don't affect me at all. I don't even really like you."
"Oh?"
"That's right. Nothing. You do less than nothing for me. Zip code. My ideal man is cultured, noble, regal."
"And my ideal woman doesn't have a loose upper plate," Remo said.
Terri harrumphed, got up and stepped across Remo. She moved to the other side of the aisle and sat next to Chiun.
Chiun said, "I prefer to sit alone. Be gone, woman." He spun around and clamped his gaze on the wing again.
Terri rose and moved to a seat behind Remo.
He turned and smiled. "Welcome to the club. When he abuses you, he likes you."
"You must both love me then," she said.
"Only him," Remo said.
Smith regularly awoke at 5:29 A.M., one minute before his alarm was set to go off. Then he turned
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the clock off so that the ring would not disturb his wife.
By this day, he awoke at 5:24 A.M., a full five minutes early, and knew something was wrong. He must have been dreaming. But what was it about?
Then he remembered. It wasn't a dream. It had been a thought. The lunatic he had been talking to in the West somewhere had been talking about motion pictures.
Suddenly, it all made sense-his talking about gross points, his maundering about how everybody was stealing from him.
Somehow CURE's records had gotten into the information system of a moviemaker. No ... a writer, as Smith recalled the conversation. Out there somewhere was a writer with CURE's records and now he was writing a screenplay based on the exploits of Remo and Chiun.
A small chill shuddered through Smith's body.
"Are you all right, dear?" his wife asked in the darkness of their bedroom in a little ranch house in Rye, New York.
"Yes. Why?"
"You're awake early," she said.
"Yes. I had an idea."
"How unusual," she said.
"Sorry to disturb you, dear," Smith said.
"Oh, you didn't disturb me."
"Go back to sleep, dear," Smith said.
"If you're sure everything's all right," she said.
"Everything's all right." Smith leaned over and pecked a kiss on his wife's cheek, then quickly left the bedroom to dress.
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But Mrs. Smith knew something was wrong, two minutes later, when the alarm sounded. Smith had forgotten to turn it off, and that was something he hadn't done in twenty years.
Thirteen
His bags were flawless. The ammunition and auxiliary weapons were stashed neatly in lead-lined cavities on the inside of mock typewriters and dictating machines, so the airport's randomly used x-ray equipment would show only the familiar shape of those ordinary objects.
But most of Commander Hilton Marmaduke Spencer's arsenal was on his body, built into his suit, his shoes, his sleeves, his belts.
"How will you get past airport security?" Wissex had asked him.
"The same way I escaped from Moscow in 1964," Spencer had said. "Did I ever tell you? I was"
"Well, I really have to go now," Wissex said. "Good luck on your mission."
"Luck has nothing to do with it, old top," Spencer said.
At London's Heathrow Airport, there was a long corridor leading to the waiting and boarding area for Air Espana planes. Only passengers were permitted past the human x-ray security machines that controlled the corridor.
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Forty minutes before he was due to board, Spencer was at a cocktail lounge in the airport, waiting for someone to arrive.