But this time she had failed and she cried all the way back to Washington. At the laboratory complex, she found the new scientists, apparently undisturbed by the death of their colleague. The elderly Oriental asked why she was crying. The sexy, obnoxious American seemed more intent on boasting about an even greater discovery that would eclipse that of poor Dr. Ravits.
"I am crying because I think that by my foolishness I have condemned thousands of people to death."
"Since when are you a graduate of West Point or Annapolis?" asked Remo.
"You're a-beast," said Dara.
"One learns to tolerate him," Chiun said.
"How do you?" said Dara.
"I must say that sometimes I do not know," Chiun said.
"I'm still not wearing a kimono," Remo said.
"He refuses to wear a kimono?" Dara asked Chiun. Chiun nodded wisely.
"How sad," she said.
"You are wise beyond your years," Chiun said.
"No. If I were truly wise I would have gotten Dr. Ravits' discovery accepted by the IHAEO."
"Why is that a problem?" Remo asked.
"You wouldn't understand," Dara said.
"Maybe I would," said Remo. "Then again, maybe I wouldn't."
Dara explained about the Third World politics within the IHAEO.
"You're right," said Remo. "I wouldn't understand, but look. We'd all like to see this experiment work. I think it would probably attract an awful lot of people."
"Not the killers?" said Dara. "We've had enough killing here."
"Maybe not enough," said Remo, thinking of the killers who were still alive.
"How can you say anything so cruel?"
"I move my lips," Remo said.
"We wish to help," said Chiun.
"You're so kind."
"One learns kindness when one lives every day with ingratitude," Chiun said.
"But you can't help. You don't understand the intricacies of the Third World and Third World politics, especially on the international level."
"Who do we have to reach?" Remo asked.
"You can't reach them. They're an international body. They have diplomatic immunity. They're all wealthy from their jobs. They can't be bought. Nothing can be done."
"Who is the most powerful man in the IHAEO?" Remo asked.
"Amabasa Francois Ndo. He is the director general."
"Where is he?"
"He is supposed to fly in this afternoon from Paris," Dara said.
"What tribe is he?" asked Chiun.
"You wouldn't refer to the director general as a member of a tribe," she said.
"But what tribe?" Chiun insisted.
"I really don't know."
"We will find out," said Chiun.
"You must never refer to the director general as a member of a tribe," said Dara. "You'll never get anywhere like that. He would have his bodyguards throw you right out of the room, maybe out the window. He is a very proud man."
"You just get Dr. Ravits' discoveries ready for us and we'll take care of convincing Ndo," Remo said.
"You mean the anti-immune pheromone molecules," she said.
"Right. That," said Remo.
"Absolutely that," said Chiun. After all, they were supposed to be scientists.
Amabasa Francois Ndo heard his pilot announce in his clipped British accent that the IHAEO diplomatic jet was about to land at Kennedy International Airport. He burned a little sliver of chateaubriand before the god Ga, a wooden replica made from the first willow to bend in the first storm of the rain season. A good Ga protected one during dangerous times. A good Ga could take an Inuti boy and make him a great man, make him a director general of a worldwide organization.
Ndo always had the Ga with him. He had brought it with him to the Sorbonne, when he was young and poor, living on the pittance paid by the French colonial government.
They had sent him to school where he became part of the revolutionary movement to remove France from Inuti lands. The French had built roads for the Inuti, established police for the Inuti, hospitals for the Inuti, laws for the Inuti lands. But the French lived in the big houses and the Inuti served them drinks on cool white porches as their untouchable cool white ladies looked on.
Amabasa Francois Ndo had two ambitions as a young man going to Paris for his education. One was to become the head of police, the other was to have one of those cool white women.
The second ambition was realized seven minutes after he rented a cheap room. He didn't even have time to unpack. The daughter of an industrialist, determined to end racism in the world, came into his room calling for a form of solidarity against people whom Ndo figured out were just like her father.
She issued this call while undressing him and herself. It was her favorite way of fighting racism. Unfortunately, Ndo, like all the other African students she met, needed penicillin to escape the ravages'of solidarity with the young woman.
Amabasa hoped his other ambition proved more satisfying. But he abandoned it when he saw how policemen lived compared to how ambassadors lived. He had a knack for seeing where movements went and gliding along with them. He also found he had a knack for eating at fine restaurants, and more than a knack for public speaking.
When an African student raped and then hacked to death a local Parisian girl, he knew immediately it was a case of a madman who should be put away but he also knew that all Africans would be blamed by some whites and that might eventually affect him.
So he took his last piece of a stolen crepe and burned it before Ga secretly in his Paris room. The smoke rose and he chanted requests for protection. Then he went out and made the first of his speeches about the ravages of French colonialism as if the only reason anyone could commit such a mad brutal murder was a century of oppression. He put on trial all the things and people he so envied: the gendarmes, the law courts, the big white houses and even the cool white women.
Surprisingly, none of the young white radical women were offended. They wanted to hear whites attacked, their fathers attacked, their brothers attacked, their lovers attacked.
This realization stood the young Inuti student well, because in an instant he understood that there was nothing so fraudulent or so malicious that would not attract support from some white groups, provided they agreed with the choice of target.
With proper respect for Ga, a brilliant appreciation of abstract concepts and a disregard for truth that would have gotten him stoned out of any Inuti village, Amabasa Francoia Ndo rose in the ranks of Third World diplomacy.
It did not matter that First World nations supported the IHAEO. The way to success was not gratitude but treating white nations like those white radical girls so long ago in Paris. Applause followed. Awards. Honors from the white countries he attacked. Occasionally there were efforts to turn the health organization into some form of international clinic but Ndo always managed to convince members to address broader issues. Colonialism was a health issue. Imperialism was a health issue. And when Russia weighed in, totally on the side of the Arabs, Zionism became a health issue.
Considering the makeup of the delegates, these were easier issues to deal with. Ndo was sure there weren't three delegates who knew a corpuscle from a tractor trailer. Most of them did have college degrees but had gotten them in sociology which made them virtually useless for anything but unfounded speeches anyway. He would never express that opinion, of course, because of the strong support of most sociologists for IHAEO. Not that he would ever let his son become one.
Amabasa Francois Ndo was at the pinnacle of his career when his private jet landed at Kennedy International Airport and his bodyguards motioned his armor-plated Cadillac limousine in from the hangar. He took the small wooden god and put it into the vest pocket of his three-piece Saville Row suit and prepared to debark. There had been some recent troubles with America threatening to withdraw its funding unless IHAEO started doing more health and less politicizing, but that would be easily quelled by a stroke of good fortune.