"I'll get you back through Smitty," Remo said.
"He seems upset," Reva told Remo.
"He is." .
"Are you just going to leave him?"
"I don't need guilt from you, Ms. Bleem. Where are we going, anyway?"
"To Hamidi Arabia. That's where Wardley sent the shipment."
Chiun stepped closer and touched her arm.
123
"Where in Hamidi Arabia?" he asked. "Sheik Abdul Hamid Fareem," she said.
Chiun turned to Remo. "I will go with you, Remo."
"Why the change of heart?" Remo asked.
"Because I have business in Hamidi Arabia," Chiun said.
"Since when?"
"Since the time the land was green with rivers before it surrendered to the sand. It is an obligation. And we, those of us who are truly Sinanju and not just impos-ters with no sense of tradition or honor or..."
"Skip it, Chiun," said Remo.
"We honor our obligations."
"We have to stop in Marigot first," Reva said. "I'm not going to Hamidi Arabia without it."
"How do we get there? You can't get off this island."
"No problem," Reva said.
Her bullet-necked chauffeur drove them into Marigot, where Reva picked up four large gray metal boxes, each about one foot high. With great care, she had them packed in styrofoam. Remo heard liquid gurgle inside.
"What is in there?"
"Booze," she said. "The only thing you can't buy in Hamidi Arabia."
"Come on, with their money, they must smuggle some in."
"Yes. Ordinary booze. But not Lazzaroni Amaretto. That's the authentic Amaretto. Made from the old 1851 recipe."
"So what?" said Remo.
"So I buy my cars through Special Interest Autos and I drink Lazzaroni Amaretto. I want the best. What's money for?"
"I don't know," said Remo.
"Glory," said Chiun.
A U.S. Navy patrol boat pulled up to a pier in Marigot, looking for one Ms. Reva Bleem.
"You're under arrest," said the commander. 124
"Thank you," said Reva. "I have three friends here with me who are also under arrest." She pointed toward her chauffeur and Remo and Chiun.
"Certainly," said the commander.
And the patrol boat moved the four of them and Chiun's trunks through the Une of quarantine ships out across the Caribbean to a large pleasure yacht.
"I want you to look after my car," said Reva to the commander of the patrol boat.
On her yacht, Reva explained that the Navy commander would retire soon and that his pension was not as good as the one Reva had offered him to get off the island.
"Money buys everyone," she said.
"That's what people think of tribute," Remo said to Chiun.
"That's not what I think of tribute," Chiun said.
The yacht sped them to Anguilla, where there was a Bleem jet ready for takeoff. The jet ran on Polypus-sides, Reva explained, but already a few mechanics had passed out, and doctors said they might never walk again because their nervous systems had been ruined by some form of deadly gas.
"See," Reva said. "It's the exhaust emissions from burning Polypussides. It's not ready for sale yet. Now you know why we have to stop that bacterium."
125
r
Chapter Eight
Remo walked up the steps of the private twenty-seater jet, with Chiun and Reva Bleem following him. Oscar, the chauffeur, was supervising the loading of Chiun's trunks and Reva's packaged liquors into the hold of the plane.
As Remo stopped just inside the doorway at the head of the ramp, he felt Chiun suddenly brush by him, the breeze of his robe wafting past Remo's face. He knew where Chiun was going—to the seat he always took on planes, on the left-hand side, directly over the wing.
He saw Chiun walk down the aisle between the empty seats and could almost feel him chuckling at getting his favorite seat. And just because it annoyed him, Remo dove across the rows of seats on the left-hand side of the plane, like a swimmer making a racing start into an Olympic pool. Down three rows he skidded, then dug in with the toe of his foot against the back of one of the seats and pushed forward again. He turned his body in the air and wound up sitting in the seat over the wing.
He looked up the aisle at Chiun, who was walking toward him, but without a hint of expression, the Oriental sat in a seat on the right side of the plane. Reva Bleem still stood in the doorway, looking at both of them. Remo heard Chiun chortle, "Heh, heh."
"Something funny, Chiun?" Remo asked smugly. He 126
knew how annoyed Chiun must be that Remo had his seat.
"Heh, heh, heh."
"What is worth three heh's?" Remo asked. "I was just thinking of how predictably foolish you are," Chiun said. "You thought I wanted that seat, and so you plop your big fat white body down the plane like a flying squirrel to try to deprive me of it. But I knew you would do that. And I laugh because I did not want that seat. In aircraft like this one, I like this seat. I like to be on this side of the plane. Now, don't you feel like an imbecile, Remo? Aren't you even a little bit annoyed that I find you such a cause for amusement? Heh, heh, heh. Who would want to sit on that side of the plane?" Remo saw the old Oriental's eyes on him, little laugh Unes wrinkled in the corners as he chuckled.
"Heh, heh, heh."
"Good," Remo said. "I'm glad you got the seat you want because this is the one I want."
"It is yours, Remo. Take root in it. I have the seat I want," Chiun said.
Oscar, the chauffeur, came up the gangplank of the plane and went forward into the pilot's cabin. The door closed behind Reva Bleem, and almost instantly the jet began taxiing away from the hangar.
Remo wanted to be alone with his thoughts, but a few moments after the plane lifted off, he was alone with Reva Bleem.
"Do you two always argue over airplane seats?" she asked as she sat next to Remo.
"No. Seating's not important. Not to me anyway."
"Nor to me," Chiun called out from across the aisle. "I don't care where anyone sits as long as it is not here in my favorite seat. This is my favorite seat I love it here."
"Why don't you let the old gentleman have his seat without all this bickering?" Reva asked Remo.
"Shut up, will you?" Remo said. "Next thing, he'll have you running errands for him." He half rose in his
127
seat, watching Chiun from the comer of his eye. He just did not trust the old Korean. But Chiun's eyes were looking away from him, out the window, carefully watching the wing of the plane for any incipient signs of stress or fracture.
Remo pursed his lips in annoyance, then brushed past Reva Bleem and walked to the front of the plane and slid into a seat there. Within moments, Reva was sitting next to him.
"Where are you from?" she asked. "I don't know a thing about you."
"Everywhere and nowhere," Remo said.
"That's not much of an answer," she said.
Remo got up and brushed by her to sit on the other side of the plane. Reva followed him.
"Are you trying to avoid me?" she said.
"What gave you that idea?" Remo said. He moved again and she followed.
"Will you two cattle stop stomping around this craft?" Chiun snapped. The voice came from the left side of the plane, and when Remo looked back, Chiun was sitting in Remo's seat over the left wing. He smiled at Remo before going back to inspecting the wing.
Annoyed, Remo slumped against the window. Reva Bleem pressed her bosom against his left upper arm as she leaned toward him.
"Why are you being so unpleasant?" she asked.
Remo moved away from her breast. "Unpleasant? Who's unpleasant, goddammit?" Remo said. "All right. I'm unpleasant." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "I've got to find this stupid bacterium, and that's all your fault, you and your damned tax loss, and what the hell am I going to do with it when I find it? Punch it? And I've got him on the snot back there because he wants to go to work for somebody else and he's getting so he can't tell the difference between a plum and a pear."