They stumbled toward the entrance to the tent, and Remo heard Melody say, "Wow, a prince for a husband. I wish Grandpapa could have lived to see this. And he always thought I'd need tits to get a husband. Glory to Islam."
Fareem touched Zantos's arm. "You are free, child," he said. "No shame attaches to you."
"Thank you, sire," she said. She bowed, and as she raised her head to turn away, she glanced toward Remo and winked.
"And now, if your son will leave us . . ." Fareem told Chiun.
"Be gone, Remo," said Chiun.
"Just like that? Be gone?"
"Yes. Be gone," Chiun said.
Remo walked outside. As he pased Reva Bleem, she said, "You stink as a soldier." Once out in the sand, Remo understood how Sheik Fareem had decided to punish General Bull's false pride, because the general was now leading the hundred remaining soldiers of the Hamidi army back toward Nehmad. They were on foot, and except for shoes, they were all naked. The sheik's men had stripped them bare.
Remo chuckled to himself, then looked up toward the road and saw Oscar leaning against the parked Rolls Royce.
And he wondered why the sheik hadn't brought Oscar in along with everybody else. Why did Oscar always stay by the car? Remo decided to find out.
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Behind him, he could hear the faint buzz of voices as Reva talked with the sheik and with Chiun. Remo strolled off, away from the oasis, toward the Rolls Royce. Oscar looked up when he saw Remo approaching.
"How'd you escape?" Remo asked. Oscar shrugged, and Remo realized he had never heard the man talk.
"No, really," Remo said. "Why didn't the sheik bring you in with everybody else?"
"I don't know. Go away. Miz Bleem doesn't like people hanging around her car." "Why not? I bet she's got lots of cars." "Listen you, you going to get out of here or not?" "No."
"I don't know why you're supposed to be so special. You don't look special to me," Oscar said.
"You know what I think? I think that maybe you hang around this car 'cause there's something here worth hanging around for."
"I don't care what you think," Oscar said. "I just want you out of here." "So let's take a look," Remo said. Oscar reached out his arm as Remo pulled open the front passenger door. Remo brushed the arm aside as if it were a blade of grass. He leaned into the car and opened the wood-fronted glove compartment.
Oscar came up behind him and wrapped his big arms around Remo's chest. He jerked upward to lift Remo off his feet and toss him off into the sand.
But Remo did not move. Instead Oscar's grip loosened with the force of his jerk, and he stumbled backward. He lost his balance and wound up sitting in the sand himself.
"But that'd be stupid," Remo said. "You wouldn't be hiding anything in the glove compartment. I've been riding in this car for a couple of days. I might have looked. Where are the trunk keys?"
He turned around and saw Oscar sitting on the ground.
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"What are you doing there?" he said. "Give me the trunk keys."
Oscar scrambled to his feet, brushed himself off, and said, "Not a chance." He assumed a fighting position, tegs spread, hands balled iato fists, arms raised in front of Mm. He waited for Remo to attack.
"Come on, fella, give me the keys. I hate to mess up a Rolls Royce."
"You better get ost of kere before I get mad," Oscar said.
Remo shrugged. "Have it your own way." He walked to the trunk of the car, grabbed the old-fashioned turn handle, and yanked upward.
The trunk lid squealed, and there was a snapping sound as the heavy-duty steel lock gave way and the lid flew open. Remo leaned into the trunk.
Oscar charged and let fly two powerful blows to the middle of Remo's back.
Remo said, "Now let's see what we've got in here."
Oscar took a stance behind Remo and set himself up as if he were ready to strike a punch-o-meter machine in an amusement park. Putting all 250 pounds of his body behind his blow, he crashed his fist into Remo's right kidney.
He felt his knuckles break.
Remo still stood there, leaning into the truck, rooting around. AU he saw were the styrofoam-wrapped cartons of liquor that Reva Bleem had insisted upon bringing to Hamidi Arabia.
"I wonder," Remo said. Oscar had recoiled, holding his broken right hand in his left hand. Remo started to open the tops of the gray metal liquor boxes. The first three held Lazzaroni Amaretto. But the fourth had no liquor. Instead it held another small styrofoam box. Remo opened it and pulled out a test tube stoppered with a cork; the junction between cork and bottle was sealed with wax.
He turned toward Oscar.
"What have we here?" Remo said.
"Give me that," said Oscar. With his left hand he
grabbed for the test tube, but Remo snatched it back out of his reach. He replaced it in the small styrofoam container and put the lid back on.
"You've had this all along, haven't you?" Remo said. Oscar didn't answer. "But why the hell didn't sweet little Reva just give it to the sheik? Why all the crap about waiting for it to arrive? Why'd she tell me that if the sheik got it, it was going to ruin her? Why'd she bring it here? Why didn't she just bury it if she wanted to keep it away from the sheik? And if she didn't want to keep it away from him, why didn't she just give it to him? Are you going to talk, or are you just going to stand there holding your hand?"
"Miz Bleem doesn't tell me what she's thinking," Oscar said.
"She'll tell me," Remo said. He walked away, holding the container of rapid-breeder bacteria under his arm. "You better get that hand checked," he called back to Oscar. "It looks broken to me."
196
Chapter Twelve
"The rapid-breeder bacterium has arrived," Reva Bleem said.
"Where is it?" asked Sheik Fareem.
"In my car."
"Bring it and we will use it," Fareem said. "If we needed an illustration of how low the Hamidis have fallen because of oil, we certainly received one today."
Reva nodded. "But the American?" she said.
"What about him?" Fareem asked.
She turned to Chiun. "Will you let him live?"
"Why not?" Chiun said. "His prowess as leader of an army threatens no one."
"But he could be a danger to our plan to use the bacteria," she said.
"He lives," Chiun said.
Reva shook her head. "After what he said about you too."
"What did he say?" Chiun asked.
"He said that he was going to kill you. That you were too old to matter anymore and that he was going to kill you to teach you a lesson. He said he didn't like Orientals anyway."
"This is very serious," Fareem said, glancing at Chiun.
The old Korean nodded. "Yes, it is. I will take care of him."
"When?" asked Reva.
"Now," said Chiun.
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They were met outside Fareem's tent by Oscar, who was still holding his battered hand. "He took it away from me, Miz Bleem. He took it away."
Chiun led them to Remo's tent, on the far side of the oasis. Remo heard them coming. He was lying on his sleeping mat.
"Remo," he heard Chiun call.
"What do you want?" he yelled back.
"Where is it?" Chiun called.
"Safe. Where nobody can touch it," Remo said.
"You have it in there with you, don't you?" Chiun called.
"No, I hid it," Remo said.
He crossed his arms on his chest and chuckled to himself. Let Chiun look. Let him try to find the tube of bacteria under the sand where Remo had stashed it. Thousands of square miles of sand. Let Chiun look. His side may have won the battle, but Remo had won the war. The bacterium was safe, out of the reach of Chiun and Fareem.
"Heh, heh, heh, heh," Remo muttered, loud enough for Chiun to hear. Let him look. "Heh, heh, heh, heh."
It would be impossible to find. Remo had been careful. Exactly fifteen paces away from the corner of his tent, due west, and buried under two feet of sand, then smoothed over. Not a trace for anybody. Not even Chiun.