"No," Remo said truthfully.
"Pong," Fang Yu said distantly. "Pong. A hollow kind of sound-as hollow as the souls of those who drive the tanks and the butchers who give the orders." She spat out the word "butchers" with sibilant vehemence. She turned suddenly.
"We have to assume this room is bugged. We will speak of important matters later. Where do you wish to go?"
"I don't know yet. I have to find a man. A Korean."
Fang Yu's eyebrows lifted like commas.
"He's on his way to Beijing, if he's not already here." Remo continued. "He may be with a Chinese, a young man."
"How will we know these two?"
"The Korean is over eighty, and he will wear a kimono. Probably of silk, and travel with several steamer trunks. Where he goes, he will cause great commotion. He's very excitable. His voice squeals."
A notch appeared between Fang Yu's slim eyebrows. "You make this Korean sound like Old Duck Tang."
"Who's that?"
"You know him as Donald the Duck."
"I think you've zeroed in on his personality," Remo said dryly. "Exactly."
"I will look into this," she murmured at last. "You will wait here. Are you hungry?"
"I will be."
The notch disappeared. "Then I will take you to a most excellent Chinese restaurant," she said, smiling again. "You will savor it very much. The food is what you Americans would call scrumptious."
Remo closed the sliding door after her, shutting off the clattery hum of Beijing traffic. He hadn't even noticed the sound until it was gone.
"I will return at eight," Fang Yu called over her shoulder.
"I'll be here," Remo said. He watched Fang Yu slip out the door, enjoying the undulant sway of her slim hips.
Suddenly, locating the Master of Sinanju didn't seem as urgent as it had been.
Chapter 14
There was a great commotion at the Badaling train station when the excursion train from Beijing pulled in, minus its red caboose.
In the soft-seat cars, the commotion manifested itself as a repeated forlorn cry.
"What about my luggage?"
"We search for passenger luggage," the unhappy Head of the Train said in his stilted English. He looked worried.
The Master of Sinanju arose from his nap and hectored Zhang Zingzong to take down his lacquered trunk from the overhead rack.
Zhang struggled with the heavy trunk, but in his heart he was grateful. There had been fourteen such trunks when they set forth. The others had remained in Havana, to be called for when they reached their unknowable ultimate destination.
Zhang Zingzong had no idea what their ultimate destination was, but he knew that what he carried in the teak box in his knapsack whispered of a thousand footsteps to come.
The Master of Sinanju following like a silken votary, Zhang carried the trunk out to the platform. He signaled for a rickshaw and loaded the trunk aboard. It filled the entire rickshaw seat.
"No room for us," he told the Master of Sinanju.
Chiun lifted a spidery hand. Another ricksaw rattled up, pulled by a heavily bundled man who might have been a young fifty or an old thirty. Beijing winters took a lot out of the men.
Chiun gathered up his skirts and settled into the open seat. Zhang started to climb in. The Master of Sinanju stopped him with a warning nail to his sunken chest.
"You will stay with my trunk," he said firmly, "and see that it is not stolen."
"We have few thieves in China," he protested indignantly. "Thieves are beheaded here."
The Master of Sinanju looked around him haughtily. "I see many heads," he said, "but I also see many thieves."
"No thieves," Zhang repeated.
"All Chinese are thieves," said the Master of Sinanju, staring straight ahead, his cold hazel eyes unwavering.
Zhang climbed onto the steamer trunk, wincing at Chiun's sharp admonishment not to scuff the lacquer.
"Wo-men yao qu Wan-Li-Chang-Cheng," he spat at the driver.
The rickshaws started up through the cabbage stink of the city street, leaving the excursion train behind. PLA soldiers swarmed over it like green mites over the corpse of a fire-blackened centipede.
They were passed by lines of tour buses on the way to the Great Wall of China.
The hilly terrain all around them resembled a bleak snow-swept lunar landscape. Here and there sections of apparently flexible stone battlements undulated into view.
The eyes of the Master of Sinanju grew bright as he recognized sinuous sections of the Great Wall of China.
"Faster!" he called to his driver.
The lazy Chinese drivers, of course, did not move faster, he noted. If anything, the obdurate ones slowed their lackadaisical pace.
The Master of Sinanju arranged his kimono skirts impatiently. Soon, he thought, soon.
The rickshaw pulled up to the tourist parking area in the lee of the Great Wall.
It towered twenty feet high, and was broad enough for horsemen to ride its stone-paved road-for the wall was as much are elevated road as it was a barrier--five horses abreast.
It dwarfed the people milling under it, as well as the many tourist buses.
The Master of Sinanju stood up in the rickshaw, his hands grasping the opposite wrists in the concealment of his joined kimono sleeves, and surveyed the Great Wall's lines.
This was the section that was open to tourists. The inner wall was despoiled by a modern brick parapet and handrail. Chiun wrinkled his nose. Was this what the Chinese had come to? Offering up their mightiest monument for the edification of big-nosed foreigners? Were US dollars so bright that they would allow even their supposed enemies to walk along its dragonlike spine?
Chiun cast his eyes east, where the wall had been desecrated by vandals. It lay in ruins. To the west, the wall was a vanishing small thing coiling through the Yanshan Mountains.
"Come," said the Master of Sinanju.
Zhang Zingzong dropped from his perch. Without waiting for word, he heaved the big trunk off the rickshaw seat and set it on the cold stone ground.
The Master of Sinanju bestowed a single dollar bill upon the eager Chinese drivers. He was astonished that they accepted the paper money without first holding out for gold.
Even their avariciousness had fallen on evil times.
"What will we do with this?" Zhang demanded, pointing to the trunk. The rickshaws were being turned around, their drivers seeking new customers.
The Master of Sinanju looked around.
"It will be safe on top of that bus." He was pointing to an empty tourist bus with an overhead wire luggage rack.
Zhang Zingzong laboriously carried the trunk over to the bus and clambered atop. He knew from recent experience what the Master of Sinanju would do next.
No sooner had he gotten to the top and leaned over than the old Korean reached down and took up the trunk by one brass handle. He jerked upward. Under this slight manipulation, the trunk seemed to become weightless. It rose floatingly, and Zhang had to scramble to grab the brass handle that was suddenly before his nose.
He wrestled the trunk onto the luggage rack and then clambered back to Chiun's side.
"What happen if bus goes away before we return?" he asked, looking around in case PLA soldiers had seen them.
The Master of Sinanju said nothing. He went to a rear tire and one sandal swept out. The tire expelled air with a firecracker report. The bus listed to one side. The Korean disappeared to the other side. Another report, and the bus settled further.
The Master of Sinanju returned, saying, "Show me the way, Chinese."
Zhang Zingzong started for the wall, going up the steep railed parapet to the top.
The tourists were a mixture of Chinese and foreign nationals. Chattering of Young Pioneers, wearing identical red kerchiefs, they strolled by under the watchful eyes of a woman with her hair pulled back into a tight bun.