"Can you drive a bus?" Chiun demanded of Zhang.
"No," said Zhang. "I have never driven anything."
"Then I will teach you," the Master of Sinanju said.
He hustled Zhang into the crowd of foreign tourists who were waiting for the driver to restore their bus to running order.
Chiun separated the folding doors and pushed a hesitant Zhang in. No one thought there was anything unusual in this, and so no one protested.
Zhang found himself pushed into the driver's seat. He looked around the steering wheel nervously.
"What I do?" he muttered.
"Wait," Chiun hissed. He drifted to the back and saw that the driver had finished tightening the lugs. He began cranking the hand jack. The bus was slowly ratcheted back to its normal pitch.
Chiun flew back to Zhang. "Turn the key!" he hissed.
Zhang turned the ignition. The engine grumbled into life just as the rear wheels touched the ground.
"Now push that pedal with your foot," Chiun commanded, pointing to the gas pedal.
Zhang hesitated. Then the driver jumped in front of the bus, screaming and waving frantic arms.
Zhang hit the accelerator. The bus surged ahead. The driver jumped out of the way.
"Turn the wheel!" Chiun cried as they barreled toward a fear-frozen gaggle of Young Pioneers.
"Where?" Zhang said, panic--stricken.
Chiun seized the wheel. He sent the bus veering away from the children, who scattered like white pigeons.
A group of PLA soldiers rushed out of nowhere to see what was going on.
They ran directly into the path of the bus.
"How stop?" Zhang cried, eyes so wide they looked like they would fall out from between their pulled-back lids.
"For soldiers," Chiun said firmly, "you do not stop."
The People's Liberation Army were used to being obeyed. They stood their ground, and waved their arms to signal a stop, believing that the Chinese driver would obey without thinking.
They realized their miscalculation four feet too late.
The bus began chewing up limbs and breaking bones.
Bodies bounced off the grille. They were all the same lime-green color, so the Master of Sinanju did not interfere with Zhang Zingzong's driving.
He was getting the hang of it. And so quickly. Perhaps the modern Chinese were not so backward after all.
The bus rumbled away. They lost a few rear windows to PLA bullets, but none threatened them. The Chinese may have invented gunpowder, Chiun thought smugly, but they had never mastered the art of aiming.
Chapter 15
The Green Lantern Restaurant was near Purple Bamboo Park. Remo was surprised, as Fang Yu led him inside, to find it not at all like the ostentatious Chinese restaurants of America, but a simple room with square tables out of a 1940's movie.
The waitresses hovered by the kitchen, regarding Remo with giggling girlish glances.
"Are they going to wait on us or wait us out, hoping we'll die of starvation?" Remo asked after they had endured a ten-minute wait.
"This is not a tourist restaurant," Fang Yu told him. "They have probably never served a Westerner."
"Think they ever will?" Remo said hopefully.
Fang Yu beckoned toward the gaggle of waitresses. Her command was short and pungent.
One waitress lost her giggly face and approached.
Her Chinese question came so rapidly Remo couldn't even distinguish between syllables.
Fang Yu spoke quickly in reply, making hand gestures that somehow conveyed to Remo a sense of many exotic dishes.
The waitress padded off into the kitchen. The others followed her shyly, with furtive backward glances.
Fang Yu turned to Remo, putting a hand on his.
"You will love the crap here," she said, smiling brightly.
"Crap? It's that bad?"
Fang Yu's eyes flew wide, her face going red. "I mean carp. It is fish. Crap is a different American word. I get mixed up sometimes."
Remo frowned. "I don't remember ordering carp."
"Carp is all they serve in this restaurant. It's a specialty."
Remo's frown deepened. "No rice?"
"Of course. What is a meal without rice?"
The food came in less than a minute. And kept coming. They served spicy dishes and bland dishes and intermediate dishes.
"I thought you said they only served carp here," Remo said as he pushed some spicy tidbit into his mouth with chopsticks.
"What you think you have been eating?" Fang Yu said.
Remo looked up in surprise. "All this is carp?"
"Good carp, huh?"
Remo nodded. So far it was. He had never been a fan of the tiny orange fish, but some of it actually melted in his mouth. A few dishes he had to push aside. The smells told him they contained ingredients that would act as toxins to his refined metabolism.
He wished he had put aside the boiled carp. It was the only dish that didn't taste good.
On the other hand, he liked the carp soup so much he asked for seconds.
Remo finished the meal with a bowl of steaming rice. It was the kind that clumped together because cooked grains were sticky.
"Japonica," he pronounced. "Grown, I'd say, on the island of Honshu."
Fang Yu stopped, a mouthful of Fragrant Carp on its way to her red mouth.
"How you know that?" she asked, startled.
"I know rice," Remo replied, tweezering another clump to his mouth with an expert flick of his chopsticks.
Fang Yu shrugged and resumed her eating. But her bright eyes glanced toward Remo oftener, and her smile came more easily.
Two hours later, they stepped out into the cold Beijing night, full.
"How hard is it to get a cab in this neighborhood?" Remo wondered, looking up and down the nearly deserted street.
"Nearly impossible," Fang Yu assured him. "I am surprised with you, Remo," she added.
"You mean at me," Remo corrected.
"No, I do not think so. You use your chopsticks like one born in China. And you can tell where the rice comes from by its taste."
"I've been around," Remo said evasively.
They began walking. The wind was cold and Fang Yu impulsively took his arm. Remo did not resist. He had become used to the familiar touch of her hand.
Here in China, he felt different. Back in America, he had learned to watch himself in public, careful not to make new friends or fall into relationships. It had been especially difficult these last few months, after an artist's conception of his face had been plastered on several consecutive editions of the National Enquirer, which claimed he was an evolutionary superman. For over a year, Remo couldn't move openly through the US. Lately Smith had agreed that memories of his face had faded. But only after Remo had pointed out that the National Enquirer wasn't like the National Geographic. People didn't stockpile their copies. They filled them full of coffee grounds and threw them away.
Here, in China, cut off from Chiun, he stuck out like a sore thumb, but strangely, Remo felt more comfortable. Maybe it was the company, he thought, glancing at Fang Yu.
"What are you thinking, Remo?" Fang Yu asked as they crossed a snow-slick street.
"I'm thinking that I'm having a pretty good time," he said truthfully.
"And I am too," Fang Yu said, squeezing his arm slightly.
"But I have a mission. I gotta find that Korean."
"I have told you, there is no word of him yet. What can you do without word?"
"I don't know," Remo admitted. "Guess I'll just hang around Beijing until he shows up."
"Beijing is the nerve center of China. If Old Duck Tang comes to Beijing, or any other place in China; I will hear of it. For no one can move unseen through China for long. China has a billion eyes. He will be seen, his presence will be reported. And I will hear of it."
"How?"
"We have a word. Guanxi. It means 'connections.' I have these connections. If there is word," she repeated firmly, "I will hear of it."