The engine whine changed pitch and Remo felt the pressure build up in his ears. He opened his mouth slightly and his eardrums cleared instantly.
A mountaintop poked up on Remo's side of the plane. Another appeared on the opposite side. The plane began buffeting.
"Looks like we're here," Remo said as the plane tipped its right wing, showing the sprawling Valley of Mexico below.
"What ruins are those?" Chiun demanded, pointing to a vast jumble of gray stone dominated by a great flat-sided pyramid.
"One of the Aztec ruins, I guess," Remo guessed.
"We never worked for them," Chiun said, dismissing the entire sweep of Aztec civilization with a papery frown.
"Too bad," Remo said. "They were right up your alley. Made the czars look like muppets."
On the ground, Remo went to change his American dollars for pesos so he could use the airport pay phone.
He returned to the Master of Sinanju with his pockets bulging with heavy coins.
"This place is worse than Great Britain," Remo complained as he fed coins into the pay-phone slot. "They got a million different coins and no paper money under a five-peso bill. If they ever get around to abolishing the dollar bill back home, I vote we move to Canada."
"There is no work in Canada," Chiun pointed out. "Nothing goes on up there."
Remo grinned. "Sounds like retirement paradise."
Smith came on the line, his voice lemony and sharp.
"They cannot find the President's body," he said glumly.
"Does that mean he could have survived?" Remo asked, hope rising in his voice.
"Impossible," Smith said. "Air crashes of that severity rarely allow for survivors. We have to operate under the assumption that we have lost our chief executive."
"Damn," Remo said. "Is there anything Chiun and I can do?"
"Yes, I've booked you on a Mexicana flight to the town of Tampico. That's the staging area we're using to process the crash site. You're now Remo Jones, a cultural attache with the U. S. embassy in Mexico city. "
"That means I'm CIA, right?"
"You will contact Comandante Oscar Odio of the Mexican Federal Security Directorate, the DFS, in Tampico. The Mexicans are requesting an on-site observer. Soon they will be demanding it. Your task will be to handle their on-site person. That will be your entree to the crash site."
"Sounds like we've just pulled baby-sitting duty," Remo grumbled.
"Call it what you will," Smith returned. "I want you in the area in case something breaks."
"What about the Colombians?"
"We'll close the barn door later. Just follow orders."
"You're a prince, Smith." Remo hung up. He turned. Chiun was looking up at him, his head cocked, his hazel eyes narrow.
"What?" Remo asked, placing his hands on his hips.
"Why did you refer to Smith as a prince?" he asked suspiciously.
"Now, don't get the wrong idea. It's just-"
Chiun's hand shot up. "No lies. Speak the truth only, Remo. If Smith is making his move now, I must know it. Matters of succession require delicacy and correctness. I will not be party to a sloppy palace coup."
"It's just an expression," Remo shouted. And noticing that he was attracting attention in the busy terminal, he continued in a low, controlled voice, "I was pulling Smith's leg."
"Over the telephone?" Chiun said skeptically.
Remo looked ceilingward. "It's another expression."
"I do not want to hear expressions or excuses," Chiun snapped loudly. " I demand the truth."
"Okay, okay," Remo relented. "Congratulations. You've figured it out. It is a coup. Smith is deposing the Postmaster General. All those free stamps just for the taking have pushed Smith to the brink."
"How does eliminating the President figure into this?" Chiun went on in a mollified tone as they sought the Mexicana Airlines counter.
"It's really, really complicated," Remo said distractedly.
"Ah," said Chiun, and lapsed into silence. Then: "You may explain it to me on our flight. I assume we are going to fly again?"
"Yeah, we're going to the crash site."
"Yes, of course. To cover up the evidence of Smith's plotting. A wise move, and politically expedient."
Harold W. Smith made the appropriate phone calls to the State Department, which contacted the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, which in turn put in a call to Comandante Oscar Odio's office in Tampico.
So when Remo Williams presented himself at the headquarters of the Direccion Federal de Seguridad in Tampico, no one asked to see his identification as he entered the white Spanish-colonial building.
A blue-uniformed guard at the main desk, however, looked at Chiun quizzically as he listened to Remo identify himself and then escorted them to the comandante's office.
Tampico Zone Comandante Oscar Odio didn't ask Remo for his identification either. He smiled broadly under a mustache so thick it looked as if it had been grown in a refrigerator. The first words out of his mouth were a silken, "Bienaenidos, senores."
"Hi," Remo said sourly.
Comandante Odio looked at Remo's casual attire, and his attitude cooled.
"You are the attache from the American embassy," he said, his black jewellike eyes gleaming. "Dressed like that?"
"I was on vacation," Remo told him with a straight face. "In Cancun. Didn't have time to change."
"And this man?" Comandante Odio indicated the Master of Sinanju.
"This is Chiun," Remo said without skipping a beat. "My interpreter."
Odio frowned. "He is not Spanish."
"Neither are you, Mexican," the Master of Sinanju snapped in perfect Spanish.
Comandante Oscar Odio winced. "I see. Still, you will have no need for this man, I assure you. For I speak impeccable English, as you can plainly hear, Senor Yones."
"Jones."
"Yes. That is what I have said. Yones."
"He comes anyway," Remo said flatly. "Or none of us goes."
Comandante Odio stiffened. "As you say," he said, the smoothness leaving his voice again. "A helicopter awaits us. As soon as the representative from the Federal Judicial Police arrives, we will be on our way. "
"The who?" Remo said suddenly.
"I represent the Federal Security Directorate. The Federales have insisted on having an observer also."
"Look," Remo said testily, "this is an emergency. Do we have to stand on ceremony?"
"This is our country, Senor Yones. Not yours. Please be good enough to enjoy our hospitality while we wait. Would you care for a drink?" Odio reached into a desk drawer and extracted a large bottle. "Tequila?"
"No," Remo said flatly.
Odio turned to the Master of Sinanju, saying, "You, senor?''
"It has a worm in it," Chiun sniffed.
A peculiar smile settled over Odio's handsome features as he returned the bottle to its place unopened.
Remo looked out the window, where an olive helicopter with side-mounted machine guns sat under a tall ahuehuete tree. Worry rode his hard features. The President dead. Terrorists involved. He wondered where the Vice-President was now and if they were still keeping the news from him.
Deep within the Sierra Madres, Walid cocked an ear to the roof over his head and listened to the clatter. It was thin, and growing thinner.
"The helikobters are not so loud now," he ventured.
"The roof," Jalid observed, "it is covered with sand. Perfect camouflage against the Americans."
Abu Al-Kalbin shoved another wooden spoonful of steamed rice into his mouth. He wolfed it down greedily.
"Are you sure this will help?" he demanded of Walid and Jalid, white grains clinging from his half-open mouth.
"The rice, it absorbs water in the bowels," Walid said sincerely.
"Soon you will have firm solid stools," Jalid added, smiling.