Chiun turned. "Yes. What do you know of this?"
"It is a pollution headache," Lupe explained. "Many turistas get these things. They are not used to the thin air or the smog. Our smog, I regret to say, is also famous. Mexico lies in a high valley and the mountains that surround it form a natural-how you say-cop. "
"Cup, not cop," Remo said absently. He was looking at Chiun. He had never seen his teacher ill a day in his life. As old and frail as the Master of Sinanju appeared, under the wrinkles and semitranslucent skin, he was a human dynamo. "Are you going to be all right, Little Father?"
"We must leave this place as soon as we can," Chiun croaked. "The air is bad and the oxygen thinner than Tibet's."
"Soon as we accomplish our mission," Remo assured him.
"Mission?" Lupe asked.
"Did I ask you what color a Bimbo Bread truck is?" Remo said quickly.
"Si. And you would not tell me why you thought this important."
"Forget it," Remo said. "An idle question."
"Blue," said the Master of Sinanju. "Blue and white. "
Remo leaned forward. "How do you know that?"
"Because there is one in front of us."
Remo followed Chiun's pointing finger-it trembled almost imperceptibly-and saw the back of a blue-and-white bread truck. The word "Bimbo" was plainly visible, as were a loaf of bread and a fluffy white cartoon bear.
"Driver," Remo said urgently, "try to pull up on the driver's side of that truck."
"What is this?" Lupe demanded.
"Later," Remo said. "Driver, do it!"
The traffic was thick, but the driver tried. He jockeyed in and out of the traffic flow with a kind of wild precision.
At a traffic light, they pulled up alongside the truck.
Remo rolled down the window, getting a faceful of noxious warm air. He put his head out, but all he could see was a patch of sky reflected in the breadtruck driver's mirror.
"Can you see anything, little Father?" he demanded.
The Master of Sinanju put his head out. He looked up, and Remo saw his beard hair tremble. His tiny mouth dropped open.
And before Remo could react, Chiun burst out of the car, shaking a tiny furious fist.
"You!" he shrieked. "Traitor!"
Remo started to open his door, calling, "Chiun, what are you doing?"
The bread truck surged ahead, cutting off the taxi. The Master of Sinanju leapt after it.
Remo flew out of the back and gave chase, oblivious of Guadalupe Mazatl's shouting after him.
Up ahead, the Master of Sinanju was running like an octogenarian Olympic torchbearer, fists pumping high, legs working like spindly pistons under his flopping kimono hem.
The truck veered crazily, causing near-accidents at every turn. Still, not a horn honked. Not a curse was shouted in any language. Unless one counted the excited imprecations of the Master of Sinanju as he hauled after the zigzagging truck.
Remo drew abreast of the Master of Sinanju, his own running motions controlled and tight.
"Chiun! What did you see? Who's driving?"
"The . . . puff . . . President of . . . puff . . . Vice," Chiun wheezed. His voice rattled.
"You sure?"
"I would know that callow, treacherous visage anywhere!" Chiun wheezed.
"Look, you're not breathing right," Remo pleaded. "Leave this to me."
"No!" said Chiun, sprinting forward.
"Oh, great," Remo said. "Now he's got to show me up...
The Bimbo Bread truck came to a rotary of sorts, dominated by a huge white column surmounted by a gold-leaf angel. Remo grinned, knowing that the driver would have to slow down to manage the sharp curve.
But he did not slow down. With almost computerlike precision he sped into the circle and began orbiting the massive column like a satellite on wheels.
"What's he doing?" Remo muttered, falling in behind the truck. He stayed with it for one orbit. Midway through the second, he decided to cut across the monument. The noxious fumes of the exhaust were starting to make him feel whoozy.
Remo sprinted across the monument, up the shallow steps, and back down again.
He alighted on the opposite side-just in time to intercept the speeding truck.
His eyes flicked once toward the Master of Sinanju, pelting around in the truck's wake.
He saw a winded, red-faced Chiun, slowing down, his arms jerking unsynchronously, like those of a Boston Marathon runner at Heartbreak Hill, his legs wavering.
"He's in trouble," Remo muttered worriedly.
Suddenly, the Master of Sinanju stumbled, a big green colectivo bus only yards behind him.
Remo's eyes jumped to the approaching bread truck and went back to Chiun. The sun on the windshield obscured the driver's face.
Swearing to himself, he let the truck roar past and raced back to rescue his mentor.
The green bus was not stopping. The driver's dark eyes were fixed on the traffic, not the road. The Master of Sinanju was raising himself of the asphalt with trembling arms, his face dazed.
Remo's mind raced, making instinctual mental calculations he could not have duplicated with pen and paper. The speed of the truck, his own velocity, even the air resistance pressing against his chest. They all coalesced into some deep untranslatable knowledge.
Remo picked up speed, bent at the waist, and without pause scooped up the Master of Sinanju with bare inches between them and a big bus tire.
The bus whizzed by, sucking at the hairs at the back of Remo's head.
He deposited the Master of Sinanju on the grass of a little square park. He felt his own lungs burning slightly, as if he had somehow inhaled fire.
"Chiun! Are you all right?" he said with difficulty.
"The air is poison here!" Chiun wheezed. His eyes were closed, his thin chest heaving with each breath.
"Yeah. I'm starting to feel it too." Remo settled back. He concentrated on his own breathing. The air was heavy. He had been aware of it ever since leaving the airport, but he hadn't noticed the thin oxygen content. The pollution particles had masked that deficiency.
Now, in the strange humming drone of Mexico City traffic, he became slowly aware that his head was beginning to throb.
"This is not good," said Remo Williams, who had not had a headache or a cold or any other common minor infirmity since achieving the early states of the art of Sinanju. "And that Lupe is probably looking for us right now. Are you up to ditching her?"
"I am up to returning to America," Chiun said weakly.
"Soon as we can," Remo promised. He stood up, looking for a taxi.
He flagged down a yellow VW Beetle with black and white checks on the doors as it came around the circle.
"Where are the best hotels?" Remo asked the driver. "The ones with air-conditioning."
"In the Zona Rosa, senor. The Pink Zone."
"Then take us to the Pink Zone," Remo said, assisting Chiun into the back.
"Zona Rosa, si," the driver said. The cab scooted down a street and back up another. They passed streets with European names like Hamburgo, Genova, and Copenhague.
"You feeling any better, Little Father?" Remo asked.
"I will live," Chiun said stiffly. His eyes were closed. He looked very old all of a sudden, Remo thought. He always looked old. But Remo had long ago learned to trust-and respect-the power that flowed under the wizened shell of the man who was his teacher. He sensed that power ebbing, and it worried him.
Sooner than Remo expected, they were tooling down a street called Florencia, where a row of tall palms dominated a center island. They passed trendylooking boutiques and even some American restaurants.
Remo was about to ask the driver why it was called the Pink Zone when he noticed that the cobbled sidewalks were faintly pink from paint that had been worn thin by rain and the tread of countless feet.
Abruptly the driver pulled up to a corner. He turned around, saying, "Two hundred pesos, senor.''