"Answer my question, s'il vous plait."
"No. It was yellow. Petrified the guys it landed on, too."
"You say yellow?"
"Yes."
"But now pink?"
"Yeah."
"Ze yellow scared some men, and now when ze pink light comes zey all lay down zeir arms and cease fighting?"
"I don't know if there's a connection, but sure, it might be that way." Remo looked at the girl under the beret more closely. "Anyone ever tell you you have a nice accent?"
"Yes," Chiun chimed in, "you have a very nice accent for a Frankish wench."
The girl glowered at them.
"What's your name?" asked Remo.
"Avril Mai."
"Nice name."
"Yes, you have a very nice name for a lying Frank," said Chiun.
Remo and the girl looked at the Master of Sinanju.
"She has just told you her name is April May," Remo told Chiun.
"Must be a Taurus. Are you a Taurus?"
"I am a Cartesian."
"It is an impossible name for a Frank," said Chiun without rancor. His hazel eyes swept back to the warm pink shine coming up out of the Crater.
The girl began backing away. "I must be going," she said quickly. "I ' ave a story I must phone in."
"Good luck," said Remo.
"Au revoir," said Chiun, waving her away with a graceful flutter of fingernails.
As she walked away, she began hissing words into satellite phones intently.
"What's she saying?" asked Remo.
" 'La charade se perpetre avec lumieres de tres brillantes couleurs. Les lumieres de tres brillantes couleurs sont la clef'," Chiun repeated.
"In English, I mean."
"The charade is being perpetrated with very bright colored lights. The bright colored lights are the key."
"What charade?"
"I do not know," said the Master of Sinanju, who had caught the eye of Mongo Mouse and exchanged friendly waves with the upright rodent. "And I care even less."
Chapter 12
Dr. Harold W. Smith was tracking the progress of the Second American Civil War on his office computer when he got the call.
On an amber map of the continental United States he was carefully plotting the position and movement of the converging forces.
The rogue Rhode Island National Guard unit was still camped out on the District of Columbia side of the Potomac, just above Arlington, under the watchful eye of D.C. Capitol Police while elsewhere other units were on the move.
It was an astonishing sight. On the screen, which was buried under the black tempered glass of his desktop where only Smith could see it, it looked as if mighty armies were on the march to Petersburg, Virginia.
Smith had assigned tags to each unit. The Confederate regiments were represented by amber numbers while the Union troops were assigned letters. These were keyed to a list of regimental names that kept scrolling by on the left-hand side of the screen like marching soldiers.
That they went by designations like the 13th North Carolina Unreconstructed Signal Corps, 5th Tennessee Butternut Guerrillas or the 501st Motorized Michigan Touring Teamsters did not detract from the deadly earnestness of the situation.
Bands of men with guns were converging on Virginia, armed and intent upon fighting the Civil War all over again. Passions had been inflamed. In many states, both North and South, law-enforcement agencies, unable to put aside their sympathies, refused to intercept or put down these rogue units of weekend warriors.
And from Petersburg National Battlefield was coming the first sketchy reports of a pitched battle under way.
It was high noon. Memorial Day, 1995. Perhaps the last Memorial Day in U.S. history if the tides of battle were not quickly reversed.
When the blue contact telephone began ringing, Harold Smith was so intent he didn't register the sound at first. It took three rings before his aged hand reached out and brought the receiver to his pinched gray face.
Harold Smith was a New England Yank, but his colors were Confederate gray. He wore a gray threepiece suit enlivened only by his Darmouth college tie, which was hunter green. His eyes were gray behind rimless glasses. His sparse hair was a grayish dusting on his head. Even his dry skin had a grayish cast, the manifestation of a congenital heart defect.
When he spoke, his voice was as flinty as the granite hills that had birthed him.
"Yes?"
"Hey, Smitty," said Remo in a bright voice.
"Remo, I have reports of a battle going on at Petersburg National Battlefield."
"Guess that's why they call it a battlefield, right?"
"Remo, this is serious!"
"No," corrected Remo, "this is over."
"Over?"
"Over. As in the boys can start going home now."
"But I have reports of other reenactment units moving on Virginia."
"Well, when they get here they can move right out again. The Blue and the Gray have patched things up."
"What happened?"
"Mongo Mouse dropped by, and everybody came to their senses."
"Remo, you are babbling."
A squeaky voice piped up. "No, Emperor, everything Remo says is true. Mongo came, along with Dingbat and others of his gallant company."
"They dropped down in balloons," Remo added.
"Balloons, Remo?"
"Big pink ones. Lit up like bottles of calamine lotion with light bulbs inside."
"Remo, you are not yourself."
"Hey, I just had a pleasant afternoon. Don't spoil it with your ulcerous crabbing."
"Ulcerous crabbing? For the first time in over a century we have civil war!"
"I told you," Remo said patiently. "It's over. It was a great big misunderstanding. When the balloons showed up, everyone simmered right down. Mickey Weisinger made a big reconciliation speech and won 'em all over. They've laid down their muskets, and there won't be any more trouble. Chiun and I hardly had to do anything. Isn't that great?"
There was a pause on the line.
"Remo," Smith said in a cautious voice, "I have some bad news for you."
"Shoot."
"I have hit another stone wall in the search for your parents."
"Aw. Too bad. But I know you'll keep trying, Smitty."
"That is just it," pressed Smith. "I have reached an absolute dead end. There is no other avenue to search."
"Gee, that's disappointing," said Remo.
"I am calling off the search. Do not ever raise this subject again."
Remo's voice diminished as he turned from the telephone and said, "Chiun, he's calling off the search for my parents."
"At least he tried," said Chiun without concern.
Remo's voice came back to the telephone receiver. "I know you tried, Smitty. Appreciate it. Really."
"Remo, you are not talking or acting like yourself."
"Who else would I talk and act like? Daniel Boone?"
"You are too calm, too relaxed, too accepting."
"I told you I feel pretty mellow."
"Remo, what happened out there today?"
"Told you. The war's over. Hallelujah."
"Remo, did anything unusual happen out in the park?"
"Well, lemme see," Remo said slowly. "I can't think of anything except the yellow bomb."
"What yellow bomb?"
"You hung up before I could mention it last time. A black helicopter buzzed the Crater, dropped this thing that looked like a traffic light except all the lights were yellow and when it hit, everything turned really yellow."
"What do you mean-everything turned really yellow?"
"We were running away because we thought it was a bomb."
"It was," inserted Chiun calmly.
"It didn't explode. But there was flash, I guess. The sky turned yellow. So did the grass and trees and everything. Then the Union prisoners started pouring out of the pit, and were they scared. Every one of them babbling about the yellow light."
"Then what happened?"
"Chiun and I went to investigate and when we got to the Crater, the bomb or whatever it was started screaming and melting into a puddle of slag."