"No, wait," Chiun commanded. "All is not as it appears."
"Don't tell me. You're getting a news flash from the satellite dish in your head?"
Chiun clucked his tongue. "If your senses were not so impaired, you too would know that the man we seek is at this moment leaving by the building's side exit."
"And how would you know that?"
The Master reached a slender hand out the open passenger window and wafted the air to his flared nostrils. "Go that way," he ordered, pointing with a long finger. "And hurry!"
Remo leaned on his horn and turned right, forcing his way between the jam of backed-up media cars. He drove over the landscaped concrete island, onto the hospital front lawn and then around the side of the hospital. When he came to the wide red-brick entry walkway he turned again, this time for the street.
"What car did he get in?" Remo demanded. "What the hell am I supposed to be looking for?"
Chiun stuck his head out the window and, his scraggly beard flapping in the breeze, shut his eyes and took a deep, slow breath. "That way!"
Remo bounced over the curb and back onto the road, fishtailing around oncoming traffic.
"Are we getting closer?" he asked.
Chiun sampled the air. Then he opened his eyes and pointed again. "That one!" he exclaimed. "The stinker is in that one!"
The vehicle the Master had identified was a stretch limo, navy blue, with a silver TV antenna on the roof. "Gee, I wonder who the limo belongs to?" Remo said as he closed the gap between the cars.
The limousine's personalized California license plate read MY-T-MAUS.
Even though Remo sang a bar or two of the theme song for him-"Here I am to save the day!"-Chiun didn't get it. The cartoon show had been off the air for decades before the Master had picked up his nasty TV habit.
The limo turned onto an on-ramp for Interstate 5 North. After traveling six or seven miles, it exited the freeway and headed into the hills of Brentwood. Once they got onto the city streets, Remo dropped back a bit to avoid being seen.
"You realize we have a much more serious problem on our hands with this one," he said to the Master.
Chiun gave him a deadpan look.
"Ludlow Baculum is a U.S. senator," Remo explained. "His security team will most likely be either federal agents or enforcers from whoever is importing the drug."
"So?"
"So they will not wait to use deadly force against us."
"If they are in the employ of this inhuman monster, then they, too, must die."
"No, Chiun," Remo said. "Listen to me. If the security is federal, it works for the government, not the senator. We work for the government, too. Indirectly. We can't kill those guys for doing their job. And we can't kill the senator, either."
"But Emperor Smith-"
"He wants a live subject to interview. We can't have a repeat of what happened on the football field."
"It was I who captured the stink patch...."
"Yes, but that's all we got." Remo waited for the message to sink in, then he said, "And there's another thing. It's a crime punishable by death to kill a member of the U.S. Senate. If we do that and get caught, even Smith won't be able to save us."
"Do you suggest that I might be the one to lose control?"
Remo grimaced; no way could he miss the outraged tone of the Master's voice. "Lighten up, Chiun," he told his companion. "All I'm saying is, this time let's try and not slaughter the man we're after."
Chiun appeared to sulk, his hands and neck disappearing inside the cuffs and collar of his brocaded robe.
"Sheesh," Remo said.
Ahead, the limo slowed to a crawl as it approached a pair of tall white steel gates on the left. Gates that immediately opened, allowing the limo to enter a treelined asphalt drive. Remo kept on driving. The estate was ringed by a twelve-foot-high perimeter wall, which in turn was topped with tastefully rendered iron spikes. Remo continued on up the hill. As he rolled past the gate, he got a look at the men guarding the entrance. In suits, ties, shades, headsets and carrying mini-Uzis, they were Feds for sure.
Remo parked a couple of blocks farther on, in front of a gardener's pickup truck, the bed of which was loaded down with bags of grass and yard tools. The gardener in question had ear protectors on and was in the middle of mowing the front lawn of a three-story Spanish-style home.
"Let me handle the guys at the gate," he told Chiun as they got out of the car.
The Master, still miffed, said nothing.
As they passed the pickup, Remo grabbed a rake and a limb trimmer on an aluminum extender pole from the back. "Here," he told Chiun. "Carry this." The Master accepted the rake in silence.
The two of them crossed the street and walked down the hill toward the white gates. As Remo and Chiun approached, through cascades of purple-and-pink bougainvillea, they could see the blue limo parked under the mansion's porticoed auto entrance. The huge home was without frills: modern, multilevel, with lots of glass exterior walls. They were about ten feet from the gate when the two security men on the other side moved into position.
The Fed who wore his pale brown hair in a supershort crew cut spoke crisply into his headset, "We've got a pair of bogeys at nine o'clock. Stations Red and Blue on intruder alert."
With the limb trimmer resting over his shoulder, Remo stopped in front of the gate.
"Move on," said the Fed.
"We're supposed to do some pruning inside," Remo told him.
"No, you're not. Move on, lawn boy." The security men shared a smirk.
Remo set the tip of the long metal pole on the sidewalk and stepped a little closer to the gate's bars. "My partner here," he said, gesturing at the little old Oriental with the rake, "is the world's foremost expert on the monkey puzzle tree. He's made time in his busy schedule, as a personal favor to Mr. Koch-Roche, in order to inspect a suspected fungal outbreak on a museum-quality specimen on the grounds. I don't think Mr. Koch-Roche will be amused if you turn him away."
The crew-cut Fed gave Remo an irritated look, then spoke again into his mike. "Station Yellow here," he said, sizing up the men on the other side of the gate. "We've got a couple of guys claiming to be gardeners at the gate. See if they're expected. One's an old Jap-"
Remo hadn't quite reached the optimum position for the strike he had planned-the tip of the pole was a little too far to the left-but he knew he had no choice but to go for it. Chiun had already whipped the handle of his rake around, and was thrusting it between the steel bars like a lance.
With a loud crack, the wooden handle splintered against the crew-cut Fed's body armor, but not before Chiun had delivered a paralyzing shock to his diaphragm. The Fed crumpled and dropped to his side, curling up in a fetal position on the drive.
Crew-cut's partner had his hand on his mini-Uzi when Remo made his own thrust. The long aluminum pole bowed in the middle as its butt made solid contact with the man's chin. The bend in the pole absorbed some of the blow's power, which was still sufficient to stun the Fed and make him drop his weapon.
Remo quickly scaled the gate and used the lever to open it for Chiun, who with great dignity walked through the opening and stepped over the fallen form of the crew-cut Fed.
The Master paused to kneel beside the wheezing man.
"Korean," Chiun said slowly and distinctly, as if addressing a child. "I am Korean."