"How much Japanese faces are improving."
"Huh?"
"Not the older generation. They are too set in their ways. But the younger ones. They are marrying outside of the islands. New blood is flowing into their veins. I do not normally approve of mixing the blood, but for the Japanese it is a good thing. Their faces are slowly improving. They are not as good as Korean faces, or even Mongol faces. But in another century, perhaps two, Japanese will not be burdened with such morose countenances."
Assorted Japanese passengers turned in their seats and looked unhappily in Chiun's direction.
"I never noticed that," Remo said guardedly.
"It is a fact, Remo."
After that, the majority of the Japanese passengers found ways to change seats with others, and the midsection of the cabin was suddenly free of Japanese glaring.
The Master of Sinanju smiled with quiet satisfaction for the remainder of the flight.
Remo just hoped it would end soon. They were only now taxiing to the Logan Airport runway. And it was fourteen hours to Osaka.
Chapter 3
NYPD Patrolman Tony Guiterrez had just turned the corner of Eighth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street when it exploded.
A hot blast of air picked him up off his feet and threw him down the side street as he was admiring the maddening swing and sway of a redheaded girl's walk. She had a nice behind. It wiggled. Normally Patrolman Guiterrez paid more attention to his surroundings, but you didn't see a lot of Anna Nicole Smith behinds on the streets these days. Women liked to keep themselves trimmer than that.
A slow smile of appreciation was tugging at Patrolman Guiterrez's lips when he felt his feet leave the hard concrete, and he forgot all about the girl and her undulating pelvis. The thunderous boom seemed to be chasing him.
His mind froze in midthought. Explosion!
Many people's lives flash before them when they feel the cold touch of death. Patrolman Guiterrez was made of different stuff. He recognized the sound of a detonation. Even in that split second when his eardrums were being punished by the leading edges of the traveling shock wave, his mind correlated a half-dozen random facts.
The explosion was directly at his back. Couldn't be more than twenty yards away. Sounded right at the corner, too.
What had exploded? he wondered with an eerie clarity of thought.
The faces of the pedestrians Guiterrez had passed flashed by his mind's eye. Ordinary people. None had caught his observant eye.
There had been a Dodge Ram pickup truck at the corner light. Traffic on Eighth Avenue was flowing smoothly.
A car bomb! he thought. Yeah. That's gotta be it. A car bomb.
Then he was slammed into the free-standing wire trash container.
It probably saved his life, though Guiterrez didn't realize it for a while. He struck the trash barrel with such force that for three days afterward the wire pattern was visible in white against his red cheek. They bumped together in midair, then rolled. Guiterrez landed atop the rolling container, mashing it almost flat with his 215 pound body. The barrel was full of newspapers and other paper refuse. They helped save him, too.
When Guiterrez came to, he was looking at a dragon of smoke rolling across the otherwise blue September sky.
Guiterrez sat up. He hurt in so many places he didn't know where to start. He looked at his feet. Still attached-though he'd lost one regulation shoe. He noticed he couldn't feel the ground with his supporting hands, so he looked right, then left, half-expecting to see raw stumps.
One palm was skinned raw, but it was whole. He counted his fingers to make sure.
When he tried to stand up, his spinal column felt like a fracturing icicle.
But Guiterrez got up. He had to. His clearing sight showed him the corner he had just passed.
The first thing he saw was the woman on her back. Her mouth was open as if she were screaming. Something very red and uncertain was foaming up from it. Her eyes stared glassily. Guiterrez couldn't tell if she was ejecting blood or viscera or a jellylike combination, but he could tell she was all but dead.
Not far from her, a meaty naked leg lay scorched and smoking.
The silence in the aftermath of the explosion seemed to last a long time. The screaming soon followed it. Guiterrez was running to aid the wounded by the time they were swelling into a chorus of agony.
He found the man who had lost his leg around the corner. A black man. He sat up against a building facade looking down at his missing leg. Guiterrez could tell he was seeing what had happened to him but he wasn't getting it. Not yet. Then without warning, he did. He let out a bellow like a wounded bear.
Guiterrez was barking into his shoulder radio. "Central, send X-ray and fire apparatus. Corner of Eighth and Thirty-fourth."
The Dodge pickup was on fire. The driver behind the wheel didn't have any head. He didn't have much of anything from the shoulders down. A monster might have taken a bite out of him.
If it was a car bomb that had done this, Guiterrez realized, it wasn't the pickup.
Other cars were shattered and broken. One was flung over on its side.
Whatever the bomb was, it had been big.
But it wasn't a car bomb. Guiterrez had seen plenty of car-bomb footage on TV. They usually left a smoking axle. Maybe not where it should have been, but it always landed somewhere.
No cars had blown up. Guiterrez was positive of that.
As the wail of sirens started up, Guiterrez went from car to car, checking for dead and wounded, wondering what had blown up. What on earth had blown up? He should have seen it when he turned the corner. The corner had been ground zero. But try as he might, he couldn't remember anything sitting on that corner.
At least, nothing that stood out. And Tony Guiterrez prided himself on his powers of observation.
THE CHIEF OF DETECTIVES for Manhattan's bomb squad took him aside an hour later and asked, "What did you see?"
They were on ground zero. The crater on the corner still smoked lazily. Blood and glass lay everywhere. Building facades at all four corners showed scars.
Guiterrez was staring at the crater. It had disrupted the entire corner, flinging granite curbstones like bricks. One had been discovered on the smashed remains of a desk in a second-floor office on the other side of Thirty-fourth.
"There was something there... " he muttered.
"What?"
Guiterrez banged his forehead in frustration. "I don't know. Damn."
"A package?"
"No."
"A suspicious person?"