"Save it for the debriefing. Pull your strings. I gotta get to Chiun."
"He's in Massachusetts. For how much longer, I do not know."
"Just get me out from under here, Smitty."
The word took exactly thirteen minutes to reach the Yuma County Sheriff's Office, which dispatched a sheriff to the airport. The sheriff took possession of the deputy, cuffs and all, and personally escorted Remo to his gate.
The airline agent said, "The flight doesn't leave for another ninety minutes."
The sheriff solemnly offered to refrain from arresting the agent, his manager and the president of the airline if an exception was made and the flight took off immediately with the very important FBI agent from Washington, D.C.
This seemed eminently reasonable to every airline representative who fielded the request, and Remo found himself comfortably seated in a nineteen-passenger Beech 1900 climbing over the Sonoran Desert and into the rising red sun.
He was the only passenger.
At Phoenix the airline had a 727 fueled and ready. Remo was spared the inconvenience of disembarking at the terminal. They rolled the 727 up to the Beech-craft, laid a plank between the two main hatches and Remo walked across.
He was back in the air less than ninety seconds after touching down. The copilot came back to apologize for the transfer delay.
"Don't mention it," said Remo.
"We could have done a rolling transfer, but it would have been tricky. You understand."
"Perfectly," said Remo.
"Is there anything I can get you?"
"Chilled mineral water. Steamed native corn and pressed duck in orange sauce."
"And vegetables on the side?" asked the copilot, writing the order on his pale palm.
Remo clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back. "Corn on the cob if you have it. Extra steamed corn if you don't."
"Coming up in a jiffy," said the copilot.
"Not if you cook it properly."
"Of course, sir," said the copilot, rushing to the galley.
When a statuesque stewardess with fiery copper hair came striding out, Remo's first reaction was to hide. Stewardesses typically found him hormonally irresistible. Remo saw the opposite sex as a craving he usually regretted. It was a legacy of his Sinanju training, which reduced the sex act to a series of mechanical, unsatisfying steps guaranteed to turn women to jelly and put Remo to sleep. Minus the afterglow.
But as the stewardess fixed her shiny blue eyes on Remo, he suddenly recalled he hadn't seen a woman younger than sixty since the summer.
When the stewardess smiled and purred, "Hi, I'm Corinne. But you can call me Corky," Remo said, "I'm Remo but you can call me Remo."
The stewardess laughed with all her body. Even her shimmering copper hair seemed to join in. It made Remo feel good to look at her.
"Is there anything I can do for you, Remo?"
"Just sit here and smile that same smile. Can you do that?"
"Absolutely."
The food was excellent, and the attentive stewardess radiated heat like a furnace with teeth and cleavage. And all in all it was a pleasant flight. Remo had forgotten how easy life could be with the entire resources of the U.S. government at his disposal.
Once he stepped off at Boston's Logan Airport, tension took root in the pit of Remo's stomach and he started to wonder what he was going to say to the Master of Sinanju.
He was still wondering as the taxicab dropped him off in the private parking lot of their condominium castle.
At the double-leaf door, Remo saw two signs that hadn't been there before.
One was a black-and-red No Trespassing sign. The other, also black and red, warned Beware Of Dog.
"Christ," Remo muttered, opening the door with his key and slipping inside. He didn't hear any dog. He didn't smell any dog. But that didn't mean there wasn't a dog.
Creeping up the carpeted steps, he made his way toward the one clear biological sound that reached his ears. The strong, dynamic heartbeat of the Master of Sinanju.
At the closed door to the tower meditation room, Remo hesitated. He didn't sense a dog on the other side of the door, either. Carefully he took hold of the doorknob, turned it and eased the panel in. Knowing Chiun, he had probably found some exotic crossbreed, like pit bull and lion. Remo liked animals and didn't want to hurt one just because it thought it was defending Chiun.
A squeakily thin voice said, "If you have come for your things, they are where you left them."
Remo froze in place. "Where's the dog, Chiun?"
"I threw nothing out."
"The dog?"
"What dog?"
"The sign on the door said Beware Of Dog."
"Did the sign say beware of a particular dog?"
"No. But they never do. Is it okay to come in?"
"I will not object to you surveying what has been your home before it is taken apart and transported brick by brick to its place of honor in the Pearl of the Orient."
Remo entered. He saw no dog. Just Chiun seated on a tatami mat in the center of the heated stone floor.
"You're moving this rockpile to Sinanju?" he blurted.
Chiun was folding a teal kimono. He didn't look up. "That is no concern of yours. It belongs to the House. And the House has decreed that it be moved to a happier land."
Remo saw the fourteen lacquered steamer trunks into which the Master of Sinanju was packing his spare kimonos.
"Why is there a Beware Of Dog sign if you don't have a dog?" Remo asked.