"Quickly, Remo," Chiun put in unconcernedly. "I wish to leave immediately."
"Give me a sec, okay? Look, I'm sorry," Remo said to Robin, cornering her by a window. "This won't hurt a bit."
"Hurt! Wait! Don't do anything you'll be sorry for later. My father is a full bird colonel. If you so much as lay a hand on me, he'll hunt you down. He'll-"
Remo reached out and squeezed a nerve in her neck. Robin Green's eyes rolled up into her head. She exhaled a slow, summery sigh and slumped into Remo's arms. He carried her easily.
"Excellent," Chiun said as he breezed out of the room. "Thus we will not have to listen to her on the trip back to Folcroft."
"Did you catch what she said about her father?" Remo asked as they took the elevator down. "No wonder she's not up on charges. Her father's been protecting her."
"And it is no wonder that she is named Robin," Chiun sniffed. "With a father who is a bird. What kind of depraved woman must her mother have been?"
16
Robin Green's vision cleared slowly. At first, everything was a blur. Her arms felt stiff. When she breathed, she inhaled her own exhaust. She felt enclosed, claustrophobic. And her ears rang, just like they would after a long flight.
"Better get set," a familiar voice said through the ringing. "Looks like she's coming to."
Into her blurred brown field of vision moved a vertical column of gray. It stopped before her. A man, she decided.
Robin tried to speak, but her throat was clogged. She coughed to clear it. Her eyes watered. Surprisingly, that seemed to help. The gray blur grew more distinct.
Robin realized that she was sitting down. There was a strange cottonlike smell in her nose. She squeezed her hands, but couldn't feel them. Panic started to mount in her throat. Had she been injured in the car accident more than she thought? Had any of the events that followed it actually happened?
She clutched at herself. Her breasts felt tender. She remembered the smashed steering wheel.
"Can you hear me?" she asked the gray blur.
"Yes," replied a male voice, dry and bitter as a week-old lemon peel. "Please do not exert yourself until the bandages are removed."
180
181
Robin gasped involuntarily. "Bandages? Am I okay?"
"Sure," another voice said from behind her. "The X rays were all negative. Now, just sit still a minute." It was that first voice. Remo whatever-his-name-was.
Then it all came back in a rush of memory. The car crash. The fight at the motel. Remo's hand reaching out to her, and then . . . oblivion.
"What . . . what did you do to me?" she sobbed, reaching for her face. She couldn't feel her face. She couldn't even feel her fingertips. They were swathed in fabric. Or was it her face? Then her vision cleared.
Robin realized she was in a small room. The walls were odd. Not covered with paint or wallpaper, but Naugahyde or something similar. Like overstuffed upholstery. Padded and . . . Padded . . .
"Oh, God," she gasped. "I'm in a padded cell."
Then she saw the man. He was all in gray. A handheld mirror shielded his face. The mirror side reflected Robin's own face. It was the face of a Hollywood mummy. Only her stark and staring blue eyes showed through the winding gauze.
"Please calm yourself," the gray man said from behind the mirror. "The procedure is quite painless, I can assure you."
Robin felt a strong hand-presumably Remo's-take the top of her head, and the tiny snippings of surgical scissors began. She looked down and saw her bandaged hands clutching the armrests of a chair.
"Am I ...?" Robin choked out. "Will I be ... disfigured?"
"Nah," Remo said. "The bandages were so we could get you onto the airline flight while you were unconscious."
"What?" Robin barked indignantly.
"I asked Remo to bring you here," the gray man said. "It was necessary that you not see anything that could lead you back to Remo or myself. You were transported as a catatonic burn patient."
182
"Smith! Are you Smith?" Robin demanded. "Because if you are, you're in big trouble, buster."
The gray man gasped involuntarily. "Remo," he said in a shocked voice.
"Sorry, Smitty. Your name slipped out. But don't worry. Robin's on our side."
"The hell I am," Robin shouted. Suddenly the bandages fell away. Her mouth hung open. Her reflection stared back at her. Except for a few bruises and a cut near her hairline, it was normal-if paler than usual. She breathed a sigh of relief.
"See?" Remo said brightly, coming around the front. "Good as new."
"Step aside," Robin told him acidly. "I want to talk with your boss."
"And we want to talk with you," the man Robin took for Smith said matter-of-factly. "So please try to calm yourself."
"Calm myself!" Robin cried, pushing herself from the chair. "This loon just kidnapped me. I'm an Air Force investigator. You can't get away with this crap."
"Allow me, Emperor," a squeaky voice said from behind her left ear. And a hand with long curved fingernails reached up behind her hair and took the nape of her neck.
Robin felt her legs suddenly go numb, as if they had gone to sleep. She fell back into the chair.
"What is this?" she demanded. And then she noticed for the first time that she was sitting in a wheelchair.
"Oh, dear Lord," she said weakly, the fight going out of her.
"The paralysis is only temporary," Smith told her. "Chiun will restore the use of your legs after we have the answers we seek."
Chiun stepped into view, his face placid.
"You bastard," she hissed at him. And the old Oriental's face took on an injured expression.
183
"Perhaps if you continue to insult me, I will forget how to realign your spine," Chiun warned her.