"One can tell. Even at a distance. A pale piece of pig's ear is a pale piece of pig's ear. The blow hit the stupid man alongside the head. It would have scrambled his brains, had he any."
Chiun jumped back, as if shadow boxing.
"The fat man continued on the attack with another brutal blow. Oh, the damage it would have done had it too landed on the head. But fortunately the stupid man took the blow on his shoulder. He surrendered instantly."
"Not a moment too soon, I guess," Remo said.
"He might have suffered permanent injury if he continued," Chiun said. "His hamburger eating apparatus might have been broken. The physical centers that control his sloth, his ingratitude, his selfishness might even have been injured, and how then could a white man carry on in life?"
"You're right, Little Father. This is a violent city, and we have to leave. I'll call Smith."
But when he looked for the telephone atop the desk, he could not find it.
"Chiun. Where's the telephone?"
"The what?" said Chiun, turning again to the window.
"The telephone."
"Oh. The instrument that brawks through the night when elderly people are trying to gain a few moments of god-sent rest from the travails of the day? The instrument that interferes with…"
"Right. Right. Right, Chiun, right. The telephone."
"It is no more."
"What'd you do with it?"
"I suffered its intrusion upon me the first time. The second time I decided to end its brawffing misery."
"And?"
"It is in the wastepaper basket," Chiun said.
Remo looked into the wicker basket. In the bottom of its white plastic liner was a pile of dull blue dust, all that was left of a powder blue Princess phone with touch-tone dialing.
"Good going, Chiun,"
"I did not ask it to ring. I did not telephone the servant below and ask him to ring the telephone at certain intervals."
"Oh," said Remo.
"Indeed 'oh.' One who would do that should be beaten up in the street."
"May I sit down?" asked Sashur Kaufperson, who was still standing just inside the door.
"Sure," said Remo. "The chair's over there. On top of the couch. But don't get too comfortable."
"Why not?"
"You're going with us. To see General Haupt."
CHAPTER TWELVE
So it was, that without notifying Dr. Smith, Remo, Chiun, and a reluctant Sashur Kaufperson headed for Fort Bragg, North Carolina. They arrived in a rented car in mid-morning, and the new army military policeman at the entrance to the post, deciding that the hard-faced white man and the elderly Oriental that General Haupt had labeled as secret assassins were obviously not the same as a hard-faced white man, an elderly Oriental, and a good-looking woman with big boobs, waved them through after only a perfunctory look at Remo's identification which listed him as a field inspector for the Army Inspector General's Office.
They found General William Tassidy Haupt inside a field house, where he was inspecting his troops for the benefit of the photographer for the post newspaper, this being Clean Uniform Month in the new army.
General Haupt stood inside the big barn-like building, facing a line of forty men. A small squad held M-16s at the ready. Clusters of grenades were clipped to their belts. Another squad held rocket launchers. Next to them were four men holding flamethrowers.
"I think you men with the flamethrowers ought to get on the other end," General Haupt called out. He wore an immaculate khaki gabardine uniform. His trouser legs were tucked into the tops of his highly polished airborne boots. On his head he wore a white helmet with two gold stars stenciled on it. On his side he carried a .45 pistol in a brown leather holster that matched exactly the color of his boots.
"We get better symmetry if we've got the tall flame-tossing junk at one end and the tall rocket things at the other end," he said.
The four men with flamethrowers dutifully moved to the far right side of the line. The major in charge of the squad wondered if he was being moved to get him into a position from which he could easily be cropped from the picture. What had he done, he wondered. He would have to keep an eye on General Haupt, just in case he had somehow made the general's crap list.
In the center of the forty-man line stood assorted squads with hand weapons, two-man bazookas, mortars, rifles, and automatic weapons.
The captain in charge of a four-man bazooka detail said, "General, should we get on an end too?" The major from the flamethrowers smiled to himself. That's why the other officer was only a captain, volunteering to put himself in a bad position.
"No," replied Haupt. "Stay where you are. This way we've got a tall element at one end of the photo and a tall element at the other end and a semi-tall element in the center. That lends balance to the picture. I think it's going to turn out real well."
"Major, how long are we going to have to hold these heavy things?" a master sergeant, sweating under the load of a flamethrower, asked the major.
"Don't worry, corporal. It's just a few more minutes and we'll have you right back at your personnel desk."
"I hope so," pouted the sergeant. "It's sergeant, sir, not corporal."
"Right. Sergeant."
"I don't know why I get all these details anyway," the sergeant said.
"For a very simple reason," the major said. "You're six feet tall and you weigh one-hundred-ninety pounds. The general wants people just that size for this picture. Sort of a Graeco-Roman ideal. There's a good chance this picture might be used across the country. Billboards. Recruiting posters."
"If it is, do I get residuals and modeling fees?" asked the sergeant.
"Afraid not. This is the Army."
"I'm going to ask the union anyway," the sergeant said.
"All right, men," General Haupt called, facing the line of troops. "Time to look alert now."
General Haupt turned to the man from the post newspaper, a corporal in gabardine uniform who stood holding an old Speed Graphic camera.
"How does that look?" the general asked.
"Fine."