"Where in Little Havana?"
"I do not know. He moves around." This was the truth, and it seemed to work.
The tall Anglo noticed the clock on the wall and casually said, "It's about bedtime, isn't it?"
"Que?"
And so swift was the night that overcame his senses that Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta did not notice he had lost conciousness, until he opened his eyes many hours later to find himself drooling into the fine rug that had once graced his Havana office.
Upon regaining his senses, he called the contact number of Leopoldo Zorilla. The phone rang and rang and rang, and a feeling of dread came over him.
There was another number he had been given. He had not been told to whom this number belonged. Only that it should be resorted to in only the direst circumstances.
He dialed and waited ....
Chapter 7
Remo Williams used a pay phone to contact Harold W. Smith.
"Smitty? Remo. We got something."
"What is it?"
"His name is Leopoldo Zorilla. Name ring a Cuban bell?"
"Vaguely," said Smith, and the hollow clicking of fingers on a keyboard came through the phone wire.
"Yes, Remo. Leopoldo Zorilla is a Cuban defector, according to Immigration and Naturalization Service computer records. He was picked up in a raft floating in the Windward Passage."
"Where is he now?"
"Unclear. He was briefly detained by INS and then released."
"If he was that big, why wasn't he debriefed?"
"I do not know. I imagine because there has been such a flood of defectors that Washington saw no intelligence value in interrogating him."
"Well, according to Revuelta, he loaned some of his Ultima soldiers to Zorilla."
"For what purpose?" Smith asked.
"Claims he doesn't know. But he was told to stand by to go back to Havana in style."
"Interesting. You have your lead. Pursue it. Find Zorilla and learn all you can."
"What's the latest?"
"Castro is still speaking."
"This could go on for days," Remo remarked.
"Let us hope not."
"You and me both. If Chiun doesn't get his daily Cheeta fix, I wouldn't give odds on Castro's survivability"
Remo hung up and turned to the Master of Sinanju, who was patiently waiting some distance away, saying, "Smith says to chase down Zorilla."
"Then let us begin."
They returned to their rented car and drove off.
Remo hadn't been to Miami in a number of years. It had changed. The palmettos still shook in the offshore breezes, the heat still soaked cloth to the skin, but the people were different. There were more Latin faces than Remo remembered.
Off in the night, he heard a sporadic pop-pop-pop-pop of a sound. Machine pistols. His mouth went grim.
Remo had been raised in a time when street gangs were considered unsalvageable if they carried zip guns. Now it seemed that the cheapest hood was better armed than the average Korean War-era soldier.
"This town looks and sounds like it washed ashore from the Third World," he said bitterly.
"I do not remember it this way," Chiun remarked, his narrow eyes reading the faces in the night.
"Another present from Fidel. About ten years ago, he launched a little thing called the Mariel boat-lift. Dumped the contents of his prisons and mental institutions on Miami. As well as honest refugees. I guess both flavors stuck around. I hardly see any white faces."
"This is acceptable," sniffed Chiun, arranging his kimono skirts absently.
"Listen to you, Mr. Multicultural."
"Pah! Do not speak that word."
Remo smiled. He had scored a direct hit. A few months ago, the Master of Sinanju had joined the campaign of a darkhorse candidate for governor of California. The man-an Hispanic-had offered Chiun the post of treasurer. Chiun had tentatively accepted. Only after Chiun had nearly burned his bridges with Harold Smith did he learn that the candidate was actually a fugitive banana-republic dictator, with a face made media-friendly by plastic surgery.
They had been forced to terminate the guy, and Chiun found himself in a ditch with Harold Smith. He was still digging out.
The bewildering maze of Miami byways took Remo to what was supposed to be Little Havana. He slowed down and unrolled his window.
"Hey, pal. This Little Havana?"
The man turned, shrugged, and continued walking.
"I just need a yes or no. Is it?"
The man kept walking.
"People are real friendly down here," he grumbled, driving on.
Remo took the next right and cruised by a row of bars whose neon names were flowery and Spanish.