As they walked from the smoky bar, Remo and Chiun felt eyes on their backs. No one followed them out.
"Where do we ask next?" asked Chiun, looking around suspiciously.
"Nowhere," Remo said. "We just walk around." He started walking. Chiun followed.
"What will that accomplish?"
"Right now, that bartender is probably calling Zorilla or someone connected with Zorilla. We won't have to find him. His people will find us."
It took less than fifteen minutes.
They were about to cross a busy intersection when a large white Cadillac pulled in front of them. A black Buick slid in behind them.
"Jackpot," Remo whispered.
Doors popped open and bulky-shouldered men emerged, wielding short-barreled Uzis and other easily concealable automatic weapons.
"Jou seek Zorilla?" one demanded. He wore a plain gold hoop in one ear, making him resemble a well-tanned buccaneer.
"Word gets around," Remo said casually.
"Why jou seek Zorilla?"
"Only Zorilla gets to ask me that question."
Hard eyes looked them over carefully. Remo folded his arms. In his T-shirt and tight chinos, it was obvious that he carried no weapon larger than a concealed blade or flat .22 pistol.
The Master of Sinanju had been walking with his hands tucked out of sight in the joined sleeves of his ebony kimono. He was invited to bring his hands into plain view.
Chiun replied with a single pungent Spanish word that stung the faces of the men aiming at him.
Harsh Spanish spilled out. Chiun lashed back with short, declarative sentences.
Uneasily, the men looked to one another. Finally, in English, one said, "Jou will come with us."
"Suits us," Remo said easily.
They were herded into the back of the Cadillac. A man took the wheel and another, the front passenger seat. The latter turned in his seat and pointed his Uzi so that Remo and Chiun were covered.
"No fonny business," he warned. "Or pop-pop-pop-pop. "
Remo smiled back at him. "Sounds pretty brave, coming from a guy who took the death seat."
The Cadillac peeled off. The black Buick followed. Remo settled down for the ride.
"What did you tell them, Little Father?" Remo asked the Master of Sinanju as the ride lengthened. "I called them motherless sons of worthless fathers." "I've heard wore." "But they have not," Chiun said smugly.
Chapter 8
When Leopoldo Zorilla received the warning telephone call, he was drilling his soldiers in a remote corner of the Big Cypress Swamp. They were excellent soldiers-young, strong and fiercely willed. Destined to be liberators. They would form the nucleus of the New Cuban Army, and he was proud of them.
Yet they also reminded Zorilla that, sadly, he was no longer the young man he once was.
Not that Leopoldo Zorilla was old. He was, in truth, barely forty. But forty years of living on Castro-held Cuba had taken their toll on his erect body. There was not enough flesh on his bones, from improper diet, and his eyes were sunken. Even his mustache appeared sunken-the result of too much sugar and not enough meat and vegetables. The teeth he had retained were black with metal.
He let the soldiers exhaust their weapons against the targets-staked dummies, each dressed in olivedrab that bulged at the belt line and each with a Castro beard adorning its blank, chubby face.
"Fire above the beard!" he commanded. "Between the beard and the hat. That is your target. The flabby flesh between."
The men reloaded their Belgian-made FAL rifles and fired again. Instantly, the blank white areas collected sprinklings of holes that, had any of the dummies been the true Maximum Leader, would have splashed his brains back out of his head and into the eternal night.
An orderly came huffing up.
"A telephone call, Comandante."
Leopoldo Zorilla turned smartly, ever the military man. He had been a deputy air commander in the Cuban Air Force, and now he was a full commander in the army-in-training that would replace the Cuban Revolutionary Army.
"Who is it?" he demanded.
"It is Pepe. He says that two men seek you in Miami."
"What men?"
"I do not know, Comandante."
"Carry on," he told the orderly, and stormed into the barracks building, a converted tobacco-drying shack in the sprawling tangle of swamp called Big Cypress.
The cellular phone lay off the hook in his makeshift office.
"Pepe," he said gruffly. "What is this about two men?"
"They just left, Comandante. They ask for jou by name, but I tell them nothin'."
"Who were they?"
"An Anglo. The other was Asian. They were not dressed like FBI or any other government person I could name."
Zorilla frowned. "Hmmm. Who might they be?"
"They said they would comb Miami for jou, Comandante."
"There is no need for them to go to that trouble," said Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla. "Have them brought here."
"Is that wise?"
"We are too close to B-Day to allow the authorities to interfere with us."