"It does?" Remo said, astonished.
The Asian nodded sagely. "In Italian, as well."
"Who would name his son 'Oar'?" Remo wanted to know.
"A parent who would then leave his son on a doorstep," Chiun countered.
"You leave my parents out of this!"
"Why not? They left you out of their lives."
Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla looked to his men, who held their FAL rifles on the bickering pair. They shrugged, as if to say, "We do not understand these strange ones, either."
Zorilla shrugged in reply. He listened as the argument grew loud. Loud and harsh on the Anglo's side, and loud and squeaky on the Asian's. Zorilla studied them carefully. These men had said they had been sent by Uncle Sam, but they were not dressed in the business suits of the agents of Uncle Sam. They were cool, nearly oblivious to the threat of the weapons arrayed around them. Perhaps they were stupid, Zorilla thought.
Then, as the argument lapsed into a tongue Zorilla neither recognized nor understood, he began to wonder if it was possible they were not who they claimed to be.
"You will cease this noise!" he thundered.
The argument went on.
"Hombres! Quiet them!"
The rifle barrels were poked between the men, as if to separate them. The pair argued on, unconcerned.
Then the rifles were used to prod the two arguing ones.
Hands so fast they left no blurs in the night air rendered the weapons useless.
This was how Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla saw it:
The rifle muzzles were poked forward.
They never touched the bodies they were intended to prod. Instead his soldiers jumped back, as if startled by the unexpected sound that came from their muzzles.
It was not an explosive sound. Not even the click of chambers being charged.
The sound was more of a runk! Like a steel goose honking in the night.
The sound was what made his soldiers recoil, weapons coming up in their hands. The right-angle bend in their barrels was what made their eyes go round in their heads.
Leopoldo Zorilla changed his mind again. These men, for all their odd appearance and odder behavior, were highly trained professionals. He had never seen the likes of them before.
Wordlessly, he signaled his soldados to break up the argument.
The men, who were left clutching maimed weapons, startled expressions making their faces clownlike, retreated as the replacements came in.
Runk!
These too, stepped back, as if they had poked their barrels into the whirling blades of the most powerful fan ever constructed. But there was no fan. The pair seemed not to touch the weapons at any time. They merely used their hands to gesticulate angrily at one another. At no time did they appear to reach out and actually touch the rifle barrels. But this was the only explanation, that they were using their hands to create this wonder.
It is either that, Zorilla concluded, or they are protected by personal force-fields.
The thought, wild as it was, intrigued Leopoldo Zorilla. He lifted his open and weaponless fingers and inched them toward the Anglo named Remo, as if he were an electrician approaching a possibly live wire.
He received a shock that was no different.
It was not electrical in nature, but his fingers stung very suddenly. Zorilla withdrew them and looked at his fingertips.
The nails were already turning black, the way they had once when he had tried to fix a broken window in his Santiago de Cuba comandancia.
The upper casement had slammed down, catching the tips of his fingers. Within days the nails had blackened, eventually to fall off, leaving a black, gritty substance resembling crushed coal that was probably dried, trapped blood.
The pain this time was not nearly as intense, but the fingernails were already blackening and Zorilla felt them go numb.
"Are you injured, Comandante?" a corporal asked worriedly.
"Silence these two!" Zorilla ordered, a slow-traveling pain moving from the area of numbness up his arm and to his central nervous system. It was like a delayed pain. It shot through his muscles suddenly, and his teeth clamped down so hard he distinctly heard a bicuspid break.
This time, his soldados went to work in earnest. They brought the butts of their rifles around and prepared to club the still arguing pair apart.
This, apparently, was enough to make the pair notice that they were under attack.
This time, Zorilla could see their hands at work. Their feet as well. Kneecaps cracked like seashells. Fingers were bent backward, against the natural flex of the knuckle. Men were flying. Rifles cartwheeled from nerveless hands.
In seconds, the cream of his New Cuban Army was standing about as he: clutching injured members, or squirming in the dirt, weaponless and conquered.
The Anglo said, "Our information is that Uncle Sam has nothing to do with this little boot camp here."
"Your information is wrong," Zorilla muttered through pain-tightened teeth. A bloody chunk of tooth enamel dribbled from his mouth.
"What do you think, Chiun?" the Anglo asked the Asian.
"You have asked the question wrongly," said the Asian named Chiun.
And the Asian proceeded to ask the question in a unique manner.
He said not a word. He used the long, spidery nails of his right hand, which gleamed like curled ivory. He took Zorilla by the point of his chin and, neither exerting obvious pressure nor inflicting additional pain-not that any was needed-used that chin as a handle to bring Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla to his knees in the dirt like an effeminate maricon.
"You command this ragtag army?" he demanded.
"I do," Zorilla admitted through his teeth.
"And who commands you?"
"Uncle Sam."