"Master Chiun?"
"Is this not a task for the FBI, those stalwarts? We are assassins, not sleuths. I am Chiun, not Fetlock."
"Matlock," growled Remo.
"If this marauder is found, we will be happy to dispatch him, but is it necessary to squander our valuable time chasing this fiend? Is not our place here at your side? You have only just escaped death. Who knows that this is not some Japanese scheme to unseat you? I offer my pupil and myself as bodyguards until this dire crisis has passed."
"It is highly unlikely that I was targeted. I had an unreserved ticket. No one could know I was on that train. And if my life was sought, there was no reason to derail a freight train in Oklahoma City a year ago."
"Logic is a dangerous trap," warned Chiun.
"Is something the matter?" asked Smith of Remo.
"Chiun just doesn't want to lose another fingernail to the phantom samurai," Remo suggested.
Chiun puffed up his cheeks like a Korean version of Old Man Winter, ready to vent a blast of angry air in Remo's direction.
"I am certain you will be able to deal with him when the time comes-if it comes," said Smith.
Subsiding, Chiun bowed as if in agreement. His bobbing posture covered the angry glance he threw in Remo's direction.
Remo mouthed the words Nice try.
"Talk to Cupper," said Smith. "I will look into the Oklahoma City parallels, if there are any."
"As you wish, O diligent one," said Chiun, bowing out of the room.
"Later," said Remo, following.
Outside the building Chiun exploded. "Are you mad, dragging an old head into this!"
"Look, it may prove this samurai-"
"Ronin."
"-has been active for a while."
"So?"
"That means he's not your wave-tossed ghost ronin just washed up on shore."
"What makes you say that?"
"Because if he were after the House, he'd have found you long before now."
"You were in Oklahoma City when that train of beasts fell over on its side?"
"Yeah . . ."
"Where in Oklahoma City?"
"Sleeping in a hotel room behind the tracks, hiding from you."
"Ah-hah!"
"Ah-hah what?"
"The toppling of the train was to lure you into an ambush."
"So why wasn't I ambushed?"
Chiun's face froze. His mouth paused in open mode. "Why must you and Smith insist upon heaping white logic on everything?" he sputtered.
"Beats ignoring reality."
"You would not know reality if its brazen talons roosted upon your thick head and looked down into your face with its blazing ruby eyes," said Chiun, getting into the rental car.
"You know," admitted Remo when he got behind the wheel, "it is kind of a big coincidence that that train should derail when I was in Oklahoma City and another one when Smith was riding it."
"We will resolve to ride no train for the rest of our days-bitter and galling as the prospect may be."
"Suits me just fine," said Remo, sending the car through the Folcroft gates. After the Dragoon, it felt like driving a Tonka truck.
Chapter 14
Melvis Cupper was watching the track hands rerail the baggage car at Mystic, Connecticut.
He liked nothing better than watching the rerailers work. They were a special breed. And since part of his investigation involved observing the proceedings but prevented him from actually participating and therefore breaking a sweat, he took his ease at trackside while the Hulcher crew set the clevis hooks at the four corners of the car.
Two side-mounted Caterpillar tractors were hunkered down on either side of the right of way. A supervisor was on his stomach looking up at the work. He wore a white safety hard hat. All eyes were on him. Or rather, on his hands.
It was a hell of a thing to watch.
With only hand gestures, he signaled the boom hands to lift the north end of the car. The twin Cats screeched as they strained to lift the car off the soft, gouged earth. The wheel assemblies dangled uselessly.
In less than a minute they walked the car over the rail bed and dropped her down, true as an arrow, onto the blocks.
The supervisor got off the ground and wiped his hands, signaling the crew to move to the next car in line.
"Just like pickup sticks," Melvis said happily.
An hour later the last car had been rerailed, the track crew brought up a bucket and began to attack the bent rail.
The dreaded cry, "Watch the rail!" rolled out, and Melvis dropped off his perch and betook himself to a point well back of the festivities.
The bucket dropped down and started bringing up rail section. Most of it came up easy, but there was no way of telling when a stressed or bent length of steel would snap or break with catastrophic results.