"Really? How interesting."
"Yeah, real interesting. Interesting, too, how that babe who was dying out on the sidewalk-you know, the one you went to help by stopping that can of spraying poison-showed up downstairs as healthy as a horse."
Chiun waved his hands in praise before his weathered face. "Thank the awesome ministrations of the Master of Sinanju, deliverer and banisher of death, for restoring life to her ravaged body. All hail splendiferous me."
"Ditch the sales pitch. She was fine and you knew it. This is part of the game. We didn't fly all the way to England just so you could look up an old girlfriend. That guy in the bowler said Source was getting orders to kill me from someone higher up." He tapped the back of the driver's seat. "Hey, Gunga Din. Drop us off at Buckingham Palace."
They were heading away from the palace. The cabbie gave no sign that he even heard Remo.
"I have already told him to take us to the airport."
"No way I'm leaving without an explanation. First the queen tries to kill me, then she has Philliston send someone to do it for her. If you won't spill the beans, she will. Buckingham Palace," he ordered the driver. "And don't spare the camels."
"He cannot understand you," Chiun stated. "He speaks Pushtu and understands very little English." The Master of Sinanju said something to the driver in a language that Remo didn't understand. The man didn't nod, didn't say a word. He continued to stare at Remo in the mirror. There was a look of hate in his dark eyes.
"Did you just say 'Heathrow' in the middle of that gobbledygook?" Remo demanded.
"We are going to the airport."
"No way, Jose. Not unless you're willing to let me in on what's going on." He noted the look of determined silence on his teacher's face. "Okeydoke."
He smacked the driver on Fido's bed linen. "Buckingham Palace. You've gotta speakie enough English for that. Big house? Nice old lady in a frump dress lives there? Take us there now."
Across the seat, the Master of Sinanju pursed his lips. "Why must you always be so difficult, Remo?" he asked, a hard edge creeping into his voice. "Why can you not simply sit back and enjoy our most holy tradition?"
"Our most holy tradition is cash up front," Remo said, annoyed now with both the Master of Sinanju and the cabdriver, who was still ignoring his orders.
Remo was about to order the cabbie back to the palace once more when the taxi suddenly swerved sharply in traffic.
They were on Westminster Bridge. Traffic hummed along. Remo looked up in time to see the driver leaping over the seat at him, a wild glint in his dark eyes.
The cabbie had a knife in his hand, clutched in white knuckles. That wasn't all.
The man had lit a match a moment before. When Remo absently noted the sound, he had assumed it was for a cigarette that he was going to have to pluck from the stubble of the man's face and toss out the window. But he saw now it was not a cigarette between the driver's lips. A fat red stick of dynamite was clenched between the cabbie's yellowing teeth. The lit fuse sputtered rapidly down.
"What the hell?" Remo snarled as the driver tried repeatedly to stab him. Remo dodged the thrusting blade. The knife made a mess of the upholstery of the back seat.
"Death to the infidel!" the driver yelled in garbled English. He slobbered around his stick of dynamite. "I thought you said he couldn't speak English," Remo demanded of the Master of Sinanju.
"That?" Chiun asked. "Oh, they pick that phrase up like litter off the streets of Kabul."
The cab began to slow in traffic. The instant it did, a bounce came hard from behind. The rear bumper of the taxi had been tapped by a fast-moving truck, propelling the taxi forward in a more-or-less straight line. Tires squealed. A horn honked angrily.
In the rear Remo hardly noted the noise or the jostling. His face had grown very cold.
"Kabul?" he asked. "Like Afghanistan Kabul?"
"Death to America!" the driver said, saliva dripping from the end of his dynamite. When he spoke, he almost lost the hissing stick. He had to pause in midstab to reposition the dynamite. He clenched the far end in his molars.
"There is only one Kabul," Chiun answered. "The world has not excreted enough dung that it has need of another."
The driver was frustrated beyond understanding. Face glistening sweat, he continued trying to stab Remo, but only managed to shred the back seat. His frantic mind realized it didn't matter. The American was seconds from death. There would not be satisfaction from seeing him die by the knife, but the explosive would do the job the blade could not.
Even as the man was attempting to stab him, Remo noted the burning fuse. The driver gave one last jab with his blade when Remo finally nodded.
"Okay, that's long enough," Remo announced when the fuse was mere seconds from burning completely away. He promptly plucked the stick of dynamite from the cabdriver's mouth.
He plugged it hissing-fuse-first down the man's throat. Grabbing the cabbie by his dirty pajamas, he heaved him out the window and over the bridge. The gagging driver couldn't even scream. He was halfway to the Thames when his fuse burned down deep in his gullet and his body went boom.
Afghan meat splattered silvery waves.
Up on the bridge, Remo scrambled up over the seat and dropped in behind the taxi's wheel.
He hit the gas and pulled away from the honking truck. Swerving through traffic, he left the truck and its angry driver in their wake.
"What the hell just happened?" Remo demanded over his shoulder as he sped off Westminster Bridge.
"You killed our driver, that's what happened," Chiun clucked unhappily. "What is wrong with you?"
"He tried to kill me first," Remo snarled.
"Yes, but he had not taken us to the airport yet. You could have waited until then to remove him. Now we will need to find another. Pull over."
"Like hell."
"Remo, in this country they drive on the other side of those little lines in the street. I do not trust that you will stay on the proper side of the little lines in a coloring book, let alone on the streets of a foreign land."
"Screw the lines," Remo said. "I want to know why that guy just tried to blow my head off."
Chiun's weathered face grew annoyed. "Apparently the British learned from you Americans how to keep a secret, that's why," he muttered. "And now, thanks to their loose lips, we need to find another taxi. Stop the car."
"No. And for the record, U.S. security only started to suck once we turned over all our national secrets to the ACLU and People for the American Way for safekeeping. What did that guy learn from the British?"
Chiun folded his arms, irritated. "That you were going to be here, obviously." He released a long, weary sigh. "You are going to make this difficult for me, aren't you?"
"If you mean am I going to go tra-la skipping along like nothing happened after two attempted murders in less than a half hour, no, I'm not."
And because he saw now that his intransigent pupil would not be persuaded to continue without an explanation, the Master of Sinanju reluctantly agreed to offer one.
"Although it is against my better judgment to betray one of our most beautiful traditions," the old Korean warned.
"Nothing beautiful about people trying to kill me."
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
Chapter 9