Chapter 22
Traffic was backed up between the town of Ukiah and Nirvana West. It wound between the piney hills like a torpid blacksnake and reminded Remo of the first time he had come here-except now they were north of Nirvana West instead of south.
Remo got out and walked up to the next car in line.
"What's the holdup?" he asked the driver.
"They're dying at Nirvana West," the man said excitedly. "It's the story of the decade!"
"The Snappers?"
"The Snappers and Harvesters, and even some of the feds."
"Feds?"
He nodded his head. "They're dropping like flies. People are saying, the ozone hole is cracking wide open."
"If it is, wouldn't it make sense to be going the other way?"
"You crazy? The other way is Ukiah."
"Nobody's dying in Ukiah," Remo pointed out.
"There's no story in Ukiah. It's all happening in Nirvana West. This is going to be great!"
And the man leaned on his horn so hard Remo gave up trying to talk to him. He retreated to his car.
"What news?" asked Chiun.
"They're dropping like flies," said Remo, climbing in. "And it's not just the Snappers. It's the Harvesters too. Just like we figured."
Chiun regarded the line of cars visible through the windshield with doubtful eyes. "Then why are these people so anxious to go to the place of death?"
Remo shrugged. "I guess they wanna drop like flies too."
"We will walk," said Chiun, stepping out.
Remo started to get out and almost lost his door to a speeding line of limousines that came flying up the other lane, going in the wrong direction. He ducked back behind the wheel, pulling the door after him.
There were three limos. A white one trailed by two black town cars.
"Damn! That's gotta be Clancy," Remo said, getting out. "Get back in, Little Father. If he can go that way, so can we."
They piled back in and Remo pulled into the other lane.
The press had the same idea. They started pulling into the other lane too, blocking Remo's rental car.
Instead of one blocked lane, now there were two. And nobody was going anywhere fast. Horns started honking again.
"I'll bet Nalini was in one of those limos," Remo said bitterly. "We could have nailed her right here."
"We will walk," said Chiun. "And then we will nail her."
So they walked.
Twenty minutes later, they reached Nirvana West, where Senator Ned Clancy had seized the podium that was still there from the day before.
"I vow on the sacred memory of my dear departed brothers," Clancy was saying, his voice ringing with righteous indignation, "to do all I can to rid the world of the curse of Human Environmental Liability Paradox in our lifetime. No price is too high to pay. No cost too burdensome. No-"
"-tax too outrageous," grumbled Remo, watching from the shelter of some evergreens. "I don't see Nalini anywhere," he added.
"I do not see the other limousines," said Chiun, his hazel eyes raking the jam of still-arriving press vehicles. "Only the white chariot of Clancy."
"We gotta get close without being seen," Remo said, starting off.
They moved in on a pair of cameramen who were filming establishing shots from a distance, and as if their plan had been worked out beforehand, Remo and Chiun slipped up behind them and found nerves in the back of unwary necks with their fingers.
Both cameramen buckled at the knees, and after they had collapsed on the ground, their equipment was in Remo and Chiun's hands.
"How do you operate these contraptions?" asked the Master of Sinanju.
"Just carry them on your shoulder and close to your face," said Remo. "That way no one is liable to recognize us who shouldn't."
Cameras high, they advanced toward the media circle, and gravitated to its outer edges.
Clancy continued speaking.
"I have come to believe that there is no hole in the ozone," he was saying. "My dear departed blood brother, Theodore Eagle-That-Soars, the great Mohair Indian warrior, was wrong in his assumptions. Whatever is visiting the HELP virus on innocent, environmentally aware Americans, it will be unmasked for what it is. Whatever it is."
On the other side of the gathering, Remo came upon a chauffeur trying to get his feet untangled from a knot of remote cables on the ground.
"We're looking for Senator Clancy's mother," he said.
"She went on ahead," the chauffeur said, without looking up.
"Ahead where?"
"To the SF Airport."
"Damn!"
Remo rejoined the Master of Sinanju.
"We missed her, Little Father."
Chiun's face darkened. "What do we do now? We are forbidden from harming Clancy the clown."