122917.fb2 Fools Gold - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 32

Fools Gold - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 32

"You can't read either," screamed Marmelstein.

"I used to. I just don't need it anymore. If I could read, I'd be a publisher, not a producer. I used to read beautifully. Everybody said so."

"So did I," said Bruce.

"Why did you stop?" asked Hank.

"I don't know. You don't use something, you forget how," said Bruce.

"I can still recognize my name in print," said Hank Bindle.

"I can too," said Bruce Marmelstein. "It's got a lot of round bumpy letters in it."

"Mine has got curls," said Hank Bindle.

Nine

Chiun had wandered off when Remo grabbed Terri by the arm and growled, "Come on. You've marched us all over every depressing place in the world. We're getting out of here. Another day in this dump and I'll have rickets and morality and an undying affection for cows."

They picked their way slowly over the lumps of marble and stone and in the distance saw Chiun's tiny figure, swathed in his brocaded kimono, standing near the rubble of the temple, looking down at something.

The beggars who lined the pool to the now-destroyed temple had already begun to drift back, taking their accustomed begging spots.

"What's he doing?" Terri asked Remo, looking toward Chiun.

"He likes to pose," Remo said. "Looks like he's doing something significant."

"He must be doing something."

"Suit yourself. Go see." Remo freed Terri's arm and she walked quickly down along the length of the pool toward Chiun.

127

128

A beggar approached Remo. One eye was rolled back into his head and there was dried spittle along the right side of his mouth.

"Beg pardon, American friend. Do you have a dollar for a poor but honest beggar?"

"No."

"Half a dollar?"

"No."

"Anything . . . any alms?"

"Here's a dime," Remo said. "Go buy yourself a cabinet ministry."

He flipped the beggar a coin, and saw Terri drop to her knees next to Chiun in the temple wreckage, and begin to smooth away debris with her hands. Casually, Remo strolled along the pool toward them.

When he joined them, he said, "Oh, jeez, not another one."

"Shhh," Terri said. She was tracing her fingers over a gold plaque, following the lines of the peculiar wedge-shaped letters that had been chiseled into the soft metal. The plaque was now curled up at both ends, like a piece of fresh lettuce.

Remo guessed that the plaque had been buried somewhere under the temple and had been blown to the surface by the force of the explosion.

"I don't care what it says," Remo said. "We're going home."

"We'll go where it takes us," Terri snapped. "Be quiet. This is important."

Chiun looked toward Remo and shook his head as if Remo should not waste his time arguing with an imbecile. Remo nodded.

He picked up a handful of smooth stones from

129

the rubble and amused himself by tossing them at the beggars who were again lined along the low wall facing the pool. He put fourteen stones in a row into fourteen different tin cups. Every time one of the stones landed in a cup, the beggar would pull the cup to his body, shield it with his arms from the other beggars, and peer inside to see what godly gift he had been sent. Not one of the beggars showed any interest in the destruction of the old temple or even came up to look. Nor had the police showed up. Did India have police? Remo wondered. The country had a hundred thousand gods, but did it have any police? How could you govern a country that had more gods than police?

Terri stood up after ten long minutes.

"Spain," she said. "The gold went to Spain."

"And then to the Bronx," Remo said in disgust.

"It says Spain," she said stubbornly.

"You find this writing acceptable?" Chiun asked Terri.

"Yes," she said. "Ancient Hamidian script." She paused, then asked, "What do you mean?"

"Nothing," Chiun said and turned away.

Terri looked at Remo quizzically, but Remo said, "Don't ask me. You two are the big language mavens. I'm just along for the ride."

"I've noticed," Terri said.

Generalissimo Moombasa received Lord Wissex in his master bedroom suite, in which a bevy of naked blonde voluptuous beauties would have seemed as unnecessary as another harmonica player at a hillbilly convention. Moombasa obviously had no room in his life to love anyone but himself.

130

The walls of the bedroom were made of what might have been imported marble, but it was hard to tell because they were covered, almost every square inch, with mural-sized pictures of Moombasa greeting his subjects. In the small corners where the walls met, and the murals didn't totally mesh, there were smaller photos of Moombasa. Some men like mirrors over their beds, but Moombasa had another enormous mural there, the same size as his big bed, so that his last view at night, before shutting his eyes, was his own smiling face.

Moombasa was sitting up in bed, propped up by pillows, eating soft-boiled eggs from a cup. The runny albumen seemed intent on escaping his spoon and kept dribbling down onto the front of his blue velvet smoking jacket, which had gold-fringed military epaulettes on the shoulders.

Wissex was amused to note that Moombasa ate with a golden spoon from a golden egg cup. In Wissex Castle, where servants had been feeding noblemen since the days when Moombasa's ancestors were eating their own children, they used simple sterling and old china.

Albumen and yolk running down his chin, Moombasa asked, "What success?"