"Yeah."
"See if you can find out who they are. It's just a feeling I have, but maybe this 'big thing' had something to do with his American followers."
"Could be."
"Do you need any help?" asked Smith.
"Well, a brass band might be good to let everybody know that Chiun and I are here. A couple of flamethrower units and a division of artillery, and I think we should be able to handle his eminent fatness. Of course, we don't need any help. Nothing your computers can give us anyway. What time is it?"
"Twelve-five and ten seconds."
"Dammit, I'm off. See you, Smitty. Stay within your budget."
Inside the cab, as Remo walked back toward it, Joleen asked Chiun: "Are you his friend?"
"I am no one's friend but my own."
"Well, you seem so close."
"He is my pupil. He is backward, but we do the best we can, considering. He is more a son than a friend."
"I don't understand."
"If you no longer like a friend, you end friendship. With sons it is different. If you no longer like them, they are still your sons."
"That's right, buddy," said the cabdriver. "I got one like that. Big lug. All-state football in high school and the team. So I work to put him through school. So he gets a scholarship to USC for it. But he was too lazy to make out of school, and do you think he'll look for work? Not on your life. He says he's waiting for a position. He can't take just any job."
"I am not interested in the activities of your cretinous offspring," said Chiun.
"Yeah, a position," the cabdriver said, not having heard one word of Chiun's. "Did you ever hear of anything like that? He can't take a job; he has to have a position?"
"I have a position for you," said Chiun. "Prone. Mouth stuffed into dirt. Silent."
Remo slid back into the cab.
"Well?" said Chiun.
"Well, what?"
"When does our vessel leave?"
"Not for a while, I'm afraid," said Remo. He gave the cabdriver an address on Union Street.
Chiun folded his arms across his chest. Joleen watched him, then looked at Remo, who said, "It can't be helped. It's business, Little Father. That comes first."
She turned toward Chiun. "It should not come before promises," said Chiun.
"We've got this little thing to do first," said Remo.
Joleen pingponged her head between them.
"But what is a promise made by a white man?" Chiun asked himself. "A nothing," he answered himself. "A nothing made by a nothing, signifying nothing and worth nothing. Remo, you are a nothing. Smith is a nothing."
"Right, Little Father," Remo said. "And don't forget racists."
"And you are both racists. I have never heard of anything like this. A broken promise. The ingratitude. You would not do this to one whose skin was as fish-flesh pale as your own."
"Right," said Remo. "We're racists through and through, Smitty and me."
"That is correct."
"And our word can't be trusted."
"That is also correct."
Remo turned to Joleen. "Do you know he taught me everything I know?"
Joleen nodded. "Yes, he told me."
"He would have."
"He is right, you know," said Joleen.
"About what?"
"You are a racist."
"Who says?" asked Remo.
"Everyone knows. All Americans are racists."
"Right, child," said Chiun. "It is the defense adopted by the inferior person."
CHAPTER TEN
In an alley off Union Street in San Francisco, hippie hucksters hawk homemades. Jewelry, painted shells and stones, leather belts fill up little stalls that line both sides of the alley.
Business is generally bad, but the salesmen do not seem to mind, content instead to sit in the sun, smoking marijuana, and talking among themselves about how nice it will be when the revolution comes and the new socialist government will pay them for sitting there.
In the rear, the alley opened into a gravel-coated yard, fenced in with high wooden stockade posts. Booths bordered the entire yard, and one of the booths flaunted the poster of the Maharji Gupta Mahesh Dor.
Joleen dropped to her knees and kissed the steel cable that the poster was taped to.
"O Blissful Master," she said. "Across the seas, I come following your goodness."
"Don't pull on the frigging wire," said a bearded, tanned blond youth, shirtless, with rag-cuff jeans, a silver earring, and a grape juice concession.