"Yes, wasn't it? I wonder why they were there?"
Stantington shrugged. "Perhaps they thought the premier was in some danger?"
"Perhaps," Karbenko said. "Thank you for your cooperation, Admiral."
Riding back down in the elevator, Remo asked Karbenko, "Why'd you let him off the hook, if you know those were his guys at the airport?"
"There was no need to push it. I know and he knows I know. I just wanted to be sure what he was up to."
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"What is he up to?"
"He thinks I'm the assassin," Karbenko said.
"Are you?"
"If it was me, buddy, he'd be dead by now," the Russian spy said.
"Why'd you give him the song and dance about the Colony Astor Hotel ?"
"If he put men out searching for us, they might get lucky and find us," Karbenko said. "This way, he can tie up his men at the other hotel and they won't bother us."
Remo nodded. The Russian colonel was impressive.
"This man is impossible." Nina spat out the words, then wheeled and pointed toward Chiun who sat on the floor, his arms folded under his saffron kimono, looking impassively at the motel wall.
"What happened?" Karbenko asked.
"I wanted to watch television," the premier's wife said. "He told me I should not because all the shows were obscene. If I wanted a good story, he said, he would tell me one. Finally I succeeded in getting the television turned on. I was to watch the news. He told me I should not watch the news. That they were showing pictures of some fat man."
"Yes?" Karbenko said.
"The fat man is the premier. His picture was on the television. Now what do you think of that?"
Karbenko looked at Remo. Remo shrugged.
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"Maybe your husband ought to lose some weight," he said.
"Then he broke the knobs off the television set so we could not watch it."
"Philistines," Chiun said. "The Russians were always a people without taste."
"Where is the premier ?" Karbenko asked.
"He is in the next room. Watching the television there," Nina said.
"I hope his eyes rot," Chiun said.
"I guess you didn't like Chiun's movie," Remo said.
"We began to get tired of it after the first hour," she said. "So we asked him to stop."
"A Russian could lie in a field of flowers and complain of the smell," Chiun said. "There has not been a sensitive Russian since Ivan the Good."
"Ivan the Good?" Karbenko said. He looked at Remo, a question mark on his face.
"Right," Remo said. "Chiun's family did some work for him once. He paid on time. That raised him from Ivan the Terrible to Ivan the Good."
They left Chiun staring at the wall and went through the open door into the next room.
The premier was sitting on the small single bed, smiling.
"I have been much on your television, American," he told Remo.
"What did they say?" Karbenko asked.
"That I am visiting America to confer with the President about the deaths of our three ambassadors. That our mission here has refused to give any details of my whereabouts or my schedule."
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"Good," said Karbenko.
But the premier did not hear the comment. His eyes were fixed, almost glazed, looking at the TV tube.
"Look, Nina. Look," he said, pointing at the tube. "That is where we are going."
Remo and Karbenko leaned over to look.
It was a commercial for Florida's Disneyworld.
Nina nodded.
The premier said. "I want to go there."
"When?" Karbenko said.
"Why not now?"
Karbenko thought for a moment.
"Why not?" he said.
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