Was he ready to handle a massive delegate revolt? Was he ready to be stripped of his rank?
Was he himself ready to be returned to the bush as he so cavalierly had ordered all the delegates? "Yes," answered Amabasa Francois Ndo.
Yes to all the questions.
Because he would do anything never to have to see that kimono again.
Chapter 6
Dara Worthington had left the meeting crying. After years of losing scientists while struggling against what had to be the most resilient insect on the face of the earth, the IHAEO labs and poor Dr. Ravits had finally succeeded in isolating a single chemical substance that could conquer the plague of central Africa.
And now, she had blundered somehow in the intricacies of IHAEO politics. Perhaps she had just lost touch with the organization's administration while she was working with the scientists. Whatever. But somehow she had ruined the one chance the people of central Africa had to survive the rainy season. She had taken the lifelong work of Dr. Ravits and at a simple committee meeting thrown it all away.
She had done everything wrong. She cried all the way back to Washington: There was an IHAEO jet leaving but the executive director of the coordinating committee of Liberation Front Observers needed all the available space for his cases of Dom Perignon, so Dara had to take a Greyhound bus.
Back at the laboratory, she did not know how she could face the researchers, all of whom knew that Dr. Ravits had finally solved the unsolvable problem of the invincible Ung beetle. Thousands, perhaps millions of people, might live because of his work and now it wasn't even going to be tried out.
She thought briefly of taking Ravits' solution to an American or French health unit. But if word got out that she was subverting the IHAEO by going to a First World country, no self-respecting Third World country would let in any medical teams at all. She learned quickly, when she had gone to work for IHAEO, that in dealing with a Third Worlder one was always dealing with that great unmentionable: "inferiority complex."
It clouded everything. It even defined Third World. It was not a matter of being non-white because then Japan would be part of the Third World and it was not. In fact, nations that could be considered white were part of the Third World, whose membership requirement seemed to be that its populations were incapable of producing anything beneficial for the rest of mankind.
"Garbage countries," as one economist put it. "The only economic role they ever play is that they happen to breed over resources that industrial nations need. Then the industrial nations give them money which they spend back in the industrial nations because they don't produce anything worth buying themselves."
Dara Worthington could not agree with that cold assessment. People were not garbage even if their government showed no concern for their own populations. She had done missionary work with her parents in Africa and found the people kind and lovely. She loved the people and therefore would put up with anything to help them. She had seen those poor countries suffer the ravages of insect plagues. She had seen proud, decent African farmers facing fields, which they and their families had poured years of work into, that had turned into useless shreds of crops because insects had gotten to them first.
In more advanced countries, a disaster like that would mean that the farmers would lose money and, at worst, have to go on to another job. But in the Third World it meant what it had meant for thousands of years since man had come out of the caves. It meant death.
That was why Dara Worthington had gone to work for the IHAEO. That was why she could easily put up with the machinations and humiliations of being part of the scientific element of the IHAEO. She didn't care if hundreds of millions were spent on private planes, and if fortunes were spent on luxurious mansions. At least some money was going to help people who needed help and that was important to her. That was her department's responsibility and because she had lost her head and said outright to a committee of the IHAEO that they would have to do something now, before the rainy season, she had failed. If she had not been so desperate, so upset by Dr. Ravits' death, she never would have confronted them like that. Instead, she would have found a willing delegate, bought him an expensive dinner, and gotten him to make the proposal. He would then, of course, take all the credit for the work and present it as a Third World achievement. It didn't matter to her; it was the way things worked.
But this time she had failed and she cried all the way back to Washington. At the laboratory complex, she found the new scientists, apparently undisturbed by the death of their colleague. The elderly Oriental asked why she was crying. The sexy, obnoxious American seemed more intent on boasting about an even greater discovery that would eclipse that of poor Dr. Ravits.
"I am crying because I think that by my foolishness I have condemned thousands of people to death."
"Since when are you a graduate of West Point or Annapolis?" asked Remo.
"You're a-beast," said Dara.
"One learns to tolerate him," Chiun said.
"How do you?" said Dara.
"I must say that sometimes I do not know," Chiun said.
"I'm still not wearing a kimono," Remo said.
"He refuses to wear a kimono?" Dara asked Chiun. Chiun nodded wisely.
"How sad," she said.
"You are wise beyond your years," Chiun said.
"No. If I were truly wise I would have gotten Dr. Ravits' discovery accepted by the IHAEO."
"Why is that a problem?" Remo asked.
"You wouldn't understand," Dara said.
"Maybe I would," said Remo. "Then again, maybe I wouldn't."
Dara explained about the Third World politics within the IHAEO.
"You're right," said Remo. "I wouldn't understand, but look. We'd all like to see this experiment work. I think it would probably attract an awful lot of people."
"Not the killers?" said Dara. "We've had enough killing here."
"Maybe not enough," said Remo, thinking of the killers who were still alive.
"How can you say anything so cruel?"
"I move my lips," Remo said.
"We wish to help," said Chiun.
"You're so kind."
"One learns kindness when one lives every day with ingratitude," Chiun said.
"But you can't help. You don't understand the intricacies of the Third World and Third World politics, especially on the international level."
"Who do we have to reach?" Remo asked.
"You can't reach them. They're an international body. They have diplomatic immunity. They're all wealthy from their jobs. They can't be bought. Nothing can be done."
"Who is the most powerful man in the IHAEO?" Remo asked.
"Amabasa Francois Ndo. He is the director general."
"Where is he?"
"He is supposed to fly in this afternoon from Paris," Dara said.
"What tribe is he?" asked Chiun.
"You wouldn't refer to the director general as a member of a tribe," she said.
"But what tribe?" Chiun insisted.