"Chiun, that hasn't been going on for a hundred years."
"See? Just yesterday. My father warned me about Australians. If they like your sandals, they will steal them from your feet while you are walking and then come back for your feet."
"We walked through Harlem, we can walk through Australia," Remo said.
But in the next moment even he wasn't sure of his own argument. As they walked out into the terminal, Remo felt a hundred sets of eyes lock on him and the Master of Sinanju. Men who had been sitting stood. A hush fell over the crowd.
"Oh, crud," was all Remo managed to say before a murderous howl rose up from the airport concourse. The crowd surged toward Remo and Chiun.
"It's a mugging!" the Master of Sinanju cried, twirling on his heel. "Guard your purse!"
The old man bounded down the hall, back in the direction they'd just come.
"A hundred people aren't rolling two guys, Little Father," Remo said, running to catch up. Passengers who had just deplaned from a commercial flight jumped angrily from their path.
"If you knew Australians like I knew Australians, you would not be so naive," Chiun replied.
Behind them, the mob gained strength. Remo and Chiun darted up an escalator, across a railing and jumped down into the main terminal. The crowd doubled back in hot pursuit.
In the terminal, Remo wasn't surprised to see some familiar hypnotic pulses flashing on the arrival and departure monitors that hung from the ceiling.
"Don't look at the screens, Chiun," Remo warned. But Chiun was already out the door. Remo flew out after him. The Master of Sinanju was bounding into the rear of a waiting cab. When Remo slipped in after him, the driver tried to gouge out his eyes with his keys.
Remo smacked the cabbie unconscious and snagged the keys on their way to the floor.
"Just once it'd be nice to go somewhere where everyone isn't trying to kill me," he groused as he dumped the driver to the sidewalk. He hopped behind the wheel.
"It is not you and your offensive personality for once-it is this floating prison," Chiun squeaked. "Hurry and drive, while my virtue is still intact."
Remo managed to drive ten feet before a speeding car crumpled his bumper. The driver had the dead-eyed look of Vox's other subliminal victims. When Remo tried to go around it, another cab hopped the curb and slammed them from the other side. They were pinned in a V of crashed cars as the mob from the terminal began swarming into the sunlight.
The crowd swamped the cab, smashing windows and pounding fists on buckling metal.
"Any ideas, Little Father?" Remo asked as he leaned away from hands that were trying to strangle him.
When he got no response other than the animal roar of the mob, he glanced in the back seat.
Chiun was gone.
"Why didn't I think of that?" Remo muttered. He popped the door and slipped out.
The crowd surged. Remo surged with it. As it continued surging, he bled back through it, leaving the mob to crush to death the empty space where he no longer was.
Their backs were to him as he hurried along the row of cabs. He kept to pillar and shadow to avoid detection.
He found the Master of Sinanju three cabs down. The driver of this taxi didn't have the look of a Vox viewer in his eyes. He seemed baffled by the activity up ahead.
"You wanna kill us, too?" Remo asked the driver as he slid in the back seat next to the Master of Sinanju.
"Only if you're a lousy tipper, mate," the man replied.
Remo gave the cabbie the address of Robbie MacGulry's flagship station. The two Masters of Sinanju ducked low, avoiding the crowd that was just beginning to realize that the two men they were after had disappeared.
"What did I tell you?" Chiun said. "This country is not safe for simpler travelers like me."
"Looks like it's plenty safe for people who aren't us," Remo said. "Friend must be expecting us. Do me a favor and keep from looking at any TV screens, okay?"
A strange look came over the old man's face. If Remo didn't know better, he would have sworn it was a flush of embarrassment on his teacher's cheeks.
Chiun didn't look at Remo. As they drove away from the airport, he fussed at the knees of his kimono. "Believe me, the last thing I want to see is your ugly white face on television," the Master of Sinanju sniffed.
He screwed his mouth shut tight for the rest of the cab ride from Sydney.
REMO HAD the taxi driver park at the back fence of the Wollongong Vox station. Avoiding guard booths and security cameras, the two Masters of Sinanju scaled the high fence and slid onto the grounds. The parking lots were empty.
"No cars," Remo commented as they headed for the main building. "Little early to be closed for Christmas."
"This is Australia," Chiun grumbled. "They were probably all stolen."
"Friend thinks we're coming. He's probably up to something. Just please, be careful."
His meaning was clear.
This time, the Master of Sinanju did not dignify his pupil's plea with a single word. Face stony, he mounted a set of rear stairs between security camera cycles. Remo darted inside behind his teacher.
They found themselves in a long air-conditioned hallway. The walls were thick glass. A door at the end of the hall led into a large control room.
The room was two stories high and filled with enough high-tech gadgetry to put NASA to shame. The air inside was cold. There was no one in the room. A pair of lonely security cameras scanned from high above.
Remo had already had enough of cameras lately. And now he knew who might be on the other side looking in.
On entering the room, Remo feinted left, Chiun dodged right. They each found a blind spot on opposite sides of the room where the cameras wouldn't be able to track them.
Once Remo was sure he sensed no listening devices, he called over to the Master of Sinanju.
"Just because they're broadcasting from here, doesn't mean Friend's around."
"No, it does not," Chiun agreed. "So you wanna be first?"
"As Master I was first," Chiun replied thinly. "Which means I decide who goes first."
Remo's eyes sank to half-mast. "Short straw again," he said. Sighing, he stepped down the painted concrete stairs.
The cameras had continued to patiently sweep the room. But as the first one passed Remo, it stopped dead. An instant later, a phone at his elbow rang.
"Think it's for me?" Remo said dryly as he lifted the receiver to his ear.