SUPERIOR SIZE HAS FAILED AS WEAPON AGAINST THE SUBJECT, AS HAS SUPERIOR NUMBERS. SO ALSO HAS TRICKERY AND POISON. HE HAS RECENTLY DISPOSED OF AN ORIENTAL WHO THREATENED HIM. SUBJECT IS UNUSUAL AND MAY BE UNIQUE. IN THAT UNIQUENESS MAY LIE A WEAKNESS. I HAVE UNTIL TWENTY-THREE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN HOURS TONIGHT TO FIND OUT.
224
Chapter Fifteen
Remo was glad that he had checked out the Penny-A-Pound shopping center on the way back to his motel from Reva's office, because at night it would have been difficult to distinguish the Penny-A-Pound shopping center on Downtown Boulevard from the Pound-A-Penny shopping center or the J. C. Pound Shopping Center or the Henny-Penny shopping center or the Penny-Henny-Pound Shopping Center, all of which were lined up one after another, in an interminable row seeming to stretch from Raleigh to the horizon.
Remo was just glad he had not been told to meet Reva's friend at the Wiggly-Piggly Shopping Center because he had just passed a Higgly-Wiggly, a Wiggledy-Piggledy, a Higg-Piggy, and a Piggy-Higg. How did anyone in North Carolina ever remember where they bought their groceries? And once they did, how did they ever find their way home? Everything looked alike.
But at :14 p.m., Remo was sitting alone in his rented car in front of the Time-Rite Drugstore, right next to the closed Rye and Ribs eatery. He knew that was right because in the next shopping center along the road, there had been a Rite-Time Drugstore, right next to the Scotch and Sirloin steakhouse.
He was sure it was Time-Rite. And Rye and Ribs. He hoped.
The stores that surrounded on three sides the giant parking lot were dark, and only a few of the copper-hued overhead lamps illuminated the lot.
225
At exactly :14, a large black car pulled into the parking lot and rolled up nose to nose against Remo's car. He closed down his pupils against the glare of the headlights, and then the other driver turned his lights
off. Remo opened his door and started to get out. And
then he laughed.
Coming out of the other car from all four doors, front and back, were eight men. They were all his size. And they had dark hair and dark eyes. They wore black T-shirts and chinos and leather slip-on shoes. Around their wrists they wore black leather wrist
bands.
Now, what in the hell was that all about? Did Reva Bleem's friend just have a weird sense of humor?"
"Which one of you is Reva's friend?" Remo asked.
"All of us are," said the driver, in the too-fast slurred accents of New Jersey.
"Well, it's nice to meet all of you," Remo said. "We could start a baseball team. We wouldn't have to buy uniforms. Call ourselves the Black Knights or something."
The eight men had moved around and were now facing him in a large semicircle. His back was against
his car.
"We'd have to have a pinch-hitter for you, sucker," the driver said. Remo looked at the men carefully and was annoyed. He never realized how common his looks were until he ran into eight look-alikes at once.
But why? He had been set up, but why eight people who looked like him? Was it supposed to confuse him? How could it? He knew who he was, and as long as he attacked someone else, he wasn't attacking himself.
He was thinking this when the first man charged, and as Remo slid under the knife the man held in his hand, he realized that the idea of Reva's Mend had been to confuse him—to splinter his thinking so he would wonder about these eight people—and not be paying attention to the business of staying alive.
Too bad, he thought. It wouldn't work.
T
But it did.
As he slid under the one knife-thrust, another of the eight men closed in from the semicircle and dropped down, trying to land with his knees on Remo's throat. He had a knife in his hand, and as Remo spun to avoid the knees, he saw the silver blade glint as it came toward his face. He slammed back with his head, moving out of the way of the knife, and used his skull to mash into the stomach of the man who knelt beside him. He heard an "Oooooof!" as the air crushed from the man's lungs. But he had no time to dwell on it because he realized that on the ground like this, he was vulnerable. If a large enough pile of men climbed on him, his movements would be restricted, and one of their knife thrusts might hit home.
He tried to get to his feet, but before he could, he was hit by the force of six more men diving toward him. He felt the weight on him, the pressure on his ribs. It felt like a little less than a thousand pounds. He squirmed his way into the mass of bodies, hoping to join with them, hoping that confusion would work for him instead of against him, and they would be unable to injure him because they wouldn't be able to tell him from their own.
And then he felt the weight on him lightening.
And he heard Chiun's voice calling.
"Remo, where are you? Identify yourself."
"Here, Chiun."
"That won't do," Chiun said. "Identify yourself. Say something stupid."
Meanwhile, Remo felt the bodies on him growing lighter, then he felt a pair of powerful hands grab him by the neck and thrust deeply into his side, and he started to rise from the ground, and he shouted, "Hey, Chiun. Me. Stop."
Chiun dropped him heavily on the ground and turned to look at him, his hands on his hips.
"Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" Chiun asked. "Just look at this mess."
Remo glanced around. Five of the men who at-227
tacked him would attack no more. They lay sprawled in the parking lot, fifteen feet away from Remo's car, their limbs outflung in the indignity of death. The three men nearest the car started to move to their feet. They held knives.
"I don't know," Chiun said. "I thought you were one of a kind. I never knew this country was filled with so much ugliness. I have to rethink my decision to stay in this land of big-noses."
The first man was on his feet, and from Chiun's blind side, he lunged with his knife toward the Oriental. Without turning, Chiun backhanded him with his left hand, and the man went sailing over the hood of Remo's car to land in a lump on the hard pavement of the parking lot.
"Tell me, Remo," said Chiun, "is there a special farm where things like you are bred? Does someone really want to produce such creatures in number?"
The other two men stopped against Remo's car, looked around at the bodies surrounding him and Chiun, then jumped into their car and drove off.
"Now you did it," Remo said.
"I did not do it. I did not spawn these things," Chiun said.
"I mean you let them get away. They're gone now."
"Can they be gone off the earth where their ugliness will never be seen again?"
"Oh, well, the hell with it," Remo said. "It was a good idea to have you waiting here in case it was a trap."
"And the trap worked. I was forced to look at those hideous visages," Chiun said. "Oh, the fiend. I will never be the same."
"Let's knock off the ugly routine," Remo said. "I think we'll go back to see Reva and see if she knows more than she's telling us."