A car screeched to a stop beside Remo's crouching form.
"Hurry." a voice called from the car.
Remo got to his feet. There was no one behind the wheel. Remo lifted on tiptoe. His head barely topping the dashboard, the Master of Sinanju gestured frantically. The passenger door popped open.
"Quickly," Chiun said anxiously. "They are getting away."
Remo jumped in, and the car took off down the street, careening like a drunken tiger.
"Where did you learn to drive?" Remo asked.
"Back there," Chiun said.
"Back where?" asked Rerno. "Back where I picked you up."
Remo suddenly noticed the ignition had been popped. "Wait a minute. You mean you don't know how to drive!"
"What is to learn?" asked Chiun, lifting himself up out of the seat to better see over the steering wheel. "You point the car and it goes."
"Right," said Remo, grabbing the wheel with one hand. "I'll help you point."
"You might also help me with the brake," said Chiun as they took a corner on two wheels.
"What's wrong with it?"
"Nothing. But I cannot reach the pedal with my feet."
Remo shot out a foot and the car slowed and stopped, knocking over a mailbox.
Remo got out and jumped over the hood to the driver's side. "Scoot over," he said.
The Master of Sinanju folded his arms defiantly.
"If you will not let me drive, neither of us will drive. "
"Fine," said Remo. "Then you can be the one to tell Smith that you let Ferris get away."
Chiun slid over and Remo got behind the wheel. The car leapt forward.
"This would never have happened if you hadn't gotten hungry," scolded Chiun.
"Save it," said Remo, pushing the speedometer to sixty. He spotted the van pulling onto a major highway. Unfortunately, it was in the opposite lane. Remo sent the car over the lane divider and did a U-turn.
"I think that is against the rules," Chiun pointed out. Remo ignored him. He piloted the car onto the ramp and sent it hurtling after the van.
When the van came in sight a half-mile away; Remo accelerated. Streetlights flashed past. He overhauled the van with surprising ease. Even as the blond girl stuck her tongue out at them in defiance, she did not push the van past sixty-five.
Remo found out why when he tried to force the van off the road.
His left-front fender crumpled against the side of the lumbering vehicle. The van didn't even wobble. It was too heavy. Too heavy to speed and too heavy to stop. "This is not how it goes on TV," Chiun pointed out. Remo tried again, but this time the van came at him. Remo felt the steering wheel wrench under his fingers. He compensated against the twisting of the front wheels as they careened out of control. The steering wheel broke off in his hands.
Remo hit the brakes, and the car spun around like a big metal top, as the van continued on into the night. When the car stopped scraping sparks of the guardrail, Remo and Chiun got out of the wreck.
"You okay?" Remo asked Chiun.
Chiun straightened his pink tie. "Of course. How could you let them get away like that? I will be shamed before Emperor Smith."
"That thing was a tank," Remo said. "Let's find a pay phone."
"I am not reporting failure to Emperor Smith," said Chiun.
"You don't have to. I will."
"Done. Just be certain you place the blame where it belongs, on your shoulders. I told you I should have driven."
Ferris D'Orr woke up. He found himself lying on a fold-down cot inside a plush-lined van. He rubbed his stinging shoulder. The last thing he remembered was being in his bed in the penthouse and having a blond girl shoot something into his veins.
"Ughh," Ferris said.
A mechanical whirring attracted his attention. Ferris saw the old man, the one from his nightmare.
"Ah, Mr. D'Orr. I am glad you are awake."
"Where am I?"
"That does not matter. It should concern you only that we are nearly home."
"My home?"
"No, mine," said the old man. "We will be under way shortly, I assure you. My Ilsa is running an errand." A few minutes later, the blond girl jumped back behind the driver's seat.
"This is all I could find," she said breathlessly, waving a sheaf of papers. "Most of the pay phones were vandalized. Honestly, don't people respect property anymore?"
Konrad Blutsturz took the papers in his steel fist and riffled through them.
He shook his head. "There are so many of them," he said in disgust, and threw the papers to the floor.
One of them landed on Ferris' covers. He picked it up. It was a page of telephone listings. Ferris noticed the van's interior was littered with similar pages.
Oddly, there was one name on every page Smith. As the van got under way, Ferris D'Orr pulled the blanket over his head and shut his eyes until they hurt. He hoped that he would wake up back in his penthouse bedroom. But he didn't think that he would.
Chapter 22
Dr. Harold W. Smith awoke on the first ring.
He awoke the way he always did, like a light bulb switching on. He lay there for the briefest of instants. Recognizing that he was in his office at Folcroft Sanitarium, he got off the office couch. His wristwatch, which he wore even to bed, read 4:48 A.M. as he picked up the desk phone.