Capping the mouthpiece, Popejoy whispered, "You are."
Ten minutes later, as Remo climbed into a spiffy cherry-wood number with plush scarlet lining and a bottle of mineral water supplied compliments of the Popejoy Funeral Home, the undertaker was explaining, "A 'Jim Wilson' is slang for any cadaver traveling by air. We get a special discount fare, of course. It will be cold in the cargo hold, but with frequent landings, you should be fine. Assuming you don't object to being a dead man." He smiled like a pleasant little cherub.
"I've been a dead man before," said Remo, climbing in as the Master of Sinanju dabbed at his eyes with a flapping sleeve.
"My son," he said in a choked voice.
"I'm not dead," Remo reminded.
"I am merely practicing my grief for the long voyage," the Master of Sinanju said.
THE FLIGHT WASN'T the most pleasant journey Remo had ever taken in his life, but when the casket was taken off the Aeroflot plane and loaded into a truck by workmen who sounded Russian to Remo's ears, he was happy to have arrived.
Considering his destination was Moscow, Russia, this was amazing in itself.
The baggage handlers were very considerate. They pried open the casket to let Remo out. One clutched a pair of pliers.
When the baggage handler in what turned out to be Bucharest, Romania, opened the casket clutching pliers, Remo had assumed he was in Moscow and they were customs agents.
Then he saw the gold teeth cupped in one man's hand and realized they were corpse robbers. Remo scared one dead when he sat up and slapped the man's jaw askew while the others fled into the night.
Remo pulled the casket lid back.
After a while, someone came along and loaded Remo's coffin in the transfer plane.
The gold thieves in the true Moscow were made of sterner stuff. They looked shocked, then one pulled out a Luger and decided that if their victim wasn't completely dead, he would finish the job right here and now in the bowels of Moscow's Sheremetevo II Airport.
Instead, Remo pinched his forefinger against his thumb, placed it a micrometer in front of the man's nose and let go. Ping.
The Russian stumbled back howling. The Moscow coroner cited the official cause of death as severe nosebleed. It would have made the newspapers except the dead man was found piled atop three others who died of acute undescended testicles, a condition that usually meant the testes had not dropped into the scrotum from the abdominal sac after birth. In this case, the testicles were kicked deep into the body cavities of their owners as if they were musket balls, not the other kind. But as this was physiologically improbable, not to mention a medically unrecognized condition, the Russian coroner fell back on a familiar term to mask the inexplicable.
Remo found the Master of Sinanju waiting for him in the Sheremetevo II Airport terminal. This time Chiun wasn't hovering over the luggage dump. He was realigning the fingers of a would-be pickpocket.
The man was on his knees howling as Chiun held his left wrist with his right hand while using his right hand to stretch the felon's fingers as far as the connecting cartilage would allow. Which was an extra inch on the long fingers and a quarter on the pinky. With a flourish, he popped the man's thumb out of its socket and left him clutching the broken ball of pain that was his fist.
"Russia was never like this," Chiun muttered as they claimed a battered green Zhiguli car whose checkerboard stripe denoted it as a local taxicab.
"There's a lot of crime in Russia these days," Remo admitted.
"The Russians need a good czar. Otherwise, they behave like children who do not get along with themselves or others."
En route to the heart of the city, they witnessed two broad-daylight knifings, as well as a man being methodically run over by a Mercedes SL. The man was being held down on the sidewalk by four other men as a fifth backed the car across his chest. Each time it passed over his chest, he expelled a whoof! and spasmed.
Remo asked the cab driver to stop, then sauntered over to assist. He assisted the four assailants out of the suddenly shattered, unworking sacks of bonemeal their healthy bodies had become. It was too late to save their victim, but it was better than nothing.
"What's happened to this place?" asked Remo as the taxi moved on through the gray streets that were choked with the filthy snow mounds of a recent storm.
"Democracy," the driver said. "Is it not wonderful?"
They saw American billboards emblazoned with Cyrillic logos. Remo quickly learned how to spell a wide variety of familiar US. products in the Russian alphabet by guessing what the letters meant.
Snow was piled as high as the second floors of buildings in some spots, and in contrast to his previous visits to the dreary city on the banks of the Moscow River, not a policeman or soldier walked the streets.
"Where's the law in this town?" Remo asked.
"The law of the jungle is the law now. It is wonderful. I make six times the rubles I made before the Soviet system went pfui. "
"Good for you. Just get us to Gorky Street."
"It is coming up. But it is called Tverskaya Street now. What is your exact destination?"
"I don't have one."
"In that case, you will pay double the fare."
"Robber!" flared Chiun.
"Why is it double the fare?" asked Remo.
"I charge for unnecessary directing to a nonspecified destination," the cabbie said amiably.
"Well, it's only kopecks," said Remo.
The cabbie snorted. "Kopecks are valueless. Rubles rule Russia now."
They turned onto a long thoroughfare near a snow-burdened park where the familiar arches of McDonald's were a bright spot of color in an otherwise drab area. There was a line that stretched around the block to get into the fastfood restaurant.
"Gypsies buy Beeg Meks to resell in the park," the driver volunteered. "Is the new Russia not great?"
"It is not," snapped Chiun.
The driver lost his smile. "State your destination."
"Anywhere around here," said Remo.
"Oops. I now charge you triple."
"Triple? Why?"
"Imprecise directing of driver. It eats into my efficiency. Time is rubles. You are costing me rubles."
"Fine. See that gray stone building? Drop us in front."
The cabbie obliged by U-turning through blaring traffic and bumping up on the slushy sidewalk without regard for scattering pedestrians.
Turning in his seat, he began counting up the fare with the aid of his fingers.