"I don't understand."
"It was a Bartholomew Bronzini film. I think it's Grundy IV."
"No," piped up the commandant of the Marines Corps, "it's not a Grundy at all. It involves another character. A new one."
Everyone looked at him as if to say, "Thanks loads for the non sequitur." All except the President, who was looking at the floor in stunned silence.
"Sir?" asked Admiral Blackbird.
The President looked up from his thoughts. "Go to Defcon One. Continue to monitor the situation. I'll get back to you."
"Where will you be?" the admiral asked, surprised at the President's sudden forcefulness.
"I'll be in the john," said the President as he slammed the Situation Room door behind him.
The admiral looked at the Secretary of Defense and asked a low question.
"How bad did you take him?"
"Bad enough," the secretary said morosely, "that I'm going to make a point of losing every match for the remainder of the President's first term."
The President of the United States did not go to the bathroom. He went directly to the Lincoln Bedroom and to the top drawer of a nightstand, which he pulled open to reveal a red telephone with a smooth blank area where a dial would normally be. He lifted the receiver.
The sound of ringing penetrated his ear. After only one ring, a lemony voice asked, "Yes, Mr. President?"
"Is your man still in Yuma?"
"Actually, both of them are."
"Have you had any contact in the last few hours?"
"No," Smith admitted. "This is a routine assignment. Check-ins are not necessary. Is there a problem?"
"We've lost all communication with Yuma. There are tanks in the streets."
"It is a war movie," Smith pointed out.
"Well, it's turned real. A Marine air station and an Air Force range are in unfriendly hands. They already shot down two recon patrols."
"Oh, my God," said Harold W. Smith. "This is a Japanese production, isn't it?"
"Yes, you know it is. The Nishitsu Group is behind it. "
"The Japanese are supposed to be our allies. Is there any chance that this is actually a Soviet or Chinese operation? Could Nishitsu be a dummy corporation or something?"
"If so," Smith returned, "then the situation is graver than Yuma. There are literally hundreds of Nishitsu plants in the country. But I do not believe that theory makes sense. Nishitsu is too big. They're definitely Japanese."
"How about Japanese Red Army connections? They're among the most vicious terrorists in the world."
"Doubtful."
"Smith, use your computers," the President rapped out. "Dig into Nishitsu's background. Find out everything you can about them. I need answers."
"Specifically, Mr. President?"
"Specifically, why they would invade the U.S. I need something I can take to the Japanese ambassador. Maybe we can sort this out quietly."
"Mr. President," Smith said sternly, "if what you tell me is true, we have an American city under occupation. I do not think this is something that can be negotiated away. It calls for a swift response."
"That's why I came to you, but you can't reach your people. "
"If Remo and Chiun are in the area, you can be assured that they will not stand idly by while an American city is overrun."
"You're using the wrong tense, Smith. Yuma has been overrun. It's fallen to the Japanese or whoever these people are. And where are your people?"
Smith had no answer to that.
The President continued. "If I unleashed our military, the civilian casualties would be enormous. No, I can't have that. Quiet diplomacy, Smith. This must be solved with quiet diplomacy. Get back to me as soon as you can."
The President hung up. Miles away, Dr. Harold W. Smith hunched over his computer terminal. As his fingers flew over the keys, he wondered what could have happened to Remo and Chiun.
Chapter 17
It was bad enough, thought Bartholomew Bronzini, that he had been shot at by a crazed movie crew. It was bad enough that he had been chased out into the desert with his tail between his legs. Running from a fight was not Bartholomew Bronzini's style, in real life or on the screen.
But as night fell over the desert and the cold got worse, he started sneezing over and over.
"Perfect," he said, trying to keep the T-62 tank pointed at Yuma. "Just when it couldn't get worse, I've caught a freaking cold."
Bronzini had run the tank blindly through the desert until he knew he was in the clear. The sandstorm had long since died down. There was no water. Just mountains and low rippling desert sand as far as the eye could see. He had to go around the mountains frequently in order to stay on course for Yuma. The detours cost him all sense of direction.
Bronzini was no longer sure that he was still headed toward Yuma.
He came across the bodies quite unexpectedly. First there was a man lying in his way. Bronzini stopped the tank and leapt out of the driver's pit. He went to the body, which lay on its stomach, clad in desert utilities. An unused parachute pack was strapped to the body.
Bronzini rolled the body over. One look at the face confirmed that it was a body. The man's eyes were wide open. His face was undamaged, but the expression on it was one of stark horror. The mask of the face had hardened with the mouth open in a frozen scream.
Bronzini wondered what had killed the man. There wasn't a mark on his body. Had Bronzini had the nerve to squeeze the body at any point, he would have felt the gravelly grit of pulverized bone under the skin instead of a skeleton structure.
Finding nothing, he got back into the tank and pushed on. Bronzini ran the tank around a sandhill, hoping for fewer sandhills beyond it. He got what he wanted.
Before him lay a sea of sand. And like motionless corks on the undulating waves were hundreds of bodies. Bronzini jockeyed the tank between them gingerly. It was a sight of unearthly stillness. Every body wore a parachute pack. They looked as if they had simply dropped dead as they walked through the sand.
It took a while for the enormity of it all to sink in. Bronzini might not have figured it out except that beside one of the bodies was a smoke canister stuck in the sand. It had been used.
"The fucking parachute drop," he said. His voice was etched with disbelief. He looked up into the sky. It all made sense then. The drop had been sabotaged.