It was not much different from a Western hotel. The decor was subdued. The rug was peach, the bedspread yellow.
"I asked you a question," Remo said as Fang Yu pulled the draperies open. She pushed aside the sliding glass door and stepped out onto a balcony. Remo joined her out in the cold.
Down below, the vast expanse of Tiananmen Square lay open to their eyes. The square was only sparsely populated. Most of the walking figures looked like tiny Gumbys. PLA soldiers.
"Yes, I am," Fang Yu said quietly.
Remo started to speak. Fang Yu silenced him with a slim finger on his lips. Her scent was in his nostrils suddenly. It was very, very faint. Possibly even a natural scent. Remo liked it. She smelled of dying roses.
"What are you looking at?" Remo wondered.
"I have never seen it from such a vantage point," Fang Yu said in a dreamy voice.
"The Kentucky Fried Chicken fits in real well," Remo remarked dryly.
When there was no reply, Remo said, "Were you there? When it happened?"
Fang Yu looked down at the square, saying nothing for a long time. Presently she whispered a low question.
"Do you know the sound a human head makes when it is crushed under the treads of a tank?"
"No," Remo said truthfully.
"Pong," Fang Yu said distantly. "Pong. A hollow kind of sound-as hollow as the souls of those who drive the tanks and the butchers who give the orders." She spat out the word "butchers" with sibilant vehemence. She turned suddenly.
"We have to assume this room is bugged. We will speak of important matters later. Where do you wish to go?"
"I don't know yet. I have to find a man. A Korean."
Fang Yu's eyebrows lifted like commas.
"He's on his way to Beijing, if he's not already here." Remo continued. "He may be with a Chinese, a young man."
"How will we know these two?"
"The Korean is over eighty, and he will wear a kimono. Probably of silk, and travel with several steamer trunks. Where he goes, he will cause great commotion. He's very excitable. His voice squeals."
A notch appeared between Fang Yu's slim eyebrows. "You make this Korean sound like Old Duck Tang."
"Who's that?"
"You know him as Donald the Duck."
"I think you've zeroed in on his personality," Remo said dryly. "Exactly."
"I will look into this," she murmured at last. "You will wait here. Are you hungry?"
"I will be."
The notch disappeared. "Then I will take you to a most excellent Chinese restaurant," she said, smiling again. "You will savor it very much. The food is what you Americans would call scrumptious."
Remo closed the sliding door after her, shutting off the clattery hum of Beijing traffic. He hadn't even noticed the sound until it was gone.
"I will return at eight," Fang Yu called over her shoulder.
"I'll be here," Remo said. He watched Fang Yu slip out the door, enjoying the undulant sway of her slim hips.
Suddenly, locating the Master of Sinanju didn't seem as urgent as it had been.
Chapter 14
There was a great commotion at the Badaling train station when the excursion train from Beijing pulled in, minus its red caboose.
In the soft-seat cars, the commotion manifested itself as a repeated forlorn cry.
"What about my luggage?"
"We search for passenger luggage," the unhappy Head of the Train said in his stilted English. He looked worried.
The Master of Sinanju arose from his nap and hectored Zhang Zingzong to take down his lacquered trunk from the overhead rack.
Zhang struggled with the heavy trunk, but in his heart he was grateful. There had been fourteen such trunks when they set forth. The others had remained in Havana, to be called for when they reached their unknowable ultimate destination.
Zhang Zingzong had no idea what their ultimate destination was, but he knew that what he carried in the teak box in his knapsack whispered of a thousand footsteps to come.
The Master of Sinanju following like a silken votary, Zhang carried the trunk out to the platform. He signaled for a rickshaw and loaded the trunk aboard. It filled the entire rickshaw seat.
"No room for us," he told the Master of Sinanju.
Chiun lifted a spidery hand. Another ricksaw rattled up, pulled by a heavily bundled man who might have been a young fifty or an old thirty. Beijing winters took a lot out of the men.
Chiun gathered up his skirts and settled into the open seat. Zhang started to climb in. The Master of Sinanju stopped him with a warning nail to his sunken chest.
"You will stay with my trunk," he said firmly, "and see that it is not stolen."
"We have few thieves in China," he protested indignantly. "Thieves are beheaded here."
The Master of Sinanju looked around him haughtily. "I see many heads," he said, "but I also see many thieves."
"No thieves," Zhang repeated.
"All Chinese are thieves," said the Master of Sinanju, staring straight ahead, his cold hazel eyes unwavering.
Zhang climbed onto the steamer trunk, wincing at Chiun's sharp admonishment not to scuff the lacquer.
"Wo-men yao qu Wan-Li-Chang-Cheng," he spat at the driver.