"That is why we get off there. If they look for you, you will not be where they expect."
"What do we do in Hohhot?" Remo asked, pocketing the document.
"We disappear," Fang Yu said simply.
The train rattled on. Fang Yu dropped off to sleep, leaving Remo to stare out the window in bored silence.
China rolled by, vast, gray, and mountainous. Remo felt as helpless as he'd ever felt in his life. Cut off from Chiun, unable to get around China without help, and forbidden to use his Sinanju powers, he might as well be an ordinary CIA agent on a wild-goose chase. He didn't like the feeling. He was used to fast results, shaking information out of people when necessary and wisecracking his way through situations. No one understood his humor in China. Worst of all, they stared at him like he was a freak.
He mentally damned the political restrictions that kept him from doing his job the most direct way possible. If he had had his way, he would have crashed into the Great Hall of the People and taken the Chinese leadership hostage until Chiun was located and brought to him.
That would have worked. Hell, he'd have been home by now.
"Politics," Remo muttered half-aloud. He hated politics.
Thinking of the Great Hall of the People reminded him of the black limousine. He had meant to ask Fang Yu about it. He looked over. She was asleep, a pillow under her spilling black hair, her glasses still on. She looked like a wise lady owl.
Remo let her sleep. He hoped he'd remember to bring it up again. It was bothering him.
Then, as if sonic invisible genie had decided to grant his wish, Remo saw the black limousine scoot up the road that ran parallel to the railroad bed.
Remo started. It came up from behind like a silent ghost. It looked exactly like the Tiananmen Square limousine, and the one he'd encountered back in the US-right down to its snoutlike grille and double set of headlights.
Remo looked down, but the train's height prevented him from seeing directly into the car interior. No telling who was behind the wheel.
Remo nudged Fang Yu awake. She resisted his prodding.
"Fang Yu!" he hissed urgently.
"Mmmmm?"
"Fang Yu," he repeated, shaking her.
"What?" She blinked, looking around drowsily.
"Take a look and tell me if this is a Chinese limousine."
Fang Yu peered past Remo, sending fragrant rose-petal billows into Remo's nose.
"What you talking about?" she asked poutingly. "I see nothing."
Remo's head snapped around. The limo was gone.
"It was just there," he said doubtfully. Craning his neck, he spotted its rear deck about a hundred yards ahead. It was picking up speed.
"Look," Remo said, pulling her close to the window.
Fang Yu put her hands and cheek to the glass and tried to see past the curving forward cars of the train.
"I do not see car," she said unhappily.
"It's gone now," Remo said. "It was a long black limousine. I saw it go into the Great Hall of the People last night."
Fang Yu resumed her seat. "So what? Official limousine go in and out of Great Hall all the time. They are called Hong Qi-Red Flag limousines."
"I saw one of these in America just a few days ago," Remo told her.
Fang Yu's eyebrows shot up. "Oh?"
"Yeah. It looked nothing like anything I'd ever seen. The chauffeur was Chinese."
"Red Flag limousine," Fang Yu said simply. "Big shot drive them in China. High cadres. People like that."
"What was one doing in America?"
"I do not know," Fang Yu said in a voice that implied bored disinterest.
"Do Red Flag limos have a square grille?" Remo asked intently.
"What is a grille?"
"The front part."
"I suppose so," Fang Yu said vaguely. She was rapidly losing interest in the conversation. "I am going to nap again. Do not wake me again just to look at Chinese limousine, okay?"
She drifted off almost instantly.
Remo put his chin in his hand and looked unhappy. The sudden appearance of the limousine bothered him, but it must have been what Fang Yu had said-an official vehicle. Probably lots of them in China. It didn't explain the one prowling the streets of New Rochelle, but it made more sense than the theory that it was the same one. No way it could be following him, he thought. Only he and Fang Yu knew where they were. Not even Smith had that information.
Chapter 18
Boldbator the Mongol galloped across the barren steppe.
He bounced in his padded trousers on the high wooden saddle, feeling the magnificent muscles of his short-legged horse surge and release with every lunging step and the wind flapping his long brown del caught at the waist with an orange sash.
The blazing sky overheard was like a brilliant blue dome protecting the world. The steppes were an endless plate of dun and old snow extending to every point on the compass.
"Ai yah!" cried Boldbator, the cold air hot in his lungs. He loved the steppe, its vastness and wild freedom. To ride from horizon to horizon was to live.
The trouble was, there were no adventures beyond either horizon for Boldbator the horse Mongol, descended from a long line of free-riding nomads. Once, his kind had ranged from south China to the far lands of Europe, conqueror-kings in the saddle.
No more. Not even Mongolia lay united under the Mongols. Here, in Inner Mongolia, Boldbator was a Chinese serf. And his brothers to the north in Outer Mongolia held firm in an oval of land, allied to Russia, but warily friendly with China, like a lump of cold mutton caught in the mouths of two ravening wolves.
The thought made Boldbator whip his fine cream horse harder. The steed responded, as is the way with a good Mongol horse. Nostrils flaring, he pounded the steppe like the drumming beats of a thousand demons.
Boldbator rode with ghosts this day-the spirits of his mighty ancestors. He wished they were with him now. They would be khans of both Mongolias, as well as the Russias and the soulless Chinese to the south.