Swearing to himself, he let the truck roar past and raced back to rescue his mentor.
The green bus was not stopping. The driver's dark eyes were fixed on the traffic, not the road. The Master of Sinanju was raising himself of the asphalt with trembling arms, his face dazed.
Remo's mind raced, making instinctual mental calculations he could not have duplicated with pen and paper. The speed of the truck, his own velocity, even the air resistance pressing against his chest. They all coalesced into some deep untranslatable knowledge.
Remo picked up speed, bent at the waist, and without pause scooped up the Master of Sinanju with bare inches between them and a big bus tire.
The bus whizzed by, sucking at the hairs at the back of Remo's head.
He deposited the Master of Sinanju on the grass of a little square park. He felt his own lungs burning slightly, as if he had somehow inhaled fire.
"Chiun! Are you all right?" he said with difficulty.
"The air is poison here!" Chiun wheezed. His eyes were closed, his thin chest heaving with each breath.
"Yeah. I'm starting to feel it too." Remo settled back. He concentrated on his own breathing. The air was heavy. He had been aware of it ever since leaving the airport, but he hadn't noticed the thin oxygen content. The pollution particles had masked that deficiency.
Now, in the strange humming drone of Mexico City traffic, he became slowly aware that his head was beginning to throb.
"This is not good," said Remo Williams, who had not had a headache or a cold or any other common minor infirmity since achieving the early states of the art of Sinanju. "And that Lupe is probably looking for us right now. Are you up to ditching her?"
"I am up to returning to America," Chiun said weakly.
"Soon as we can," Remo promised. He stood up, looking for a taxi.
He flagged down a yellow VW Beetle with black and white checks on the doors as it came around the circle.
"Where are the best hotels?" Remo asked the driver. "The ones with air-conditioning."
"In the Zona Rosa, senor. The Pink Zone."
"Then take us to the Pink Zone," Remo said, assisting Chiun into the back.
"Zona Rosa, si," the driver said. The cab scooted down a street and back up another. They passed streets with European names like Hamburgo, Genova, and Copenhague.
"You feeling any better, Little Father?" Remo asked.
"I will live," Chiun said stiffly. His eyes were closed. He looked very old all of a sudden, Remo thought. He always looked old. But Remo had long ago learned to trust-and respect-the power that flowed under the wizened shell of the man who was his teacher. He sensed that power ebbing, and it worried him.
Sooner than Remo expected, they were tooling down a street called Florencia, where a row of tall palms dominated a center island. They passed trendylooking boutiques and even some American restaurants.
Remo was about to ask the driver why it was called the Pink Zone when he noticed that the cobbled sidewalks were faintly pink from paint that had been worn thin by rain and the tread of countless feet.
Abruptly the driver pulled up to a corner. He turned around, saying, "Two hundred pesos, senor.''
"How do you know this is where I want to get off?"
The driver shrugged, muttering something Remo didn't catch.
"What did he say, Chiun?"
The Master of Sinanju put the same question to the driver, and translated the reply.
"He said, 'This is a good place to get off;' " Chiun explained.
"Why not?" Remo said, getting out. He paid the driver in coins, knowing he was overtipping but not caring. He was sick of the heavy Mexican money rattling in his pockets. It all came out of his CURE operating expenses anyway.
The cab pulled away. Remo looked around. He was standing before a boutique called Banana. The roof had been done over to resemble Jungleland. A giant version of King Kong clutched a hairless mannequin against the backdrop of papier-mache trees.
"Let's find a hotel," Remo said, stepping around the corner onto a street called Liverpool.
The first hotel he came to was in an area dotted with earthquake-shattered buildings. The glass face of the Hotel Krystal was undamaged.
"Looks fine to me," Remo said. "So long as the earth doesn't move."
They checked in and, once in the air-conditioned room, began to feel less light-headed. Remo poured out the contents of a bottle of complimentary purified water into two glasses and gave one to the Master of Sinanju. That helped too.
Chiun sat up in one of the big beds.
"I recognized the President of Vice, Remo."
"No kidding," Remo said dryly, looking out at the Mexican skyline. It was magnificently broad and seemed to extend as far as the ring of distant mountains. The sky was darkening to a steely elemental color, as if it was about to rain toxic metals.
"But there is something else," Chiun added.
"Yeah?"
"He recognized me. That is why he ran."
"Can't be. He's never seen us. He shouldn't know we exist."
"The look in his eyes told me that he recognized me," Chiun insisted. "Not in his face. It was like the mask of a clown, always grinning. But his eyes. They told me that he knew my face and feared me."
"Impossible!"
"It is so," Chiun repeated firmly.
"Look, I'm going to need you on this," Remo said anxiously. "Are you up to it, or not?"
" I will serve my emperor," the Master of Sinanju said weakly.
"I'd better call Smith."
"Tell him what I have told you."
"He's not going to believe any of this," Remo muttered, punching the telephone keypad.