Remo looked down. His front tire barely touched the white no-parking line.
"But you told me to come closer!" he protested.
"But I did not give permission to cross the white line, senor."
Remo got out of the car. He ripped the ticket pad from the man's hands, tore his gunbelt free, and as a final expression of displeasure, stomped the motorcycle into an agony of spare parts.
"Teotihuacan, senor?" the cop said quickly. "Go norte."
"Point," Remo said. "I forgot my compass."
The suddenly smiling traffic cop obliged. Remo said gracias in a metallic voice and got back into the car.
Twenty minutes later, they were driving past a cemetery set in the foothills of one of Mexico City's towering sentinel mountains. One side of the mountain was a beehive of tar-paper and cardboard shacks, set cheek by jowl.
"I can't believe people live like this," Remo muttered.
Past the mountains, the terrain flattened and was dotted with feathery trees and the occasional rosepink chapel. The air became cleaner. But not clean enough to induce Chiun to breathe it directly. Remo's head was pounding now. It was still like breathing unadulterated car exhaust. The pit of his stomach felt cold, like a spent coal.
"How do you feel, Little Father?" he asked.
"Ill," Chiun croaked through his sleeve.
"Wonderful," he muttered, noticing the sign that said SAN JUAN TEOTIHUACAN. "We're walking into one on the worst situations in our lives and we're freaking basket cases."
"We are Sinanju," Chiun said wearily. "And we will prevail." Then he coughed. Remo had never heard his mentor cough before, and it frightened him.
Chapter 25
The question was put to Officer Guadalupe Mazatl by the fat man the others called, with slimy deference, "El Padrino."
"Que quieres? Plata, o plomo?" In English: "What do you want? Silver, or lead?"
DFS Primer Comandante Embutes held a Glock pistol to Guadalupe's smooth brown forehead. She knelt before El Padrino, her eyes more shamed than frightened. It was the question she had dreaded back in Tampico. The narcotraficantes would give other FJP officers the same choice: accept bribes and look the other way, or die.
Guadalupe's lower lip trembled. She had thought she knew what her answer would be. But she was without a pistol now. And as El Padrino, who was dressed like an Acapulco gigolo, looked at her with feigned indifference, she muttered the word that tasted of bitterness.
"Plata," she said, adding, "No me mates, por favor."
The pistol was withdrawn.
Comandante Embutes said, "Very wise, senorita. Now you will tell us all about the americanos, and their presidente."
The words tumbled out of Guadalupe's Mazatl's mouth. She told them everything, about the false Vice-President, about the speaking statue. They scoffed at first, but when she produced the videotape, they scoffed no longer.
El Padrino's video machine played the scene over and over in the plush stateroom of his Lear jet. The cabin was very silent except for muttered curses.
"Josip Broz Tito, eh?" El Padrino said finally, turning to her. "Tito was a good man. Perhaps we can bargain with him, eh?"
"He wants only to survive," Guadalupe muttered abjectly. "That is what the gringos have said. To survive. "
El Padrino stood up. He nodded to Comandante Embutes. He pulled Guadalupe to her feet, checking the cords that bound her hands behind her back.
El Padrino lifted her chin in his many-ringed hands.
"We all wish to survive, eh, chica?"
And Officer Guadalupe Mazatl lowered her head in Aztec shame at his arrogant ladino smile.
Chapter 26
Remo parked at the tourist entrance to the ruined necropolis of Teotihuacan. There was a museum ticket booth nearby. The door stood open. It was deserted.
"Looks like everybody cleared out," Remo said, coming out of the museum. He handed the Master of Sinanju a brochure, saying, "Here's a layout of the place, in case we have to split up."
They walked between two long buildings into the ruins, coming to the base of an immense flat-sided pyramid that reared up for hundreds of feet so steeply its summit could not be seen. It was like a square wedding cake, each section smaller than the one under it. The broad stairs stopped at frequent open terraces. "Remo, such magnificence!" Chiun squeaked suddenly, his tired eyes brightening to birdlike clarity.
"It's the Pyramid of the Sun," Remo replied. "And don't get carried away with past glories. The Aztecs are all gone."
"It looks almost Egyptian. Could these Aztecs have been a colony of Egypt? Only the Pyramid of Cheops rivals this."
Remo frowned. They were standing on a long straight stone-paved road. Grass grew in the chinks between the cobbles. In fact, it grew along the sides of the dull brown pyramid.
"Says here we're standing on the Avenue of the Dead," Remo said, reading from his brochure. He gazed down the road. Past a line of flat structures like flat-topped temples, the road ended at the foot of a smaller pyramid that seemed to have been excavated from a hill. The back of the pyramid was still embedded in the hill.
"And that's the Pyramid of the Moon," Remo added. He looked up. "I didn't expect anything this big. There's an awful lot of ground to cover. What do you think?"
"I think that we missed a wonderful client in the Aztecs," Chiun said wistfully, scanning his brochure.
"Forget that stuff," Remo snapped. "We'd better get organized before Gordons gets here." He looked up. "What about the top of this pyramid?"
The Master of Sinanju shaded his eyes, trying to see the pyramid's top. He could not.
"Yes," he said. "We will go up this one."
They started up the tumbledown steps. The stairs became broader as they ascended, until they reached the middle terrace, where they paused to look around and catch their breath.
"Better watch it, Little Father," Remo warned. "You can't see the steps until you're on top of them. Don't walk off the side."
The Master of Sinanju stepped to the terrace lip and looked down. It was true. The broken stone steps were so steep one had to walk to the very edge before they became visible. He frowned. The mighty Egyptians had never constructed anything so marvelous.
The city of Teotihuacan extended for several square miles in every direction. Despite the danger, Remo was impressed by its sad vastness. " I wonder if America will ever reach this stage?" he wondered aloud.
"Count on it," Chiun said. "Let us continue."
They trudged up to the topmost terrace, their lungs laboring to extract oxygen from the thin, polluted air. Chiun's breath whistled.