"You do not speak French," Chiun translated.
"I just said that."
"Il parle rebut americain!" the customs officer shouted.
"He said you speak junk American."
"Il faut qu'il se comportat."
"And must be deported," Chiun added.
"You're deporting me over your dead body," Remo told the customs man in English.
"Do you not mean over my dead body?" asked the customs officer, also in English.
"Exactly," Remo told him darkly.
Then, catching himself, the customs man clapped his hands over his own mouth. "I have been contaminated!"
Another customs officer strode up and arrested the first. They began arguing. In French.
"What's going on?" Remo asked Chiun.
"He has been arrested for speaking English," explained Chiun.
"Good."
Then a third customs officer tried to arrest Remo and Chiun for speaking English within the natural and eternal borders of the Republic of France.
That was the customs official whom Remo flung through the nearest plate-glass window. He screamed something that sounded inarticulate, but was probably just high-speed French. Both sounded the same to Remo.
Whistles blew shrilly, and airport security converged on Remo and Chiun. They were yelling excitedly in French, and since Remo didn't understand the language, he decided to put the worst possible construction on what they were trying to tell him and began resecting their frontal lobes with his index finger.
By some fluke he got a few speech centers, because the excited shouts stopped while the excited gesticulating continued as the airport security men decided to give the two English-speaking demons a wide birth.
Outside, Chiun hailed a waiting Mercedes cab in perfect French, which, he complained to Remo as they got into the back seat, was not perfect at all, but an abomination.
The cab driver, hearing English spoken in the back of his cab, which was technically French soil, brought the car to a screeching halt and ordered them out.
Since he gave the order in fluent French, Remo felt no obligation to obey and sat tight.
The Master of Sinanju, on the other hand, took immediate offense and hurled a long string of insults back in voluble French. The Frenchman hurled back as good as he got, and after a minute of shrieking cacophony Remo ended the argument by the simple expedient of giving the back of the driver's seat a sharp, sudden kick.
The driver flew out his own windshield, slid off the hood and onto the parking lot.
After Remo got behind the wheel, everything was fine except for the fact that the steering wheel was on the wrong side, and the wind blew back saltlike granules of shatterproof glass off the hood and into his face as he drove.
"So," Remo said as they entered highway traffic, "which way to Euro Beasley?"
"I do not know."
"Damn. That means we're going to have to ask directions from the locals."
They were already out of the city and into what appeared to be farmland dotted by small villages. So Remo pulled off the highway and asked a farmer.
"Euro Beasley?"
The farmer held his nose.
"You're a big help," said Remo, driving on. The next farmer spit when Remo repeated the name.
"How do you say 'Which way to Euro Beasley?'" Remo asked as they continued.
" 'Ou est Euro Beasley?"' said Chiun.
"Say again?"
"'Ou est Euro Beasley?'"
"I don't suppose that's spelled the same way it's pronounced."
"Of course not. It is French."
When Remo repeated the fragment of French for a peasant woman, she picked up a roadside stone and bounced it off their back window. She was shaking a malletlike fist at them as they drove away.
"What'd I do wrong?"
"You mangled that woman's tongue."
"You ask me, her tongue was mangled by its inventors. You know, Little Father, I had three whole years of French at the orphanage."
"Yes?"
"Yeah. French I, French I and French I. After my third French I, the nuns gave up on me and speaking French. Latin, I could handle, though."
"French is to Latin what Pidgin English is to your mother tongue," said Chiun. "And the French spoken today is doggerel."
"Tell that to the French," said Remo. "Hold on, I see some police cars coming up on us fast."
"Excellent. We can ask directions of them."
"My thinking exactly," said Remo, slowing.
In the rearview mirror three caterwauling French police cars came barreling up, driving abreast of one another. They were tiny white Renaults, with flashing blue roof bubbles and rude sirens. The car in the middle dropped back while the two side machines surged forward.
When they had flanked Remo's taxi, one gendarme called out, "Rendez-vous!"