"He is asking you to surrender."
"Ou est Euro Beasley?" Remo asked.
The gendarme flinched as if Remo had spit in his face.
"What'd I do wrong?" Remo said to Chiun.
"You told him 'He hears Euro Beasley.'"
"Oops. Maybe you should try."
But it was too late. Pistols came up out of police holsters, and Remo knew he had to act fast before their tires were shot out from under them. He accelerated, flung open his door and hit the brakes hard.
"Chiun!"
The Master of Sinanju copied his pupil's action.
The pursuing gendarmes were caught off guard. They hit their brakes too late and took off both taxi doors with a ripping of steel and the crash-bang of the doors smashing into their windshields.
When the third car caught up with them, Remo reached out and wrenched the passenger door off the pacing vehicle. Then he asked, "Ou est Euro Beasley?"
The driver pointed ahead. "Follow ze signs to A301. "
"Did he say follow the signs?" Remo asked Chiun.
"Oui."
"Don't start speaking French to me. How do you say thank you?"
"Merci."
"Oh, right. Merci, " Remo called, kicking out through the driver's side and catching the right front tire with the hard toe of his foot.
The spinning tire blew, sank and the police car went falumphing into a ditch. The driver got out and called "Bonne chance!" after them.
"He has wished us good fortune," Chiun translated.
Remo grinned. "Looks like clear sailing ahead."
Chapter 19
Behind a basement door whose brass plate said White House Situation Room, the President of the United States conferred with his military advisers.
"Options, I want to hear options," he said.
"Do we have a policy?" asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The President looked to his national-security adviser, who glanced guiltily at the secretary of defense, who in turn threw the hairy eyeball back to the Chief Executive.
"Not yet," the President admitted. "I was kinda hoping you'd help us out with that."
"We have to retaliate, Mr. President," said the Joint Chiefs chairman in his musical East European accent.
"We do have to?" the President said unhappily.
"You did say you wanted to hear options," his national-security adviser said.
"Good options. Positive ones."
"I thought you meant military ones," the JCS chair said.
"Every time I send troops somewhere, my polls drop."
"We have to retaliate in kind," the secretary of defense said firmly. "American prestige is at stake."
"Damn."
"Look, the French have bombed Euro Beasley. Now they have it surrounded. We have one of two responses in kind available to us."
"I'm listening."
"One, we liberate Euro Beasley by inserting the Eighty-second Airborne. They'll hold it against further French incursions, wire it up good, slip out under cover of darkness and blow it to smithereens."
"Blow up Euro Beasley?"
"Mr. President, we can't let the French just march up and grab a symbol of American culture and prestige. And we can't exactly dismantle it and ship it back to the good ole U S.A. in crates."
"What's option two?" the President asked.
"Option two is to retaliate in kind. They hit an American theme park. We hit a French theme park." The chair-laid a map of greater Paris on the long conference table. "Here we have Paris. And this red spot thirty-two kilometers east is Euro Beasley."
"Right...."
"This is Parc Asterix. It's twenty-five kilometers north of Paris and both logistically and symbolically, it's a natural."
"How so?"
"It's based on some sissy French comic-strip character, so it has parity with Euro Beasley as a military target. You know, they hit Mongo, we clobber Asterix."
"What is the other red spot?"
"France Miniature. It's a theme park where the entire country is laid out in miniature. You can ride through it in a matter of an hour. Sort of a Lilliput kind of deal, I guess."
"Wouldn't that be a more logical target? It's more French."
"True. But it's an awfully small target. Hard to hit. The goddamn city of Paris they got there is no bigger than this room. Our satellites had a heck of a time getting a fix on the tiny Eiffel Tower, which we'd naturally designate ground zero."