"Search me," said Remo, paying attention to his driving. "Maybe they like to complain, like some other people we both know," he added.
Chiun maintained an injured silence.
After a while Remo remembered something. "I thought Paris was killed during the Trojan War, before he could run off with Helen of Troy."
"Gossip," Chiun said dismissively.
"So what's the real poop?"
"Paris feigned his death and they eloped to Egypt in secret. Some claim that King Proteus slew Paris to win fair Helen, but in truth Paris, driven to distraction by his bride's unendurable snores, committed suicide. Any anti-Korean slander to the contrary is baseless and untrue."
"Wait a minute! Did the House ever work for King Proteus?"
Chiun gazed out the window, his face a parchment mask. "I do not recall," he said thinly.
"My butt!" Remo was silent a moment. "At least we didn't do Helen of Troy."
"Not that there were not offers," said Chiun. "Low ones."
They skirted Petersburg without incident, and all seemed calm, except for the helicopters overhead. Remo spotted state-police helicopters, a few Marine and Army ships, as well as those belonging to various news organizations, all headed in the same direction they were.
"So much for our going in unsuspected," complained Remo.
"What do you mean, we?" sniffed Chiun. "You are a guide and badger only."
"You mean gofer, don't you?"
"Just remember your place, burrowing one."
A mile before the entrance to the Petersburg National Battlefield off Interstate 95, there was a roadblock. Virginia State Troopers were stopping traffic. They were respectful to vehicles bearing Virginia license plates, as well as those belonging to North Carolina and adjacent Southern states. Vehicles with Northern plates were being turned back and in some instances detained.
At first they were polite when it was Remo's turn to pull up to the checkpoint. A solitary trooper in a gray Stetson sauntered up to Remo's side of the car.
"From around here?" he asked Remo. His uniform, Remo wasn't surprised to see, was Confederate gray with black trim.
Remo decided to bluff his way through.
"Why, shore," he said, hoping Virginians sounded like Andy Griffith, the first Southern voice that popped into his head.
"That's good to hear. We're conducting a little roadside eye test. Take but a minute." He held up a flash card. It read Portsmouth.
"Now, what's that say?" the trooper asked Remo.
"Portsmouth," said Remo.
"Nope. It's Porch Mouth," said the trooper.
"It says Portsmouth, not Porch Mouth."
"Try this next one, won't yew?"
"Isle of Wight," said Remo, reading the next card.
"Nope. It's Isle of White."
"It says Wight."
"It's pronounced white," said the trooper without humor.
"I don't see any h," Remo said.
"It's a Virginia h. Only Virginians can see it."
"Ah'm from Tennessee," said Remo, guessing at Andy Griffith's home state.
"Let's try one more, shall we?"
The trooper held up a card that clearly said Roanoke.
"Roan-oke," said Remo, pronouncing it the way it was spelled because that was the way Sister Mary Margaret used to pronounce it during American-history lessons back at the orphanage.
"Nope. Ro-noke."
"There's an a after the o, " Remo pointed out.
"And there's a bluebelly in the woodpile," the trooper retorted. He gestured to a nearby trooper. "Hey, Earl, we got us another carpetbagger come to make trouble here."
Two more troopers came up to join him, hands on side arms.
In the passenger seat the Master of Sinanju said, "Remo, I must not be delayed if I am to bind this nation together once more."
"What do you want me to do about it?" Remo asked out of the side of his mouth.
"I must save my strength, for I have a great task before me."
Remo sighed. "Oh, all right."
"Kindly step out of that car," the trooper with the flash cards said before the pain signals from his knees informed his brain that they had been ambushed by a suddenly opening car door.
The trooper let out a creditable rebel yell and doubled over to grab his throbbing kneecaps. While he was bent over, Remo removed his Stetson and threw it at the approaching Virginia troopers like a Frisbee.
It whizzed over their heads, spun in place and came back like a boomerang to slap the running troopers about their faces with the whipping chin strap.
Momentarily distracted, they failed to see Remo descend upon them. By the time they realized there was a problem, their fingers had been squeezed together in groups of five and expertly dislocated.
Remo stepped back as the troopers stood about shaking their numb but limp digits, which hung like fat, dead worms off their unfeeling hands.