Remo frowned as he glanced at her. "Guy?" he asked. "I thought that was 'Gay.'"
"Quite," said Philliston. A look of minor displeasure sent the tiniest wrinkles up around his perfect aquiline nose. "Good to see you all again. Jolly good. Perhaps at your age you don't remember me, my old friend." He extended a perfectly manicured hand to Chiun. "Sir Guy Philliston," he said with a smile that flashed a row of flawlessly capped white teeth that had never seen the interior of a British dentist's office. The Phillistons imported their own personal D.D.S. from America.
Chiun looked first at the hand, then at Sir Guy. Spurning both, he looked over at the crashed plane. "Yes, quite," droned Philliston, replacing his hand at his side with the gentlest of efforts. He had no desire to create a wrinkle in his impeccably tailored Savile Row suit. "Here to tour the scene of battle, eh?" he said to Remo and Helene. "Quite a matchup yesterday. Jolly good sport."
"Your team was a little late on the field," Remo said.
"Utter cock-up, that was," Philliston admitted. "It seems RAF and our boys were at cross-purposes. No bother. Everything is sorted out nicely now."
"Yes. Now that it's all over," said Remo.
"Rather," said Philliston affably. His expression as he sized up Remo bordered on a leer.
Remo glanced around. "Anyone know where there's a good bulletproof codpiece store around here?" he asked wearily.
SMTTH HAD BEEN UNABLE to find out anything about IV. And that lack of knowledge frustrated him deeply.
As the night had worn on, he had become more and more convinced that he was dealing with a sinister shadow organization whose vile tendrils had its origins in the darkest days of the Nazi influence in Europe.
The clues were there when CURE had first encountered representatives of the group. The truth was, he had spent much of the night cursing himself for not seeing it before.
As his wife slept beside him, he had worked tirelessly, uplinking his portable computer with the CURE database. All he had to show for a night's worth of work was a sore neck and blank computer screen.
Nothing.
There was nothing that suggested the existence of IV. If not for the physical evidence Remo had uncovered, he would have concluded precisely what he had concluded before: there was no larger menace.
It made him feel a little better to find out that he hadn't missed anything in his original search through neo-Nazi files. But not much.
Now Smith knew better.
When morning came, his wife had wanted to go out sight-seeing. Smith first made certain that the government of Great Britain was prepared to defend against a third attack. He learned through his computers that the British military was on high alert. Hoping that this meant a bit more than looking out an RAF window, Smith had sent her off on her own, promising to meet her at noon for lunch.
He continued working long after she had left. When the bombs had dropped the day before and his line to Remo was severed, Smith and his wife had been forced to spend much of their time in the basement of the hotel. They had come through the attack unscathed. However, the phones still didn't work. It didn't matter. He had learned nothing that would aid Remo and Chiun's investigation.
At eleven-thirty Smith logged off his computer, storing it in his special briefcase. He closed the lid and carefully set the locks, sliding the case back under his bed.
He would resume work after lunch.
Leaving his work behind him, Smith left the hotel in order to meet his wife in Trafalgar Square.
HELENE MARIE-SIMONE continued to give Sir Guy Philliston the precise sort of look Sir Guy was giving to Remo.
"Have you any leads on who might be behind this?" she asked, sighing heavily.
"Not a bally one, I'm afraid," Guy replied, ignoring the lust in her eyes. "Every last man jack of the blighters was killed in the new Battle of Britain. Shame, really. No idea who could have sent these Boche monkeys to the shores of old Albion."
Remo raised a hand. "Excuse me, but could you please speak English?" he asked.
"Hear! Hear!" Chiun cheered. He was still watching the tail of the crashed plane.
"These were obviously German made," Guy said, indicating the plane. "But a lot of them are now in the hands of museums, private collectors. That sort of thing. We're looking into that angle."
"I saw where one of your papers this morning said they were dropped off by Martians from a UFO and are still fighting the war," Remo said flatly. "Maybe you should look into that."
"There isn't any need to bring the popular press into this," Philliston said to Remo, as if mentioning the British tabloids were the height of rudeness. Helene sneered condescendingly at Remo. "He is like that," she confided in Sir Guy. "I have found him to be very American."
"Yes, very American," Philliston agreed. He licked his lips lightly as he eyed Remo's lean frame.
"Very, very American," Chiun piped in.
"Don't you start," Remo warned.
Sir Guy Philliston changed the direction of the conversation. "Has your government any idea where the balance of explosives has gone off to?" he asked Helene.
"They are investigating a minor explosion in a Paris Metro station," Helene replied. "My government believes the incident to be related to the thefts."
"Wait a damned minute," Remo interjected. "When did you get this piece of news?"
"Last night."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"Obviously not," she said in a superior tone. She turned and smiled warmly at Sir Guy Philliston, happy to be sharing this information with him first. He had to tear his gaze away from Remo when he realized she was talking to him.
Remo rolled his eyes. "He's gay as a parade, Helene," he sighed.
Helene became indignant. "You say that because you find your masculinity threatened in the presence of a true man." Her words were flung out as a challenge.
"Whatever," Remo replied indifferently. His tone made her even angrier.
"Well," Philliston said, clapping his hands together earnestly, "here we are. World War II renewed. The British and French along with their American cousins fighting the bally Jerry hordes."
"Yes, except if this was really a replay, you'd be begging for our help and she'd be surrendering to anything with a spike on its helmet."
As he spoke, Remo stared up at the pale blue London sky. Something wasn't right.
"I cannot imagine what it must be like to be American," Helene spit disdainfully.
"It's having drugstores with more than a hundred different kinds of deodorants," Remo said absently. "Do you hear that, Little Father?" he asked Chiun.
The Master of Sinanju had stopped watching the picture-taking crowds around the downed plane. He was staring up into the sky in the same direction as Remo.
"They are close," he said, nodding gravely. "This crowd should be dispersed at once."
Remo spun on Philliston. "You've got to clear this street," he said, voice suddenly taut with urgency.