"No matter what Remo told you, I assure you that he is in either Hollywood or Burbank. Taurus Studios has facilities in both places. That is where you need to look for him. I have booked you on a flight out of Logan. It leaves in half an hour. A cab is already on the way. You must stop Remo before he succeeds in his assignment. Have him contact me the minute you locate him."
It was Smith's turn to sever the connection. Chiun's face was dull as he replaced the receiver in the wall hook, but hints of anger were visible in the recesses of his slivered eyes.
Outside, a horn suddenly honked loudly. Smith's cab.
Chiun glanced around the kitchen. There was no time to eat. No time to even pack properly.
No need. There was only one thing he needed to pack.
Leaving his meager bowl of rice untouched, the Master of Sinanju hustled down to the living room.
Chapter 9
The construction of Los Angeles Harbor began at the very end of the nineteenth century in order to accommodate the growing export of petroleum from southern California. It was to eventually become one of the largest completely artificial harbors in the world.
Long Beach, where the harbor was built, was a suburban port city located nineteen miles south of the city of L.A. but still within greater Los Angeles County.
Having never been to L.A. Harbor, it took Remo Williams an hour and a half of searching from Los Angeles the city through Los Angeles the county before he eventually found Los Angeles the harbor. That it was located in the city of Long Beach only heightened his sense of confusion.
At the harbor a helpful merchant mariner pointed him in the direction of the latest ships bringing heavy equipment in for the Taurus Studios three-hundred-million-dollar production.
"You look beat," the man said sympathetically after Remo had thanked him.
"I just spent a year of my life this afternoon driving around L.A. looking for this place," Remo groused.
"Why didn't you take the Harbor Freeway?" the man asked with a "what are you, stupid?" shrug before wandering off.
At the moment Remo found it impossible to argue with the conclusion of the man's body language. A few minutes later he parked his car in a small lot filled with well-maintained pickup trucks and walked out amid the rows of berthed ships.
The sun was hot; the sky was coated with a film of vague grayish-white. The breeze that blew in at times from across Point Fermin and the Pacific beyond did nothing to cool the warm air.
In spite of the broad sky above, a strange sense of claustrophobia hemmed in the docks on which Remo walked.
He found the Taurus ships exactly where he had been told they would be. There were two of them. Large cargo ships loaded with huge metal shipping containers. The containers resembled 18-wheeler truck trailers that had been stripped of their wheel assemblies and stacked one atop another like massive building blocks.
Dozens of towering stacks lined the vast space before the bridge of one of the ships. The other vessel was already half-empty. Trailer trucks on whose doors was stenciled the Taurus Studios logo waited in line on the docks.
As Remo walked up to the ships, an industrial crane lowered a container to the first of the flatbed trucks. Men went quickly to work hooking the huge steel box in place. They were finished in moments. Once the load was secured, the truck drove off, only to be replaced by the next vehicle in line. The procedure began anew.
The boxes atop the two vessels seemed certain to topple over at any minute. Of course, Remo knew that this would never be the case. The containers were designed to fit one atop the other. Like gigantic plastic milk crates.
These stackable containers had helped revolutionize overseas shipping. Not only were they moved easily with the aid of huge cranes, but their innocuous shells also helped discourage piracy. Since each case was identical to the next, thieves could never know what was truly valuable and what was not. The contents were a mystery to everyone but the shipper.
What seemed odd was that these containers were being sent away without being properly inspected. Remo assumed that the trucks were being stopped somewhere away from the docks so that the contents could be searched carefully before the containers were allowed to leave the shipyard.
There was a great deal of activity on the dock in front of the pair of cargo ships. More Arabs were here, as well, just as they had been back at the Burbank studios of Taurus. The Arabs were mixed in this time with a variety of brash young Hollywood types and overweight Teamsters.
The dark faces of the Arabs were clouded in looks of perpetual suspicion as they roamed amid the Teamsters and studio men, their flowing robes dragging in the coagulated pools of oil spilled long ago.
The young men from Taurus could not have been long out of college. They had the earnest, peeved looks of spoiled rich kids who were used to getting their way. Manicured fingers pointed in every direction. To the ships, to the crates, to the crane, to the trucks.
The Taurus men wore oversize suit jackets of blue, purple and green. Apparently the coats had been fashioned from the same material used to keep eggs from sticking to the bottom of frying pans, for they had a glossy Teflon sheen. Ponytails hung halfway down their jacket backs and bobbed in irate protest with every shouted word.
For their part the Teamsters seemed to be ignoring every word uttered by the young men. They went about their jobs with the sort of infamous union sluggishness that would have put a giant sloth to shame on its most indolent day.
As he came upon the bustling, shouting crowd, Remo was looking for only one individual in the sea of nearly three dozen men. But as he scanned the group, he didn't see Assola al Khobar's face.
Unable to locate the terrorist, Remo singled out one of the studio types.
"Hey," he said, tapping the young man on the shoulder, "is Mr. Koala around here somewhere?" He was embarrassed to use the name Bindle and Marmelstein had given the terrorist.
The Taurus man turned his head slowly, disdainfully to Remo. His head was the only part of his body that moved. The studio man saw instantly that he was looking at a Nobody.
The affronted studio executive looked down at Remo's hand where the offending finger that had had the temerity to touch his person had scurried off to join its four disreputable friends. His entire face puckered arrogantly.
"I beg your pardon," the young man said through clenched teeth.
His nose was so pinched it looked as if someone had sewn his nostrils shut. Indeed this was actually the case. He had instructed his plastic surgeon to make the two openings razor thin. Of course he had stressed that they not be so narrow as to preclude the insertion of a straw.
"Koala," Remo repeated. "They told me at the studio he was here."
"Was is the operative word, isn't it?" the man said caustically. Wind whistled from his slitlike nostrils.
"Don't tell me he's gone." Remo complained.
"I believe I already have."
With that the man turned away. He rolled his eyes histrionically to a pair of his ponytailed colleagues who stood nearby.
Remo exhaled in frustration. "Where did he go?" he asked.
"I think he went to the Hollywood lot," one of the other young men offered. "He's supposed to be working with the stunt teams today."
The expression on the face of Remo's young executive became horrified. He could not believe that his associate didn't have sense enough not to talk to a Nobody. The kid was only six months out of college. He obviously did not have the life experience that came with eighteen whole months working for a major movie studio.
The junior executive's misbegotten notions of courtesy had the precise effect that that sort of thing invariably had. As the more senior of the young executives shot a withering glare at his companion, Mr. Nobody became even more emboldened.
"What's all this stuff for?" Remo asked, crinkling his nose. He pointed over at the ships and their cargo.
The older of the young men raised a staying hand to his junior, lest the other executive inspire further conversation in the Nobody. He then turned his withering eye on Remo.
"Excuse me," the man said with a deep, impatient sigh, "but are you anybody I should care about?"
Clearly he thought Remo was not. Before the question had passed his lips, he was turning back to his companions. He nodded to the younger Taurus executive, silently informing the man that this was how one dealt with Nobodies.
It was the attitude that did it. The ponytail bobbed smugly over the shiny blue suit jacket. The face was aimed deliberately, snidely away.