Behind him, the Master of Sinanju's face puckered in intense displeasure.
"It stinks of rotting garbage," the old Korean complained. The air seemed to have curdled his button nose. He pressed one broad kimono sleeve over his face. The other, he fanned frantically before him.
"I've smelled better garbage," Remo disagreed. "Let's get this over with before our noses drop off." They kept their breathing shallow as they stepped over to the reception area.
Behind a filthy desk, a middle-aged woman with a bandanna tied around her hair sat reading a copy of Mother Jones, a pair of tinted granny glasses perched on the end of her nose.
She lowered her magazine as they approached, a perpetual scowl on her blotchy face.
"Can I help you?" she asked.
"Not unless you've got a can of Lysol stashed up your caftan," Remo said. "Just get me your boss."
The woman instantly frowned at the term. "There is no boss here," she said frostily. "We're a collective. Everything is voted on and done for the good of all."
"Vote yourself a bath," Remo suggested. "Look, somebody's in charge here. Get him."
"I feel ill," Chiun's muffled voice announced through his kimono sleeve. He started to lean against the woman's filthy desk for support but at the last minute thought better of it. He opted for swooning in place.
The receptionist ignored Chiun. Her dagger eyes glared malevolence at Remo. "Why do you automatically assume a man is in command?" she asked, bristling.
Remo rolled his eyes. "Lady, I don't care. Him, her, it, you. I don't care. Just get them. This place reeks like sweaty hockey equipment."
Her severe frown lines deepened. A long, dirty fingernail unfurled. "Take a seat," she commanded. Remo looked at the nearest chair. Some unidentifiable viscous goo dripped down the plastic back. "I wouldn't sit on that with your ass," he said. Her face was stuffed back into her magazine. "Sit, stand, hop on one foot. It doesn't matter to me."
"How about if I kick?" Remo suggested. Before she could protest, he skirted the desk. There was a closed door beyond. He brought the heel of his loafer into the warped wooden surface. The door exploded from its frame, skittering in thick fragments into the hallway beyond.
Behind him, the woman leaped to her feet, chair toppling backward onto the floor.
"What are you doing?" she shrieked.
"Giving someone an excuse to kill another tree," Remo offered.
It was a split second before she realized what he meant. Only when he took his first step through the shattered remnants of the door-the door that would now have to be replaced-did the truth dawn.
"You're one of them!" the woman screeched behind him.
"If by 'them' you mean people who've figured out that Right Guard works on both sides, guilty as charged," Remo called over his shoulder.
She wasn't listening. As he and the Master of Sinanju slipped into the corridor, she was wrenching open her desk drawer. Remo could hear her fumbling frantically even as his finely tuned senses honed in on the cluster of six heartbeats dead ahead.
The smell wasn't as bad in here. An open window carried fresh air into the corridor.
"You want to do the honors?" Remo offered, pausing before the closed conference-room door.
"Just be quick about it," Chiun urged, his face still firmly planted in his sleeve of brocade silk. Remo nodded sharply.
The inner door surrendered to his kicking heel. When the two Masters of Sinanju breezed inside, they were greeted by half a dozen shocked faces.
The room was a continuation of the squalid decor of the lobby. Colorful posters thumbtacked to the pressboard walls expressed such sentiments as Have You Hugged A Seal Today? and No Nukes Is Good Nukes.
At the appearance of the intruders, Brad Mesosphere's Fruitopia bottle slipped from his fingers. It cracked, spraying its contents across the grimy linoleum floor.
"Oh, my God," he gasped, his voice tremulous with soft disbelief. "They're here."
"The dirt mother in the lobby had the same reaction," Remo mused. "Looks like we were expected."
Brad blinked at his words, a hint of terrified realization in them.
"What do you want?" he chirped, frightened.
"My ability to smell back," Remo said. "But thanks to the cavalcade of stench out there, that seems out of the question right about now, so I'll settle for the President." His eyes got suddenly very cold. "Where is he?" he demanded.
The jaw of one of the younger group members jutted defiantly. "In Washington, man," he said, sneering.
"You wanna get this one, Little Father?" Remo asked.
Chiun impatiently removed the sleeve from his face. "If only to hasten our departure," he snapped. The arrogant young Earthpeacer was fouling the air a few feet from the Master of Sinanju.
His face was a cast of youthful disdain. A curling, contemptuous mouth snarled within spotty patches of goatee and mustache. Eyes glistened with wet malevolence.
The man didn't seem to find Chiun a threat, directing his contemptuous attitude solely at Remo. He was stunned, therefore, when he felt a sudden sharp pain in his chest.
Sucking in a shocked gasp of air, he looked down. The fingertips of one bony hand were pressed against his grubby Green Day sweatshirt. Only four long fingernails were accounted for. When the pain exploded within his chest, he realized where the fifth had gone.
Chiun whipped his hand away, his curving index nail slipping out through the incision it had made between ribs.
Pulsing blood erupted through the tiny snick the Master of Sinanju had made in the man's pulmonary artery.
With a sudden surge of crazed energy, the Earthpeacer clutched both hands desperately to his chest. Face turning ashen, his eyes bugged wildly as his mouth opened and closed in pained confusion. As the last powerful squeeze of his heart pumped blood into his chest cavity, the man pitched forward, landing spread-eagled on the conference table.
A final twitch, and he didn't move again.
Brad Mesosphere watched the scene with growing horror. When he tore his gaze away from the body, he found that he was staring into Remo's dead eyes. "Where?" Remo repeated.
"Halfway across the Atlantic by now," Brad blurted. "He was flown down to Central America after we snagged him. We put him on the Radiant Grappler."
Remo felt his entire body tense.
Out of the country. More great news for Smith. "The Radiant Grappler?" Remo snarled. "I thought the French sunk that barge."
"That was Radiant Grappler I. This is the RG II."
"Great," Remo complained. "Now I have to schlepp all the way out to the middle of the ocean. Do you even care how big a nuisance that's gonna be? The guy isn't even in office anymore. Why'd you kidnap him?"
Brad gulped. He seemed like a death-row inmate who was only just beginning to come to terms with his fate.