"The muffins are ready?"
"Yes."
"That's really silly," Reggie's father said.
"C'mon Dad. I don't have all day. Do you want my promise or not?"
"Just a minute. Drake, the muffins are ready .... Drake. What are you doing with that pistol? . . . Drake, put it down now or you are dismissed."
There was a crack of a shot over the telephone line.
"Thank you, Drake," Reggie said. "That will be all."
He whistled happily. He always felt good after something worked. He had discovered this wonderful ability to make things work, which really was making people work. Infinitely more delicate and rewarding than polo. And you scored in the real game of life and death. He loved this and felt the great joy of knowing he was going to be very busy from now on. He would trust the seventh stone. It had known for millennia what Reggie was just trying to discover now.
Chapter Eight
There were a lot of telephones in the airport but each seemed to have a caller permanently attached to the receiver, as if they'd come that way, packaged for delivery, straight off the assembly line.
Remo hovered around the phone bank waiting. One white-haired woman with a bright flowered dress and carrying a paper shopping bag seemed determined to reach out and touch everyone she had ever met. While Remo was waiting, she made call after call and on each one of the calls she told the same dumb stories of how her grandchildren were doing in college. Remo thought for a moment that he had found the real Ma Bell, live and in the flesh. He also thought for a moment that a good thing to do would be to pick her up bodily and go stand her behind the engine of a jet plane. He was moving toward her to do just that when he stopped himself.
What was happening to him? Why this freefloating irritation, always so close to the surface? Waiting for a telephone shouldn't have bothered him at all. Among the many things of Sinanju he had learned was patience, basic beginner's stuff, as elementary as an indrawn breath or the correct positioning of the body in accordance with the prevailing winds.
It shouldn't have bothered him now but it did. Just like the palm tree, the concrete steps and the rice. Something was happening to him and he didn't like it. He didn't like the way he was attracted to Kim Kiley. Chiun had long ago taught Remo the thirty-seven steps to bringing women to sexual ecstasy, and in learning the details, Remo had lost the desire. But now he wanted Kim Kiley, as a man wants a woman, and that annoyed him also. Too many things were annoying him these days.
He forced himself to wait in line patiently until Ma Bell finally ran out of relatives to harangue. She hung up the receiver and stood there as if searching her memory for one more name, one more telephone number. Remo reached across her and dropped a dime into the receiver and said with a sweet smile, "Thank you. Ma," and slowly edged her away from the phone.
"Ma, my ass," the woman said. "Who are you to call me Ma?"
"The guy who didn't stuff you into a jet engine, lady. Take a hike," Remo said. So much for niceness.
After three more tries, he got Harold W. Smith on the phone.
"There wasn't any bomb," Remo said.
"No bomb," Smith repeated. Remo could almost see the frown lines deepening at the corners of his thin mouth.
"There were a couple of Pakeeta Indians though," Remo said. "They're the ones who got the Rangers."
"And?"
"I got them," Remo said. "They were waiting inside the cave to kill me." Remo thought that news might perk Smith up a bit. It wasn't a bomb to destroy America but at least it was something.
"Why? Who hired them?"
"They didn't know. They got an anonymous phone call and some cash in the mail. Somebody promised them ten grand for me and another hundred grand for describing exactly how they did it. But they didn't collect. Then there were three more incompetents waiting for me outside the cave. They fired rifles at me for a while and then they used handguns and they blew themselves up. I didn't get a chance to talk to them, but I figure their employer wasn't exactly trustworthy either."
"I saw it on television," Smith said.
"How'd I look? Somebody told me I should be in movies," Remo said.
"I guess you were moving too fast for the cameras," Smith said. "You always seemed to be a blur. You know, Remo, this is really strange."
"No, it's not. I can always be a blur when I want to," Remo said.
"I don't mean that," Smith said. "First an attempt on the President's life. Then an elaborate bomb threat that turns out to be a hoax. And both incidents staged with enough time to allow us to respond." He paused a moment. "Remo, do you think that perhaps these things happened just to try to flush you out in the open?"
"Could be," Remo said. "I told you, somebody thinks I ought to be a movie star. Maybe people just like to look at me."
"But why didn't anybody try to kill you at the President's news conference then, if they tried out at the Indian reservation?"
Remo thought a moment, then said, "Maybe somebody was trying to film me. That happened at the reservation. The networks were there, but there was also an independent film crew. They took pictures of me and the self-detonating hitmen. Super-speed film," he said. Remo went on to explain about his meeting with the late William and Ethel Wonder, the missing film and the odd coincidence that the same cameraman had covered both the news conferences and the demonstration in Montana.
"I think you're right," Smith said. "I think someone is trying to get your moves on film so that they can figure out a way to gun you down."
"Gun me down? You've been watching gangster movies again," Remo said.
"Take a vacation," Smith said, "while I figure this out."
"I already took one. Four fun-filled days of surf, sand and sun."
"Take another one. Go back to Little Exuma. You're a property owner now. Go check your property," Smith said. "Inspect your condominium."
"I don't need another vacation. I'm still recovering from the last one."
"It's not a suggestion, Remo. It's an order. Go back to Little Exuma. If you don't want to rest, don't rest, but just stay out of the way while I try to find out who's after you. Please," Smith said, and then gently cradled the receiver.
At the other end of the line, Remo listened to the pleasant humming noise for a moment, then hung up the phone. Why had Smitty been so upset? People were always trying to kill Remo. Why worry so much about a few inept would-be assassins and a missing canister of high-speed film?
It was Smitty who really needed to take a vacation. Remo didn't.
He made his way through the crowded airport to the cocktail lounge where Kim Kiley was waiting for him. She was sitting in a back booth, staring thoughtfully into a wineglass as if it might, in some small way, hold a portent of things to come.
When she saw him approaching, she looked up and smiled at him with a smile so warm, so beckoning that Remo felt a tingling in his body that was so old, it was now new.
As he sat down, she said, "I wish we could run away for a while together."
"How does Little Exuma sound to you?" Remo asked.
"It sounds fine as long as it includes you."
"Okay. It's agreed," Remo said. "Little Exuma."
"I can work on my tan," Kim Kiley said.
"You can work on my tan too," Remo said and Kim reached across the table and gently brushed his cheek with her fingertips.