"He said monster."
"You'd think with their capital in ruins, they would have better things to do than watch an old monster movie."
"Ay! El Monstruoso esta estrujando el tanque," a man cried.
"The monster has crushed a tank," Chiun translated.
"El Monstruoso devora el tanque!"
"The monster is eating the tank," Chiun said.
A man began weeping. Others began weeping, too.
"The special effects must be really something," Remo said.
"They are saying that the monster is coming this way."
"They sure take their movies seriously down here," said Remo, grabbing a chair. Chiun joined him.
The waiter was nervous. He sweated. He handed them menus and asked them their preferences in Spanish.
Remo pointed to an item of the menu. Cabro al cabron.
"What's this?" he asked the Master of Sinanju.
"Grilled goat."
"How about pastas de tortuga?"
"Turtle's feet."
"You're making this up so I don't get any meat, aren't you?"
"No," said Chiun, who then told the waiter, "Arroz. "
"If that's rice, make that a double," said Remo in English.
Chiun translated for the waiter, and within a few minutes bowls of steaming rice were laid before them.
They ate quickly. Remo finished first.
The commotion from the TV was distracting, so Remo wandered over and tried to see past the closeclustered heads of the TV viewers. The viewers in the back row were standing on stools. Even getting up on his toes didn't help much.
Getting no cooperation, Remo flicked at the earlobe of a man ahead of him, causing him to glower at the man beside him.
Remo caught a brief glimpse of the screen.
"Huh!" he grunted.
Returning to his table, he whispered to the Master of Sinanju. "Speak of the devil."
"Verapaz?"
"No. Gordons. I just saw him on TV."
Chiun's hazel eyes widened.
"What!"
"Yeah," Remo said casually. "He's the monster." Chiun eyed his pupil stonily. Remo looked back, a poker expression on his face. Finally he let his face come apart, grinning from ear to ear. "Fooled you."
"It was not Gordons?"
"Well, it looked like him. Or like the form he last assimilated."
"The ugly Aztec woman monster?"
"Yeah. Curlicue or whatever the name was."
"How do you know it is not Gordons returned to life?"
"Three reasons," said Remo. "One, we shattered Gordons into loose rock while he was in that form. He's deactivated. Two, Smith made us leave the corpse after the Mexican authorities stuck him back in their big museum. If he's still there, the roof has fallen in on his head by now."
"Those are not convincing reasons, Remo."
"I was getting to number three. Three, the monster on the TV had to be twenty-five feet tall. Cordons isn't twenty-five feet tall. The statue was only eight."
"Therefore, it is not Gordons."
"Can't be."
"Yes, you are right. Besides, how can it be Gordons when Gordons was vanquished by the Reigning Master of Sinanju?"
"I helped, too."
"I found his dense mechanical brain and broke it in his head."
"And I delivered the coup de grace. "
Chiun made a face. "You wasted a blow. He was already dead when you struck."
"Could be. But I was making sure. He came back to haunt us too many times before."
"But he is dead now. Long dead."
"If he wasn't, he'd have come back long before. And in a form we wouldn't recognize."