"It's not a problem with me, Smitty," Remo whispered.
"It is with me," Chiun called. "I may have surrendered my honorific here in Sinanju, but in this case I must remain senior to Remo, for I am the far greater expert on garbage. Remo has only had the mirror to study, lo these many years. I have had all of Remo, all the time."
"Ha, ha," Remo said. "And I thought being Reigning Master was supposed to bring me a little more respect."
"If you believe a title alone confers respect, Remo Williams, then I have wasted the past thirty years of my life," Chiun replied, tone serious.
"Very well, Master Chiun," Smith said. "You and Remo may be partners."
"Partners, Little Father?" Remo asked hopefully. The old Korean's leathery face drew into a scowl. "I will accept this as the latest episode in a long history of abuse. But I am the more senior partner," he added quickly.
"We're a go, Smitty," Remo said into the phone. "Let's just hope Chiun and I don't end up bamboozled into some cyanide-swilling cult. Mayana's got a history in that department."
"It would be best if you did not mention Jamestown while you are there," Smith said. "Jack James and his followers are still a sore subject as I understand it. The Mayanans are resentful that an American cult became so infamous on their shores. Now, if there is nothing else, I will make the arrangements with Mark for your identification."
He broke the connection.
Remo hung up the old-fashioned phone. "You want to tell me what that stuff was about the contract?" he asked Chiun.
The old Korean was rising to his feet like a puff of soft steam. He turned in a swirl of kimono silk. "You have never before been interested in the business affairs of our profession," the old man said dismissively as he breezed past his pupil. "Why break a perfect record of ignorance?"
The wizened Asian hustled from the room to pack. "Because maybe I have a feeling I'm being hosed?" Remo hollered at the old man's disappearing back.
His answer was a self-satisfied cackle from somewhere in the depths of the House of Many Woods.
Chapter 6
The normally sedate international press was gathered with giddy excitement on the hot tarmac at Mayana's New Briton International Airport. When the portly man finally stepped from the Learjet onto the air stairs, an enthusiastic cheer rose from the crowd of ecstatic newspeople.
It was unusual in the extreme for the press to display anything but cynical disdain for Western leaders. The farther west, the more disdain. But this was a special case.
The dumpy little man offered a melancholy smile. Nikolai Garbegtrov, the last premier of the old Soviet Union, had shed his usual heavy wool overcoat in favor of a light French-tailored suit.
The sun was hot on his pale face. As he climbed down the steps, he waved politely to the crowd of reporters. His tired eyes scanned for Mayanan government officials. Any dignitaries at all who might have come out to welcome the arrival of the man who had once had at his fingertips control of one of the world's greatest nuclear arsenals. He saw only press.
"Mr. Garbegtrov, why are you in Mayana?"
"Mr. Garbegtrov, could you sign this? It's for my son."
"Mr. Garbegtrov, I just loved you in Reykjavik." He knew why they were called the press. They swarmed him, pressing in. Scarcely allowing him room to breathe.
It was always this way. For the Western press-particularly that of America-Nikolai Garbegtrov was like the Beatles landing in New York.
As usual, he politely shook hands and signed a few autographs as he made his way through the crowd. His bald scalp itched under his golfer's cap, which he wore pulled down tight to his eyes. Beads of sweat rolled from the band down the back of his neck. He wanted more than anything to scratch his head. He fought the urge.
"Mr. Garbegtrov, Mr. Garbegtrov, I have a question," a reporter said, muscling in. "Why do you wear a hat in public all the time these days?"
He had gotten as used to hearing the question as he had to ignoring it.
Garbegtrov moved with the surging crowd to his waiting sedan. As the reporters clawed at him, desperate to touch his greatness, he fell through the door, collapsing exhausted onto the rear seat. His driver slammed the door on the shouting crowd and in a minute they were speeding away from the plane, away from his adoring public. The same public that would turn on him in a heartbeat if they learned his secret shame.
Garbegtrov was a bland little man in his seventies. A nondescript apparatchik who had risen up the ranks of the Soviet political system in the dying days of the failing Russian Communist empire. Everything about him was bland, from his physical appearance to his demeanor. His one great distinguishing physical characteristic was the large birthmark that was splotched on the front of his bald head.
The birthmark was his most famous feature. It had also not been seen in public for over two years. His great, secret shame.
Alone in the back seat of the speeding car-behind tinted windows through which no eye or camera lens could see, beyond a panel that separated him from the driver-Nikolai Garbegtrov finally, gratefully, tugged off his hat. Desperate fingers scratched away at his bald scalp.
It was always itchy these days. Ever since that dark night two years ago.
As he scratched, he leaned over to get a glimpse of his reflection in the chrome lid of the armrest ashtray.
There it was. As big as life. The reason he could no longer show his head in public.
U.S.A. #1
The logo was plastered around his bald pate, put there as a twisted joke by vandals while he slept. They had used his birthmark as a jumping-off point.
He had tried everything to get rid of it. Lotions, chemical peels, laser removal. Nothing worked. Whatever process had been used to tattoo the slogan there kept bleeding it back to the surface. The doctors finally gave up, and Nikolai Garbegtrov was forced to put a hat on or face the wrath of those who professed to love him most.
The press had always been his most devoted fans. Short of diddling Lenin's corpse in Red Square on May Day, there was little he could do to make them turn on him. But tattooing a pro-American slogan on his head was one thing a rabidly anti-American press corps would never stand for.
And the worst thing-the absolute worst-was the itch.
As he dug away at his scalp with his pudgy fingers, he pondered anew what would happen if the world found out.
Garbegtrov had always had the press. Without them, he truly would be a man without a country. The metaphor stirred old embers in the former Communist leader's heart. He stopped scratching. Hat in his hands, he sank back tiredly in the seat of his speeding car.
It was his fault. All of it. And it was all a horrible, horrible mistake. He never intended for the Iron Curtain to fall. As premier, he initiated reforms, but they were never meant to go so far. The dissolution of the Soviet Empire was all a terrible accident.
Western commentators at the time insisted that he would not be able to put the toothpaste back in the tube. But he had always assumed that, were it to become necessary, he would be able to cram it back in somehow.
When he declared himself to be the first Russian president, he didn't leave the Communist Party. Yet another mistake. The Communist Party was now openly despised, thanks to Garbegtrov's misfiring reforms. When the party was thrown out of power, Garbegtrov was thrown out, as well.
With the dawn of a new, freer age, there was no longer anything for him at home. He wandered the world for a time. A speech at a press gathering here, another at a university there. Always well received, of course. But for a man who had helped run the world, it was never enough.
His whole life changed because of his blundering. He thought he could never find anything to compare with the clumsy, iron-fisted, pig-headed Soviet Communist system.
Then he went to San Francisco.
Nikolai Garbegtrov's spirits were at their absolute lowest when he was called to make a speech before something called Green Earth, an organization devoted to environmental concerns of global scope.
He assumed he was being hired as a whipping boy. Since the Green Earth people were supposedly concerned with the environment and since the USSR had been the most notorious environmental offender in the history of civilization, Garbegtrov naturally assumed they would hammer him with accusations concerning Russia's dismal record. He would willingly suffer the slings and arrows of these self-loathing products of capitalist wealth. All for a big, fat paycheck.
But at the meeting something strange happened. During the question-and-answer period he brought up the Chernobyl disaster. The Green Earthers dismissed it as nothing. They wanted to talk about Three Mile Island.
"But Chernobyl was catastrophe," Garbegtrov said. "Many have died. Many more will die. Poison cloud of radioactive material spread across Europe. Chernobyl was disaster on scale that still cannot be calculated. Your Three Mile Island was-how you say?-like X ray at dentist."