Agent Vespana yanked at the door handle and pushed, but the door closed again. Remo was holding it with one hand as he drove, but how had he grabbed it so fast? Remo’s finger penetrated the door handle as if it were made of gelatin. Things broke inside the door, locking it for good.
“No, can’t do that. I need you, Martina.”
“What for?”
“Listen, I’m one of the good guys and I’m trying to stop a bad guy. I need to know what went down when you tailed him from the White House last night. Where he went, what happened when he disappeared, all that kind of thing.”
“Why?”
“’Cause he’s the bad guy, remember? He’s doing bad things and he’s going to do some extremely bad things if somebody doesn’t stop him first. Apparently, I’m the only one who’s got the brass cojones to do something about it.”
“What is Whiteslaw doing that’s so bad?” She was stalling for time, but she was also trying to get the truth out of this thick-wristed, undeniably attractive wacko.
“Did you see the Orville Flicker video? That was really Whiteslaw.”
Weirder and weirder. Vespana had seen the tape, of course. Flicker had staged a bizarre campaign to launch his own political party, which had flourished for about two weeks, then vanished when the airwaves were saturated with the videotape of Orville Flicker selling military secrets to a well-known, now deposed Mideast despot.
“Sounds kind of paranoid, buddy,” she said scornfully. “You under a doctor’s care or something?”
“He fled the sanitarium this morning,” someone squeaked in the empty back seat, making Agent Vespana squeak, too.
“Where did you come from?” she demanded.
“Korea.” The withered old man, adorned in peacock colors, was so small that he could easily have been hidden in the back seat when they got it in, but Vespana knew she’d looked. It was part of her training to look. Did she remember hearing a tiny bump like very quiet car doors a few seconds ago?
“Whoever you are, help me! I’m a federal agent and I have been kidnapped.”
“I know. This one received your name from another agent, named Stuart.”
“Ohmigod, did you kill Agent Stuart?” Vespana demanded of Remo.
“I didn’t kill him. Did you kill him?” Remo asked sarcastically in the rearview mirror. “He’s been following my trail. That’s how he caught me.”
Chiun sniffed. Vespana didn’t know what to think. “Well, now you’ve got me, what are you gonna do? Drag me back?”
Chiun admired the scenery.
“Good,” Remo said. “Let’s go find us a son of bitch senator.”
Agent Vespana was trained to lie under questioning, and she thought she was pretty good at it until she found herself paralyzed as punishment for her fibs.
“Look,” Remo said in a reasonable tone, “I’m not going to try to explain to you that I’m a good guy and I’m on your side because you just won’t believe me, so what’s the use? But just so you can sleep better when this is all over, I’m a good guy and I am on your side. I’m doing a good thing, which is trying to catch this SOB Coleslaw who’s turned his loyalty oath into a big unfunny joke. In fact, I’m doing it against orders, because it’s the right thing and my boss has got his lemon-shaped head up his lemon-shaped butt. Have you ever been in that situation? Where you just know your boss is messing things up? Of course you have— you’re with the Secret Service. Anyway, we’re going to sit here all day if that’s what it takes for you to tell me the truth about Humbert Coleslaw.”
“His name is Herbert Whiteslaw, jerk.” Vespana didn’t know what sort of weirdo kung-fu grip had put her into this state of paralysis, but she could handle it. She wasn’t even uncomfortable. If Remo wanted to wait all day, then he could damn well do it.
She lasted only ten minutes, however. That was when the lightning bolt of pain shot down from her shoulder into her stomach and forced a strangled grunt from her.
“Hey, cut it out, Chiun!”
“I have no wish to wait here all day.”
“You weren’t even invited.”
“Sorry,” Remo said to Vespana. “He’s in his eleven-teens and more crotchety than ever.”
“Don’t let him do that again,” she gasped. The agony was gone, but it had been unlike any pain she could imagine, and suddenly her paralysis was a smothering cocoon.
“Sweetheart, I can’t make him not do anything.” Vespana felt the sweat break on her brow and trickled, stinging, into her eyes. Remo was whistling, and the sound cut like scissors into her brain. It was the song “25 or 6 to 4.”
“Stop it!” she hissed.
“Well said,” said the old man behind her.
Remo puckered and began whistling, “Color My World.” Vespana used to love that song, but now it was the last straw as she descended into blind panic. “I’ll talk if you just stop that infernal whistling!”
Her paralysis was removed with a quick touch, and she was too relieved to worry about the consequences of her betrayal as she led them to the scene of Senator Whiteslaw’s mysterious escape.
