"Do not speak to me of obligations," Chiun hissed. "All whites are ungrateful. I gave Remo what no white has ever before achieved, and I gave you the use of Remo. And what have I to show for all my sacrifices? Obligations!"
"You have been well paid. In gold. You are a rich man. Your village is rich."
"I am a poor man," snapped Chiun, "for I have no son, no heirs. My village eats, yes. But will their children eat, or their grandchildren, after I am gone and there is none to take my place?"
Smith resisted the urge to remind Chiun that the United States government had shipped enough gold to the village of Sinanju to feed its entire population well, for the next millennium. Instead, he said, "I've always understood that a Sinanju contract is unbreakable. And that the word of Sinanju is inviolate."
Smith felt strange throwing back Chiun's own arguments at him, but it worked. Chiun was silent for a moment. In his hotel room, Chiun felt something hard under the sleeping robe he had just packed away and reached for it. It was a silken pouch containing the shard of speckled gray rock, the rock of the Master Shang, the rock which Sinanju tradition said Master Shang had taken from the mountains of the moon.
Hefting the rock in his hand, Chiun remembered the lesson of Shang and, his voice clear again, he said to Smith, "What would you have me do?"
"I knew I could count on you, Chiun," said Smith, who knew no such thing.
"This killer who goes by Remo's name," Smith said. "My belief is that he will next attack Lyle Lavallette of Dynacar Industries."
"I will go to this carriagemaker. I will protect him. This time there will be no excuses from Sinanju."
"Don't just protect him, Chiun. Stay with him. Ask him questions. We still don't know why those auto men are targets for assassination and I don't believe it has anything to do with environmental protests. Maybe there is some common link between them all, other than their business, that you can find out. Anything would be helpful. And if the killer shows up again, take him alive if possible. We've got to know if he's doing this for personal reasons or if he's in someone's employ."
"I understand. I will protect the carriagemaker. And I will find out what he knows. Which, of course, is very little because he is a white and an American besides."
Smith ignored the remark. He paused a moment, then said, "Would you tell me how Remo died? Do you mind talking about it?"
"He fell into bad company," Chiun said.
Smith waited but the old man spoke no more. Finally, the CURE director cleared his throat and said, "Well, okay, Chiun. Communicate with me as soon as you have something. "
"I have something now," said Chiun. "I have the ingratitude of whites. It is a larger thing than any Master of Sinanju has ever had before."
He hung up and at Folcroft, Smith thought that the bitterness Chiun felt toward Remo was strange. He would have thought Chiun would be racked by sorrow, but there was no sign of it. Still, you could never tell about Chiun and Smith forced it out of his mind and turned his attention back to the loose ends surrounding the murder at the grave of Remo Williams. Even at this critical time, in the last few hours that CURE might continue to exist, those loose ends ate away at him.
Chapter 21
"So what have you been doing all your life, kid?" the gunman asked after the cocktail waitress had brought them drinks. They were in a quiet corner of the best restaurant in Detroit. The lighting was dim and there was a view of the downtown area through the spacious windows. By night, the dirt was forgotten and Detroit looked like a city carved from ebony and set with jewels of light.
"I've been working for the government," Remo answered after a pause. He felt uncomfortable talking about his work.
"Come on. You've got to level with your old man. Before, you told me you were in the same line as me," the gunman said.
"I am. For the government, sort of."
"I get it. Secret stuff, huh?"
"Right," Remo said. "Secret stuff."
"Well, tell me about it. And drink up. That's good bourbon."
"I can't," Remo said.
"You can't tell your own father what you've been doing for a living all these years?" the gunman said.
"I can't tell you that either," Remo said. He pushed the tumbler of brownish fluid away from him. Even the smell bothered him. "What I meant was, I can't drink this stuff. "
"That's the way it goes. Name your own poison," the gunman said. He looked around for a cocktail waitress.
"I can't drink anything."
"Jeez, my son, the teetotaler. Is that what you're telling me, Remo?"
"My system won't handle alcohol," Remo said.
"You got something wrong with you?"
Remo stifled a laugh. It wasn't that there was anything wrong with his system. It was just the opposite. He was such a finely tuned human machine, thanks to Sinanju, that like a racing-car engine, the wrong mixture in the fuel tank would throw his performance off. In some cases, as with alcohol, it could have serious or fatal effects.
"What are you smiling about?" the gunman asked.
"Just thinking of Chiun," Remo said. "He said we're funny people because we eat the meat of dead cows and we drink the juice of rancid grass."
"Forget Chiun," the gunman said.
"What I mean was I can't drink stuff like this. It screws me up."
The gunman took a healthy sip of his own drink. "If you ask me, a man who doesn't drink is already screwed up."
Remo was silent. The man across the table from him was a stranger. He kept looking into the older man's face, looking for something, a flash of recognition, a long dormant memory, a hint of a shared experience, but there was nothing. Remo was confused and sad and more than a little uneasy. In another time and place, he and this man could have been enemies, and over the years for CURE, Remo had killed hundreds of professional hit men. But for circumstances, he might have killed the man who sat across from him without hesitation, never dreaming that the target might be his own father.
The waitress came back and asked for their order.
"Prime rib. Bloody rare. Mashed potatoes. Any green vegetable's okay."
Remo said, "I'll have rice. Steamed."
When Remo did not add anything else to his order, the waitress said, "And?"
"No 'and.' That's it. Just the rice. And a glass of bottled water, please."
"Yes, sir," the waitress said dubiously, taking away their menus.
"Rice?" the gunman said, "Just rice?"
"I'm on a special diet."
"Skip it for just one night. How often is it you find your father? Isn't that reason to celebrate? Have a steak."
"I can't," Remo said
"Those nuns really did a job on you," the older man sighed. "Or maybe it was hanging around with that old Chinese character?"
He quickly changed the tone of his voice when he saw the look that came into Remo's eyes. It scared him and he reminded himself to go light on that subject in the future. Or there might not be any future.
"Okay, suit yourself," the gunman said. "I want to talk to you about something."
"You never told me where I was born," Remo said suddenly.
"You never asked. Jersey City."
"I grew up in Newark," Remo said.
"That's where I worked. We moved there."
"What other relatives do I have?" Remo said.
The gunman shook his head. "Just me. I was an only child and so was your mother. Both our parents are dead. You've got nobody else but me. Listen to me, now. This is important."
"I'm listening," Remo said, but he was thinking of Chiun. The old Korean had, through the legends and history of Sinanju, given Remo more family than this man, his own father, had. He wondered what Chiun was doing right at that moment.