Now Remo sat back waiting for a commercial. He looked out the window. Down the road came a dark green Chevrolet with New York license plates. The car drove exactly at a thirty-five-mile-per-hour speed that would bore most people into sleeping at the wheel. The speed limit was thirty-five miles per hour. The exact speed of the car, around curves as well as on straightaways, never varying, told Remo who was driving it. He went outside to the driveway shutting the door quietly behind him.
"Hi, Smitty," said Remo to the driver, a lemony-faced man in his fifties, with pursed tight lips and a dehydrated face that had never been moistened by emotion.
"Well?" said Dr. Harold W. Smith.
"Well what?" said Remo, stopping him from entering the cottage. Smith could not enter quietly enough not to disturb Chiun while the shows were on, for although he was still athletically trim of body, his mind let his feet clop in the normal Western walk. Chiun had often complained to Remo about these interruptions after Smith had left. He did not need the aggravation of verbal abuse from Chiun today; he felt bad enough about using a gun.
"The job," Smith said. "Did it come off well?"
"No. They got me first."
"I don't need sarcasm, Remo. This one was very important."
"You mean the other jobs were vacations?"
"I mean if you didn't do this one right we will have to close shop, and we're so close to success."
"We're always close to success. We've been close to success for more than ten years now. But it never comes."
"We're in the social tremors preceding improvement. It's to be expected."
"Bullshit," said Remo, who a decade before had come out of a coma in Folcroft and been told of the secret organization named CURE, headed by Dr. Harold W. Smith, designed to make the Constitution work, a quiet little group that would insure the nation's survival against anarchy or a police state. At first Remo had believed. He had become CURE'S killer arm, trained by Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, the world's greatest assassin, and he had believed. But he had lost count now of the people he had eliminated who would have made the quiet little group known as CURE into an unquiet big organization.
The four in the Bay State Motor Inn were just the latest.
Remo handed Smith the Tucson program.
"Good," said Smith, putting it in his jacket pocket.
"It hasn't been photographed either," said Remo. "You forgot to mention photograph copy."
"Oh, they can't photograph this kind of paper."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Can't be done."
"How do you do that?" asked Remo.
"None of your business."
"Thanks," said Remo.
"It has to do with light waves. Are you happy now?" said Smith. He wore an immaculate gray suit with starched white shirt and that gruesome Dartmouth tie that never seemed to collect a grease spot. Then again, Smith didn't eat grease. He was a turnip and boiled cod kind of person.
"Okay," said Remo. "The commercials are on."
"Can you really hear through walls?"
"None of your business," said Remo.
"How do you do that?"
"You refine quietness. Are you happy now?" said Remo.
Chiun rose to greet Smith, his arms outstretched in salutation.
"Hail, Emperor Smith, whose beneficence and wisdom accommodates the very universe of man. May you live long forever, and may your kingdom be feared throughout the land."
"Thank you," said Smith, looking at the trunks. He had long ago given up trying to tell Chiun that he was not an emperor and not only didn't wish to be feared throughout the land but didn't even want to be known. To this, Chiun had responded that it was an emperor's right to be known or not known as he wished.
"Well, I see you're packed," said Smith. "I wish you and Remo bon voyage, and I will see you again in two months, correct?"
"You will see us with more love for your awesome wisdom, oh, Emperor," said Chiun.
"Where are we going?" said Remo.
"You should know. It's your illness that's sending you there," said Smith.
"Where? What illness?" said Remo.
"You do not remember how badly you felt this morning?" asked Chiun. "You have so quickly forgotten your ill feelings?"
"Oh, that. Well, that was because of the gun thing," said Remo.
"Do not mask pain, lest you deceive your body of proper warnings," Chiun said.
"That was this morning. Those trunks have been packed for a week," Remo said.
"You ought to see Iran if you want to go so badly," Smith said.
"I don't want to go to fucking Iran," Remo said. "It's Chiun who's always talking about Persia."
"You see how his memory is beginning to fail," Chiun said. "He even forgot the other day how he loved Sinanju."
"Hey, wait a minute," Remo said.
"Bon voyage," said Smith. "I see Chiun's show is resuming."
"It is nothing compared to your beauty, Emperor Smith."
"Well, thank you," said Smith, succumbing briefly to the flattery that Sinanju assassins had been applying for centuries to many emperors around the globe.
"What's going on here?" Remo asked.
Chiun returned to watching television and Smith left, the Tucson program, the dangerous link to the secrets of CURE, safely in his jacket pocket. Smith drove into the quaint heart of the seashore resort town and stopped by a large aluminum statue that was somehow appealing to him. Everyone else seemed to think it lacked life… lacked, there was no other phrase for it, a sense of creativity. Smith thought it was just fine. He went closer to look. He saw only the flash of light. He did not see the shards of exploding metal which tore into his insides and made everything very yellow before the world became black.
The explosion was heard in the little white cottage Smith had just left.
The commercials were on again, so Chiun commented: "Is this your Fourth of July? If so, why did I not see many fat women with children?"
"No," said Remo. "How come you didn't complain about Smitty interrupting your show?"
"Complain to an emperor?" said Chiun, shocked. "It was your job to see that he left before my meager pleasures were intruded upon. I was left without your help when I needed it most."
"You didn't miss anything. You could come back to one of those shows five years from now, and you wouldn't miss anything. Rad Rex will still be wearing that silly doctor's smock, still trying to discover a serum that can teach him how to act."
But Chiun was rock silent. The commercials fed into the soap opera and he folded his long fingernails and like a gently settling petal lowered himself to the floor.
The two stars of this soap opera, Val Valerie and Raught Regan were talking in bed. They were not married.
"Disgusting," said Chiun, and he did not talk again until late afternoon when all his shows were over. By then, Remo had heard that a man was seriously injured in town. A little boy on a bicycle shared the gossip.
"Yeah. He was a doctor, too. From New York. The police said he ran a sanitarium there in someplace that's named after bread."
"Whole wheat sanitarium?" Remo said.
The boy shook his head.
"Rye?" said Remo.
"That's right. He ran a sanitarium in Rye."
CHAPTER THREE
The hospital smelled of ether traces and constant scrubbing. The woman at the information desk said yes, a gentleman had been admitted in serious condition. Yes, the explosion victim. His wife had been notified. The name was Dr. Harold Smith, and no, Remo could not be allowed to see him because he was in the intensive care unit.
Remo smiled boyishly, told the plump middle-aged information woman that she had beautiful eyes, caught her left hand like a fluttering bird and then, as if he were absentminded, moved the pads of his fingertips sensuously along the underside of her wrist. They looked into each other's eyes and discussed the weather and the hospital, and Remo saw a red flush creep up her neck.