"Ready?" MacCleary yelled, stepping back from what would become the firing pattern.
"Ready," Remo called out. So MacCleary didn't bother to check the old man. Maybe this was one of the frequent tests. Maybe this old man, unable to speak English, pitiful in his frailty, was the victim offered to see if Remo would kill. What a pack of bastards.
Remo sighted by barrel instead of the "V". Never trust the sights on another man's gun. The distance was forty yards.
"Go," yelled MacCleary and Remo squeezed twice. Cotton chunks flew from the mats as the shots thunked where Chiun had been. But the old man was coming, moving quickly, sideways up the gym floor, like a dancer with a horrible itch, a funny little man on a funny little journey. End it now.
Another shot rang out in the gym. The funny little man kept coming, now crawling, now leaping, shuffling, but moving. Give him a lead. Crack!
And he kept coming. Fifty feet away. Wait for thirty. Now. Two shots reverberated through the gymnasium and the old man was suddenly walking slowly, with the shuffle with which he had entered the gym. There were no bullets left.
Remo in rage threw the pistol at Chiun's head. The old man seemed to pluck it from the air as if it were a butterfly. Remo didn't even see the hands move. The acrid fumes of spent powder drowned the scent of chrysanthemums as the old man handed the pistol back to Remo.
Remo took it and offered it to MacCleary. When the hook came close, Remo dropped the revolver to the floor. It landed with a cracking sound.
"Pick it up," MacCleary said.
"Stuff it."
MacCleary nodded to the old man. The next thing Remo knew, he was flat on the floor getting a close look at the grain of the gym's wooden flooring. It didn't even hurt, he went down so quickly.
"Well, Chiun?" Remo heard MacCleary ask.
In delicate, if not fragile, English, Chiun answered, "I like him." The voice was soft and high-pitched. Definitely oriental yet with clipped, British overtones. "He does not kill for the immature and foolish reasons. I see no patriotism or ideals, but good reasoning. He would have slain me for a night's entertainment. That is a good reason. He is a smarter man than you, Mr. MacCleary. I like him."
Remo got to his feet, bringing the gun with him. He didn't even know where he had been hit until he attempted a mock bow toward Chiun.
"Yeeow," Remo cried.
"Hold breath. Now bend," Chiun ordered.
Remo exhaled. The pain was gone. "All muscles, because they depend on the blood, depend on the oxygen," Chiun explained. "You will first learn to breathe."
"Yeah," Remo said, handing the revolver to MacCleary. "Say, Conn, what do you need me for if you've got him? I don't think you'd need anyone else."
"His skin, Remo. Chiun can almost disappear but he's not invisible. Can you hear witnesses saying they saw a yellow wisp of a man near every assignment we carry out? The papers would have a field day with the Phantom Oriental. And above all, Remo," MacCleary's voice dropped, "we don't exist. Not you, not me, not Chiun, not Folcroft. Above an assignment, above our lives, this organization never was. Most of your assignments will be keeping it that way, I'm afraid. That's why it's especially important that you never make a friendship here."
Remo looked at Chiun. The brown slits remained impassive despite an obvious smile. MacCleary's head was bowed as if terribly interested in the boards at Chiun's feet.
"What are the boards for?" Remo asked.
MacCleary just grunted and turned from Remo and headed for the door. His blue loafers shuffled along in a gait similar to Chiun's. He did not shake hands or say goodbye. Remo would not see him again, until he had to kill him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Harold Smith was eating lunch in his office when the direct scrambler line rang. It had little to distinguish it from the other two phones on the large mahogany desk, but a small white dot in the middle of the receiver handle.
Smith returned a spoonful of prune whip yogurt to the white porcelain dish on the silver tray. He wiped his mouth with a linen handkerchief as though expecting an important visitor, and picked up the receiver.
"Smith, 7-4-4," he said.
"Well," came the all-too-familiar voice.
"Well what, sir?"
"What about the canvass in New York?"
"Very little progress, I'm afraid, sir. We can't get past Maxwell."
Smith dropped the handkerchief to the tray and absently began to build prune whip yogurt drifts with the spoon. In the valley of tears that was his life, upstairs never failed to add a few thundershowers, then wonder why he got wet.
"What about the new-type personnel?"
"We're preparing a man now, sir."
"Now?" the voice came louder. "Preparing him? The Senate is coming to New York very soon, and it can't come with that Maxwell still operating. Too many witnesses disappear. We need a canvass, and if Maxwell's stopping it, then stop Maxwell."
Smith said "We only have an instructor-recruiter that's capable in this field..."
"Now, damn it. What the hell are you doing up there?"
"If we send our instructor, we'll only have the trainee."
"Send the trainee then."
"He wouldn't stand a chance."
"Then send your recruiter. I don't care how you do it."
"We need three more months. Our trainee will be ready then."
"You will eliminate Maxwell within one month. That is an order."
"Yes, sir," Smith said and hung up the receiver. He demolished the yogurt drifts and let the spoon sink into the grayish mixture.
MacCleary or Williams. One untrained, the other the only link to new material. Maybe Williams could pull it off. But if he failed, then no one. Smith stared at the white-dotted phone and then at the inter-Folcroft lines.
He picked up a local phone. "Special unit," he said into the receiver and waited. The noon sun sparkled on the waters of Long Island Sound.
"Special unit," a voice answered.
"Let me speak to..." Smith's voice tailed off. "Never mind," he said. Then he hung up and stared at the waters while he made his decision.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Remo had found Chiun's quarters much larger than his own, but stuffed with so much colored bric-a-brac that it looked like an over-crowded gift shop.
The elderly Oriental forced Remo to sit on a thin mat. There were no chairs and the table they ate from was ankle high. Chiun had said folded legs developed more tone than legs dangling from a chair.
For a week, Chiun only talked. There were no direct instructions on his trade. Chiun probed and Remo evaded. Chiun asked questions and Remo answered them with other questions.
Maybe the plastic surgery had slowed the pace of training. Surgeons straightened a break in Remo's nose and removed flesh from beneath the cheekbones to make them look higher. Electrolysis pushed back his hairline.
His face was still in bandages when, at one meal, he asked Chiun: "Ever eat a kosher hot dog?"
"Never," Chiun said. "And that is why I live so long." He went on: "And I hope you will never again eat kosher hot dogs or any of the filth you Westerners drop into your stomachs."
Remo shrugged and pushed away the lacquered black bowl that held the white, semi-transparent fish flesh. He knew that at night he could order real food.
"I see you will never give up your bad habits as far as your mouth goes."
"MacCleary drinks."
Chiun's face brightened as he lifted a sliver of the whitish fish. "Ah, MacCleary. There is a very special man. A very special man."
"You train him?"
"No, I did not. But a worthy acquaintance did. And he did an excellent job considering he was working with a person of Mr. MacCleary's idealism. Very difficult. Fortunately, you will have no such problems."
Remo chewed on a few grains of rice that hadn't been tainted by touching the fish. A strange light filtered through the orange screens.
"I suppose I should not ask, but how did you escape the burden of this idealism?"
"You should not ask," Remo said. Maybe he'd get the prime ribs tonight.