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CHAPTER EIGHT
The Folcroft estate in Rye, New York, had been built behind thick walls by a millionaire who had no wish to share with the public his passion for young women. It had been used by the United States government during World War II as a training camp for spies, and then had drifted into some kind of vague medical administration headquarters for the government, until one Friday, when all the personnel were told to clear out by 6 P.M. Sunday. Everything would be shipped to their homes, along with their new work assignments.
At 6:01 P.M. that Sunday, Dr. Harold W. Smith, presented by the president of the United States with an assignment he didn't want, arrived at the rickety old dock behind the main Folcroft building. CURE was born.
Over the years, the estate was converted by Smith into Folcroft Sanitarium, an expensive rest home for wealthy malingerers, and it pleased Smith inordinately that he made the sanitarium show an annual profit. This was not really necessary because the sanitarium served only as a front for the massive computer network that was used by CURE in the battle against crime.
Smith's office was in a rear room on the main building's second floor, overlooking the waters of Long Island Sound, which looked bleak, cold, and gray twelve months of the year.
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Smith was in his office, patiently explaining what CURE had done about the note threatening America's athletes. Remo sat on a hard-backed chair facing Smith, but Chiun walked back and forth across the room, stopping only to drum his ringers impatiently on Smith's desk.
"I've checked everything," Smith said, "and we just can't tie the terrorist threat to either South Africa or Rhodesia."
"Or anybody else for that matter," Remo suggested. When Smith nodded, Remo said, "For this, the taxpayers spend how many millions a year?"
"Not on me," Chiun said quickly, looking up from drumming on the desk. "Everyone knows how little the Master of Sinanju is recompensed for his efforts in this very wealthy country. It is one of the disgraces of my life. Can we go to Russia now?"
"Just a moment, Master," Smith said. He wondered why Chiun was so anxious to leave. All his enthusiasm for this Moscow mission was making the CURE director suspicious.
"The early bird catches the worm," Chiun said. He nodded toward Remo. "Or, in this case, the early worm may catch the gold medal. We will return in glorious triumph."
Smith cleared his throat. "Yes, well, Remo, what I'm saying is that we don't know who's involved."
"As usual. Come on, Chiun, we're going."
He stood up and Smith said quickly, "I think it would be best if you kept a low profile in Moscow."
"That will be difficult with that big white nose," Chiun said.
"He's telling me not to win anything, Little Father," Remo explained.
Chiun looked at Smith with an expression that meant he thought Smith should be instantly admitted to an asylum.
"What?" he exclaimed. "Lose?"
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Smith shrugged. "How would it look if Remo won on national television?"
"Glorious," said Chiun. "Unless he was sloppy, but I will train him to make sure that does not happen."
"Maybe glorious but definitely dangerous," said Smith. "Our secrecy would be in danger. Remo's life in jeopardy. You can understand that, can't you?"
"Of course, I can understand it," Chiun said. "I am not a child."
"Good," Smith said. He told Remo, "Remember, we haven't discounted anybody. Not the South Africans or the Rhodesians or anybody else. We'll keep looking. And Chiun?"
"Yes."
"Thank you for understanding."
"You do not thank someone for being intelligent, Emperor," Chiun said. "It is because I am so intelligent that I understand these things and can sympathize with your plight."
As the two men left his office, Smith began to worry again. Chiun had given up too easily and Smith vowed to be sure to watch the Olympics on television, an instrument he generally disdained.
Out in the hallway, Chiun said to Remo, "That man becomes more and more of a lunatic every day. Imagine. Losing."
In the car driving to Kennedy Airport, Remo asked, "What are you smirking about, Chiun?"
"The Master of Sinanju does not smirk. He smiles in warm appreciation of his own genius."
"And what has your genius come up with now?"
"I have a plan that will make me a star without that lunatic Smith being able to blame us."
"I'll let make-you-a-star pass and just ask what it is you expect me to do," Remo said.
Chiun rubbed his dry, long-nailed hands together in unrestrained enjoyment. "We will physically dis-
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able all the other American athletes. Not seriously. I know how squeamish you are about these things. Just enough so that they can't compete. Then you will enter all the events and win all the gold medals and you will tell the world you owe it all to me, your trainer, and then I will do endorsements on television and get rich."
"Brilliant," Remo said.
"Of course," said Chiun.
"Except for one thing."
"Name that thing," Chiun demanded.
"I won't do it."
"I beg your pardon." Chiun's voice was outrage itself.
"Smitty'd never buy all our athletes getting sick or hurt in an accident. Not all of them."
Chiun frowned. "Hmmmm," he said. "Maybe half of them,"
"None of them," Remo said. "It'd be too suspicious. Smith'd see through it right away and if he even suspected that you had anything to do with anything that messed up our Olympic team, it could mean the end of that lovely submarine of gold that arrives in Sinanju every November."
"There are rare occasions, white thing, when you almost make sense. We will think of something else."
Chiun sank back into the passenger's seat in silence. His next idea was not long in coming and it was even better, but he decided not to tell it to Remo, who had that hangdog loser mentality of Americans, always finding reasons why things couldn't be done.
His new idea would be to disable not just the American athletes but all the athletes of the world. Remo would be the winner by default.
Chiun liked this plan even better.
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CHAPTER NINE
This was the new Russia. Receding into the mists of history were the bloody millions-dead purges of a Stalin and the random cruelties of a Khrushchev. The bloodshed aimed at its own people had largely stopped. But the successors of Stalin and Khrushchev were still paranoidal xenophobes and a call to the Kremlin was still an occasion for sweaty palms on the part of most Russians.
For one thing never changed, new Russia or old Russia. Some of the people called to the Kremlin never came back.
But when the call came for Dimitri Sorkofsky, a colonel in the KGB, Russia's secret police, he merely wondered why it had taken them so long to call.
Sorkofsky was a prideful man, proud of his service record, as he was proud of his two small daughters, Nina, eleven, and Marta, seven. He had been equally proud of their mother, his beautiful Natasha, until she had died five years earlier at the age of thirty-two.
As he walked through the Moscow streets toward his appointment, Sorkofsky knew he was going to be given the greatest assignment of his career, and his sole regret was that Natasha was not there to share it with him.
Natasha had been fifteen years younger than he and she had always been so filled with life that she had kept him young. He never knew what had made
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her fall in love with an ugly old bear of a man like him, but he was only happy that she had. Happy and proud. He recalled how his chest puffed with pride anytime he went anywhere with Natasha on his arm, anytime he saw other men's eyes follow her across a room. And then she was told she had incurable bone cancer.
Still, during those last six months, she had been the strong one and after she had died, he felt guilty that somehow she had made those six months the happiest of his life when, by all rights, they should have been the saddest. But she would not hear of sad. She had nothing to be sad about, she had told Dimitri. She had raised two lovely daughters and had a lovely, lovely man for a husband.