"I do apologize," the waiter mumbled. "This wine has obviously gone off."
Leaving the bottle on the table, he marched woodenly into the back of the restaurant.
"And bring back a new table while you're at it!" Remo hollered at the retreating waiter.
The man offered a numb "oui." His entire body shaking, he disappeared into the kitchen.
"That's a relief," Remo said, chewing a forkful of rice. "For a minute I thought he was going to surrender."
"That is not permitted," Chiun insisted sternly as he ate. "The French contestant throws up his hands in surrender nearly every time the Time of Succession comes around."
"It happen to you?"
"No, but the Frenchman who tried to assassinate my father tried it."
"Bet that got him far."
"Actually," Chiun mused, "he was particularly sniveling, even by French standards. My father took pity on him and accepted his surrender."
"No kidding. What did he do with him?"
"He brought him back to Sinanju. Some of my earliest memories are of that smelly round-eye wandering lost around the village licking the worms from the undersides of rocks."
"Mmm?" Remo said, chewing slowly. "What happened to him?"
"He attempted to sully the virtue of my father's sister. His head is in the attic somewhere. I can show you when we next return to Sinanju."
"Pass," Remo said.
The waiter returned from the kitchen with their water.
He had gotten control of himself once more. His body no longer shook. His hands gripped the heavy crystal water glasses with determination.
"Your water, gentlemen," he said, setting down the glasses. "I apologize again for the problem with the wine. I am certain I do not know what happened."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Remo said. "If you're gonna keep up the waiter shtick, do it downwind."
"I will see now to moving you to another table." The man took a step back, out of Remo's line of sight.
Behind Remo the waiter pulled out a razor-thin garrote that was stitched into the hollow seam of his shirtsleeve. With a hiss he flung it around Remo's neck, pulling tight. He yanked, grunting triumphantly.
The wire should have sliced through flesh and bone. But to the waiter's intense frustration, his victim didn't appear to even notice that he was being strangled.
Remo didn't pause in his chewing. "I hope they get better than this," he commented to the Master of Sinanju as the French assassin tightened the wire even more.
"Are you going to eat that?" the old Korean asked, pointing at the fish on Remo's plate.
"You ordered the duck, you live with duck."
"I want duck," Chiun insisted.
"Good, because that's what you ordered," Remo said.
"Die!" growled the French killer. Muscles in his arms bulged. Sweat had broken out across his forehead.
"Are you still here?" Remo asked, irritated. Reaching up, he snicked the garrote with his index fingernail. The wire snapped and the waiter flew backward, knocking over two tables. Plates crashed to the floor and silverware flew everywhere.
"And I can do without the Jerry Lewis impression," Remo said.
As he spoke, Remo snagged the wine bottle from where it still sat on the table. While the waiter struggled to get up, Remo stuffed the bottle's neck far down the man's throat.
Burning wine came out the man's nostrils. The killer tried desperately not to swallow. Then he swallowed. He wiggled for a moment in furious death before growing still.
The instant the waiter's arms flopped to the floor, a group of men hurried efficiently from the kitchen, calming the other restaurant patrons. Thanks to the upturned table, no one had seen quite what had happened.
The waiter's throat and stomach were dissolving into open hissing sores. Someone posing as a maitre d' threw a clean white linen tablecloth over the body. The man bowed his head respectfully to the Master of Sinanju.
"I will inform the president, sir," he said crisply.
"Before you do that," Chiun said, "tell the serving staff that I would like this order to go." He pointed a long fingernail at his plate.
Remo noted that, in the confusion, his plate of fish had somehow found its way in front of the Master of Sinanju.
Chapter 12
Word of the dead French assassin found its way to Folcroft Sanitarium by the normal CURE means. Electronic tendrils extending from the basement mainframes collected the data in secret from an unknowing French intelligence computer. It was detected, translated and forwarded to the appropriate computer terminal for analysis.
For years the appropriate-indeed, the only-terminal with access to classified CURE files had been the one in the office of Dr. Harold W. Smith. But those days were gone.
Mark Howard read the report from Paris from the confines of his small office in Folcroft's administrative wing.
The centerpiece of the room was the large oak desk behind which Mark sat. The desk was so big that there was barely enough space for anything else in the office. So cramped was the room that for months after coming to work at Folcroft, Mark had regularly banged his head against the wall when he leaned back in his chair and bumped his shins on the desk's legs whenever he tried to get around it to the door.
If someone had walked by Mark's open office door, they might have laughed at the sight of such a big desk in such a small space. But few people strolled the halls of Folcroft. Besides, Mark kept his door closed and locked at all times.
In his early months at CURE, the size of the office used to bother Mark. These days he hardly noticed. His life had become far too serious in the past two years to worry about trivialities.
The rest of the room was plain and businesslike. In this Mark Howard had picked up his decorating habits from Dr. Smith. There was only one personal touch in the entire office.
For a time Mark's eight-year-old nephew used to draw pictures of Superman in flight. He would carefully color them in with red and blue crayons and have his mother cut them out with scissors so he could fly his little paper Men of Steel around the house. When Mark went home for the holidays the previous year, his nephew had grown out of that phase and Mark's sister was throwing a bunch of the little paper Supermen away. Mark saved one.
The cutout was in a little frame on Mark's desk. When Dr. Smith saw the picture, the older man frowned silent disapproval. Mark noted his employer's expression but hadn't removed the picture. The assistant CURE director couldn't express it in words, especially not to an emotionless man like Dr. Smith, but there was such great, wonderful innocence to the picture. Such hope. That simple pencil-and-crayon drawing reminded Mark Howard why he, why CURE, why America was here.
The picture stayed.
Mark wasn't looking at his nephew's masterpiece now. His greenish-brown eyes were locked on his computer screen.
He read the report from France with a determined frown.
Mark wasn't surprised at whom the French had selected. When Dr. Smith had briefed him in secret months ago about the rite of passage Remo would be going through, Mark immediately went to work sifting through CURE's files, compiling short lists of likely assassins from countries all around the globe. The man France ultimately selected as its champion was the name at the top of Mark's list.
It might have given another man satisfaction to have been right. Not Mark Howard. Pride at such a time was inappropriate. After all, a man was now dead.
Not that Mark objected to killing. Not when it was necessary. But the taking of a fellow human life was far too serious a thing to allow self-serving emotions to intrude.
Mark knew this from experience.
Although he did his best not to think about it, men had died thanks to him.
When he first came to CURE, there had been a patient at Folcroft by the name of Jeremiah Purcell. Purcell was a man with special psychic gifts. A psychotic, a murderer. The patient had manipulated Mark's receptive mind on a psychic level the assistant CURB director couldn't begin to understand. Mark had unwittingly freed him from his confinement. And people had died.