"We think you're amazing," said Harrow, counting out $169 in bills and pushing them into Hunt's pocket as they stepped off the tenth green and headed back toward the clubhouse.
"No. This guy was supposed to be. I mean what I'm doing was nothing, or at least not much. In any case, none of the lords could quite pick it up, and this Oriental finds the assistant chef can learn, and the king says a commoner can't kill royalty, so to solve the problem like they always do in France, they found a bastardy thing somewhere whereby my ancestor had noble blood and therefore, picking up the 'it' from the Oriental, he could go out and zonk any nobility the king wished. When the family moved from France, before the revolution, they sort of made their money the same way until my mother. And she said enough is enough and made me promise never to use the talent for money."
"A noble thought and promise," said Dalton. "But if something is wrong and untrue, then it's not noble, is it?"
"Well, I guess not," said Hunt, who, having won $337.92, offered to pay for dinner. And when he did so, when he had paid out nearly $200 for dinner at Maxim's for three and he had already spent part of his winnings, Winthrop Dalton informed him he had already broken his promise to his mother.
"But it only started with thirty-three cents. I always used to play for lunches and things and maybe drinks and a few bucks."
"Well, it's now three hundred and thirty-seven dollars and ninety-two cents."
"I'll give it back."
"That won't unbreak the promise, and frankly we don't want it back. It was a pleasure to see you in action."
"It certainly was," said Harrow. "Probably one of life's fifteen best thrills."
"Does it hurt to have broken that promise?" asked Dalton.
"It does now," said Hunt.
"But it didn't until you told yourself so. When you had broken the promise without knowing it, the whole thing felt fine, yes or no?"
"Well, yes," said Hunt.
"Are you your own friend or your enemy?" said Harrow.
"I guess I'm my friend."
"Then why do you make yourself feel bad?"
"I, uh, made a promise."
"Right. And in your attitude toward that promise you're ready to take food out of your own mouth, force yourself to live in a slum—you're broke—and in general hurt yourself. Do you really think you deserve to hurt yourself?"
"Well, no."
"Then why do you do it?"
"I was taught a promise is a promise."
"You were taught a lot of things, and so was I, a lot of things that made me miserable and unhappy and, frankly, a hateful person," said Dalton.
"You can leave here broke," said Harrow. "You can return the money. You can even owe us for this meal and go without lunches for a month to repay me with money I don't need. Will that make you happy?"
"Of course not," said Hunt.
"Then that's pretty stupid, isn't it?"
"Yes, it is."
Dalton stretched a veined hand out over the youthful shoulder.
"Tell me, son, aren't you a little bit tired of being stupid, of hurting yourself, of making your one life miserable. Aren't you?"
"I guess, yes."
"You guess yes. You don't know?" asked Dalton. "Are you stupid?"
"No."
"Then stop acting like it," said Dalton. "What we're getting at is that you'd be pretty stupid to starve, trying to keep a promise that's already broken."
"I'll keep the money," said Hunt.
"Well, son, there's just a little bit more. We want you to be rich and happy. Will you join us in making you rich and happy?"
"Will you?" asked V. Rodefer Harrow III.
"Yes, sir," said Ferdinand De Chef Hunt.
Dalton leaned forward. "We want you to meet the most wonderful person on earth. He's only fifteen years old, and he knows more than all of us put together about how to make people happy. Important people too. You'd be surprised."
"He's right here in America now," said Harrow.
"Praised be his blissful name," said Winthrop Dalton.
"All praise be to his perfect blissfulness," said V. Rodefer Harrow III.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dr. Harold W. Smith looked with pinched eyes at the stapled-together pile of papers on his large plain metal desk.
"Lease Agreement," it was headed, and he read through the whereases, which were contradicted by the "be it noted howevers," and the wherefores, which were watered down by the "except in the event ofs," and automatically translated them into English to learn that the Divine Bliss Mission, Inc., had leased Kezar Stadium in San Francisco for one night, four days hence "for purposes of a religious meeting."
The lease agreement was signed for the Divine Bliss Mission, Inc., by one Gasphali Krishna, also known as Irving Rosenblatt, who bore the title of "Chief Arch-Priest, California district." A stamped notation on the last page of the lease recorded it as "paid in full."
Smith read the lease again. This was it, "the big thing." He had no doubt about it, but what was a big thing about a revival tent meeting, no matter what kind of stadium it was held in? From Billy Sunday through Aimee Semple McPherson through Father Divine and Prophet Jones and Billy Graham and Oral Roberts, millions of people had been led up to someone else's vision of God for periods of sometimes as long as two days, and the country was none the worse for it. What was this Indian juvenile delinquent going to do that was different?
Of course, there was the list of names that Remo had given Smith of the maharaji's followers. Some of them highly placed and important people. But so what? What were they going to do that could somehow justify all this effort that Smith's organization was putting into a teenage Indian boy?
Smith let his eyes wander off the lease form again. If it had not been for the fact that a number of Americans who had gone to Patna had disappeared, and the Indian government had refused to show any concern about it, Smith realized he would seriously question whether this was any of CURE'S business at all. There was just nothing there in all he had seen so far that represented a threat to the government. And that was, after all, CURE'S one and only mission—the preservation of constitutional government. It was why CURE had been created by a now dead president and why Smith had been put in charge of it, and it was why only two people besides the president in office—Smith and Remo—knew what CURE was and what it did.
From a standpoint of secrecy, CURE made the Manhattan Project look like a meeting of Greenwich Village Democratic committeemen. And why not? The Manhattan Project had produced only the atomic bomb, but CURE's secrecy might be even more important, for if CURE should be exposed, it would be an admission that constitutional government hadn't worked and didn't work, and it might bring the entire nation down.
Dr. Smith put aside the lease form. He had made up his mind. Remo was working on the case, and he would let that continue before deciding whether or not to assign Remo to other things. And just as a precaution, he would take Remo's list of names and see that they were immobilized before the Kezar Stadium Blissathon of the Maharaji Dor. Something, perhaps, under the cover of a required hospital examination. And that would cover all the bases for a while. But he wished he had the names of all Dor's American followers. Remo had said there were more.
Smith looked at the computer terminal recessed under a glass panel on his desk, which silently and continuously printed summary conclusions of the data gathered by thousands of agents across the country, agents who thought they were working for the FBI and the tax bureau and as customs inspectors and bank examiners, but all of whose reports wound up in CURE'S computers.
A sign here, a loose word there, a change in prices somewhere else, and the computer could draw conclusions and put them on Smith's desk, along with recommended actions.
The computer silently printed: