The Secretary of State said he hoped the cut on the President's forefinger would heal soon.
"Yes," said the President. "Those band-aids have very sharp edges and if you grab them wrong, they can cut like knives."
"Not as sharp as paper, though," said the CIA Director.
"You know," said the President, "the home is the most dangerous place of all. Seventy per cent of all accidents occur in the home."
The Secretary of State, in his urbane manner, decided cautiously and wisely not to ask the President why he had needed a bandaid. He saw a small bottle of burn ointment and an ice cube melting in an ashtray, and he did not want to hear that the President of the United States had burned himself on ice.
"Well, good news," said the President after the doctor left.
"We don't know why the Treska seems inoperative at this point in time, but they seem to have run into something that bloodied them pretty well," said the CIA Director.
"British, French, who?" asked the Secretary of State.
The CIA Director shrugged. "Who knows? They're not going to tell us anything until those Senate investigations quiet down. Who would want to trust us now?"
"Gentlemen," said the President, "it is neither the British nor the French, and I am not at liberty to say who or what it is, but as I told you at a recent meeting, this matter would be taken care of. And it has."
The Secretary of State wanted to know how. The President said there was no need for the Secretary to know. Nor was there a need for the Director of the CIA to know.
"Whatever did it, we're lucky it's on our side," said the CIA Director.
"And it will stay on our side as long as no one talks about it. Thank you for coming, gentlemen. Good day."
He eased the tight pressure of the bandaid on his finger, then looked up at the back of the Secretary of State.
"Uh, by the way, would you send the doctor back in, please? Thank you," said the President, hiding the new cut on his other hand.
In a three-star Paris hotel rated for its quality and service, Chiun decided to speak on the death of their guest of a few days, Vassily something with the funny name, the nice Russian boy.
He knew why Remo had killed the sweet, respectful young man.
"He was a KGB general, Little Father. He was the last of the Treska killers. That's what Smitty sent us over here to do."
Chiun slowly and precisely shook his head. His frail beard hardly moved with his head.
"No, that may be why Smith will believe you killed, but I know the true happiness you had."
"Happiness?" said Remo. He checked out the bathroom. The tub was much deeper than any in America, and there was a sitting bowl that looked almost like a toilet, except it had two water faucet handles and a metal tube sticking up. It was for women. The hotel's name was Letutia. The ceilings were high, and the closets were not in the wall but separate dark wood pieces with legs. "Happiness?"
"Happiness," said Chiun.
"It was work," said Remo. "We went to the one known location of the Treska, grabbed a piece of it, and unraveled. Hey, you know how women use this thing?" Remo asked. He played with the faucet handles at the back of the almost toilet. He reasoned that it took some skill. The water went squirting up. A lot of skill.
"You enjoyed your work because the nice young Vassily showed proper respect. His teachers must have been very proud of him. He must have given them much joy, for in Russia they could say, this is my student and he has given me much joy. Not like in some other countries where those who give the greatest knowledge are abused and ignored and generally discarded."
"What is wrong?" asked Remo.
"When I recited Ung Poetry to you, you merely left the room."
"I never heard of Ung Poetry."
"Of course. Like diamonds thrown into mud before the worm. The worm slithers over great beauty as but a sharp obstacle. You never heard because you never listened. You do not know languages or kings. You do not know the names of the Masters of Sinanju in their proper order, or who begat whom. You were eating animal fat meats on soft decayed bread when I found you, and you do not know who is where or what is why, but rumble along in your dark cloud of ignorance."
"I listen. I've been training more than ten years now. I do what you tell me. I think like you tell me. Sometimes I'm beginning to think I am you. Everything you say I respect. This is so. I have never gone against you."
"Then let us do honor to the Masters of Sinanju. We will start with the first Master who came from the caves of the mist."
"Almost everything," said Remo, who remembered some of the early sessions where he had tried to get down who was whose father and who was whose mother, and they had all sounded overbearingly repetitious and unimportant. At that time, Chiun had said that Remo could not learn, because his training was starting too late in life.
"Vassilivich would have learned," said Chiun. "He was a good boy. In my history of my mastership, I shall call myself 'teacher of the ungrateful.' "
Remo turned on the television set. It jutted out of the wall on a platform just above his head. There was a picture of Charles De Gaulle talking. It was a film of his life. He did not understand French. Chiun did.
If Chiun's baggage had not been misplaced in shipping, Chiun would have had his own television programs which he could run on tape. Lately, however, he had been looking mostly at reruns. America, he said, had desecrated its own pure art form, turning it into filth and violence and the reality of everyday life. After that, Remo could not convince Chiun that every American family did not harbor in its midst a dope addict, a child beater, a leukemia victim, a crooked mayor, and a daughter who'd had an abortion.
Chiun looked at De Gaulle's image and told Remo to turn off the television. "There was never any work from that man," he said. "Now the Bourbon kings, ah, they knew how to employ an assassin. France was always a good place until the animals took over." Chiun shook his head sadly. He sat in the middle of the floor on the soft brown carpeting before the two large beds. By "animals taking over," Chiun meant the French Revolution of 1789. Every French president after that remained to Chiun a wide-eyed radical.
"I give up," said Remo. "When did I fail to properly listen to your Ung poetry? I never heard it."
"I was reciting it to that nice Vassilivich boy."
"Oh, that stuff," Remo said. "I don't understand Ung."
"Neither does the carpet or the wood of the closets," said Chiun. With a great sigh, he said he must now explain Paris to Remo, only praying that Remo would remember some of what he had been told.
Downstairs in the lobby of the Letutia, Chiun had a small argument with the concierge about something. Chiun silenced him with a word.
Remo asked what the argument was about.
"If you understood French, you would know," Chiun said.
"Well, I don't understand French."
"Then you do not know," said Chiun as if that pleasantly explained it all.
"But I want to know," said Remo.
"Then learn French," said Chiun. "Real French, not the garbage spoken today."
The street was the Boulevard Raspail. Two elderly woman sold sweets and crépes in a small white stall on a corner. A man in a dark limousine did a quick double take on Remo and Chiun. The car pulled over to the curb across the intersection. Remo saw the man lift a small camera to the back window. Remo did not recognize the man but the man obviously was looking for someone who looked like them.