Remo had never quite been able to explain to Chiun that Dr. Harold W. Smith, formerly CIA and now head of CURE, was neither an emperor now nor planning to become one. For thousands of years, the little fishing village of Sinanju on the West Korea Bay had supported itself by furnishing assassins to the courts of the world. When hired by CURE to train Remo, Chiun could not understand first of all that Smith, was not an emperor, and second that, not being one, he did not want the current emperor removed by assassination.
Now Chiun felt vindicated, and his frail elderly parchment-like face lit with joy. Now, said Chiun, people would not be shooting guns at other people in the street, but things would be properly done.
"Forget it, Little Father," said Remo. "No one's going to put you on television with a royal announcement. We'll probably be in and out of Washington-snap-that fast. Like the last time."
"Who was that man? He slept well protected."
"Never mind," said Remo.
"He had a bad knee."
"Phlebitis," said Remo.
"We call it coo coo in Sinanju," Chiun said.
"What does that mean?" Remo asked.
"It means a bad knee."
In Washington, Dr. Harold W. Smith was admitted at 10:15 p.m. through a side door of the White House and unobtrusively ushered to an office near the Oval Room. He was a sparse man, sparse of lip and smile or the amenities of the day. He wore a gray suit with a vest and carried a fine old leather briefcase. He had a lemony face and looked as if he had lived on white bread sandwiches of imitation spiced ham all his life. He was almost as tall as the President.
The President said good evening, and Harold W. Smith looked at him as if he had told an off-color joke at a funeral. Smith sat down. He was in his early sixties and appeared ten years younger, as though there weren't enough life in him to bother aging.
The President said he was deeply worried about the ethics of such an organization as CURE.
"What if I ordered you to disband tonight?" he asked.
"We would do it," Smith said.
"What if I told you that you may have the only existing organization that can save this country and possibly the world?"
"I would say that I have heard that before from previous Presidents. So I must answer from experience. I would say we can do some things to stop some things or to help some other things, but, Mr. President, I do not think we can save anything. We can give you an edge; that is all."
"How many persons has your organization killed?"
"Next question," Smith said.
"You won't tell me?"
"Correct."
"Why, may I ask."
"Because that sort of information, if leaked, could destroy our form of government."
"I am the President."
"And I represent the only agency in this country that doesn't have its dirty underwear spread out on the front pages of the Washington Post."
"Did you force my predecessor's resignation?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Must you ask? No one was running the government. You know that. He would have taken the country down with him. And you know that too. We still haven't recovered economically from that absentee President."
"Would you do the same to me?"
"Yes. If the circumstances were the same."
"And you would disband if I said so?"
"Yes."
"How do you keep your cover so well?"
"Only I know what we do. I and the one enforcement arm. His trainer does not know."
"You have thousands working for you?"
"Yes."
"How come they don't know?"
"In any given business, 85 per cent of the people do not know what they are doing or why. This is true. The overwhelming number of people do not understand why their jobs are done that way. And for the other fifteen per cent, you can generally keep them in isolated compartmentalized jobs so that one thinks he works for the Bureau of Agriculture and another for the FBI and so on."
"I can understand that," the President said. "But in your killings wouldn't the police be picking up fingerprints of your man, especially if there is only one doing all that… what's the word for it… work?"
"Yes, if the prints weren't already out of circulation. He's a dead man. His prints are on file nowhere."
The President thought a moment. It was dark outside in Washington, despite the lights illuminating all the monuments. He had assumed this office at a point when his country faced collapse and he dreamed only of the great hope America still held out. Tarnished hope, yes. But hope, nevertheless. It was not, he knew, an improvement in the living of man, just to declare your country the new wave and to have police arrest dissenters as in the Communist and Third World blocs. The goodness was in the doing. But to unleash this force he now had before him would in a way further tarnish that goodness that was America.
Still it was not an easy world. And until man found a way to live in peace, you were either armed or dead. He did not assume the world was at a different stage yet.
"I want to tell you about the Treska," the President said. He found Smith able to cut through details. No, Smith did not want extensive intelligence reports; anything that was formally given, he explained, created traceable links. Smith's team would be unleashed. You did not order them; you turned them loose and trusted their genius.
"I want to see them," the President said.
"I thought you would. At 11:15 they will be in your bedroom with the red phone."
"You've provided them some pass?"
"No," said Smith, and he explained about the House of Sinanju and how the masters really hadn't come up against anything new for centuries, because new protection devices were really just variations of old ones, and Sinanju knew them all.
The latest Master of Sinanju had been hired by a former agent of CURE to train the enforcement arm. The first assignment of the enforcement arm had been to eliminate this agent, who was wounded and vulnerable. Unfortunately, too many assignments had been necessary just to keep CURE secret. Even the most recent one. Four men who worked for CURE and had found out a little too much and had bragged a little too loudly.
The President said he had not heard of any four men being murdered; he assumed the murders had been done separately.
"No, all at once," Smith said.
"You will not work in this country again. No domestic activities any more," said the President. "No more. I don't understand how four men can simultaneously disappear from the face of the earth in a country with a free press. I don't understand it."
Smith said simply that it was not for them to understand. They went up to the room with the red telephone, and at 11:15 p.m. the President said he guessed that Smith's men hadn't gotten through security.
And then they were standing in the room, an Oriental in a black kimono, and a thin white man with thick wrists.
"Hi, Smitty," said Remo. "Whaddya want?"
"My god. How did they do that? Out of thin air?" said the President.
"Mysteries innumerable," intoned Chiun. "All the secrets of the universe to glorify thy great reign, oh emperor."
"It's not a trick," Smith said. "No mystery. People don't see things that aren't moving and these two know how to be stiller than anyone else.
"Did you see them?"
"No."
"Could they do it again?"
"Probably not because you're looking now. It's the way the eyes work. Literally, we don't see most of the things in our field of vision." Smith started to add more, then realized he knew no more; he knew so little of how Remo and Chiun worked.
To Smith, the President whispered that the old Oriental looked too frail for a foreign assignment. Smith said that the President's least worry was the safety of the Oriental.
Chiun made a short speech to the President about Sinanju being willing to shed its blood for his glories, about how the President's enemies now lived on short rope, and how his friends had a shield and a sword. Moreover, the President had many enemies, close and devious, but this was true of all great emperors such as Russia's Ivan the Good and the gentle Herod and Attila the Benign as well as such westerners as the fair voiced Nero of Rome, and, of course, the more modern ones the Borgias of Italy.