He had seen much that was illogical during his tenure with CURE. He had witnessed amazing things, and yet his mind rebelled against what he had just learned and all that it implied.
Remo and Chiun, related by blood.
Remo and Chiun, distanced by fate.
Remo and Chiun, rejoined by CURE.
The odds against it happening by chance were incalculable, but the alternative was unthinkable: Remo and Chiun brought together by CURE, which was under the control of something else.
Smith felt his chest become heavy. The question that remained, the unanswerable mystery, was what or who had manipulated CURE?
Chiun stood in the hall, out of sight of Emperor Smith’s well-meaning but doddering secretary, and eavesdropped as Mark Howard confirmed what he knew of Chiun and the Sun On Jo tribe. It was a secret best aired, Chiun considered. Too long had the truth remained unspoken to their employer.
Smith was a ruthless man, willing to make any sacrifice to continue the work of his hidden power base. Chiun learned years ago that it was best to keep quiet to the Emperor about the true extent of the fame and glory of Sinanju, and yet Remo was not so skilled at masking the truth. That he had kept the secret of the Sun On Jo for all these years was tribute to his patience, if not an indictment of his stubbornness. This subterfuge had been necessary once, lest the emperor view the existence of this tribe and Remo’s offspring as a threat to his power, and order their destruction.
That would be a foolish act, brimming with ruinous consequences, and Chiun did not think Smith would make that misstep. Still, he would keep a wary eye on the emperor in the coming days.
The emperor, after all, was old and set in his old ways, and had always been prone to episodes of insanity.
Chiun extracted a white electronic device from his sleeve as he strolled the hall of the rarely used wing of Folcroft Sanitarium. The private hospital served the wealthy and the special cases—this was the front for CURE. Chiun and Remo had for years maintained a suite of sparsely furnished rooms here. Their current stay was now stretching into weeks, since Remo had been struck down by a grievous wound that kept him comatose for days. He had recovered…
Chiun preferred not to recall the episode.
Now Remo refused to return to their proper home until he satisfied his current infatuation with the annihilation of a puppet senator. Chiun was tired of Folcroft, but also was he tired of the drab two-flat in which the Masters dwelt in Connecticut.
Chiun had his interests to distract him, and as he touched a button his device blinked happily to life.
The device allowed him to read the Internet-posted journals of people from around the world. Today, the Mississippi Trollop had updated her diary. The first words hinted at much juicy debauchery and amoral activity. This promised to be fine reading.
A lovely young woman emerged from one of the rooms and gave him an enchanting smile. The old Master stopped and bowed, a refined, rare display of respect.
“Chiun, I told you to stop that.” She kissed his cheek, then she locked her arm in his and dragged the beet-faced Master of Sinanju Emeritus into her own suite.
Chapter 5
“It’s a beautiful day in the Underworld, Pops.” Jack Fast stepped aside to exhibit a color television screen—with reception. “This neighborhood officially has broadband!” He started flipping through sitcoms and home-decorating shows. “I tapped into satellite TV, digital TV, Internet, phone, everything!”
Jack’s mobile phone rang.
“That would be Herbie, yes?” Fastbinder answered it. “Right on time, Senator. We just went on-line.”
“Jacob, you did it! I knew that kid would get to you in time. He’s a sharp one, isn’t he?”
“How’s Cairo, Senator?”
“It’s a hundred degrees and there’s sewage in the streets.”
“How are your feet, Senator?”
Senator Herbert Whiteslaw’s feet were severely burned in an assassination attempt in Washington, D.C., months before. He had done a poor job of taking care of the wounds, and they hadn’t healed well. “Still hurt like hell,” Whiteslaw complained. “I don’t even get full credit for getting them fried. Every politician except me gets big bonus points from an assassination.”
“Unless the attempt was successful,” Fastbinder added.
“Yeah. Just my luck I get bombed the same week the damn Senate building gets bombed!”
“But you were a victim in the Senate attack, as well,” Fastbinder reminded him.
“Yeah, but so what? I was still second fiddle to that right-wing wacko Orville Flicker in the press coverage.”
“He was killed, however.”
“He still got the best press!” The senator was losing his cool. He’d been under a lot of stress in recent months. Fastbinder knew it and truly enjoyed pushing the senator’s hot buttons. “Listen, Fastbinder, you gonna help me do this thing?”
“Not yet.”
“Come on, Jacob, I don’t have time to fart around here! This opportunity only comes around once every four years, you know? And you owe me—I supplied you with some Grade A intelligence. You must have made millions on all that great stuff you stole.”
Senator Whiteslaw, by virtue of his access to Defense Department secrets, had provided Fastbinder and his son with intelligence about some of the U.S.’s top-secret military technology, which the Fastbinders then stole. Fastbinder had indeed made millions, but arms sales were more of a hobby.
“If we’re talking about who owes whom, keep in mind that we lured your secret assassins into the open,” Fastbinder said. “We got you the evidence, but you failed to warn us sufficiently about their capabilities to do us harm. Both of us, my son and myself, nearly died at their hands.”
“And they stole our ’bots,” Jack Fast added.
“Losing Ironhand was like losing a member of my family,” Fastbinder lamented. “Our agreement is null and void, Senator. My son and I never intended to pit ourselves against these insane killers. Now we must wage war against them and strike them down. Until we do, all other matters are secondary.”
Jack Fast nodded encouragingly. His dad was playing the dweeb senator perfectly. Whiteslaw whined and begged and threatened, until finally he allowed that he would be willing to come up with more good intelligence—a lot more.
“We’re not looking for weapons any longer, Senator,” Fastbinder said. “We need people.”
“People? What kind of people?”
‘The smart, well-educated kind.”
“Like, you want to kidnap all the grad students from UC San Francisco?”
“Nothing so simple. We need professionals from many occupations. Engineers, machinists, geologists, electricians, carpenters, city planners.”
“City planners?”
“We will need professionals who are in very specific regions of the United States.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll e-mail you our shopping list,” Jack said, leaning into the phone. “We need healthy folks without fish allergies. They have to be the best in their fields. Get into the DOHS databases.”
“How’m I supposed to get into the Department of Homeland Security?” Whiteslaw demanded. “Not only am I in Egypt, I’m being investigated for high treason! Under the circumstances I bet my security clearance is downgraded.”
“I don’t care how. Get your people working on it,” Fastbinder said.
“Like I still have people. What’s all this for, anyway?”
“Call back when you have good news, Senator.”
Chapter 6
Jack Fast waited until his father was on the far side of the cavern, supervising the albinos on rock-hitting duty. They couldn’t seem to get the hang of using sledgehammers to break stone—but somebody had to hollow out the sixty-foot boulder that was destined to be their new headquarters.