"Gone is gone, Master. We can help replenish it."
"Can you replace the obols of Alexander, the marks of Demetrius, the tolons of the Ming? Where are the bracelets from the great African tribes, or the statues from Athens? Where are the boxes of coins with the visage of Divine Augustus therein stamped?"
"I'll make you an offer. What we cannot find for you, we will replace. We will never stop until we replace it. There is no country as capable of this as we are."
"You will undertake to replace fifty centuries of tribute to the House of Sinanju?"
"Yes," said Smith. "We will do that."
Chiun thought a moment. This was awesome. America was going to match what all the previous civilizations in the world had contributed. Ordinarily an offer like this from a king or emperor would be suspect. But Chiun had seen America, had visited its cities and factories, villages and farms. He had seen its great electronics and land so rich that crops grew in a profusion never before seen in the world.
As he had always thought, there was plenty of money here. Now Sinanju was going to get a real piece of it. America just might be able to do what Mad Harold had promised. This could mean only one thing. Smith had to do the sane and reasonable thing for the employer of Sinanju. He was going to have Sinanju do what Sinanju did best. Replace the current president and put Smith on the throne. There could be no other reason for such an awesome sum.
"Agreed. It is our true honor."
"I'd like to speak to Remo, please," said Smith.
"Of course. A fine selection. Let Remo hear it from your lips himself."
Remo had packed his one small suitcase when Chiun entered the bedroom, chortling.
"We have one last mission for Wise Harold," said Chiun.
"Why is he no longer Mad Harold? And I thought we were tired of this place."
"Remo, if you do this one thing for Wise Harold, then I will forgive you forever for the loss of the treasure of Sinanju. It will make up for your chasing around the world on foolishness while our treasures remained unfound. Smith has agreed to replace the treasures. I must prepare the list. It is very long."
"He must be desperate. What does he want?"
"Not desperate. He realizes the time has come. I have agreed on your behalf to kill the President of the United States so that Wise Harold might bring order and decency to a ravaged land."
"I don't believe it," said Remo.
"We have promised. There is no greater sin than for an assassin to break his promise."
"I'll handle one more, little father. But I am sure it is not doing in the President."
"What else could it be?" asked Chiun.
"Something extraordinarily big that only we can do." Chiun had barely begun on the list when Remo returned, asking him if there was nothing in the history of Sinanju showing how a man could enter a country two times with more than 150 men and not be even noticed until he was gone.
General Matesev knew the moment he had lost his tail. That was the first part of his invasion of the United States, that he had pulled off twice before and had no reason to believe he could not do again, at least once more.
He moved through the giant and busy New York City for two hours, testing to see if by some miracle a tail could stay with him. When he was assured it did not, he went into an American bank and pushed a five dollar bill through the window.
"Ten quarters, please," he said.
The teller shuffled out the coins quickly. Without knowing it, she had just given General Matesev the tools he needed to bring about another successful invasion of America.
He took the ten quarters and went to a phone both. Within three hours, 150 select Russian commandos would be operating within America itself. The special force would have invaded again without a trace.
With the ten quarters he made ten phone calls. With each phone call, he said:
"Good afternoon. The sky seems a bit yellow today, don't you think?"
And with each phone call he got back a statement: "More blue, I think. But who knows. Life is so strange, yes?"
And to that answer he said ten times: "Riker's Island Stadium."
Joe Wilson's wife saw him pick up the phone. She had been sure he was having an affair until she listened in to one of the conversations. There was never another woman on the end of the line.
Joe didn't work. He didn't play much, other than exercising by running around the backyard five miles every day in a simple circle, and doing jumping jacks and other routines that reminded some neighbors of basic training.
Yet he didn't need money. He had income from a Swiss bank account his father gave him and the checks were deposited in his Queens bank account with more regularity than his mother received her social security.
In fact, the only way Joe's wife had ever gotten him to marry her was to agree to have the wedding at the house. And why not? That's how they met. That's how they dated. And that's how he insisted on living. Well, that wasn't so bad. Lots of people had the disease called agoraphobia that kept them chained to their homes all the time.
Yet this was entirely different. She had picked up the phone for him in the other room because he was outside exercising. When she said it was a man talking about the sky he practically ran through the door. She listened in.
"Good afternoon. The sky seems a bit yellow today, don't you think?" asked the man on the other end. "More blue, I think. But who knows? Life is so strange, yes?" answered her husband, Joe.
"Riker's Island Stadium," said the man.
Joe hung up and began dialing other numbers. And giving orders. She had never heard him give orders before. He made fourteen phone calls and told every person at the other end the same thing.
"Riker's Island."
And then for the first time since she knew him, Joe Wilson, her husband, left their home. He kissed her lovingly good-bye and said something that terrified her.
"Look. I wasn't supposed to marry you in the first place. And you're a good kid. You've put up with a lot. An awful lot. You've let me stay at home all this time. But I want you to know that no matter what happens, it doesn't mean I don't love you."
"Are you leaving me, Joe? Are you leaving?"
"I love you," he said, and he was gone. The house seemed woefully empty without him in it. He had never left before, and the way he left so quickly and so easily told Mrs. Joseph Wilson he had never suffered agoraphobia at all.
The man called Joe Wilson took a New York bus to Riker's Island. The bus was unusually crowded that day, crowded with men, all going to Riker's Island, all in their late twenties and early thirties, all quite fit.
Riker's Island Stadium was not being used that day, and their footsteps echoed through the tunnels out onto the field. They all took seats at the fifty-yard line, looking every bit like some large team getting ready for a game.
But the man who came out of the tunnel was not a coach. No coach ever got this sort of respect.
He snapped his fingers and said, "Group captains," and ten men left the stands where the other 140 sat, and walked out onto the running track to speak to General Matesev, in his fine English suit.
"We are going to be out of America in two days maximum. If we can't leave on a plane peacefully we will shoot our way out at any point I select along the Canadian border. Any of you have men who you think are unreliable?"
All ten shook their heads.
"I didn't think so. You were all well selected," said Matesev with a little smile. The joke was that he had selected every one of them individually, men who could keep in training and wait for that one phone call.
Because the method he had devised to invade America at will with 150 men was as simple as good logic could make it. No 150 men could invade in a single body without being seen. But 150 separate men coming into a country one at a time over the course of a year would never be noticed, 150 men who would only have to wait for a single phone call to become a unified force again. One hundred and fifty men each trained to speak American English fluently, each trained as part of a team years before in Russia, now becoming that team again.