"But it will take years to search out that list you sent us. There are artifacts in there that haven't been around for centuries. "
"A great nation faces a great task," said Chiun, and in Korean to Remo: "Get the blue trunk first."
Remo answered in the language that had over the years become like his first language.
"Pretty neat, little father. I never could have gotten out that clean."
"It's only time. You'll learn it. When you know you're not working for some patriotic cause but realize you are in the family business, then you'll see. It is the easiest part of things. Emperors are all stupid because they can be made to believe we actually think they are somehow better than we just because of the accident of their births."
"What are you two talking about?" asked Smith in English.
"Good-bye," said Remo.
"I will match what any other country, tyrant, or emperor offers you, Chiun."
"Put back the trunk," said Chiun to Remo in Korean.
"I thought we were leaving," said Remo.
"Not when we have a bidding situation. It is the first rule of bargaining. Never walk away from a bidding situation; you will regret it forever."
"I don't know about you, little father," said Remo. "But I am through with Smith and CURE. Get your own trunk."
Smith saw the blue steamer trunk fall to the ground, and watched Chiun look aghast at such disrespect.
"So long," said Remo to both of them. "I'm going to play with the real Mickey Mouse instead of you two guys."
When Remo was gone, Smith asked Chiun what he knew about hypnotism.
"Everything," answered Chiun. "I used to own five hypnotists."
If Smith knew what Rabinowitz was doing at that moment, he would have run after Remo on his hands and knees and begged him to be the sad Russian's friend.
Chapter 8
Two men, each with different keys, were needed to launch an American nuclear missile. Each missile was pretargeted. In other words, those who fired it did not decide where it would land. They only followed orders. There was a strict procedure. First, the airmen had to make sure the missiles absolutely did not go off accidentally, and second, when they did, it would be only on properly validated orders from Strategic Air Command.
"And where does the Strategic Air Command get its orders?"
"From the President, Ma. Why are you asking me all these questions?"
Captain Wilfred Boggs of Strategic Air Command, Omaha, did not like coffee shops, and especially meeting his mother in one. And what really bothered him was that his mother had been asking around town about where the big missiles were, the ones that were aimed at Russia.
Captain Boggs, on security duty, had been assigned to interrogate the person. Boggs thought he was to interrogate a Russian immigrant, something so ludicrous as to make him laugh when he first heard it.
"You mean to tell me that there's a Russian going around looking for our biggest in Omaha?"
"Says he was told the missile bases was out here," answered the local police liaison officer. "But don't be too mean to him. Fella's real nice. Wants to see you, anyone from SAC. I told him, you wanna see someone from SAC, you go around this city asking for the biggest missile and you'll see someone real fast."
But the local police had made the biggest mistake of their lives. It was Wilfred's mother whom they had arrested. "You want to speak to me, Ma, phone me."
"I'm here, so tell me. How do you fire a missile at Russia?" And that was how his mother began the questions of who controlled what and where in the Strategic Air Command. Of course he got her out of jail immediately and went to a more suitable place to talk, a coffee shop she insisted on because she liked pastries. He was lucky to get her out of jail, but the policemen seemed unusually willing to break a few rules for a person every one of them found very special.
The question Ma wanted answered most of all was: "You couldn't fire one for your mother?"
"Ma, it takes two."
"Let me speak to the other one."
"Ma, I don't have a key. I'm in security now. I don't fire them."
"All of a sudden you can't fire a little missile? This is what you're telling your mother?"
"I never could fire a missile even when I had a key. It takes two and then we have to have the proper orders. Even if two of us decided we were going to fire one of these things, we'd have to have the proper command sequence wired in to our station."
"Hold on. Just a minute already. We're into a lot of things I didn't suspect," said his mother, and she took out a little notebook and a pencil and said:
"All right, give it to me from the very beginning."
"Will you put away that pad and pencil? I can't be seen telling you the SAC structure with you taking notes. And why are you taking notes?"
"Because I'm trying to find out why a red-blooded American boy who will fire a missile if some machine says fire, won't fire one for his flesh and blood. That's why. One missile and you're making a big deal already. One little missile. How many missiles do you have? Hundreds, right?"
"It could start a war, Ma."
"It won't start a war," said his mother in a strange singsong, dismissing such an idea with a touch of her hand and a low sad nod. "Russia will learn not to bother innocent people. They respect that sort of thing."
"I don't know that the missiles at our base are aimed at Russia. It could be Eastern Europe. Asia. We don't know."
"You mean, you'd fire a missile and not know where it landed?"
"It helps. We don't want to know who we'd be killing. We might read books about those places and refuse at the last minute."
"So I've come all the way out to Omaha in Nebraska for nothing?"
"Not nothing, Ma. We haven't seen each other since Christmas. Boy is it good to see you. How're Cathy, Bill, and Joe? You've got to fill me in."
"They're fine. Everyone's fine. Everyone loves you, good-bye. Are you going to finish your Danish?"
"I don't like pastry, Ma. Come to think of it, neither do you. "
And his mother left without kissing him good-bye. Stranger still, when he confessed to the local police that he had released the subject they had put into his custody, the one who had been asking about missiles, his mother, all they said was, "Thanks. We owe you a lot. And we'll never forget it."
Spring in Omaha was like spring in Siberia. It was warmish nothing, as opposed to winter, which was frozen nothing.
Vassily Rabinowitz stood on the street corner with one single Danish pastry in his hand and the entire Soviet Union as his enemy.
Missiles were out. He had nothing against Russia, never had. All he wanted was to be left alone. All he wanted was to be able to walk around awhile without having people come up to him asking questions. He had thought America would be like that. Yes, one could walk around, but not for long. Muggers could get you before you could get them into a proper frame of mind.
So he had gotten himself a crime family, and from the newspaper reports, he was pretty good at it. He had become a criminal mastermind. And one single Russian commando unit had shown him that his crime family, his tough desperate criminals, were about as tough as a dozen cannoli in a paper box.
They had deserted him, and Vassily had been bound sightless and soundless and carried, terrified, over a long distance until the only family person he met in this country rescued him and then left. The man had been definitely friendly even without Vassily's influence.
But Vassily had been scared out of his wits. He knew the Russian government. A nice word to the government meant you were weak. Peace was weakness. How many times had he heard Russian generals comment, on hearing of a peace overture, that the country offering it was weak? Peace was weakness. Of course, when the other country armed itself, then it was aggressive.
"Why," Vassily had once asked a field marshal who had come to the parapsychology village for treatment of a headache, "are we not weak when we make a peace overture? These things have puzzled me."