“Isn’t that what you’ve done?” Mark Howard asked without animosity. “Exploit your position of strength to force the issue.”
“I guess so. Isn’t that what all negotiations are about?”
“This is not the lesson of Sinanju,” Chiun responded hastily. “Bargaining from a position of strength is acceptable, but violating your contract to achieve it is inexcusable,” Chiun maintained stoically, and a little sadly.
“What, me? A Sinanju Master? Violate a contract?” Chiun looked at his protégé’s smug expression. “Of course you did.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Remo,” Dr. Smith said in irritation, “whatever I have agreed to, I agreed to it because you did violate our contract. There’s no argument there.”
“Yes, there is,” Remo said. “I read the contract. My understanding of the contract is that the Master of Sinanju is to perform his duties to previously set standards. I did that. You wanted us to go to the nude luge. You wanted us at the ice skating babe-a-thon. You wanted us in Australia and New Zealand. I was there for you.”
Smith was aghast. “You weren’t. You told me you quit You refused to do what I asked you to do. You can’t disobey orders and expect that to fulfill your contract.”
“I always have,” Remo said without concern.
“Previously set standards of performance?” Mark Howard asked.
“You got it, Junior.”
“That is a juvenile interpretation of our agreement,” Chiun spit. “Here I must side with the Emperor, Remo. You may not ignore the finer points of the arrangement.”
“I followed the arrangement as I understood it. I did my homework. I read the thing, and more than once. It hurt worse than eighth-grade algebra, but I did it.”
“You obviously didn’t,” Smith said. “You misinterpreted much of it if you honestly believe you followed the terms.”
Remo set his mouth hard, then stood up abruptly and opened the door with a whoosh of air. “Hey, Mrs. M. Got my package?”
“Yes. Here you go, Romeo.”
“Don’t get up.” Remo bounded out and was back in a moment, the door crashing shut behind him. It was a FedEx box, which he scalpeled open with his extralong fingernail, withdrawing a heavy roll of rich parchment and a stapled, ragged stack of photocopies.
“My copy of the contract,” Remo said, holding up the photocopies and fanning them. They were scribbled on every page with rows of question marks, dense boxes of Hangul scribbling and four-letter words blocked out in boxy Superman-style lettering. “What a bitch. I gotta hand it to you, Smitty, Little Father, this is the most godawful pile of mumbo-crapola ever put together by man or machine. You two ever want to make real money, you could form an insurance agency.”
“But what is this?” Chiun practically shrieked in dismay. He had the roll of parchment and was spinning through it at lightning speed.
“That’s my interpretation.”
“It is Hangul, mostly!” Chinn exclaimed. “It is on parchment. The penmanship is legible.”
“G’wan,” Remo said.
Chiun landed the parchment heavily on the desk before Harold W. Smith. “It is nearly perfect.” He was smiling. Remo was as red as a stoplight.
“Yorar notes are in Hangul?” Smith asked.
“Not my notes, Smitty. The contract.”
Chiun beamed. “Yes!”
“What are you saying?” Mark Howard demanded.
“The clause of intent,” Chinn announced proudly. “My son, Remo—” Words seemed to fail the old man.
“This is the contract, Smitty. I wrote it np, based on my understanding of this mess of malarkey.” Remo flicked the photocopy.
“No. That is the contract. It is what Chiun and I agreed to.”
“Chiun and you agreed to it, Mark Howard signed onto it, I’m somehow obligated to it. Yeah, it’s a real unique humdinger of a heap of vicious circles through loopholes. I never did get the whole picture in my head but I could understand it in bits and pieces, and that’s what matters. Because you put in a clause of intent. Smart move, Little Father.”
“I did not foresee this, however.”
“The clause of intent was designed to prevent loopholes, not create them!” Smith said angrily. “It says that the contract language cannot be manipulated to create unforeseen concessions of Sinanju authority. It was designed to prevent unintended transfers of obligation. Remember the fiasco when the Russian usurped the Sinanju contract years ago? That’s what prompted Chiun to ask for a clause of intent. The only reason I agreed to it was because every other contingency was so minutely spelled out that I did not see how it could be used against me.”
“But you also agreed that the decision about what was and was not intent was up to the Master of Sinanju,” Remo Williams said.
Smith stopped talking and slumped in his chair. Chiun smiled like an angel. Mark Howard shook his head and stifled a grin.
“That would be me,” Remo said. “You can look at who’s bossing around who and make your own decisions. Chiun can write whatever he wants in the House of Sinanju scrolls. The real truth is what Sinanju tradition says, and Sinanju tradition says I am Reigning Master. I’m the one who decides what the intent of this is. And I did. I read it. Every word, every page, three times. Then I read it again, and I transposed what the intent was onto these pages. I don’t mind telling you it was the most bloody awful experience of my entire life, and I’ve been through some shit.”
Remo stopped to listen. Despite outward appearances, Smith’s heart still beat regularly, so he went on.
“So you see, Smitty, this is the official contract between the House of Sinanju and CURE.”
Smith nodded very slightly.
“And I did not violate any of it,” Remo stated. “Got it? Chiun?”
“Yes, I see.” Chiun’s hazel eyes looked as if they would soon start dancing around the room for sheer pleasure.
“Smitty? Junior? Whichever one of you I’m supposed to really be reporting to? You getting any of this?”
“I get it, Remo,” Smith said, sitting forward with sudden animation. “I’ve been had.”
“You have not.”
“I can’t even read this document.”
“Here’s the English version.” Remo slipped another stack of handwritten pages out of the box. “Read it. You’ll see. No violations by me.”
“The public exposure?” Smith demanded defensively.
“Never happened. Never intended it to.”
“The disregard of orders?”
“Never worse than in the past.”
Smith waved one hand dramatically. “I can’t accept any of this.”
“The fact is, the only one who broke the terms of the contract was you, Harold W. Smith. You violated the parts about interfering with my extended family. It wasn’t just a little violation, either. It was outrageous.”
“Egregious,” Chiun corrected.
“Right,” Remo said.
“Therefore, the Master of Sinanju has the right to void the contract entirely at this time.”
Smith grew still again. “You have me there.”
There was a potent silence in the old office at Folcroft Sanitarium.
“Answer me this,” Smith said. “You have all this, and still you wanted the contract renegotiated? What more do you want?”
Remo rolled his eyes to the water-stained ceiling tiles. “Christ Almighty, Smitty, you were at the meetings. Some authority to do what’s right when I know I’m right and you’re wrong. Remember Humbert Coleslaw? What a pickle you would have saved the government if you’d listened to me and focused CURE on getting rid of that bad apple early on. Plus, a life. Accumulated vacation time. This stuff is not in the contract, my version or yours. Some, I don’t know, independence?”