"What's horrible, Remo?"
"Whatever you said, Smitty. This oil thing."
"Remo, I knew you were barely listening. Why do you continue in service? I don't think you care about America anymore. You used to."
"I do care, Smitty," said Remo, and now he was looking at that crusty New England face, with the majestic snow-crowned Rockies rising behind it, out past Denver. Behind Remo were the American plains and the big old cities. Behind Remo was where America had fought a civil war, losing more men than in any other war. Behind Remo was where bloody strikes and bloody company goons wrote labor history.
He had been born back there in the East, and abandoned, which was why he could become a man who didn't exist. Who would he feel required to contact again? Who would miss him?
Folcroft Sanitarium was back there, and that was the second time Remo was born, and this time he knew more about life.
"I continue to serve, Smitty, because that is what is right. The only freedom anyone has is to do right."
"The moral thing, you mean."
"No. Not necessarily. Those mountains behind you are the most mountain they can be. They are, and they are right. I must be that, too. It came to me while I was here. I am what I am. And what I am is ready."
"Remo. For a wise-guy Newark cop, you're beginning to talk like Chiun. I don't think I have to remind you that Sinanju is a house of paid assassins, centuries old. We pay Chiun's village for his services. We paid for your training."
"Smitty, you're not going to understand this, but you paid for what you wanted Chiun to do, not for what Chiun did. You wanted him to teach me parlor tricks of self-defense. He taught me Sinanju."
"That is absurd," Smith said. "You're talking nonsense."
Remo shook his head. "You can't buy something you don't understand, Smitty. You'll never understand . . . Now why not get on with the assignment?"
Smith smiled wanly and proceeded to outline the problem and the assignment.
Problem: the Arab nations were putting a slow oil squeeze on the United States. American researchers working on oil substitutes had been killed.
Assignment: a physicist at Berkeley is working on another oil substitute; see that he isn't killed. Secondly, find out who is behind the killings.
Smith explained it carefully. When Remo appeared to be secure in his knowledge of priorities-nowadays it was often more important whom he didn't kill-Smith thanked God, zipped his flat, worn briefcase, and headed for the door without offering to shake hands.
At the door, Chiun appeared, vowed the eternal loyalty of the House of Sinanju to the beneficent Emperor Smith, shut the door behind CURE'S director, and said to Remo:
"One does not give an emperor too much time. He begins to think he knows how one does things."
"I like Smitty. For all my problems with him, I like him. He is one of my people."
Chiun nodded slowly, and like a gentle blossom on a soft cushion of warm air, descended into a sitting position from which to speak. The golden kimono settled around him.
"I have not told you this, but even though Koreans are my people, not all are wise and brave and honest, nor do all serve their discipline with integrity."
"No crap," said Remo, feigning surprise. "You mean to tell me that all Koreans aren't wonderful? I can't believe it."
"It is true," said Chiun and solemnly repeated a story Remo had only heard two hundred times. When the supreme power made man, he first put the dough in the oven and took it out too quickly. It was underdone and no good. That was the white man. He put more dough in the oven and to make up for his mistake in making a white man, he left the dough in too long and made the black man. Another mistake. But after the first two failures, he got it just right and out came the yellow man.
And into this man he put thoughts. And the first thoughts were disproportionate to the human mind, breeding arrogance. And that was the Japanese. And into the next man he put thoughts that were inadequate and stupid. And that was the Chinese. Since thoughts are very complicated, the supreme being kept trying and failing, and he created the piggy Thais, the corrupt Vietnamese, the...
Chiun frowned a moment. "Never mind the details. The rest were pig droppings. But when the supreme being made Koreans, he got it just right. The right color and the right mind.
And Chiun began listing the faults of all the provinces and villages until he came to one and that was Sinanju, his tale was that not even all Koreans are perfect. But before he could finish, Remo did something he had never done before.
"Little Father. Because of what Sinanju produced, both you and I may someday be killed. I know that you brought me here to make me ready to face that challenge, and now I am ready. But remember, that challenge comes from Sinanju. Not only from Sinanju, but from your house. From your very family. The better became the worse and both of us are still looking over our shoulders because of the evil that came out of Sinanju."
And with that, Remo turned and left the room in high discourtesy to the latest Master of Sinanju.
Riding down in the elevator, he thought of the evil from Sinanju, which was Chiun's nephew, Nuihc. Nuihc had been the son of Chiun's brother. He would have succeeded Chiun as the Master of Sinanju, but he had turned to crime.
Twice before, he had tried to kill Remo and Chiun. Twice, he and Remo had battled to standoffs. The second time, Chiun had warned Remo: "When we want him, he will find us." It would, Remo understood, be their greatest challenge.
And he knew that this was the reason Chiun had brought him here. To make sure he was ready for that challenge, which Chiun, in his unerring way, knew would come soon.
Remo was ready; he knew what he was now, and what he had always been. But he allowed himself to wish that Nuihc had been drowned at birth in the North Korean
Remo caught a cab to the airport, found out the schedule, saw the delays, and went right outside and hailed another cab.
"Downtown," he said.
"Where downtown?" the driver asked.
"You got the sentence wrong, buddy. Not where downtown, but downtown where."
"Okay," said the weary driver. "Downtown where?"
"Berkeley."
"You're kidding," said the driver. Remo pushed three one-hundred-dollar bills through the change chute at him, which killed all the driver's objections but one. He wanted to go home first, to get a change of clothes and tell his wife where he was going.
"I'll pay for a change of clothes. You're making the drive nonstop anyhow."
"But I've got to tell my wife where I'm going, you know."
Remo threw two tens into the front seat, but the driver explained that he and his wife were very close. They were very close up to fifty dollars, when she became nosy and possessive. Remo slept all the way to Berkeley. He arrived at the science building just in time to see the fourth floor of a large red brick and aluminum building come blasting across campus. Shards of glass sprayed a half-mile into downtown Berkeley, cutting only 227 undergraduates who had been manning booths to collect signatures for the legalization of marijuana. Ugly billowing black smoke belched from where the fourth floor had been. People started running toward the building. The nervous blare of a siren sounded far away.
A dark-haired coed in tee shut and faded jeans covered her face, weeping.
"Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no."
Remo rolled down the cab window.
"That's the science building, isn't it?" he asked.
"What?" she sobbed.
"Science building, right?"
"Yes, it's awful. How could anything like this happen?"
Remo rolled up the window.
"You should have made it faster through the Rockies."
"I got you here late, huh?" said the driver.
"Yes and no."
"I just hope there weren't people in there," said the driver. He had the look of horror that comes when people realize that life is not as secure as they have themselves convinced. The look would disappear as the driver once again rebuilt the illusion that he was not in fact at the gates of death with every breath he took.