A cry rang out for retribution. It was joined immediately by a firm of American lawyers, who announced to the world:
"What is the cost of a city? What is the cost of a civilization? The price to be paid must be so prohibitive that a Gupta can never happen again." These words came from Genaro Rizzuto himself just after he met with the Indian prime minister, Gupta had become a word synonymous with disaster.
Rizzuto even had a bumper sticker that read: "NO MORE GUPTAS."
The prime minister declined to have it put on the state limousine.
Chapter 4
The first reports of the death of fifteen thousand people in India made little impression on the American media. It was just another third-world disaster, appearing in newspapers as a one-paragraph filler item. But when word came that an American factory was responsible, Gupta was a major story.
It was like Africa. A hundred thousand black Africans could be slaughtered by other blacks, and it would make little impact as a news story. Perhaps one or two mentions here or there. But if twenty black people were killed by white South African police, then it became a front-page story.
If Syria chose to kill twenty thousand of its citizens, wiping out its town of Hama, that might be mentioned or not. But if Israel was standing nearby while Arabs killed three hundred or so other Arabs at Sabra and Shatilla in Lebanon, that was front-page news. When the Israelis pulled out and the Arabs went back to killing each other in the same places, the news retreated to the inside pages.
Thus, when there was a white or European angle to a story, a filler item became a front-page disaster. International Carborundum was American. If an American factory had killed fifteen thousand people in Gupta, it was news.
Remo and Chiun heard the news while Remo was avoiding a movie camera in a Los Angeles studio. He had agreed to accompany Chiun to Hollywood as part of a vacation because Chiun, like Smith, thought Remo needed a rest. Both of them thought Remo was crazy. He thought they were crazy. The compromise was that Remo would go out to the West Coast with Chiun. Chiun would be allowed to secure whatever deal he thought he had going with a movie company, provided he did not appear before a movie camera. Remo would make sure Chiun didn't get himself in front of the cameras.
This was of course an impossibility, as Remo told Smith, because no one stopped Chiun from doing anything, and the most likely time for Chiun to do exactly what he wanted was when he had promised to fulfill someone else's wishes.
So Remo got word of the Gupta disaster at precisely the moment when Chiun was most likely to get himself seen. The cameras were rolling and Chiun, who just happened to be in his pure gold kimono with the ruby-encrusted red dragons, stepped forward to offer his humble assistance. Remo's buzzer rang. Smith had asked him to carry it. Smith had been watching a dangerous situation and had promised not to use Remo if he didn't have to. But if he had to, the buzzer would ring.
It rang just as Chiun stepped forward into the lights begging everyone's pardon, saying he did not wish to interfere and certainly did not wish to disturb anyone.
"But there is something of interest here that might be helpful to such wonderful stars as yourselves."
Remo took the buzzer device to the nearest pay telephone. He was supposed to dial the operator and then press the buzzer into the telephone receiver. This would automatically encode an access number directly to Smith.
Remo had been given access codes before but he had trouble getting them right. The numbers had to be more than seven digits lest unauthorized people accidentally dial into the most sensitive telephone lines in the nation. The more Remo became attuned to the mystical nature of the universe, the less he was able to deal with mechanical things.
So Smith had engineers devise a beeper device that even chimpanzees had been able to use after brief training with banana rewards. The absolute failsafe, most user-friendly thing since the human kiss, it was called.
Remo got it right on the third try.
"What do you want, Smitty? Better hurry."
"There's a little problem in Gupta, India. I need to talk to you."
"What's important about Gupta, India?"
"What's happening at a Los Angeles law firm is important. "
"That seems just as unimportant. Hey, I got to get back inside. Or do you want Chiun starring in some movie around the world?"
"I'm coming out there, Remo. This is important."
"Everything's important except American families, Smitty. Good-bye," said Remo. He moved quickly through the studio offices and onto the set. Chiun had made an arrangement with the producer to provide technical assistance. This producer was famous for action films and was doing a movie on a man with extraordinary powers. Chiun had corresponded with him, saying he knew how people could naturally do wondrous things, without props or tricks.
When the producer had asked what things, Chiun answered: anything the producer wanted. What Smith did not know, and Remo understood most well, was that Chiun's main ambition was to get credit for all the secret work he and Remo had done.
Chiun had never understood, or wanted to understand, that America was not some feudal kingdom employing assassins to make or unmake emperors, but a democracy that was run by rules.
Secrecy for Chiun was sneaking up on someone, not keeping your mouth closed after you had been successful at it.
His great ambition, having had the histories of Sinanju turned down by every publishing house in New York, was to have a movie made of them. There was no chance this would happen. These histories, records of each Master of Sinanju, went on for forty-two thousand pages and Chiun would not allow one word to be cut. If made into a movie, the histories of Sinanju would have run twenty-four hours a day for months.
A wily producer, hearing of free technical assistance, had given a Hollywood promise to look at part of the histories, promising that if they could cut the running time to six weeks they might have something there, but of course it would have to be in English. Chiun had said the histories lost something in English, but he agreed to go out to the Coast to discuss it. Now as Remo got to the set he saw Chiun showing one of the actors how to throw his arm powerfully enough to actually make a car shake. Everyone was exicted. Everyone was applauding. The director thought this was magnificent. But somehow, and none of the movie people knew how, Chiun had to be very near the star to make the trick work. "Could the technical help possibly wear a less glaring kimono? That gold and red just sucks up the attention of the entire screen," called out the director. "Oh, this little thing?" asked Chiun, touching a long fingernail to the gold embroidery.
"Yeah. Red and gold. It's like a traffic light and makes the heroine look like a sidewalk, sir. Could you change it?"
"I am afraid I have nothing else," said Chiun humbly.
Remo knew there were fourteen steamer trunks of his kimonos back at the hotel.
"Can we drop a gray robe over him or something? My light readings are going through the ceiling," said the cameraman.
"Does he really have to be on the set?" asked the assistant director.
Chiun nodded yes, with apologies. He said he gave the actor a sense of confidence by being nearby. Could Chiun be nearby out of camera range, then? "I will try, O great artists of the West, whose glory inspires a thousand poets, whose beauty shames the blossoms of the dawn."
"Okay, a gray cloth, and let him stand three paces back and we have it," said the director.
Someone called "Action" and the hero reached out, trying to push the car. Chiun, being helpful, moved in somewhat closer, and with abject apologies found that his gray covering was coming off.