The residents of the valley numbered twenty-seven people, most of them guides who could easily have been trucked away. But the Grand Booree was an object of national pride; its lake was as important a public symbol as the Statue of Liberty.
The word from the top had been that Grand Booree was too big to be ignored. Robert Dastrow knew this was still government thinking, as he informed Nathan Palmer that he was about to do a freebie for Palmer, Rizzuto
"Never mind why I'm doing this. You can pay me later. Just get your young lawyers into the Booree Canyon to warn the people that the Booree was badly built and might go any day now."
"The Booree? How are you going to do the Booree?"
"Never mind. Just get your people out there. Make a lot of noise. Attract attention. Do whatever you have to do to make sure people sit up and take notice. "
"But we usually don't want to be noticed."
"This time, you do," said Dastrow. "Be sure you make noise now. We're fishing, so to speak."
When the young spokesmen for Palmer, Rizzuto came into the canyon to warn the few residents there, they were greeted with derision. The governor of the state went on television to laugh at the crazy lawyers. It became a popular joke that Palmer, Rizzuto had run out of disasters to chase, so instead they were hallucinating them. Palmer worried that the dam wouldn't go and their investment would be lost. Schwartz worried that the dam would go and for the first time Dastrow would have them linked as possible suspects in its destruction. Rizzuto worried about filling an inside straight with two men he met on an airplane, and in Folcroft Sanitarium Harold W. Smith took the threat of the Grand Booree more seriously than anyone else in the country.
It was a threat he couldn't possibly resist. Palmer, Rizzuto had made a mistake. They were, for the first time, establishing a trail right to themselves.
At their first check-in he ordered Remo and Chiun into Booree, Colorado. As soon as Remo nailed the evidence he was to inform Smith, and Smith would move it through normal channels back into the justice system, where the law firm of Palmer, Rizzuto to say nothing of Messrs. Palmer, Rizzuto, and Schwartz individually, could at last pay for their crimes.
"Well, we finally got 'em now, little father," said Remo as he made sure the fourteen steamer trunks with the kimonos for all occasions were packed and organized for the bellboys to wrestle into the elevator.
"We have nothing. We have insanity. Even the girl dressed in rags made more sense than you. She understood money. She understood the purpose of work is to make money. You don't even understand what you do things for anymore."
"No, it's you who don't understand;" said Remo.
"This is childish," said Chiun. "It could go on for days, you saying I don't understand and I saying you don't understand. Let us just let the subject drop."
"Okay," said Remo.
"Because you don't understand," said Chiun, following the trunks out the door.
On the plane to Denver Chiun opened the magazines, pointing out stories about how people worked for money. Everyone else in the world worked for money but Chiun's lunatic protege.
"I thought we were going to let the subject drop," said Remo.
"I am dropping it."
"Then do it."
"Done. Why should I want to talk about how you are breaking my heart?" said Chiun.
"If I don't do exactly what you want, exactly when you want, your heart is broken."
"I hardly consider your betrayal of everything we stand for something so petty as 'not exactly what I want.' "
"This may come as a surprise to you, but guilt does not work with me," said Remo.
"Why should my suffering ever bother you? What have I done for you, other than teach you everything you know from breathing to movement? What should I expect in return for this, for the best years of my life?"
Several people in the first-class section were now listening to Chiun. A young girl thought Remo was awful. A middle-aged man kept casting angry glances at him. A flight attendant comforted Chiun. A woman named Goldstein was taking notes, commenting that Chiun was an absolute master of communication.
"See, even she knows," said Chiun.
"She probably meant 'master at communicating guilt,' " said Remo. "I don't care how much other people make. I don't care how much glory other Masters have brought to Sinanju. I do my job. I like my job. It's my job and I'm happy with it, dammit. Case closed. Good night. I'm taking a nap."
"Sleep well," said Chiun.
"Thank you," said Remo angrily.
"On the tears of one who loves you," said Chiun, who then dozed off contentedly while Remo fumed.
"I never win with him," said Remo.
"Why should you?" said a flight attendant.
On the drive from Denver to Grand Booree, Chiun decided he was going to let Remo find his own way. He would no longer berate him for what he felt he had to do.
Indeed, Chlun was most pleasant during the drive, saying how much he respected and liked Remo. "You have become a Master, something not always possible even for those of Sinanju. You are truly a good son in so many ways. Your loyalty to most of that, which is Sinanju has impressed me over the years. I have felt pride in your glory. For your glory, Remo, is the glory of Sinanju."
Remo waited for the other shoe to drop. He recognized a setup when he heard one. But the other shoe didn't drop. Chiun just repeated how much he respected and loved Remo. That Remo was better than anyone from Sinanju except, of course, Chiun, which was why Chiun had stayed so long. If Remo weren't wonderful, Chiun would not have wasted a minute beyond the initial time paid for by Smith for the training.
"Perhaps you do not even know the moment I knew you were someone special, even in white skin." Remo cast a quick glance at Chiun. The voice was soft, the hands were complacently at rest in the lap of the traveling kimono. The face was benign. This was when Chiun was most dangerous.
Remo did not venture an answer.
"It was when I saw a star in your eye. It is greatness that comes from a mystery. Is it the blood of birth? Is it the forge that tempers a soul? Is it the soul itself? Even Masters of Sinanju do not know this. But you had it, my son," said Chiun.
Remo did not answer. He drove in silence, but Chiun did not attack him once. In the small town of Booree, alongside the lake above the massive dam, Remo finally exploded.
"All right. I give up. Why are you being so nice to me?"
"Because you are going to die, Remo," said Chiun, and he said it so plainly that Remo believed him. This was not a game. It was not a manipulation.
Remo thought for a while. He finally said, "Not without a fight, little father."
"May the Masters of Sinanju look down on me with pity. I train a Master of Sinanju who believes that second place in a fight to the death is all right provided he performs well."
In Booree the laughter among the people had suddenly changed. People were now talking about how much less their homes would be worth if they bordered a big pit instead of Lake Booree. Every few moments people cast worried glances at the top of the dam. And Remo could feel what was going on. Through the reddish clay of what had once been the top of a canyon and was now the lake's shore, Remo could feel a slight rhythmic tremble every few moments.
The birds winging over the dam sensed the danger, cawing strange calls. Remo sniffed the water and the air: it smelled of impending disaster.
" 'Course you can't tell a thing from here," said an old-timer with a sun-grizzled neck and a face as worn as a leather saddle. "But engineers say the Grand Booree, she's beginnin' to tremble. Vibrations like. Slow now but they're pickin' up. Those lawyer fellas sure are smart 'bout what's happenin'. They said it would. Said the government was negligent when they built her. Nobody ever thought that, but it sure looks like it's true."