"Besides talent?"
Chiun waved a hand as if to brush away the interruption. "They have agents. This is because of your mail system in this country."
"What does the post office have to do with it?"
"If a writer just put his story into the mail to send it to a television station, what would happen is what always happens to the mail. It would get lost, just as those lunatics have lost most of the mail that a faithful few have been sending to me for these years. So the writer gets an agent. This agent puts the story in an envelope and then he puts it under his arm and takes it to the television station and hands it to the proper people. This way it is not lost. Trust me, Remo, this is how it's done."
"That's not what an agent does," Remo said.
"That is just what an agent does," said Chiun. "Now for this, your professional agent gets 10 percent of what the writer gets. Because you are just a beginner I am willing to pay you five percent."
Remo shook his head, more in confusion than in rejection. "Now, Little Father, why did you pick me?"
"I told you. I have studied this carefully. You have the quality that is most necessary to being a successful agent."
"Yeah? What's that?"
"You have two first names." Remo looked stunned. "That is correct, Remo. All the big agents have two first names. Why this is I do not know, but it is so. You could look it up."
Remo opened his mouth to speak, then stopped. He opened his mouth again, then stopped.
"Good. You have nothing further to say. It is settled. Because I know you so well, Remo, it will not be necessary for you to have a legal contract drawn. I know you would never cheat me."
"Chiun, this is ridiculous."
"Do not feel inadequate. You will learn to deliver as well as any agent. I will help you."
Remo abandoned further protest as useless. "Well, we'll just stay loose on that for awhile. Now this soap opera of yours. What's it about? As if I didn't know."
"Ah, wait until you hear. It tells the story of this young, honest, noble brave man from…"
"… the village of Sinanju in North Korea," Remo said.
"… the village of Sinanju in North Korea," Chiun continued, as if he had not heard Remo. "And it follows this young man as he goes out into the cruel stupid world, plying his traditional art…"
"… of being an assassin like all the Masters of Sinanju," Remo said.
Chiun cleared his throat. "Plying his traditional art of personnel management, and how he is misunderstood and not appreciated, but he holds always true to his beliefs, and without fail sends gold back to his village, because it is a poor village…"
Remo interjected. "And without the gold, the people would starve and have to drown their babies in the bay because they couldn't feed them."
"Remo, have you been peeking at this manuscript of mine?"
"No, Little Father."
"Then let me finish. And our hero, older now, adopts a son of another race, but the son turns out to be a fat ingrate, who smells of plastic airplane seats and denies his father all good things." Chiun stopped.
"Well?" said Remo.
"Well, what?"
"How does it turn out? What happens to our hero and this ungrateful American son whose name probably turns out to be something like Remo Williams?"
"I have not yet written the ending," Chiun said.
"Why not?"
"I want to wait and see how good a job you do as my agent first," said Chiun.
Remo took a deep breath. "Chiun. I've got something to tell you and… and I'm glad the telephone is ringing because I won't have to tell you."
The caller was Dr. Harold W. Smith.
"Remo," he said. "I want you and Chiun to come to Woodbridge, Connecticut."
"Wait a minute. Don't you want to know how everything went in North Dakota?"
"It went fine. I heard about it. Did you bring back the $10,000?"
"I used it to tip the cabbie," Remo said.
"Please, Remo. Your attempts at humor are disconcerting."
"You think that's disconcerting, try this. I wasn't joking. He drove me to my hotel and didn't say one word. It was worth every penny of it."
"I'll pretend that I haven't heard any of that," Smith said in his dry, precise voice. "Woodbridge, Connecticut."
"Can it wait?"
"No. We are going to a funeral."
"Your treat or mine?"
"Be at the Gardner Cemetery at 7 a.m. And Remo?"
"Yes?"
"Bring the $10,000," Smith said, and hung up before Remo could tell him again, truthfully, that he had given it to a cab driver.
Remo replaced the receiver. Chiun was still standing motionless on the rice mats in the center of the room.
"And the title of this beautiful drama is…" Chiun began.
"Little Father, I've got bad news for you," Remo said.
"Oh. How does that make this day different from any other?"
"Your beautiful drama. I won't be able to deliver it right away, because I have another assignment from Smith."
Chiun rolled up the sheets of parchment. "That is all right," he said. "I can wait a day or two."
CHAPTER THREE
The body of Vincent Anthony Angus was borne to its final rest in the Gardner Cemetery in Woodbridge, Connecticut, by a caravan of Cadillacs.
The long procession of shiny black cars passed through the heavy iron gates of the cemetery and past three men who stood in the early-morning chill near the cemetery's stone wall. Chiun wore a light-yellow robe, Remo a shortsleeved shirt and slacks. Dr. Harold Smith looked like a fuzzy gravestone, wearing a gray suit, gray overcoat, gray hat, and the grim gray pallor of a man whose universe is bounded by office walls.
Smith said hello to Remo and Chiun as they arrived.
Remo said, "Wait a minute," and unbuttoned Smith's topcoat. "Just checking," he said.
"Checking what?" asked Smith.
"Same suit, same vest, same white shirt, same stupid Dartmouth tie. I've got this picture in my mind of a closet filled with these same clothes and stretching on to eternity. And in the cellar of the White House, they have this laboratory and it's making dozens of windup Doctor Smiths to fill those clothes. And they're going to keep sending them out, sending them out, to order me around and around and around and…"
"You're very poetic this morning," Smith said. "You're also late."
"I'm sorry. Chiun was busy rewriting his great new work."
Chiun stood behind Remo, his hands up the sleeves of his pale-yellow kimono, his sparse wisps of white hair blowing in the morning breeze like smoke.
"Good morning, Chiun," Smith said.
"Greetings, Emperor, who is as wise as he is generous. Your glory knows no bounds. Your telling will know no antiquity. Your wisdom will be spread on the sands of time forever. This humble thing shall earn your fame in Sinanju 20-fold."
Smith cleared his throat. "Errr, yes. Of course," he said. He pulled Remo to the side. "He wants something from me. What does he want from me? I already send enough gold to that village of his to finance a small country. Now, that's it. No more raises in the tribute.
I'll hire Cassius Muhammid to train you if he raises the price again."
"You don't have a thing to worry about, Smitty," said Remo. "He's not after your money."
"What then?"
"He thought with all your connections you might know somebody in the TV business."
"Why?"
"So you can help him get his soap opera on the air."
"Soap opera? What soap opera?"
"Chiun's written a soap opera," Remo explained happily. "It tells all about his life and career in America."
"His life and career?" Smith said. "It talks about us? About CURE?"
"Does it ever? But you really come off good, Smitty. Not penny-pinching or narrow-minded or anything. Just another big-hearted, friendly hirer of assassins."