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"Right," said Remo. "At last, you're going to get all the credit you deserve."
"I take it back. That man is not an idiot. He is just malicious."
"He just has faith in you, is all," Remo said.
"As soon as I heard him talk funny, I should have known. He cannot be trusted."
"Why are you all bent out of shape? 'Over a compliment?"
"Because if this man of many teeth goes on television and says that we are in charge..."
"I'm glad it's 'we' now," said Remo.
"When he says we are in charge of his protection and then if anything happens to him, what then becomes of the good name of Sinanju? Oh, the perfidy of that man."
"I guess we'll just have to save him," Remo said.
Chiun nodded glumly. "He is from Georgia, isn't he?"
"That's right."
"Stalin was from Georgia."
"That's a different Georgia. That's in Russia," Remo said.
"It doesn't matter. All Georgians are alike, no matter where they are from. Stalin was worthless too. Millions dead and no work for us. I was never so happy as when that man was killed by his own secret police."
"Well, buck up. You're working for a Georgian this time, and you've got plenty of work. You've got to help me save the President."
Chiun nodded. The first rays of sunlight were entering the room, and through the translucent pink curtain, the sun cut jagged lines of light across the angular yellow face.
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Chiun looked toward the light, and with his back turned to Remo, said softly, "A Hole."
"What?"
"Do you remember nothing? The Hole. They are going to attack him and force him into The Hole for the real attack. We have to find out how."
"How do you know they'll do that?"
"Killers come and killers go, but all they have ever known or been or could hope to be, has come from the wisdom of Sinanju. I know they will do that because they seem to be less inept than the usual level of murderers you have in this country. Therefore they emulate Sinanju and that is the way I would do it."
"All right," Remo said. "We'll have to find The Hole."
Across the city, Sylvester Montrofort was wheeling his way down the hallway to his private office in Paldor Services Inc. He pressed a button on the right arm of his wheelchair and the sliding door to his office opened in front of him. There was already a man in the office. He was standing at the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out through the brown-tinted glass at Washington, D.C., below. He was a tall man with hair so black it was almost blue. He was over six feet tall, and his suit was broad at the shoulder and nipped in at a narrow waist, and tailored so well that it was apparent that the suitmaker knew his only function was to wrap something well-fitting around a work of art that nature had already created.
Montrofort hated the man. He hated him more when the man turned at the sound of the opening
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door, and smiled at Montrofort with just as many perfect teeth as the dwarf had. The man had a healthy tanned face, masculine but not leathery. His eyes sparked with the kind of vitality that informed the world he saw humor and mirth where no one else could. His hands as he raised them toward Montrofort in a greeting were long and delicate and manicured, and had been known, upon necessary occasions, to drive an icepick through an enemy's temple.
Benson Dilkes was an assassin and his awesome skills had helped make Paldor the success it was in the international world of protection for money. None of the Paldor salesmen ever knew it, but the reason they were received so warmly in the emerging nations by the presidents-for-life and the emperors-for-life and the rulers-insurmountable-forever was that Dilkes had been in the countries only days before, mounting an assassination attempt that looked like the real thing, but missing by a hair. He prepared the field from which Paldor's salesmen harvested very rich contracts.
And on those rare occasions when a foreign leader decided he did not need protection, no matter how close the recent assassination attempt had been, Dilkes usually showed him he was wrong. And generally, the ruler's successor was smarter. And hired Paldor.
"Sylvester, how are you ?" Dilkes said. He came forward to take Montrofort's hands in his. His voice had a raspy Virginia twang.
Montrofort ignored him and wheeled behind his desk. "Just the same as I was the last time I saw you two days ago," he said curtly.
Dilkes smiled, his even white teeth a badge of
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beauty in his bronzed face. "Even two days without seeing you seems like an eternity."
"Can that bullshit, me bucko. You know that Pruel failed yesterday?"
"So I read in this morning's papers. Unfortunate. I think, if you'll remember, I volunteered to do the job for you myself."
"And if you'll remember I told you that I want this to be extra careful. I don't want no shirttails hanging out at all. Your job is that dipshit revolutionary, Harley. How is he doing?"
Before he answered, Dilkes came around and sprawled in one of the three chairs facing Mon-trofort's desk.
He bridged his fingers in front of his face. "Just as we expected," he said. "He tired quickly of buying the cameras individually and is now buying them in bulk, showing off his rolls of cash, and generally making himself most memorable for the investigation that will eventually come."
Montrofort nodded, his eyes riveted to Dilkes' face, cursing the man's handsomeness.
"I have to tell you, Sylvester, though. I still don't know why you're going through with this. They offered to reinstate the payments."
"I'm going through with it because I'm tired of being pushed around. I'm not a'baby carriage."
"Who's pushing you around? Paying tribute is hardly abusive behavior," said Dilkes.
"Look. They paid. Then they stopped paying. If I let them get away with that, they'll stop paying sometime in the future again. They've got to know that we mean business, business, business. That's it."
Dilkes shrugged and then nodded. Of course, it had nothing to do with meaning business. It had
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to do with Sylvester Montrofort being a dwarf cripple and finally deciding to prove that, no matter what his body looked like, he was a man to reckon with. Reason had as much chance of stopping him as argument had of reversing the tide.
Dilkes pulled a hard plastic casino chip from his right jacket pocket and began rolling it across the tops of his fingers. "Of course, by now the President will have ordered Congress to stay out of the way," he said.
"More likely, just the leaders. Now if they're able to impose discipline, we'll have our congressmen just inside the Capitol entrance, waiting." Montrofort smiled for the first time that day, and fluttered his hands skyward in an imitation of a bird flying away.
"The surest trap is the one you set in the path of a man running to avoid a trip," Dilkes said.
"More of your eastern wisdom?" Montrofort said. His voice sneered.
"You should read more of it, Sylvester. You won't find it in libraries, but if you know where to look there is a body of literature out there that tells all of us, in this strange business, all we ever need to know."
"I believe in technology, baby. Give me that ol-ogy every time," said Montrofort. He was feeling better now, and he raised the level of the platform behind his desk so he was six inches higher than Dilkes.
"And I believe in Sinanju," Dilkes said.
Montrofort remembered something. He squinted at Dilkes.
"What'd you say?"
"I believe in Sinanju."
"And what's Sinanju?"
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"An ancient order of assassins," Dilkes said. "Creators of the martial arts. Invisible in combat. Through the ages of history, they have been involved in every court, in every palace, in every empire. There's an old saying: 'When the House of Sinanju is still, the world is in danger. But when the House of Sinanju moves, the world continues only by sufferance.'"