"These are Koreans, aren't they?" asked Montrofort. He smiled slightly as he watched the cool, impeccable, unflappable Dilkes continue to roll the casino chip across the back of his fingers.
"Were Koreans. The last anyone heard is that there is only one Master left in the House. An aged, frail man who if he still lives must be retired. None know of him till this day. What's wrong, Sylvester? You looked as if you've swallowed a frog."
"Not know of him may be accurate," said Montrofort slowly. "But not till this day. Bather, yesterday. That Master's name is Chiun, he is eighty years old if he is a minute, and yesterday he was sitting on that very chair you now occupy."
The casino chip dropped to the carpeted floor. Dilkes jumped to his feet as if he had just been told his chair had been wired to the Smoke Rise generating station.
"He was here?"
"Yes. He was here."
"What did he do ? What did he say?"
"He said that America was decadent because it did not love assassins. He said that American television was decadent because it had destroyed its only pure art form. He said that white and black and most yellows were decadent because they
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were inferior races. And he told me that he wished he had met me when I was young, because he could have prevented me from being this way but now it was too late to do anything. That's what he said."
"But why? Why was he here?" "Very simple. He is defending the President of the United States against assassin or assassins unknown." Montrofort smiled. Dilkes didn't.
"I'll tell you another thing, too, Dilkes. He was one of the guys Pruel was supposed to blow away yesterday."
"You tried to kill the Master of Sinanju?" said Dilkes.
"Yep. And I think I'll try again." "Now you know why Pruel failed." Dilkes paused and looked behind him as if fearing something or someone had come in the door. "Sylvester, you and I have been friends and partners for a long time." "That's right."
"It ends now. You can count me out." "Why? All this over an eighty-year-old Korean?"
"I may be the greatest assassin in the western world..."
"You are," Montrofort interrupted. "But compared to the Master of Sinanju I am a kazoo player."
"He is very old," said Montrofort. He was enjoying this. It was pleasant to watch the cool Dilkes panic. There were actually beads of sweat on the forehead of the big man. "Very old," Montrofort repeated.
"And I want to be. I am going back to Africa." "When?" said Montrofort.
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"An hour ago. Do what you're going to do yourself. Goodbye, Sylvester."
Dilkes did not wait for an answer. He stepped on the pressure-sensitive pad in front of the door and it slid open. It shut behind him just as the inkwell thrown by Montrofort hit the door. "Coward. Emotional cripple. Coward. Fraidy-cat," Montrofort screamed at the door, his voice as loud as it could be, knowing it would carry through the door, and Dilkes would hear him.
"You're a pussycat, not a man!" he screamed. "A coward! A lily-livered baby!" yelled Montrofort.
And he smiled all the while.
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"This is it," said Remo, waving his hand toward the cast-iron dome high overhead inside the main entrance to the Capitol.
"This is where the Constitution is kept?" Chiun asked.
"I don't know. I guess so."
"I want to see it," Chiun said.
"Why?"
"Do not patronize me, Remo," said Chiun. "For years, I have known what we do. How we work outside the Constitution so everybody else can live inside the Constitution. I would see this Constitution so I may know for myself what it is we are doing and if it is worthwhile."
"It pays the gold tribute every year to your village."
"My honor and sense of personal worth are beyond price. You would not understand this, Remo, being both American and white, but some are like that. I am one of them. We value our honor beyond any amount of riches."
"Since when?" asked Remo. "You'd work as an enforcer for a Chinese laundry if the price was right." He was looking past Chiun at a group of
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men standing off in a corner of the huge entrance hall.
"Oh, no. Oh, no," Chiun said. "And why are you looking at those fat men who drink too much?"
"I thought I recognized them," Remo said. "Politicians I think they are. Maybe congressmen."
"Them I would speak to," Chiun said. He walked away from Remo.
The Speaker of the House was the first to see the little yellow man approaching.
"Mum, men," he said and turned, smiling, toward Chiun, who approached, unsmiling, like a teacher on his way to confront an amphitheater of parents whose children had been left back.
"Are you a congressman?"
"That's right, sir. Can I help you ?"
"A long time ago I was very angry with you because you put on the Gatewater show of all you fat men talking and you took off my television shows. But now the "shows are no good anymore, anyway, because they are decadent, so I don't care that they are off. Where is the Constitution?"
"The Constitution?"
"Yes. You have heard of it. It is the document I am supposed to be working to protect, so that all of you can be happy as clams, while I do nothing but work, work, work on your behalf. The Constitution."
The Speaker of the House shrugged. "Damned if I know, sir. Neil? Tom? You know where the Constitution is?"
"Library of Congress, I think," said Neil. He had a thin pinched face that was unhealthily red-blotched. Thinning gray hair swirled around his head in windblown swoops.
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"Maybe the national archives," said the congressman named Tom. He had a face that was strong and open, an invitation to trust. It looked as if it had been carved from a healthy potato.
"You gentlemen work here ?" Chiun said.
"We are congressmen, sir. Glad to meet you," said Neil extending his hand.
Chiun ignored the hand. "And you work for the Constitution and you don't know where it's kept?"
"I work for my constituents," said Neil.
"I work for my family," said Tom.
"I work for my country," said the speaker.
"I used to work for Colgate, though," said Neil brightly.
"That's nothing," said Tom. "I used to deliver newspapers on cold winter mornings."
"Lunatics," said Chiun. "All lunatics." He walked back to Remo. "Let us leave this asylum."
"You said we've got to find The Hole where the President is vulnerable. He'll be talking on the front steps. Now where's The Hole?"
Chiun was not listening. "This is a strange building," he said.
"Why?"
"It is very clean."
"It costs enough. It ought to be clean," Remo said.
"No, it is cleaner than that. There has never been a castle that was not infested. But this one is not."
"How can you tell that? There could be little buggies everywhere, just peeking out at you, waiting for night time so they can come out and dance."
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"Dance on your own face," said Chiun. "There are none here and that is very unusual in a castle."
"This isn't a castle, Chiun. It isn't a palace. This is a democracy. Maybe cockroaches are monarchists."
"This country is run by one man?" Chiun asked.
"Kind of."
"And he has a secret organization that we are part of?"
"Right."
"And we kill his enemies whenever we can?"
Remo shrugged at the onrushing inevitable.
"Then this country is like any other," Chiun said. "Except here they take longer to do things. The difference between this place and an absolute monarchy is that the absolute monarchy is more efficient."
"If they were so efficient, why couldn't they do anything about the cockroaches in the castles?" asked Remo.
"Remo, sometimes you are terribly stupid."
"Hah. Why?"