"I didn't know," said the man. He tied the terrycloth belt around his terrycloth robe. "Are they all right? Are you all right?"
"Yes. I got nicked. You know us innocent passersby. Always getting hurt."
"Terrible what's happening to America these days. Is it safe to go downstairs?"
Remo listened. The gunfire had stopped. The police were probably flooding the lobby now. The sirens were about that much time away when he first heard them.
"Yes. But I'd advise you to go back to sleep. It's not a pretty sight."
"Yeah, thanks. C'mon in, kids."
"Bang, bang," said the little boy.
"Shut up," said the father.
"What is it dear?" came a woman's voice.
"Some trouble in the lobby'.
"Those kids are gonna get it," yelled the woman.
"Not their fault," said the father shutting the door.
Remo walked up the flights to his floor. The blood flow was stemming now, coagulating as it should. The shirt became sticky. When he entered the suite, Chiun was asleep by the window, lying on his floor mat, curled like a fetus in peaceful repose, his face to the window.
"You're wounded," he said without turning around, without the twitch of body to indicate awakeness. He was sleeping and his mind registered sounds, and he was quietly awake in an instant, trained since childhood to awake immediately upon the entrance of a strange sound and trained to awake in such a manner as to avoid giving any indications that he was awake. It was many of the little advantages that made up the Master of Sinanju, supreme teacher of the martial arts, respected leader of the small Korean village that depended on his rented services for its financial survival.
"Not serious," said Remo.
"Every wound is serious. A sneeze is serious. Wash it clean and rest."
"Yes, little father."
"How did it go?"
"Not too well."
"It went well enough. I felt vibrations of rifle fire through the floor."
"Oh that. Yeah it was a three, three, three that took a Scarlet Ribbon."
"Why are you wounded?"
"I started the Ribbon late."
"Never before," said Chiun, "has so much been given to so few who used it so little. I might as well give my instructions to walls as to a white man."
"All right. All right. I'm wounded. Lay off."
"Wounded. A minor flesh wound, and we make it into the great tragedy. We have more important problems. You must rest. We will flee soon."
"Run?"
"That is the usual word in the English language tor run, is it not?"
"I can't go, Chiun. I have work. We can't run."
"You are talking silliness and I am trying to rest."
"What happened at the building, Chiun?" Remo asked.
"What happened at the building is why we must run."
Dr. Harold Smith got the report late in the morning, at 10.12. The phone line was activated ever hour at twelve minutes past the hour. From 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time until 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, this was done with direct link to Smith. If he were not in his office, a tape recording would be accepted. Into this tape recording Remo would read the message as best he could in medical terms. Thus, if the message were discovered by others, it would only be a doctor reading in an odd hour report.
At 10.12 when the buzzer on his phone rang, Smith knew from the very first words that the plan would be the extreme one.
"My alternate plan didn't work," came Remo's voice.
"All right," said Dr. Smith. "You know what to do."
"Yeah."
And that was it. The phone was dead, and four of the nation's leading labour leaders were going to die.
"Damn," said Dr. Smith. "Damn."
If the system could not tolerate collective bargaining, then maybe the American system was just false. Maybe the patch-up work CURE did only delayed the final outcome. Maybe business and labour were supposed to function as warring, hostile giants, with the public whipsawed in between. After all, Dr. Smith knew, business had a history of doing just what the unions were trying to do now. It was called cornering the market, and that was considered the height of business acumen. Why should the unions not be allowed to do the same?
Dr. Smith spun to view Long Island Sound, deep and green and going far out into the Atlantic. Perhaps there should be a sign, "You are leaving the Sound. Now entering the Atlantic." But there were no signs, either on the Sound or in life. It was wrong for the unions to blackmail the nation like this, just as it was wrong for businessmen to corner the market in a certain commodity and drive up its prices. He must begin to work the agency towards stopping that sort of crime. And so, staring at Long Island Sound, Dr. Harold Smith planned to enact a piece of American legislation. Without votes. Without writing. Without immediate public knowledge. But he would enact it somehow, someday: it would be illegal for corporations to corner the market and drive up the price of food. And he would not stop at using 'The Destroyer," just as he had not hesitated to use him today.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Remo slipped the wrapped crowbar with Bludner's fingerprints on it into the back of his pants. Then he put his shirt over it, and a jacket over that. He surrounded the crowbar with muscle, cushioning it between his shoulder blades, keeping the metal rod positioned on top and hidden behind the jacket. The forked end of the crowbar nestled right behind his reproductive organs, following the curve of his body. An X-ray would have shown a man sitting on a curved bar.
A good tap on his back would, Remo knew, cause him great pain. He walked somewhat stiffly to the door of his hotel suite.
"I'll be back."
"You are going to that building?" Chiun said in caution.
"No," said Remo.
"Good. When you return I will tell you why we must run. If I did not have to stay here and watch over an impetuous youth," said Chiun. 'I would leave now. It is no matter, however. We will leave later, after you expend your wasted energy."
"It will not be wasted, little father."
"It will be wasted, but feel free to indulge yourself. Amuse yourself."
"This is not amusement, little father."
"It is not work, Remo. It is not productive, mature work."
"I am going to set things right which must be set right."
"You are going to indulge yourself in wasted effort. Goodnight."
Remo exhaled his frustration. One did not reason with Chiun. For all his wisdom he could not know the threat of four unions joining into one. For all his wisdom he was wrong this morning.
The lobby was aswarm with police, newspapermen, photographers, TV cameras. The ambulance drivers had left, most of them headed for morgues.
Rocco 'the Pig' Pigarello was perspiring under the television lights. His arm was bandaged, undoubtedly the result of a bullet from one of his own men.
"Yeah. These crazy men were shooting at us for no reason. It was an assault against organized labour by gangsters."
"Mr. Pigarello, police say all the injured and dead were union men." The newscaster held a microphone to Pigarello's face.
"Dat's right. We had no way to defend ourselves. There must have been twenty, maybe thirty wid guns."
"Thank you, Mr. Pigarello," said the television newscaster. He turned to his cameraman.
"That was Rocco Pigarello, a delegate to the International Brotherhood of Drivers' convention here in Chicago, a union that has been severely hurt today in an outburst of senseless violence."
Remo watched Pigarello's eyes. They spotted him. The Pig went to a police captain. He shot Remo a furtive glance. Remo smiled at the Pig. The Pig suddenly forgot what he was going to say to the captain, and Remo walked from the hotel out into the busy morning street through a corridor of police barricades. People gawked over the barricades, they leaned from windows across the street, they stood on tiptoes on the opposite sidewalk.