And then without even being aware, Harold W. Smith felt as bright as a summer morning, fresh as his orange juice, and more chipper than anytime since the morning of his tenth birthday.
He saw Chiun remove his long fingernails from behind his neck, and Smith's neck was still tingling.
"You were letting the tiredness of your body make your decisions," said Chiun. "Now how does the world look?"
"Difficult."
"For the great emperors it is always difficult."
"'I don't suppose it would do any good to tell you I'm not an emperor. I guess not. There is a difficult problem. And I can't reach Remo."
"All problems are the same. They just have different faces and times," said Chiun.
"You mean you may have run up against something like this in the histories of Sinanju?"
"I guarantee we ran up against it in our history. The question is, will I recognize it? You see, our histories are our strength. That is what Remo must learn. He would know what he is experiencing now if he had properly revered our histories."
"He didn't like that part of the training, I take it," said Smith.
"He called it an ugly name," said Chiun.
"I'm sorry," said Smith.
"Now we are all paying for it," said Chiun. "Ah well, he will be back soon. I will tell him you are angry also."
"How do you know he's coming back?"
"He always comes back to me after he completes a service for you."
"But I thought you said he suffered from the Master's disease. "
"And he does, most gracious Emperor Smith. He will wreak acts of vengeance upon mankind. It is an old Hindu curse interpreted by them as a duty imposed by one of their gods."
"But if he is wreaking vengeance, his own personal vengeance, how will he do what he is supposed to do for me?"
"You mean your assignment?"
"Yes. This man he was supposed to eliminate," said Smith.
"Oh, that," said Chiun, dismissing the worry as trivial. "That's business. The man is dead."
"Guenther Largos Diaz is perhaps the most cunning briber in the world. He should have been dead days ago."
"Yes, I admit, Remo may be late, but there is no question. Mr. Diaz may think he is saving his life, but Remo will come to his senses because the disease fevers the brain in waves, not in a constant barrage. Don't worry. Remo is Remo."
"Yes," said Smith wearily, "but who that is, I don't know. "
"You read the souls of all men, O most gracious Emperor," said Chiun, who thought that it would take a white to deal with someone for twenty years and then come out with a statement as stupid as that. If he didn't know Remo by now, he never would.
* * *
Guenther Largos Diaz had understood immediately there was a quality to this man called Remo that he had never seen before. And even though he had learned many things about him in the last few days, he did make the disastrously impulsive judgment that he knew Remo.
He had seen him kill at the foot of the Andes, seen his work in Boston and now in Denver, seen the flippant grace that made awesome deeds seem no more than the simple manipulation of the hand, like swatting away a fly.
It was this very simplicity that made it all seem so natural, which in Diaz's understanding made it all the more magnificent. He could feed this force victims and thus prolong his own life, but life was too valuable to live it poorly, to constantly be running around America one step from death.
There had to be a significant move along the way when Remo would make that switch to working for Diaz instead of Diaz working for Remo. The more subtly it was made, the more possible it would become. What Guenther Largos Diaz wanted was for their goals, his and Remo's, to become indistinguishable, and then once that had been established, to slowly substitute Diaz's real goals.
For in this one man Diaz would have an army of killers. To this end, he questioned Remo. They were aboard the private jet on their way to Atlanta, where Diaz had assured Remo a major builder was also using Diaz cocaine money. "We are really getting the big shots, Remo."
"You seem happy about it, Diaz."
"I am happy to be alive," said Diaz. He examined a tray of truffles brought to him by the steward aboard his jet, and dismissed them as inadequate. They could always fly to France for the best truffles. Life was so short, why settle?
"You didn't seem to be too frightened," said Remo.
"Why be frightened even though life is dear? But I am thinking, why not get the true masters of crime. We have dealt with bankers and bookies and commodities dealers, and now we seek a builder. Let us get the great criminals of the world."
"These are big enough for me," said Remo.
"Do you know how much a country steals every day? What does one communist government steal when it has everyone within its borders providing cheap labor? What does the American government steal when it taxes? Cocaine smugglers are pipsqueaks, and so are bankers. Are you willing to go for the really big boys, Remo?"
"No," said Remo. "As a matter of fact I should be getting home. I'm late."
"I thought you didn't have a home."
"I don't really. It's my teacher I live with."
"And he teaches you these powers."
"Yeah. In a way," said Remo. He liked the plush white cushions on the plane. He wondered what it would be like to live this way, to have many homes. Guenther Largos Diaz had many homes. If he worked for Diaz, so would he.
"In what way, Remo?"
"I'd tell you but I don't have time."
"We have all the time in the world," said Guenther Largos Diaz, making a broad gesture with his hands.
"No you don't," said Remo, and he did not throw Diaz's body out of the plane because they were over America and it might hit someone.
Chapter 4
Vladimir Rabinowitz was free. He was in the land where people ate meat all they wanted. No one stood over your shoulder. No one told you what to think. No one bombarded you with the correct view of the world.
Those were the good parts. The bad part was nobody cared what you thought. Nobody cared where you slept or whether you ate at all. You had no set place in the world. Living in Russia was like wearing a truss around your soul. It smothered the spirit, but when the truss was removed, you felt as though the spirit was now dangerously without support.
For the first time in his twenty-eight years of life Vladimir Rabinowitz had no place to go, no place to be, no one to have to talk to, and it was not exhilarating. It was terrifying. He looked over his shoulder for the police. He looked around for some official, and then with a deep sigh he told himself this was what he had wanted all his life and he should enjoy it.
He watched the people rush through Kennedy Airport until one glanced at his eyes. She was young, but apparently wealthy because she wore a fur coat. Her eyes were ice blue, and he caught them in his own gaze.
The trick was to get behind the eyes into the mind. Human eyes were really set like those of predators, not victims. Antelopes and deer had their eyes in the sides of their heads to spot anything sneaking up on them. They were runners for their lives. Lions and wolves had their eyes set in the front of their heads. They were hunters for their food.
When people glanced for the first time at anything, their eyes were really searching for weaknesses or strengths. If one knew the eyes, one knew that. The second glance was sexual. And only after these two stages were over did people get to talking. But it was in these stages that Vassily Rabinowitz worked.
The woman's eyes said no danger, and then said no to sexual partnership. But by that instant he had locked her pupils with his and smiled, and what he did here with people rushing around them and distracting them, with overhead speakers blaring in English, with the scent of harsh cleaners still on the floor and the air stuffy from so many people using it, was to let her eyes see through his that she was safe. The message was friendship. She no longer had to worry about safety.
"I am telling you what you know," said Vassily in his b
est English, "better than what you know."
His voice was not soft, but held that note of confidence beyond confidence. It was someone speaking the truth. The people never remembered he had said this afterward, in fact sometimes they didn't remember direct suggestions at all. As he had explained to the scientist who was assigned to him back at the village:
"Most of the decisions for immediate action and recognition are not decided in the conscious part of the brain. That's too slow. It's an instantaneous thing. It's there immediately. What I do is lock in at the first stage."
"But all hypnotism requires relaxation, comrade," the fellow scientist at the village had said.
"The mind is never relaxed. You're thinking of presleep," Vassily had said, and the scientist had liked that. He liked the description of the levels of the mind. He liked the stages of recognition through the eyes. He liked all of it, and Vassily, being rather creative, kept on expanding. Of course the scientists could never reproduce what Vassily Rabinowitz did, because Vassily didn't know how he did it. Never did. Nor did he know why everyone else in his village could do it to those born outside the village.
All he knew was that when he went to the outside world, which at the time was the special village in Siberia, he promised the elders of the village never to tell anyone about them.
And here in America the woman with the ice-blue eyes said:
"Darling, I didn't know you were in New York!"
"I'm here. Don't hang on me. I want something to eat already," said Vassily.
"You're always so thoughtful. Never thinking of yourself, Hal. Always me first. Of course we'll get something to eat."
"Right," said Vassily.
"I love you too, precious," said the woman. Her name was Liona. Her mind had taken over the job of telling herself what she wanted to believe. This Hal she was in love with apparently had a nice way with words.
Vassily never had a way with words, least of all English words. So he told her what he wanted, and she heard what she wanted, and they got along fine all the way into the biggest, busiest, dirtiest city he had ever seen. New York. And she bought him lunch. And took him to her apartment. And made violent love to him, screaming, "Hal, Hal. Hal."
"So long," said Vassily.
"You're wonderful, Hal."
"Sometimes. Sometimes I'm this guy Morris, who is awful," said Vassily, but he knew she didn't hear that. He had been three Morrises in his life; none of them had ever been good lovers. Once he was a Byron. Byron was terrific. He liked being Byron.
Vassily, untrained in war and the strategies of war, could not imagine he would ever be a danger to anyone. When you had the powers of his home village of Dulsk you really didn't have to worry about dangers from the outside.
But as he left the apartment, something bad happened. The worst fears of Russian planners were realized, though not in a way they might have expected.
In this fine country, in this land where store windows were filled with plenty, Vassily Rabinowitz was mugged. They were three teenagers. They were of the oppressed black race. Vassily, whose only knowledge of American racial matters was the historic injustice done to these people and the daily persecutions they suffered, felt an immediate sense of brotherly compassion.
In the midst of his compassion he suffered contusions about the eyes, lacerations of the head, a broken left wrist, and a damaged kidney. When he got out of the hospital he was told to check his urine for blood.
This could never happen in Moscow. A drunk might take a loose swing at someone, but never would anyone so blatantly assault another.
Coming out of the hospital, Vassily Rabinowitz knew he was going to have to take care of himself. In every aching part of his body, in every accidental brush against a wound, he knew he was never going to allow this to happen to him again. He would create a fortress Vassily. He would trust no one to take care of him. He would do everything for himself. He would protect himself, he would set up a business for himself, and foremost, he would never again expose himself to the vicissitudes of brotherly love. He was going to get his own police force, to substitute for the people dressed in blue who called themselves police, whom he had never seen hit anyone on the head with a nightstick. He was going to get himself the strongest, deadliest, most powerful protection available in this new country.
Rabinowitz wasn't quite sure what that was, but he knew how to find out. And so he began protecting himself. He talked with a policeman. The policeman thought he was talking to his father.
"Dad," said the policeman, "the toughest man in the city, the one I would hate to be left alone with, the one I would walk miles to avoid, has got to be Johnny 'The Bang' Bangossa. "
"Is a strongy, huh?" asked Vassily.
"Pop, that man has been breaking bones for a living since he was twelve. I heard he beat up four patrolmen by himself when he was sixteen. By the time he was twenty he had made his bones."
"What is this making of bones?" asked Vassily.
"Dad, how long have you been on the police force, that you don't know what making your bones is?"
"Talk to your father already," said Vassily. They were in a luncheonette. Some of the food Vassily recognized from Russia. The rest he wanted to eat.
People were looking strangely at them. Vassily could sense that. He didn't care. The man had red hair, blue eyes, and was six feet tall, almost a half-foot taller than Vassily. He was also by any reasonable estimation a good ten years older than Vassily.
"Pop, making your bones is killing someone for money."
"So where does this Bangossa fellow live?"
"Queens. He's been under surveillance for a month. And he knows it. Word on the street is he's going crazy 'cause he hasn't busted anyone's skull in a hell of a long time. Everyone's waitin' for him to break."
Vassily got the address of the stakeout, took a large sugary roll from the counter, told the counterman his son would pay for it, and headed out for Queens, New York, and the address of the stakeout.
When the wife of Johnny "The Bang" Bangossa saw a little fellow with sad brown eyes come up the walkway to their brick house in Queens, she wanted to warn him to stay away. If he did not stay away, Johnny would mangle him, the police stakeout that everyone knew was in force would close in, and Johnny would be incarcerated, using the remnants of the sad-eyed little fellow as evidence, probably for a lifetime, leaving Maria Venicio Bangossa virtually a widow. A woman without a man. A woman who could not marry again because in the eyes of the Church she would still be married.
Maria Bangossa opened the door.
"C'mon in," she said. "Have you come for Johnny Bangossa?"
"Indeed 1 have," said Vassily Rabinowitz. He was amazed at how much red brick was used in this house. Someone would think this was a bunker. The windows were small and narrow. The roof was low, and nothing but brick reinforced by brick was used in the exterior.
Inside, furniture glistened with a sheen he hadn't seen anywhere else in America except on luncheonette counters. Suddenly Maria Bangossa realized she was talking to her mother.
"Ma, he's in a lousy mood. I just leave some pasta by his door three times a day. I don't go in. You gotta get outta here."
Maria saw her mother shrug.
"Don't worry already. We'll be all right, and everything will work out. Just show me where the animal is."
"I'm fine, Ma, and Johnny's in his room. But he's sleeping. He's even worse when he wakes up. I rush out of bed because I don't want to be near him when he opens his eyes."
"It's all right, Maria. Your mother will be fine," said Vassily.
The carpeting was a deep maroon and looked like bad imitation fur. The lamps were porcelain figurines holding facsimiles of fruit. The stair banister was made of chrome. Airports were better decorated than the home of this Johnny Bangossa.
When Vassily got to the room, he knocked on the door and called out.
"Hey, Johnny Bangossa, I want you should talk with me awhile."
Johnny Bangossa hear
d the foreign accent. He heard it in his house. He heard it outside his room. He heard it while he was asleep and when he awakened from that sleep. The first thing he did was swing wildly, hoping someone was near him and would be crushed by the blow. But his fist met only a piece of the wall, shattering plaster.
The voice had come from the door. Johnny grabbed the corners of the door and ripped it away. Standing there in front of him was a little man with sad brown eyes, probably a Jew.
Johnny reached for the Jew. His anger almost blinded him.
Vassily Rabinowitz saw the big, hairy hands come down toward him. Johnny Bangossa filled the doorway. He wore an undershirt. His massive shoulders were covered with hair. His face was hairy. His nose was hairy. Even his teeth and fingernails seemed to be hairy. He had small black eyes that looked like coal nuggets, and a wide face that underneath the hair was very red.
Vassily sensed he was going to die very soon. And then he locked eyes with the massive man.
The hulk paused, then cringed.
"Hey, Carli, leave me alone. C'mon, Carli," whined Johnny Bangossa, covering his head and retreating into the room.
"I'm not going to hit you. I need you," said Vassily.
"Don't hit," said the large man, and he winced as though he was being struck on the head.
"I need you for protection," said Vassily. "You will be my bodyguard.'
"Sure, Carli, but don't hit."
Vassily shrugged. He knew his bodyguard would be actually feeling the slaps and cuffs used by the person who raised him.
It was a bit unsettling to walk downstairs with a hulk of a man wincing, ducking, and covering his head.
Maria Bangossa stood in shocked amazement as the two of them left the house. It was as though her beloved husband was reacting to his older brother Carl who had raised him. Johnny had said Carl had raised him strictly, in the old-fashioned way. Nowadays, with the advent of social workers, this was considered child abuse.
Carl Bangossa had been proud of the way he raised his younger brother Johnny to follow in the family footsteps. Unfortunately, Carl never saw Johnny reach manhood because Carl too followed in the Bangossa family footsteps.
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