"Some crime family," said Rabinowitz. They could see the beginning of the main street of the town down the road and walked to it. Back near the truck there was gunfire. Apparently the Russian soldiers, without the genius of General Matesev to plan their escape, resorted to what soldiers naturally did. They dug in and shot at everyone who wasn't their kind. Now they were zeroing light mortars on the Long Island Expressway and planning to fight to the death.
Remo found a coffee shop.
"You are the first person who has been kind to me since I have come here to America. You are my first friend," said Vassily.
"If I'm your friend, buddy, you're in trouble."
"Is what I am saying. I am in trouble," said Vassily. "I don't have a friend. I don't have my crime family. I had one of the best crime families in America. See? I'll show you."
As the large sugary Danish pastry arrived with the heavily creamed coffee, Vassily came back to the table with a handful of New York City newspapers. He went right to the stories. Apparently he had read them before.
Proudly he pushed them across the Formica table for Remo to read.
"You know, sugar's a drug," said Remo, glancing at the glistening layer of chemically colored goo enveloping the sugar-and-flour concoction. If Remo had one bite, his highly tuned nervous system would malfunction, and he would probably pass out.
"I like it," said Vassily.
"They say that about cocaine and heroin, too," said Remo, wincing as Vassily took a big bite.
"Is good," said Vassily. "Read, read. Look at the part about the 'cunning mastermind.' Is me."
Remo read about shotgunning in elevators, machinegunning in bedrooms, and shooting in the back of the steps of a church.
"Pretty brutal," said Remo.
"Thank you," said Vassiiy. "Those were my bones, as they call them. Have you made your bones?"
"You mean do a service?"
"Yes. Most assuredly. Do service."
"Yeah," said Remo.
"Would you like to join my new crime family?"
"No. I'm going overseas somewhere."
"Where?"
"I don't know."
"Crime families are not what they're cracked up to be," said Vassily. "They all ran. What is this with them? I made them caporegimes, too. And then they ran. What are crime families coming to nowadays'? That is what I ask. I hear so much about America deteriorating. Is this true of the crime families?"
"I dunno," said Remo. "I got my own problems. Once I find out what you do, then I'm done. More than twenty years and I'm through here. Well, okay, good enough. What should I tell my boss you do? I mean exactly. I mean, would a country invade another country just to get back a hypnotist? I thought he might have been lying."
"Was not lying. Russians are crazy. Crazy people. They invaded, you say?"
National Guard helicopters buzzed overhead. In the distance, small-arms fire could be heard. Many people had rushed out of the luncheonette and were being warned by policemen to stay back. Somehow the Russians had invaded America, but the word was, not too many of them. A bunch of Russians was trapped, someone yelled.
"And in one of the best neighborhoods, to boot," said another.
"They sent soldiers," said Vassily, covering his eyes with his hands. "What am I going to do? I can't fight a whole country. Not a whole country. You've got to be my friend. "
Vassily now decided that if this man would not be his friend voluntarily, he would do it the other way. It was always better to have a sincere real friend, but when one couldn't, one had to make do with what one had.
Just like with women. One would prefer that a woman would undrape herself with honest passion, but when one did not have honest passion available, the next best thing was dishonest passion. It certainly was better than no passion at all. He would give the man who introduced himself as Remo one last chance.
"Be my friend," he said.
"I got a friend," said Remo. "And he's a pain in the ass. "
"Then hello," said Vassily, taking his hands away from his eyes to make contact with Remo, who was going to be his best friend whether he liked it or not.
Unfortunately the man moved faster than anything Vassily had ever seen, and he did it so gracefully it hardly looked as though he were moving, except that he was out the door and into the street in an instant.
The reports out of Washington buzzed with relief. The President had nothing but praise for CURE. Smith, however, felt uncomfortable with praise. As Miss Ashford used to say in the Putney Day School back in Vermont:
"One should never do a job for praise, but because it should be done. And it should be done well. One should never be praised for doing what one should, because all jobs should be done well."
This parsimonious attitude was not peculiar to Miss Ashford. It was what the Smiths believed, and the Coakleys, and the Winthrops, and the Manchesters. Harold W. Smith had been raised in an atmosphere that was as rigidly uniform as in any of the courts of China. Everything had changed since then but the memories of the older folk, of which Harold W. Smith at age sixty-seven legitimately counted himself.
And so when the President told Smith he had come through in the hardest times, Smith answered:
"Is there anything else, sir?"
"We easily captured that special Russian group, and do you know how they got in every time without us finding them? They were planted ahead of time. All set to go. Bang. All they needed was their commander to tell them to go. And your man got him, and the rest of them are useless. And we know now how to take precautions against any other attempts at this. These are tough times and it feels damned good to win one for a change," said the President.
"Sir, what can we do for you?"
"Take a damned compliment for once," said the President.
"I do not not believe, sir, we were commissioned to win medals and such. If I ever mentioned a medal to either of our two active people, they would laugh at me."
"Well, dammit, thank you anyhow. You should know that the Russians have denied any involvement with their own soldiers, publicly declaring it a capitalist imperialist Zionist plot. Privately they threw up their hands and apologized. I think this thing is turning everything around. Their espionage system is exposed as it never has been before, their special group will never exist again, and we have them on the run. They've pulled back into their shell and word is they are running scared. Scared."
"Except we don't know why they risked so much yet."
"Did you find out?"
"Not yet, but I suspect when one of our active people calls in, I will."
"Let us know," said the President, and again he surrendered to bubbling enthusiasm. "These are great days to be an American, Harold W. Smith. I don't care how expensive that laundry list of treasure is to get. It's worth it."
"It might be a strain on the budget, sir."
"What budget? Nobody knows how this thing works. Besides, what's another few billion more if it's worth it? We lost a few billion just in accounting."
"Yessir," said Smith, hanging up.
Down at Vistana Views, Remo looked around the condominium to see if he had left anything. He was leaving America for good now. He had completed his last mission. Smith would be here soon for the last debriefing.
He felt sad, but he didn't know why he felt sad. He told himself it was fitting that he was leaving from Epcot Center, a Walt Disney production. His whole life might have been Mickey Mouse all along.
Was America any better for the work he had done? Was he any better? The only thing that made him better was his training. Chiun tried to cheer him by talking about the glories of the courts of kings, how one could play games with dictators and tyrants as employers, how Smith was inexplicable and treated his assassins poorly, ashamed of them, hiding their deeds, even hiding himself. But in the land of the true tyrant, an assassin was flaunted, an assassin was honored, an assassin was boasted about.
"Yeah, good," said Remo. And still he felt like yesterday's old pota
toes, somehow being thrown out with the rest of his life.
"Do you feel bad, Remo. The Great Wang understood these things. It happens to all Masters, even the great ones. "
"Did it happen to you, little father?" asked Remo.
"No. It never happened to me."
"Why not?"
"Well, you have to feel that somehow you have done something wrong. All I had to do was look at my life. As the Great Wang said: 'Do not judge a life by how it ends, as do those of the West, but judge it by the whole.' If I did nothing but fail for the rest of my life, I would still be wonderful. "
"That's you, not me. I feel like the world has fallen out from underneath me and I don't know why."
"As the Great Wang said: 'Before perfection is that awareness of not being perfect, so that you feel your worst before you achieve your new level.' You are only getting better, Remo. And we should be grateful for that, because you certainly needed it."
"Great Wang. Great Wang. Great Wang. There are lots of Masters. I studied them. Why is he so damned great? I don't see it."
"Because you're not good enough to see it."
"Maybe you're better than the Great Wang. How do I know?"
"You are not to know, I am to know. Hurry, all the good tyrants seem to be falling."
"How do you know the Great Wang was so great? Was he greater than your father?"
"No. I was greater than my father."
"Then how do you know?"
"When you reach a certain level, you see the Great Wang."
"Is he alive? Does his spirit still exist in this world?"
"No. It exists in the greatness of Sinanju. And when you achieve that, that next level, you will see him."
"What does he look like?"
"A bit overweight, as a matter of fact, but he told me I was thin, so on his advice I gained an ounce and a half."
"You actually talked to him?"
"You can when you make the passage. What you are feeling now is the beginning of your passage."
"So what is the big deal about passing into a better level? I'm already more than good enough for what I need. "
"How cruel the stab of one's own son, nurtured like a natural son, reverting to his white attitudes again. It is the reason that the white race will never be great."
"Anytime you want to call it quits with me, little father," said Remo, "say so."
"Testy today, aren't we?" said Chiun with a smile. The Master of Sinanju knew he had won. No matter what Remo said, he was on his way to his new level. It was not that he would seek it. Indeed, if he didn't try so hard sometimes, he would be there already. But the truth about Remo's new level was that it was not taking hold of him. And soon he would see the Great Wang for himself and hear the advice given only to the great Masters of Sinanju, whatever that advice would be. It would be right. The Great Wang was always right. Never was there a time when he was not right. This was recorded in the histories of Sinanju, this was reality. Every time Remo could move up a wall vertically and understand it was only the fear of falling that was his enemy, every time he breathed in concordance with the great forces of the cosmos, the Great Wang lived. And now he was only waiting to say hello to Remo at the right time.
This Chiun knew, and this Remo could not know until it happened.
Mad Emperor Smith arrived, a half-hour late. The one thing the lunatic had had in his favor was punctuality and now that was gone. Good riddance, said Chiun in Korean.
The translation for Smith into English lost something, however.
"Oh, gracious benignity," intoned Chiun as he opened the door for the head of CURE. "In our last day of perfect service, glorifying your name, the tears of our parting rend the hearts of your faithful assassins, knowing there will be no equal to your glory."
Even Smith, color-blind, recognized the red kimono with the gold dragons. That was the kimono Chiun had worn the first day they had met, and never worn since. They were actually leaving at last, thought Smith. It was good-bye. Well, at least they had saved the country. That force that had invaded America with impunity not only had been destroyed, but Russia had been thoroughly embarrassed and was really whipped on all fronts as the President had said. The two sides were no longer teetering toward a world-ending conflict. Russia was in retreat. They had given America the breathing space it needed to avoid launching missiles that could never be called back. Now all Smith had to do was find out why Russia had sent in the Matesev group.
Remo offered his hand.
"I guess this is the end," he said.
"I guess it is," said Smith.
"Yeah. Well, who knows," said Remo.
"Sit down. Let's talk about Matesev's mission."
"Don't have to sit, Smitty. They were after a hypnotist. Supposed to be a great hypnotist."
"They have lots of hypnotists," said Smith. "The Russians are famous for doing experiments with the human mind. Why would they be after this one?"
"Supposedly he could do it with everyone instantly. I mean when I found him, Matesev's people had his eyes taped and his mouth taped. They were scared of him."
"Of course, they should be. If he is what they say he is, someone like that could control the world. I could see how he would escape Russia easily. Escape anywhere easily. This man could walk into the Department of Defense and start a war. No wonder they wanted to keep him under wraps. I'm surprised they didn't kill him when they found out he could do those things."
"Why not use him to their advantage?" asked Remo.
"Who would be using whom when he could hypnotize anyone into believing anything? He was like an atomic warhead, but with a mind of his own. They must have been on tenterhooks all the time they had him."
"Maybe," said Remo. "In any case, Smitty, good luck and good-bye."
"Wait a minute. What did he look like?"
"About five-foot-seven. Kind of sad brown eyes. Nice guy. Lonely."
"You spoke with him?"
"Sure," said Remo.
"You let him go?" asked Smith. The lemony face suddenly turned red as horror set in. "You let him go? How on earth could you let him go, knowing what he was? How could you do such a thing?"
"That wasn't my job. You said do Matesev. I did Matesev. All right? You said find out what he wanted. I found out what he wanted. Case closed."
"You could have thought. We have to get Rabinowitz. There's no way we can let that man roam around this country. For both our sakes. Those damned stupid Russians. Why didn't they tell us? We could have worked together. "
"Good-bye, Smitty."
"You can't leave, Remo. You can recognize him."
"Recognize him, hell. He wanted to be my friend."
"You have too many friends, Remo," said Chiun. He was waiting for Remo to lift the trunks. It would not be seemly for a Master of his stature to carry the luggage. He would have Smith do it, but like most Westerners Smith only became more feeble as he grew old.
This was not a way for a Master of Sinanju to leave an emperor, carrying his own bags.
"I have one too many," said Remo. Chiun was too happy to be leaving the Mad Emperor Smith to quibble about such minor slights.
"Remo, do you understand why we have to get Vassily Rabinowitz, and do to him what the Russians did? Do you understand?"
"Understand?" sighed Remo. "I don't even want to think about it. C'mon, little father. I'll carry your steamer trunks out to the car."
"If you wish," said Chiun. Life was becoming good already. He didn't even have to work on Remo to make him do what he should have done out of the love in his heart, instead of forcing Chiun to practically beg for it. If one had to ask, one was demeaned. This might not be the absolute truth, but it sounded good, so Chiun decided to use it sometime when he had an opportunity.
"Chiun, tell him the job isn't over," said Smith.
"How can I reason with one who has served you so well? Only your words, O Emperor, are inviolate, and once spoken must be followed forever. You said he should eliminate this evil on
e Matesev. Is Matesev alive?"
"Well, no, but-"
"You said he should find out about this Rabinowitz. Did Remo not personally speak to Vassily Rabinowitz himself, even to the discussion of friendship?"
"Yes, but-"
"Then we leave with glad hearts knowing we followed to the absolute letter your magnificent commands."
"Name your price," said Smith.
"We are still waiting for the last tributes," said Chiun. "Not that we are crass servers of gold. But we understand as you understand that America's credit is its most priceless possession. And you most of all wish to keep your name and your credit at the highest levels of history. This when all the treasure of Sinanju is restored according to our agreements, then we would be more than happy to serve you again."
"But it will take years to search out that list you sent us. There are artifacts in there that haven't been around for centuries. "
"A great nation faces a great task," said Chiun, and in Korean to Remo: "Get the blue trunk first."
Remo answered in the language that had over the years become like his first language.
"Pretty neat, little father. I never could have gotten out that clean."
"It's only time. You'll learn it. When you know you're not working for some patriotic cause but realize you are in the family business, then you'll see. It is the easiest part of things. Emperors are all stupid because they can be made to believe we actually think they are somehow better than we just because of the accident of their births."
"What are you two talking about?" asked Smith in English.
"Good-bye," said Remo.
"I will match what any other country, tyrant, or emperor offers you, Chiun."
"Put back the trunk," said Chiun to Remo in Korean.
"I thought we were leaving," said Remo.
"Not when we have a bidding situation. It is the first rule of bargaining. Never walk away from a bidding situation; you will regret it forever."
"I don't know about you, little father," said Remo. "But I am through with Smith and CURE. Get your own trunk."
Smith saw the blue steamer trunk fall to the ground, and watched Chiun look aghast at such disrespect.
"So long," said Remo to both of them. "I'm going to play with the real Mickey Mouse instead of you two guys."
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