"I never made any such promise," Remo said evenly.
Chiun stopped halfway to the door. He whirled, his kimono skirts swirling. The pattern was carnation. It looked like a bathrobe purchased from a Ginza street stall.
"Worse than your memories, he has absconded with your gratitude," Chiun proclaimed in a bitter voice.
"I never promised you Cheeta Ching. Even if I had, how do you expect me to deliver? Abduct her?"
"No, entreat her. Tell her of the riches that will be hers if she becomes my bride."
"You're twice her age," Remo pointed out. "Besides, she's married."
"To become the consort of the Master of Sinanju, she would gladly divorce that unworthy person. I would shower her with gold and jewels. She would spend her days basking in the reflected glory of my awesome magnificence."
"She makes a cool three mil a year. She doesn't need your gold, and she's famous all by herself."
"This is an impossible country," Chiun spat. "The women are paid fabulous sums for looking into the TV camera and reading unimportant words."
"Can it, Chiun. If you have a crush on Cheeta Ching, do your own courting. Now, let's go. We're having a showdown with Smith."
The Master of Sinanju watched his pupil storm past him, his face a mask of elemental rage. He tucked his hands into draperylike sleeves and padded after Remo on silent feet.
As they got into the car, Chiun put a quiet question to Remo.
"What do you intend to say to Smith?"
Remo started the engine and threw his arm across the back of his seat as he backed out of the driveway. He shifted to forward gear and sent the car slithering down the street.
"I've had it," Remo said after a long pause. "Ever since that Enquirer story broke, my life has been an open sore. It was bad enough being dumped onto death row again. But to find out that Smith hadn't mellowed over the years-just gotten better at hiding his cold-bloodedness-that's it. No more."
"It was not Smith's nature that was hidden. It was that you allowed yourself to become blinded to it. All emperors are cruel."
"Smith's no emperor. He's just a bureaucrat. And let me finish, will you?"
Seeing the intensity of his pupil's words, the Master of Sinanju swallowed his planned rebuke.
"My house has been violated," Remo went on tightly. "All my life I've wanted a home of my own. I get one and now its filled with Smith's low-rent spy-movie junk. He's been watching us all along. For Christ's sake, we live next door to him. I knew it was a mistake to move into his neighborhood. "
"I agree. But I do not hold it against you," Chiun said levelly. "We all make mistakes."
"Against me!" Remo flared, taking a corner on screeching whitewalls. " I don't remember that being my idea."
"Perhaps it is another lost memory," Chiun sniffed as he absently arranged his skirts.
Remo fell silent. They had left the city behind and turned onto a wooded road. The salty fresh tang of Long Island Sound, occasionally visible through breaks in the treeline, filled their nostrils.
"You still have not told me what you intend," Chiun said at last.
"I don't know yet," Remo admitted. "I told him months ago I was through with the organization. But you're still under contract, aren't you?"
"Technically, yes," Chiun admitted. "But I too am disappointed in Smith. He claims that he is helpless in the matter of Cheeta Ching. He swore he would arrange a private meeting between us."
"Then we walk. It's that simple. We don't need Smith, or America. We're the top assassins in the world. We can write our own ticket. Go anyplace. Live high. Be appreciated. "
Chiun's eyes shone with pride. "I have longed for you to speak those words for many years, Remo."
"Then you're with me in this?" Remo asked.
"Yes," Chiun said. "No matter what entreaties Smith makes, no matter the quantity of his blandishments. We will stand together on your decision. Our decision."
"Done," Remo said firmly. His lips thinned as the austere stone lion heads mounted on either side of the Folcroft Sanitarium gate came into view like dim beacons of hopelessness.
He pulled through the open wrought-iron gates, handed the guard an ID card that said "Remo Mackie," and parked in the administrative parking area.
"Well, this is it," Remo said as he got out of the car. "The showdown."
"Fear not," Chiun said, floating beside him as they entered the spacious Pinesol-scented lobby. "We are resolute."
"Smith is going to have a fit when he sees us," Remo muttered as they rode the elevator to the second floor. "I've been trying to lie low ever since that Enquirer thing. Coming to Folcroft will really upset him.
"No more will we hide our faces like common executioners," Chiun said loudly. "In China we will have an honored place beside the throne."
Remo looked down at Chiun. "China? Who said we're going to China?"
"There is need of us there. The population is restive. There are whispers of plots, treasons, even open revolt."
As they stepped off the elevator, Remo hushed Chiun. "I got a problem working for the Chinese government, but we'll talk it over later."
Mrs. Mikulka looked up from her file cabinet as they approached the anteroom outside Dr. Smith's office.
"We're here to see Smith," Remo said sharply.
"Dr. Smith left express orders that he's not to be disturbed," said Mrs. Mikulka. She knew Remo as a one time groundskeeper of Folcroft and Chiun as a patient, now cured of delusions of grandeur.
"Too bad," Remo said, going through the door anyway.
"Pay no attention to him," Chiun whispered to Mrs. Mikulka. "He is overwrought. A cruel accident has robbed him of his most precious memories."
"Amnesia?" asked Mrs. Mikulka sympathetically.
"Worse. Ingratitude."
Ignoring Mrs. Mikulka's protests, Chiun went in and closed the door behind him. Remo stood inside the door, his fists clenched. Chiun drifted up to his side.
Across the Spartan office, Dr. Harold W. Smith's coathanger-thin shoulders showed on either side of his desktop terminal. The top of his head was also visible, the hair white and crisp as frost. The tapping of his fingers on the keyboard came like the beginning of a rainstorm.
"He is engrossed in another of his follies," Chiun said softly. "He is not aware of us."
"I'll change that," Remo said tersely. He raised his voice. "Smith!" he said coldly.
"What?" Smith's worn face poked out from around the terminal like a bespectacled gopher peering from its hole. It retreated instantly. "Not now," Smith said querulously. "The stock market is in danger of collapsing."
"What is he babbling about now?" Chiun asked Remo.
"Stocks and bonds."
Chiun nodded. "Oh, the tulip-bulb mania."
"Tulips?" Remo asked.
"Before it was stocks and bonds, men gambled in other illusions. The Dutch had tulips. The Japanese bartered rice. The Indians, dung."
"Dung? Really?"
"It was very important to them. They used it to cook their food. That is why you should always avoid Indian foods. There is no telling what filth enters the cooking process."
"Good point," Remo said, advancing on Smith's desk.
"Smith, I want a word with you," Remo said sharply.
Smith was hunched over the terminal so far that it seemed as if his spine would crack. He didn't look up. He was keying furiously now.
Remo looked at the screen. He saw three-letter stock symbols and numbers marching in parallel lines like alien creatures in a video game.
"The stock market can get along without you," Remo said, hitting a key at random. To his surprise, the screen winked out.
"My God!" Smith said hoarsely, inputting furious commands. "Five minutes. just five more minutes."
"No. Now!"
Smith whirled his chair around, crying, "Stand back. The nation's future is hanging in the balance."
Remo blinked, shocked by the vehemence of his superior's voice-but even more sho
cked by the realization that Smith wasn't seated in his usual leather chair. He was in a wheelchair. Smith gripped the wheel rims tightly as if he were prepared to run Remo down.
Remo raised his palms in surrender. "Okay, okay," he said, taken aback. "Five minutes."
"Thank you," Smith said crisply. His hands returned to the keyboard. He leaned into the machine as if looking through a portal to some horrifying world.
Remo drifted back to Chiun's side.
"You didn't tell me he was still in a wheelchair," he whispered.
"He has been very ill," Chiun confided. "When that toad Ransome took over the organization, he denied Smith medical treatment. He is recovering. But his legs are still weak. "
"There's nothing wrong with his nerve," Remo said. "He acted like he was going to bite my head off." The anger had seeped from his face. He watched Smith in thoughtful silence.
Finally Smith withdrew his hands from his keyboard.
"Thank God. It's four o'clock."
"Quitting time?" Remo asked.
"The stock market has closed. At last."
"I heard it crashed. Again."
Smith rubbed his tired gray eyes. "Not quite. But it was a near thing. I did everything in my power to reverse it. The Dow lost over five hundred points, but it had been down as low as one thousand."
"Tough."
"It was nearly economic ruin," Smith said. His eyes began to focus on his surroundings. He looked at Remo as if seeing him for the first time. "Remo! What are you doing here! You are not supposed to be seen in public. If someone should recognize you . . . !"
"Tough. I'm here. I got tired of staring at the walls. By the way, I got the governor."
"You went to Florida?" "Yeah, I was sick of waiting for you to give Chiun the green light. So I took care of him."
"My God," Smith said, hoarse-voiced. "You assassinated the governor of Florida! Without authorization?"
"Authorization, my ass. It was personal. And he was a legitimate target. He was in bed with half of the coke importers in the hemisphere. He tried to have me executed. Remember?"
"We were building a case against him. One that would stand up in the courts," Smith said coldly. "What will I tell the President?"
Remo folded his lean strong arms. "Whatever you want. I don't care anymore. I've had it with you, and with America. You, for rigging the so-called retirement plan that landed me back on death row, and America for electing governors like that jerk who signs death warrants without regard for due process."
"Remo, I can understand your feelings. But you know how it is. CURE doesn't exist. Officially. You don't exist. When your face was made public, it was a crisis-made doubly troublesome because I was in a coma. The retirement program was meant to take you out of the public eye until the situation stabilized. Were it not for my replacement's lust for power, you would have spent, at most, a few inconvenient weeks in prison."
"Inconvenient!" Remo came around the desk like a man possessed. " I got news for you, Smith. Prison isn't inconvenient. It's pure hell. Let me remind you, I was a cop before all this. CURE framed me the first time. Walking the last mile to the chair once was enough for one lifetime. I've had it. I'm leaving America."
"Actually, that may be a good idea," Smith said slowly. "For now. Perhaps after a few more months, memories will dim. No one will recognize you as the face from the newspapers. I was going to suggest plastic surgery as an option."
"No chance," Remo said bitterly. "And I'm not talking about a freaking vacation. Get it through your head: this isn't a temper tantrum. I quit!"
Smith's lips thinned. He looked past Remo to Chiun, who had been standing silent and impassive, his hand hidden in his joined sleeves.
"And you, Master of Sinanju? What have you to say about all this?"
" I am letting Remo do all the talking," Chiun said stiffly.
" I see," Smith said. He took hold of his chair wheels and rolled out from behind his desk. He looked up at Remo with unflinching eyes. "You have chosen a difficult time to abandon your country."
"You mean the stock market?" Remo asked. "There's nothing I can do about that. I'm an assassin, not a stockbroker."
"No? What if I told you that CURE just prevented the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression?"
"CURE? You mean you and your computers?" Remo said, pointing at Smith's silent terminal.
"What if I further told you that the near-collapse was no accident?" Smith added. "But a deliberate action taken to wreak economic hardship?"
"Who would do that? Who could do that?"
"That is what I intend to spend the weekend learning. For even though I helped avert a catastrophe, at nine-thirty Monday morning the cycle could begin again."
"Just a minute ago, you wanted me to leave the country," Remo pointed out.
" I still do. According to my computers, this crash originated on the trading floor of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It began with a panic selling of shares in the Global Communications Conglomerate, which is considered the IBM of this decade. It's in everyone's investment portfolio-which is why when it tumbled, everything else came down with it. Hong Kong claims that they were responding to a panic on the Tokyo market. Tokyo said it began with Hong Kong. And it did begin in Hong Kong."
"Remo and I are willing to go to Hong Kong," Chiun said quickly.
Remo turned to Chiun. "We are?"
"We can look into the employment situation in China," Chiun whispered, "and Smith will have to pay our air fare."
"Not me. My career ends here."
"As you wish, Remo." The Master of Sinanju faced Smith. "Emperor, I withdraw my offer. Remo will speak for us."
"Thank you," Remo said. He looked back at Smith, who was trying to get the childproof cap off a bottle of children's aspirin. Impatiently Remo reached out and took the bottle from Smith and opened it with a simple upward motion. Tiny spurts of burned plastic sent out an acrid stink. Remo looked at the label. It said "Free Sample" on the front just under the yellow oval that seemed to frame a snaggle-toothed mouth.
"I thought this was aspirin," Remo said, puzzled.
"It is," Smith said, taking the bottle. He popped two pills down dry. He started coughing and Remo went to the water dispenser and came back with a paper cup of spring water.
"Here," he said. He noticed the same openmouthed symbol on the cup. "What is this thing?" Remo asked, holding up the cup. "The Folcroft crest?"
Chiun craned his neck to see.
"It is a bat," he said. "Anyone can see that."
"I don't," Remo said. "Does this look like a bat to you, Smith?"
"No," Smith said, his cough subsiding.
"Anyone can see that it is a bat," Chiun said peevishly. "A bat inside a yellow circle."
Remo looked again. "Oh, yeah. I see it now. It's kinda like an optical illusion. I see it as a yellow oval with a black mouth in the middle."
"And I see it as a bat within a golden circle," said Chiun.
"I see a black blob in a yellow disk," Smith said, lemon voiced. "Now, may I have my water? I assume it is for me."
"You know, Smith," Remo remarked, handing over the cup at last, "you have the imagination of a snail."
"Thank you," said Harold W. Smith, who had been picked to head CURE for precisely that reason-among others. He drained the cup and lifted bleary gray eyes. His face was pale, with an undertinge of grayishness. He looked as healthy as a beached flounder.
"Are you certain you intend to leave?" Smith asked gravely.
"My mind is made up. Chiun's too."
"Remo speaks for both of us," Chiun said firmly.
"I cannot stop you. Especially in my present state. But perhaps I can stop these people from ruining our economy without you."
Remo frowned skeptically. "You? How?"
"When you were interrupting me, I was running a CURE offshoot, a shell corporation called Nostrum, Incorporated. It was something I created after the so-called Wall Street meltdown of 1987. You see, I s
uspected that that crash was engineered, but I could not prove it. So I created Nostrum. It was designed to shore up the market by buying key bluechip stocks during a future panic-such as today's. I am pleased to say that it worked. Nostrum employees, of course, have no idea they work for CURE."
"I know exactly how they feel," Remo snapped.
Smith cleared his throat. "Today's panic seems to have some of the same earmarks of having been engineered," he went on. "I mention the confusion over who started the initial sell-off-Tokyo or Hong Kong. They happened almost simultaneously, but my analysis is that Hong Kong started it, and Tokyo followed the trend. The difference is less than fifteen minutes, but is there. Hong Kong claims that they received a Reuters report of the Tokyo sell-off fifteen minutes before it actually began."
"I don't follow," Remo said vaguely. "High finance isn't my strong suit."
"The Reuters report was false," Smith said firmly. "Possibly even fabricated. My task-the task I was about to give you-is to follow up on that. Find out how Reuters could have reported an event that did not begin until fifteen minutes after it transpired."
"I get it now," Remo said suddenly.
"You do?" Smith asked in surprise.
"Sure. It's from that dippy movie. Batman."
"What is?"
"The cup. The aspirin. They're Batman merchandise. Like the T-shirts and caps I see everyone wearing these days. I hear they've made a couple of billion in merchandising bucks on this little design alone."
"They did?" Chiun asked, suddenly interested.
"Sure. They slap this thing on everything from baseball caps to soft-drink cups and they get a royalty each time. A nickel here, a dime there, but it adds up."
"Billions?" Chiun's voice was awestruck.
"Yeah. Now that we're unemployed, maybe you can figure out a way to merchandise Sinanju the same way. We'll never have to work again."
"Billions!" Chiun said feverishly. "Think of it, Remo. The symbol of the House of Sinanju on every coin in the world. We will be billionaires."
"Forget it, Little Father. The sign of Sinanju is a trapezoid bisected by a slash. It just doesn't cut it."
"And this does!" Chiun shrilled. "A mere bat, which, if you look at it wrong, looks like a broken-toothed mouth?"
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