"Well, they have polls, Chiun. And they question people about what they like and don't like and I guess they figured more people would want to watch the investigations than your serials."
"They did not ask me," said Chiun. "No one asked me. Who asked me? If they asked me, I would say let the beauty of the drama remain. Beauty is rare but investigations you have with you always. Where is this person who does the questioning? I would speak with him for surely he would be interested in my opinion also."
"You're not going to kill a pollster, Little Father," said Remo.
"Kill?" said Chiun, as if Remo had broached the subject to a Carmelite nun, instead of the most deadly assassin in existence.
"Those things do tend to happen, Chiun, when someone gets in the way of your daytime shows. Or are you forgetting Washington and those FBI men, or New York and all those Mafiosi? You remember. They turned off your programs. Chicago and the union thugs. Remember? Remember who had to get rid of the bodies? Do you forget those little things, Little Father?"
"I remember beauty being interrupted and an old man, who has given the best years of all his skills to an ingrate, being reprimanded for attempting to enjoy a moment of beauty."
"You have a very selective memory."
"In a country that fails to appreciate beauty, a memory which forgets ugliness is a necessity."
And that had begun the renewed personal supervision of Remo's training by the Master of Sinanju. No longer could Remo do his exercises alone. Deprived of his daytime TV shows, Chiun had to supervise the basics and Remo could do nothing right.
Sitting by Lake Patusick in the Massachusetts Berkshires where they rented a cottage for the spring, Remo heard Chiun tell him he breathed like a wrestler. During the water movements, Chiun screamed that Remo moved like a duck, and when Remo was doing the stomach flips—an exercise in which Remo lay flat on his stomach and then used his abdominal muscles to flip himself over onto his back—Chiun said Remo moved like a baby. "You should have a nurse, not the Master of Sinanju. That was slow and clumsy."
Remo assumed the position again, the spring grass near the cool Berkshire lake tickling his cheeks, the smell of the fresh muddy rebirth of life in his nostrils, the morning sun on his bare back, illuminating but not warming. He waited for Chiun's click of fingers to signal the flip. It was a simple exercise, trained into his reflexes more than a decade before, as he began the training that changed a man the public thought had been electrocuted into the killer arm of a secret organization that was designed to fight crime.
Remo waited for the snap of the fingers but it did not come. Chiun was having him wait. Better to wait, he thought, than have to find a place to put the body of the man who was responsible for taking As the Planet Revolves off the air. He felt a slight pressure on his back, probably a leaf failing.
He heard the snap of Chiun's fingers and his stomach muscles slapped the ground like springs released from restraint, but his body did not spin around as Remo expected. The instant pressure of two feet on his back sent his body flat down in the wet spring mud. Remo spit the mud out of his mouth. It was not a leaf he had felt fall on his back, but the Master of Sinanju alighting, weightlessly on him. Remo heard the chuckles above him.
"Do you need help, little baby?"
To the untrained eye, it would appear that a thirty-ish man of moderate build with extra thick wrists and dark hair had attempted a push-up and failed because an old Oriental was standing on his back. Actually, the force expended by both men could shatter slate.
This simple little accident was viewed by three men who had walked around from the front of the cottage and now stood watching the pair—the young white man face in mud, the aged Oriental giggling.
The three men wore dark business suits. The shortest carried a briefcase, the others .25 calibre Berettas that they believed were hidden under their jackets.
"I'm looking for a Remo Mueller," said the man with the briefcase. Remo lifted his head from the mud and felt Chiun alight from his back. He wanted to send a razor sharp hand into the old man's giggling face, but he knew the cutting edge of the hand would be jelly before it ever touched the face. Perhaps in ten years, his mind and body would equal Chiun's and then maybe Chiun would not use Remo as a punching bag for his frustrations.
Remo saw by the way the two taller men stood that they were carrying weapons. There is a reaction of the body to a weapon it carries, a certain heaviness of the body around the weapon. The two men stood with heaviness.
"Remo Mueller?" asked the man with the briefcase.
"Yes. That's me," said Remo, spitting out mud. He had been given the name Mueller several weeks before. This was the first time he'd heard anyone use it, and he wondered if it should be pronounced Muell-er as in fuel, or Muell-er as in full. This man pronounced it as in full.
"The name's pronounced Mueller… as in fuel," Remo said, deciding that Chiun had no corner on perversity this day.
"I'd like to talk to you about a magazine article you wrote for the National Forum of Human Relations."
Magazine article. Magazine article, thought Remo. Sometimes upstairs planted an article under his by-line when they wanted to give him a cover as a magazine reporter, but he did not remember being informed of any article by upstairs recently. He had been told to rest.
Remo stared blankly at the man. What could he say? "Let me see, the article I was supposed to have written." Upstairs moved in peculiar ways, right from the first day when former Newark policeman Remo Williams discovered that upstairs had been responsible for the frame-up that put him in the electric chair, and equally responsible for getting him out alive, the man who did not exist for the agency which did not exist
The explanation was simple, as most of upstairs' explanations were. The Constitution no longer worked; the country could no longer withstand the onslaught of crime. The answer was an organization that functioned outside the Constitution, doing whatever it had to do to equalize the odds.
"And I'm the guy who's going to do the dirty work?" Remo had asked.
"You're elected," he was told. Thus began a decade of training under Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, a decade in which Remo had lost count of the number of people he had killed, just remembered the moves.
"Would you care to talk inside?" Remo asked the three men.
The gentlemen said they would be happy to do so.
"Ask them if they know the vile pollsters of Washington," said Chiun.
"I think this is business," said Remo, hoping that Chiun would choose to get lost. Only three men knew that the secret crime-fighting organization called CURE existed, and Chiun was not one of them. But as the Master of Sinanju, there was only one thing he needed to know of an employer. Did he pay on time and did his payments reach Sinanju, the little Korean village that Chiun and his ancestors had supported through the centuries by renting out their deadly assassin's skills? This question being answered affirmatively, Chiun would not have cared if his employer were the Girl Scouts of America.
"Business, business, business," said Chiun. "You are a nation of businessmen."
"Your servant?" asked the man with the briefcase.
"Not exactly," said Remo.
"Do you men know the vile pollsters of Washington?" asked Chiun.
"We might," said the man with the briefcase.
"Chiun, I think this is work. Please," said Remo.
"We can be of help in many ways," said the man with the briefcase.
"He doesn't need your help. Inside if you please," said Remo, but Chiun, hearing that there might be some way of restoring his daytime soap operas to the screen, followed the gathering into the cottage. He sat cross-legged on the floor watching the men on couches and chairs.
"This is confidential," said the man with the briefcase. He had the quiet authority of one backed by much wealth.
"Ignore him," Remo said of Chiun.
"Your magazine article proved of great interest to my employer. I saw your surprise when I mentioned it. I c
an understand your wondering how we saw the article when it won't even be published until next week."
Remo nodded as if he knew what the article was about
"I have a question for you," the man said. "Just what are your contacts with Busati?"
"I'm afraid that all my sources are confidential," said Remo who did not know who or what or where a Busati was.
"I admire your integrity. Mr. Mueller, let me be frank. We might want you for something."
"Like what?" asked Remo, noticing the edge of a manuscript poke from the man's briefcase.
"We'd like to hire you as a consultant for our offices in Busati."
"Is that my story you have in there?" Remo said.
"Yes. I wanted to discuss it with you."
Remo reached out a hand for the manuscript. "Just want to review it myself," he said.
Even under an assumed name, Remo felt embarrassed by the story. Busati, he quickly surmised, was a country. According to what he was supposed to have written, Busati was forging new forms of socialism after throwing off colonialist chains, under the guidance of President General Dada "Big Daddy" Obode. Any report of tribal friction was an invention of the neo-colonialistic fascist imperialistic powers who feared the enlightened progressive leadership of the Saviour of Busati, General Obode, who brought electricity to the villages, ended crime in the capital and had made the first major inroads against poverty in Busati since the white man had first enslaved the little nation. Why this capitalist fear of Obode? Because his brilliance threatened to undermine the substructure of racist oppressive Western government and all Western nations quaked before the glory of his brilliance.
The article was called "An Unbiased View of Busati." Remo returned the manuscript
"You're rather an interesting fellow, Mr. Mueller," the man said. "We looked into your background and, frankly, we found nothing at all. Not a thing. Not even fingerprints. Now a traveller of your stature should have prints in someone's file. Do you mind telling us why not."
"Yes," said Remo. He turned to Chiun. "What's for dinner?"
"I have not decided," said Chiun.
"Of course, your background is your business," said the man with the briefcase. "We just wish to employ you at great profit to yourself. Very great."
"Duck would be good," said Remo, "if you cooked it right."
"We had duck last night," said Chiun.
"I'm here to make you an offer you can't refuse," said the man with the briefcase, smiling a wide row of very even white teeth.
"What?" said Remo.
"An offer you can't refuse."
"I'm refusing it," said Remo.
"Can you refuse $2,000 a week?"
"Sure," said Remo.
"Are you willing to see your stories turned down by every magazine in the country? It would not be hard for you to get a reputation as an unreliable nut, and then who would print your stories?"
'Who cares?" Remo said. He thought of the article he was supposed to have written. If that was sanity, he wondered what magazines thought insanity was.
"Come now, Mr. Mueller. I represent the Lippincott Foundation. Surely you've heard of us. A year's contract with us for one hundred thousand dollars could make an ambitious young man like you. You'd have the Lippincott family behind you forever."
Remo looked at the man and thought deeply for a moment.
"So what's wrong with duck two days in a row?" he asked Chiun.
"Nothing is wrong with duck two days in a row. There is just nothing very right with it two days in a row," said Chiun.
"Mr. Mueller, I'm talking to you."
"I know," said Remo. "Why don't you stop?"'
"Mr. Mueller, if that's who you are, we have vital interests in Busati. We want only an introduction to the leadership of that country. We cannot use formal diplomatic channels because all whites and Asians have been expelled from the country. Just an introduction, that's all we want from you. It might take you only a day, or just a few hours. For that, you would be a wealthy man. For not doing that, you will be a ruined man. Now what is your answer?"
"Right or wrong, duck," said Remo.
"I'm sorry it has to be this way, Mr. Mueller. I'm going outside. I will be back in five minutes or whenever I hear the word 'yes' yelled at the top of your lungs. If you still have lungs."
The man with the briefcase rose somberly and walked to the front door. He left it open and Remo could see him light a cigarette in the front yard. The two men with the concealed weapons rose and approached Remo.
"Stay out of this, old man, and you won't be hurt," one said to Chiun. The Master of Sinanju smiled sweetly. "Oh, thank you so much for sparing a frail old man."
Remo shot him a dirty look. He didn't like it like this, not with Chiun watching. There would be non-stop bitching later on about Remo's technique. Well, Remo would be very simple and stick to basics. He was not in the mood for a harangue.
"We would rather be easy on you," said the man nearest Remo. He grabbed Remo's wrist and twisted ever so slightly. It was a move of either kung fu or karate, but Remo did not remember. Chiun liked to catalogue these foolishnesses, but Remo did not want to be bothered. All of them were incomplete tools, even at their most advanced levels where they became workable for actual use. This man was being "the clinging vine" or something. He twisted.
Remo saw Chiun watch his elbow. Damn. Well, whatever. Remo brought his gripped hand back, taking the man with him and caught the chest bone with his right thumb. A single timed move that enabled him to step over the falling breathless body to the man facing Chiun, who now realized what Remo was doing. Remo tried to put the second man between him and Chiun so that Chiun would not witness the stroke.
The man guarding the old Oriental saw his parchment bearded face, saw him suddenly dart into a crouching position and look around the man's waist. The man looked down behind him, but saw nothing. Suddenly everything was black.
"Your stroke was rushed on the second man. I could not see the first because of the falling body," Chiun said.
"You couldn't see the second either, Little Father."
"I saw it."
"You cannot see through flesh."
"I saw the stroke of your hand in the heel of that foot," said, Chiun, pointing to the man on the floor. "It was rushed."
One of the men twitched.
"Well, the stroke worked," Remo said glumly.
"A child playing by the beach builds castles that work also, but they are not enough to live in and certainly not enough for the storm. You must build a house for the storm, not for the sunny afternoon. Your stroke was for a sunny afternoon."
"These guys were a sunny afternoon."
"I cannot reason with you," said Chiun and lapsed into a stream of Korean with such recognizable terms—to Remo—as the inability of even the Master of Sinanju to make a banquet from rice husks or diamonds from mud.
The man with the briefcase returned to the cottage with an order: "Don't you two guys hurt him too much. We need him," he said and then he saw his two guys.
"Oh," he said.
"They fall down, go boom," Remo said. "Now I'd like to ask you a question or two in all fairness and honesty."
To assure fairness and honesty, Remo placed a hand very quickly on the back of the man's neck, and as he pinched a nerve just so, the man too felt fairness and honestly were the only way to answer questions.
He worked for the Lippincott Foundation. His direct boss was Laurence Butler Lippincott. Another Lippincott, James Forsythe, had disappeared in the Busati bush. The government was working on it, but Laurence Butler Lippincott thought he could do better. Remo Mueller was wanted because he obviously was friends with General Obode. The Lippincotts would use him to get to Obode, to get his help in finding James Forsythe Lippincott. Laurence Lippincott himself had ordered that Remo be approached.
Remo released the pinch on the nerve.
"Your friends will come to in a moment or so," he said. "Where I can find Laurence Butler
Lilliput?"
"Lippincott," the man said. "No one finds Mr. Lippincott. You see him by appointment only, if you're lucky."
Remo decided to rephrase the question and there must have been something in the manner of his voice because he got an immediate response. Laurence Butler Lippincott was at the headquarters of the International Bank of New York City, 88th floor, the Lippincott Suite.
He appeared promptly each morning at 11:30 A.M. and worked through till 4:30 P.M. Non-stop. Remo released the man's neck.
No one gives Mr. Lippincott orders," said the briefcase man. "Maybe you stopped me, but there'll be more. No one can stand up against vast money. No one. Not governments. Not you. No one. All you can do is serve and hope you'll be rewarded."
"You will personally see your vast money in little soggy lumps," Remo said.
"Have you learned nothing?" shrieked Chiun. "Boasting? A boast is more fatal than a rushed stroke. A boast is a gift to an enemy. Have you learned nothing?"
"We'll see," said Remo. "Do you want to come along?"
"No," said Chiun. "A boast is bad enough but a successful boast is worse because it encourages other boasts, and they surely will cost in price. Nothing in this world is without payment."
Payment was a good word and Remo thought about it as the briefcase man drove him to New York City. Every so often, the two bodyguards would wake up and Remo would put them back to sleep. This went on until the Taconic Parkway when the two men finally got the general idea that they were no longer expected to overpower Remo.
Laurence Butler Lippincott did not have his offices in the huge tower his banks were famous for financing. They were instead in a tall, aluminium, looming building just off Wall Street, a narrow side street made wider by a large open entranceway with modern sculpture, which the briefcase man told Remo cost the Lippincotts more than two million in lost office space. Most people were amazed that Lippincott had spent $70,000 for the sculpture, but never considered that it cost so much more just to give it space. If Remo would think about reality, he too would appreciate what working for Lippincott meant. Remo did not appreciate reality.
He pushed the two bodyguards and the briefcase man ahead of him and managed to compress them all in a revolving door with the breaking of only one bone, the briefcase man's left arm which didn't quite fit. He screamed appropriately.
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