"No. No. Chiun's a racist who despises everyone else who isn't Korean. I am not a racist. The one thing I'm not is a racist."
And Wang tumbled along the sidewalk in gales of laughter, rolling himself like a hoop, entertaining some children playing on the lawns of the Vistana Views condominums. "What's so funny?" asked Remo.
"That's just what Chiun would say. He would say all whites are racist and they're not even the best race."
"I don't say that about Koreans. I know Chiun's skills even though you knock him unfairly in spite of the fact that even you admit he's got the best strokes in the history of Sinanju."
"I said cleanest strokes. And he would think that, too. Cleanest is not best, Remo. I never said you were the best."
"I have nothing I want to ask you," said Remo. "Case closed."
"Every time you wish something were so, you say 'case closed,' and I think it's because if they opened it up again you would find out you're wrong. Case closed?"
Remo suddenly spun and walked directly back to the condo.
"Chiun did the same thing. I said he was like his father. Do you know what he said to me? Told me he couldn't be like his father because his father acted childish and was self-centered and had difficulty admitting he loved someone. Came very hard. Do you think I'm lying to you, Remo?"
"Don't care," said Remo, slamming the door in Wang's face, which did not work, for while it ripped the door off its hinges with the force of the movement, it met Wang's fingertips and settled into the jamb with all the softness of a feather.
"People who don't care always slam doors like that," said Wang.
"I have a question for you. I never knew who my real mother and father were. I was found in an orphanage and raised there by nuns. The organization recruited me because they knew I had no family I would have to run back and see. Who are my real mother and father?"
"What a silly question."
"You know the answer?"
"Of course, but it doesn't even warrant breath. They're not your parents. Your parents are one person now and he is in danger and needs your help."
"Are you lying to me?"
"Only about the danger. He's only somewhat in danger. Everyone is in danger when he doesn't know who he's talking to."
Anna Chutesov heard about the initial successes of the three American columns secondhand from the buzz of gossip in the Washington embassy. The headquarters for Russian intelligence in the hemisphere was in Cuba, but Washington was still considered the main diplomatic foothold, even if militarily the important outposts were Cuba and Sornica.
Anna was trying to explain that even if they lost Sornica, they still had Cuba. And what good would Sornica do them that Cuba couldn't?
"From Sornica we can help liberate Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Mexico."
"What will you do in Mexico? Close off the border to stop people from escaping? America has been trying to do that for ten years now without success. You'll do it for them. But I'll tell you something. They're not smart enough to know that either. You'll have your big war then."
"We don't want the big war. We are not planning on the big war."
"Right, you want to stumble blindly into it like every other man. But don't worry, Rabinowitz is going to save you from all that. And then you will go down and surrender to him, and once you do that, hopefully we will get him relaxed enough to kill him, so that no idiot is going to try to use him again."
When the news that Russia's vaunted Hinds gunship had been made useless in the skies over Sornica, the Russian embassy fell into a morbid silence. Except for one happy voice of a woman singing Russian ballads her mother had taught her.
In a writers' conference in Washington, the Sornica minister of culture, Colonel Padril Ostonso, was called away from a panel discussion because of an emergency. He was excused to the thundering applause of many of the other writers.
"We sit here ashamed of America," said one novelist who had written a book whose heroes had stolen atomic secrets from America. "We are ashamed of our guns, ashamed of our tanks, and most of all, ashamed of the people who use them. What we can do to overcome this shame to all mankind that is happening today, I do not know. All we can do is to offer our brother Colonel Padril Ostonso our prayers, our support, and our applause."
Colonel Ostonso thanked them on behalf of the struggling writers of Sornica. Then he answered the phone. As minister of culture he was in charge of the writers. This meant two maximum-security jails for those who disagreed with the People's Council.
Those writers who supported the people were supported by them, and therefore they had homes. Those who were against the people had to support themselves, and if they managed to do so, the minister of culture wanted to know who was helping them. And since they couldn't support themselves without the government's permission, they were parasites and had to be put in jails.
At this very moment one of the American columns was nearing one of the jails, threatening to release the dangerous poets, novelists, and a photographer who dared take a picture of someone trying to hide from the people's draft, when everyone knew a photographer was supposed to photograph people volunteering, not evading.
"We cannot move them, Colonel," came the voice.
"They're your responsibility. What do you want?"
"Do you have dynamite? Blow them up."
"We don't have dynamite. That's considered a building material and we haven't seen any of that since reconstruction of our homeland."
"Shoot them."
"All the bullets are being used for the front."
"What do you have?"
"They're old wooden buildings and I know my mother has an extra match left over from the bad old days of the dictator."
"Burn them," said Colonel Padril Ostonso.
"That's a bit cruel, sir."
"They're my writers. I'm the minister of culture. I can do anything I want with them. If I say burn them, burn them."
Colonel Ostonso hung up and returned to the conference, where he was greeted by more applause.
One novelist suggested that Colonel Ostonso should not even be on the panel because he was a policeman and not a writer, but that writer was declared a fascist, and the floor given over to Colonel Ostonso, who moved that anyone from the United States government be denied the right to speak. It was greeted by applause, except for the women writers, who thought that there were not enough women on the panel voting for the motion.
Of course there were protests, writers being writers, some pointing out that perhaps a conference on the freedom of writers should deal with the freedom of writers instead of how many writers on the panel were women.
One even was so bold as to suggest that communist countries were more oppressive to writers and that they, too, should be condemned. The final resolution, therefore, condemned the United States of America for oppression of masses of writers, and decried oppression anywhere of writers. Since anywhere might also include communist countries, it was considered a balanced document.
The tanks had not advanced more than a hundred yards in the last hour. Rabinowitz raced to the lead column. "Get outta there, you lazy yellow dog," Rabinowitz yelled to the tank commander. He was only three miles from the capital of Sornica. He wasn't going to be deprived of victory now. The heat of the battle had driven him mad and now he didn't care if he died. Of course this was improbable with the Oriental in the black kimono around him. Chiun seemed to be able to catch flak with grace, even thanking Rabinowitz for the opportunity.
"I appreciate that you trust me with your life, knowing that you yourself refuse to dodge death, giving me the honor of protecting you, Great Wang."
"Just don't get in the way of the gun sights," said Rabinowitz to Chiun as he closed the hatch on the lead tank.
Chiun wondered why the Great Wang would use something as unreliable as a cannon. Perhaps he wanted to see how it worked like a toy.
One did not question the Great Wang.
Rabinowitz jammed his foot on t
he accelerator and nothing happened. The treads did not roll. The engine did not bark. All he could hear was the squeak of a pedal that needed grease.
"What's wrong with this damned tank?"
"Out of gas, sir. All the lead tanks are out of gas," came a voice from outside the tank. "We had an extra level of fighting and we used it up. A small battle we didn't count on. That's war, sir. A whole bunch of things you don't count on."
"I didn't count on that," screamed Rabinowitz. "We can't go forward without gas. In fact, we can't retreat without it either."
Remembering the tales of emperors past, Chiun asked the Great Wang whom he wished killed for the failure. Rabinowitz, now shrewd enough to know his assault was in trouble, tried to call for resupply, but almost instantly realized this would be impossible.
Before morning, the bulk of the struggling army was within fifteen miles of its furthest advance.
Rabinowitz even heard Russian voices a few times from the once again advancing enemy. He thought momentarily of using his special powers, but then he would have to abandon his army. And he liked his army. He liked his army better than he liked the village bicycle back in Dulsk. He had to share the bicycle.
An old man in a suit resting under a tree was shaken awake.
"That's him, sir."
Harold W. Smith blinked open his eyes. His bones were cold, and it was difficult getting up. He could barely make out Chiun in the darkness.
"Chiun, Chiun, I come in peace. Peace. I am your former emperor."
"Ah, most wise Emperor Harold Smith. There has been an enhancement to the contract I was to perform."
"What is it? I would have thought that if the Great Chiun were to eliminate someone he would be dead by now. "
"Yes, and he would have been. But following the strictest of orders, I absolutely would not press that button if I had not killed him."
"I believe the orders were somewhat different. Chiun. But that doesn't matter, because I've come to make peace with Mr. Rabinowitz. I think he is just fine, and it was a mistake on my part."
Smith opened his jacket, showing the gun. He made it a gesture of openness and honesty. He really wasn't giving anything away. He was aware that Chiun and Remo knew if any man carried a weapon around them. They could tell it from his walk.
"I'd like to give Mr. Rabinowitz our support. I was wrong, Chiun. Totally wrong."
Vassily heard the Oriental speak a language he didn't know, and therefore did not understand that he had just been introduced to the man who had ordered Chiun to kill him.
"My name is Smith. I think you're doing a wonderful job, Mr. Rabinowitz, but I think you have supply problems, and I can help."
"We need everything," yelled Rabinowitz, turning to another colonel to tell him they had to hold now or it would turn into a rout.
"Sure, but we've got to get to the place to order the supplies. You are doing it wrong. You're doing it through the army."
"Where else do you get howitzer shells from?" boomed Rabinowitz, while being shown the disposition of another column that had run out of gas.
"Just over the hill. Come with me. Chiun had better go on ahead to make sure no one has cut the phone link there. "
When Chiun was too far away for even a Master of Sinanju to be instantly between Smith and Rabinowitz, Smith pointed to a tank down the road, as an example of where the gas really was. Vassily turned his head to look, and with the other hand Smith eased the .45 out of his holster. Closing his eyes so he would not lock on his gaze, Smith fired at the head right in front of him. Fortunately the shot was deflected, because he would have killed his own first-grade teacher, Miss Ashford, the woman who was practically his mother when his own mother died.
"I'm sorry, Miss Ashford. I didn't know. We have a problem here with a dangerous man. Get out of the way so I can remove him."
"Harold. He's not dangerous," said Miss Ashford in the warm New England sounds Harold Smith remembered so well. "You've been misinformed," she said.
"No. I haven't. He's dangerous. He's a hypnotist."
"All he wants, Harold, is to be left alone and to get at least two more weeks of heavy ammunition. He's all right with small-arms ammunition but he needs gas like he needs his own balls."
"Miss Ashford, I never heard you use words like that."
"These are hard times, Harold. We all have to work together. And I wish you would help the nice Mr. Rabinowitz."
Smith tried to explain all the things he had done since the Putney Day School, how he worked for CURE now, how he was saving the nation. But he knew in his very soul that he had been wrong, really wrong.
He learned one thing from Miss Ashford, whom he trusted above all people: to serve America best, he would have to help this invasion. Join with Chiun, who knew what was best. Respect his elders. Be God-fearing and honest. Tell no lies, except, of course, if it helped this invasion.
Harold Smith went to work with a joy and an enthusiasm he hadn't felt since high school. He knew he was doing right. He had never been so certain of it in all his life. It was a certainty that was welcome after all the years of toil in the gray years of America's survival.
The first thing he did was make sure the CURE network was not destroyed. He got to a long-distance phone closer to the shore, and put in the proper coded instructions that would save all the incriminating evidence of two decades. And once saved, he now turned it all over to the one person he could trust more than himself. Miss Ashford. But it was not just any Miss Ashford. It was a Miss Ashford in all the best things she represented.
She had the sort of probity Harold Smith had sought to emulate. She had an integrity and honesty he had clasped to his bosom and that still lived within him. So the conscious mind that might have told him Miss Ashford had to be a hundred years old by now did not let him know anything was wrong when he saw her as she was back in Putney, forty years old.
Nothing was wrong. She from whom he had learned and by whose ideals he lived his life was just as alive on the tank-clogged roads of Sornica as she had been sixty years before in Putney, Vermont.
It was who he was that had been unleashed. And so he talked to her, and every time he described access to this part of government or that part of government through the network he had set up, Miss Ashford said:
"Good. Good. That's wonderful."
And thus, step by step, the entire CURE network was handed over to a man in the midst of a battle against his Russian enemies.
"You mean to say you are able to draw on any American government organization's computer files without them knowing it?" asked Miss Ashford.
"Have been for years," said Harold proudly.
"All right, maybe we can do something with that after this war. Right now, get me gas. Gas, My kingdom for gas," said Miss Ashford.
Chapter 12
Wang handed Remo the telephone. "It's for you," he said.
Remo waved the phone away. "I'm leaving," he said.
"You can't leave. You don't know where you're leaving from or going to. You're in your time of transition, the last transition you will ever make. Speak to the man. It is your current contact, Harold Smith."
"Tell him I no longer work for him. I've done the last meaningless hit of my life."
"Ah, you think every assassination has a purpose, Remo? There you go again. Savior of the world. Chiun saves the House of Sinanju and you save the world. What a pair of dullards you two are."
Remo took the phone that seemed to leap from Wang's pudgy hand into the sweep of Remo's arm, so that while Remo was trying to snatch something, he couldn't help but look as though he was really in a sort of cooperative dance with Wang, who was still smiling.
"I told you I'm through, Smitty," said Remo.
"And you quit for good reason, Remo," said Smith. Remo could hear artillery fire in the background. Smith sounded happy. That was strange. He never sounded happy.
"Look, Remo. For all these years we have been fighting what seems to be a case of creeping national rot. We
've gotten bigger and better, and the country gets weaker and worse. But I have found something down here, something very special. The sort of spirit that made America great."
"Then enjoy it," said Remo, and hung up.
"That's the way you treat a client'?" asked Wang, shaking his head in amusement.
"I'm not going to lie to him like Chiun. Chiun tells him all sorts of nonsense, and then does what he wants. That's how we differ. I tell him flat out. Good-bye. When I say good-bye it doesn't sound like three hundred verses of praise for the pope."
Remo nodded on that one. He was right.
"So serious," said Wang. "How you both treat clients amazes me. So serious. Chiun odorizes the atmosphere, and you, Remo, grimly announce the absolute truth. The two of you are so alike."
"If truth and lying are alike, then you can call anything the same. I got you there, Wang. Unless you're like Chiun and can't admit when you've been defeated. Maybe that's part of the Sinanju heritage. I don't know. Your ball game. Case closed. "
"Then if it's closed, I can't tell you that someone who thinks a client is so important as to tell the absolute truth to him all the time is the same as someone who thinks a client is so important as to be lied to all the time. I guess they both don't think the client is important, eh?"
"Twist the truth any way you want, fat man," said Remo. "I'm gone."
"No you're not. You're right here," said Wang. "What you want to run from is the truth. And you'll run forever and never get away."
"Do we live forever?" asked Remo. "How long does a Master of Sinanju live? I mean, I'm twenty years older than when I began, and I look a year or two younger. I don't know how old Chiun is, but he moves perfectly."
"Ah, Remo, do you really want to say that last part? Do you really think Chiun moves perfectly? Have you not been listening to what I said about the Masters?"
"You said Chiun and I had the cleanest strokes in the history of Sinanju. And what the hell do you mean, we treat clients with too much importance?"
"I can mention only one country that exists today that existed in my day, and that's Egypt. And believe me, it's not the same country. I can mention no dynasty that existed in my day that exists now. No border that men died and killed for is today what it was then. They all go, Remo. Your America will go. Everything goes."
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