"Say, are you two married?" asked Ruth Rosenstein, who understood that good matches had been made from greater accidents.
"Yes," said the president of United States.
"Yes," replied Dr. Harold W. Smith of CURE.
"Ruth, how could you be so crass?" Selma Wachsberg cried, secretly glad the question had been asked directly, so she wouldn't have to do it with cuteness.
"You Jewish?" queried Ruth Rosenstein, who understood that one never knew when someone was getting divorced, and why waste a phone call.
"No," said Smith.
"No," replied the president.
"Then it doesn't matter," said Ruth Rosenstein.
"Ruth!" Selma Wachsberg, who at thirty-four realized the main priority in life was sex, not sect, cried.
"Well, get someone on it," commanded the president.
"They are our only someones, sir. We're not an army."
"Are you saying we're helpless?" the president asked.
"Probably," Smith said.
"Have you tried Transcendental Meditation?" asked Selma.
"To hell with TM. I use Nytol," said Ruth, who had found that most problems become less difficult after a good night's sleep.
"Do you have any suggestions?" the president asked.
"Me?" asked Ruth.
"No, not you," the president said.
"I will try to get that team on it. But I can't guarantee it. Without them, I don't know what we'll do," Smith said.
"What'd he say?" Selma asked.
"He can't give any guarantees," Ruth explained.
"Oh," Selma said.
"Doesn't he do a good president?" Ruth asked.
"That's him. I knew I recognized the voice," Selma said.
"Nah," Ruth said.
"It is him," Selma said, shocked.
"Really? Look, Mr. President. Don't you worry. I've traveled. This is the greatest country in the world. Do what you think is right and let them all stew in their own juices."
"If you want to help, madame, hang up," the president said.
"Who's paying for this call?" Ruth asked.
"Honestly, I don't know," the president said.
"Better hang up, sir. Will contact later," Smith said.
"Good luck, you two," said Ruth.
Aboard the UN ship, investigators went through the charred remains of the Lebanese consulate. The bodies remained where they had burned to bone, stiff and brittle with lips burned away so that the skeletons looked as if they smiled.
The investigation team was made up of an American, a Russian, an Englishman, a Chinese, and five Arabs from security.
The Arabs watched each other and everyone else. The Chinese security man watched the Russian and the American watched the Chinese, the Russian and the Arabs. Basically, they stood in the center of the main-consulate waiting room and milled about. This left the Briton to poke around. He found the defenses—even though they had apparently been hastily erected by Pierre Haloub, acting head of the Lebanese mission—perfectly adequate.
No one should have been able to move into the room, overpower all of them, and set them and the offices afire. Yet someone had. Haloub and all his men were dead. How? The Lebanese had been careful men, each one of them a survivor of Beirut, where just waking up in the morning was a significant demonstration of caution and cunning.
Moreover, thought Inspector Wilfred Dawes, formerly of Scotland Yard and now on loan to MI5, it had been this Lebanese consulate that had told the nearby Egyptian consulate that the entire ship was a coffin. Was it possible they had been selected for this death precisely because they knew something? Wasn't it Pierre Haloub who stopped the small-arms fire that morning and isolated that closet with the bloodstains where the terrorists vanished? Had he learned something?
Dawes was not a large man, yet his round stomach and paunchy cheeks made him appear larger than he was. He wore a brown tweed suit with flannel vest and dark tie over white shirt. His graying hair looked as if he precisely parted it with a plumb bob. He called his hair lotion "stickum." He smoked inexpensive tobacco and had every intention of collecting his pension, instead of providing his wife a widow's pension.
By the time he returned to the main room where everyone else was watching each other, he had a reasonably good idea why the Lebanese consulate had been chosen for destruction although he did not know how it was done. The key was the word coffin. It had been spoken by a man familiar with daily death and Haloub had not been the kind to exaggerate. It had also been overheard, which was also quite logical.
The other security men asked Dawes what he had been doing.
"Looking around a bit," Dawes said.
And, by saying this, Inspector Dawes of MI5 had provided the other security men with the first thing they could agree on. Dawes was part of their team and if he wanted to work for the United Nations, he should do so in the proper spirit, namely, stay with everyone else where they could talk things through. While Dawes was meddling about the charred consulate, the security team had come up with a proper solution and they wanted Dawes to be a part of it.
"What solution do we have?" asked Dawes. The room reeked of pungent death by fire, a sweet pork aroma that no one ever forgot having smelled it once.
"Everyone but America says it's the work of Zionists," said the Libyan delegate.
"I see," Dawes said. "And what does America say?"
"America says it's not the work of Zionists."
"I see," Dawes said.
"And what do you say?"
"I abstain," Dawes said.
And he realized that if he were to solve this and publicly allow, anywhere on this ship, that he had solved this crime, he would he as dead as the charred skeletons around him now. It would not be impossible to solve, just dangerous.
He first had to find out when it was decided to transform this vessel from a tanker to a luxury liner, who had done the refurbishing, and a host of similar dull facts, all of which had been lost in the overwhelming glare of publicity. Sometimes, so much light is shed on a subject that one sees only the light and not the subject. So with the Ship of States, Dawes had heard and read and seen so much publicity about it, it came as a small shock to him to realize that he knew almost nothing about it at all.
Inspector Dawes' abstention that day was called "moral cowardice" by the other security men. Dawes shrugged. He had work to do.
CHAPTER FOUR
Before money, death. That was the deal.
Remo saw Chiun nod, ever so slightly, the whisper of white heard scarcely moving, the long fingernails placidly resting in the cradles of the hand. He was sitting in a kimono made of gold threads and jewels laced into silver settings. Remo had never seen the Master of Sinanju wear such a kimono before, not in an entire decade. He had asked Chiun if he too should wear a kimono. He had never bargained before.
"No," Chinn had said. "You are what you are and that is good."
Chiun had also never called Remo good before. But since Remo had returned to the small motor launch tied up in Virginia Beach, Virginia and admitted that he had been stupid, always stupid, serving a country that would no longer fight for itself, Chiun had been calling him worthwhile, superior, and good until Remo longed for the ridicule of old.
"How dare you call yourself stupid and unworthy?" Chiun had demanded when Remo had first returned. Rage seemed to electrify the normally placid body. "You have been given Sinanju. You, among only a few in centuries, know how to use your body the way it was made. You think. You perform. You are superior."
"Nah, you were right, Little Father," Remo had answered. "You cast diamonds into mud. You gave me Sinanju and what the hell was I? Nothing. I was nothing when you started training me. I was nothing. I don't even know my parents. I was raised in an orphanage. Nothing past. Nothing present. Nothing future. Zero times zero equals zero."
Chiun had smiled, the yellowed parchment face showing a private joy.
"Nothing, you say? Worthless, you say? Do you think a Master of
Sinanju would be so foolish as to pour an ocean of wisdom into a broken cup? Do you think I, Chiun, cannot judge worth? Are you calling me a fool? Has your despair cast out your reason? Now, you are saying I made a mistake."
"Don't laugh. Just don't frigging laugh," Remo had said, but Chiun's squeaky voice had risen in chuckling joy.
"I made a mistake. I," said Chinn and this amused him like a tinkling toy before a baby. "I, making a wrong decision."
"Nah, you didn't make a wrong decision. They paid your village its tribute and you got paid to teach. Cash and carry. They pay cash, you teach. So you made a right move. The gold has been delivered to Sinanju on time every year and you made a smart move."
Chiun moved his head slowly. "No," he said. "I could have shown you how to move your hands and your feet, but I could never have given you Sinanju if you were not worthy of it. You have learned in a mere decade what others from birth take fifty years to master. By the time you are sixty, you will be as full a Master as any. I say this. How dare you deny it?"
"But I've given my life to garbage for more than ten years. This country's falling apart. It's worthless, I think."
"No. It produced you and therefore do not disparage it," CMun had said. "Do you think the people of Sinanju, a tiny, poor village in North Korea, are worthy of the Masters of Sinanju? Of course not. The people are slothful and meat eaters. Nevertheless, from their loins come the jewels of history. Us. And this is so. You are good. Know this if you know nothing else. Good you are. From good, receiving of good, and soon to be giving good. In twenty-five or thirty years, you will be able to teach and never does one have so fully as when he gives to another."
For all his control of his body, down even to how the parts of his blood moved within his blood, Remo clung dangerously to the edge over the precipice of tears. He felt them in his teeth. And he did not cry. He surrendered.
"Yes, good," Remo said. "You know, Chiun, I'm good. Damned good."
"But ungrateful," said Chiun. "Incredibly ungrateful, and abusive to gentle sweet souls." The gentle sweet soul was, of course, Chiun. The abusiveness came somehow by Remo not doing all the shopping and cooking, breathing loudly during reruns of old soap operas, and by his general lack of appreciation of Chiun's poetry, specifically his forty-three-thousand-page eighth-century B.C. Ung "Ode to a Flower Petal Opening Up to the Morning Sun."
"You're right," Remo had said. "I am ungrateful. I don't want to hear your poem anymore. Sounds like a glass pitcher breaking in a tin drum, no matter how much you call it poetry. Right again, Little Father. Ungrateful."
And since Remo had said this with his old joyous viciousness and lack of sensitivity, and since there had been a true smile on Remo's face, Chiun only made the routine disparagements which, of course, now had no effect upon his white pupil.
It was then that Chiun had said the most important lesson he would ever give Remo was about to come. It was bargaining, and Remo must learn now that he was free of working for Dr. Smith.
"I never liked that man," said Chiun. "He is a lunatic. So now you must watch me closely, for the future of Sinanju depends upon this most crucial exercise. For what future does the artist have if he has nothing to eat?"
Chiun had decided that since the House of Sinanju had not worked for the Persians for twelve hundred years, and since Persia was now wealthy through oil and had what Chiun considered the most enlightened and reasonable form of government—an absolute, monarchy headed by the emperor, Shah of Shahs, claimant of the Peacock throne, Shah Reza Pahlavi of Persia, now known as Iran—it was Persia who would get first chance to bid on the services of Remo and Chiun.
"Little Father, the Iranian ambassador is not going to fly down to Virginia Beach just for us. I know who you are, you know who you are, Smitty knows who you are and maybe half a dozen people around the world know what you really are, but you can't get an ambassador to Washington to drop everything just to negotiate a contract for a few hits at a moment's notice."
"First," Chiun had said, "it is not on a moment's notice. Second, I do not beg ambassadors. He is only a vehicle for His Highness. And third, when you see how a real government is run, you will appreciate so much more how bad all other kinds are."
"He's not coming," Remo had said.
"Tomorrow. I think the noon heat would be good," Chiun had said.
"Never," Remo had said.
Twenty hours later, he was ushering one of the more famous ambassadors to Washington aboard the small boat moored at Virginia Beach. The ambassador's bodyguards belonged to a small elite force who had dedicated their lives to protecting the throne of the Shah and who had honed their deadly skills by juggling heavy weights. Each weighed 225 pounds and each was three inches bigger than Remo.
The ambassador wore a dark pinstriped suit that fit like sculpture and probably cost as much as a museum piece. The bodyguards followed him. He perspired freely in the early summer sun and wiped his forehead with a silk handkerchief.
He looked at Remo's thin frame with the contempt of a man offered stale fruit at a restaurant, a man who was full already.
"Let me say this. Before money, blood," he said to Remo.
"What?" asked Remo.
"You are supposed to be Sinanju, no?"
"You mean the Master of Sinanju," Remo said.
"Correct. I am Mahoud Zarudi, ambassador of His Most Serene Majesty, emperor, Shah of Shahs, ruler of the Peacock throne, Shah Reza Pahlavi. At his instructions, I am here. I do not intend to be here long. There is tonight in New York City a party I must attend to celebrate the launching of the Ship of States, the new home of the United Nations. I will give you your choice now to save your life and not waste my time."
Remo, lounging in white shorts and a striped tee shirt, looked at the dandy in the pinstriped suit and the two hulks behind him with shaved heads that left their skulls with dark stubbles. One had a round scar in the top of his head, as if he had once stood still for someone to bang him over the head with a bat.
"I'm not the Master of Sinanju," Remo said. "He's inside." Remo did not even bother to glance into the small cabin.
"And who are you?" asked the ambassador.
"You don't want to find out, sonny," said Remo, and reluctantly ushered Ambassador Zarudi down into the small cabin where Zarudi announced to Chiun, Master of Sinanju, that before there would be money, there must be blood. Zarudi did not wish to waste time or the emperor's money.
"When one has a national treasure, one is always assaulted by charlatans seeking to rob the people of their natural wealth. His Majesty is under the impression he has been corresponding with the true Master of Sinanju. His Majesty has an open and gracious heart."
Chiun, sitting in the center of the cabin in his dark bejeweled robe, nodded serenely.
"The graciousness of the Shah's heart is well known."
"And likewise is the legend of Sinanju in the East. Very well known among those who sit upon thrones," said Ambassador Zarudi. "And to those who would use this legend to rob the people of their wealth."
Remo shut the door to the cabin behind him.
"If you're talking about the oil under the ground, drilled by Americans with American machinery and made valuable by Americans' need for it, then it's only a treasure because we're willing to pay for it. You people have as much use for it as dust without us. Your treasure? American sweat makes oil valuable. You people just happen to breed over it."
Remo expected to be scolded by Chiun but there was no scolding. He knew he was supposed to keep his mouth shut and listen. He felt bad that he hadn't.
Zarudi ignored Memo as if the remark was beneath answering. The two bodyguards stared darkly at the slim American. Zarudi continued speaking.
"As I was saying, one must protect one's national treasure. The House of Sinanju is merely a legend. For to believe that there is a House of Sinanju, one must believe that there are men who can climb up and down sheer cliffs as fast as other men can run on level ground. One must believe that there are m
en who can snap steel with their hands and with reflexes fast enough to catch arrows in flight. That is what one must believe to believe in Sinanju. I do not."
"So whaddya' doin' here?" asked Remo.
"I am here at the direction of my ruler. He wishes to employ a Master of Sinanju and I wish to show that Sinanju is just a fairy tale, like monsters who eat babies, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and all the other tales that are used to entertain one's children."
Chiun held up a delicate hand. It was a signal to Remo to be quiet although it appeared to the ambassador as if Chiun had understood and agreed with his statement.
"I agree," said Chiun. "That which we have not seen does not exist. You have merely seen people who are not us and, therefore, since we are so different, you cannot believe in us. It is a most wise conclusion."
"We can settle this impasse, Ancient One, if you could give us a small demonstration that you are who you say you are. Are you not a bit old?"
"Yes," said Chiun. "For teething." And Remo laughed hard to show his contempt. One of the bodyguards pressed his hands together to show that he could crush Remo's head like a grape.
Remo smiled.
"I wish no trouble from you two," said the ambassador. "And I wish to warn you that these two men are from the Shah's private guard and are the most feared men in the Middle East."
"Next to your hairdresser," said Remo.
"You must show who you are," said Zarudi. "You must show it against these men. I am sorry but this is so and a requirement."
"How do we know you do not just wish us to assassinate these two men for nothing?" said Chiun. "We do not work for nothing. That would be unprofessional."
"Then I will pay you to assassinate my two bodyguards," said Zarudi. "A thousand dollars each. We will sail out past the three-mile limit into international waters and then you can collect your money or your doom. I do not wish this thing, old man, but I must protect the treasure of my people."
Zarudi felt one of his bodyguards rest his chin on the ambassador's left shoulder from behind. It was a breach of etiquette and yet the bodyguard was smiling. Zarudi stared angrily into the man's black eyes, his countenance demanding an apology. But the man did not stare back. He just smiled. And then Zarudi saw that the thin American's right arm was stretched out to the back of the man's neck. He was holding the bodyguard's head against Zarudi's shoulder. The bodyguard should never have let him do so such a thing.
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