Sue Me td-66

by Warren Murphy

  When the producer had asked what things, Chiun answered: anything the producer wanted. What Smith did not know, and Remo understood most well, was that Chiun's main ambition was to get credit for all the secret work he and Remo had done.

  Chiun had never understood, or wanted to understand, that America was not some feudal kingdom employing assassins to make or unmake emperors, but a democracy that was run by rules.

  Secrecy for Chiun was sneaking up on someone, not keeping your mouth closed after you had been successful at it.

  His great ambition, having had the histories of Sinanju turned down by every publishing house in New York, was to have a movie made of them. There was no chance this would happen. These histories, records of each Master of Sinanju, went on for forty-two thousand pages and Chiun would not allow one word to be cut. If made into a movie, the histories of Sinanju would have run twenty-four hours a day for months.

  A wily producer, hearing of free technical assistance, had given a Hollywood promise to look at part of the histories, promising that if they could cut the running time to six weeks they might have something there, but of course it would have to be in English. Chiun had said the histories lost something in English, but he agreed to go out to the Coast to discuss it. Now as Remo got to the set he saw Chiun showing one of the actors how to throw his arm powerfully enough to actually make a car shake. Everyone was exicted. Everyone was applauding. The director thought this was magnificent. But somehow, and none of the movie people knew how, Chiun had to be very near the star to make the trick work. "Could the technical help possibly wear a less glaring kimono? That gold and red just sucks up the attention of the entire screen," called out the director. "Oh, this little thing?" asked Chiun, touching a long fingernail to the gold embroidery.

  "Yeah. Red and gold. It's like a traffic light and makes the heroine look like a sidewalk, sir. Could you change it?"

  "I am afraid I have nothing else," said Chiun humbly.

  Remo knew there were fourteen steamer trunks of his kimonos back at the hotel.

  "Can we drop a gray robe over him or something? My light readings are going through the ceiling," said the cameraman.

  "Does he really have to be on the set?" asked the assistant director.

  Chiun nodded yes, with apologies. He said he gave the actor a sense of confidence by being nearby. Could Chiun be nearby out of camera range, then? "I will try, O great artists of the West, whose glory inspires a thousand poets, whose beauty shames the blossoms of the dawn."

  "Okay, a gray cloth, and let him stand three paces back and we have it," said the director.

  Someone called "Action" and the hero reached out, trying to push the car. Chiun, being helpful, moved in somewhat closer, and with abject apologies found that his gray covering was coming off.

  The scene was reshot forty-two times and each of those times the Master of Sinanju just couldn't quite keep the gray cover on, nor could anyone make it stay on. And when the rushes were viewed that evening, the only thing visible was Chiun smiling at the camera as the car shook, while the hero remained almost invisible as the gray cloth covered his head.

  Back at the hotel, Remo waited with Chiun for Smith's call. They had often met in hotel rooms, but one right in Beverly Hills, Smith felt, would attract too much attention.

  "Do you think Smith will want screen credit?" Chiun wondered. "He is our legal employer."

  "I don't think he'll mind not being mentioned," said Remo.

  "Yes. He is crazy, but then again, your entire race is crazy," said Chiun. And now, for the first time in years, Remo chose to answer him back. He did not choose to let it slide.

  "No, you're crazy. You worry about the treasure of Sinanju. When it was stolen a few years ago, you dropped everything and went looking for it. But what did it do for thousands of years? It sat there and did nothing."

  "It was there," said Chiun.

  "So what?" said Remo. "You never spent a penny of it."

  "It was there in case."

  "In case what?"

  "You know how we became assassins. The village starved. Babies had to be put into the waters because there was no food for them. The assassins made sure there was food and have been honored by the village ever since."

  "What you earn in tribute in one week could feed them for the next century. And this idea of people respecting Sinanju, what do you care what they think?"

  "You don't care?"

  "I care what you think, little father. I do not care what some people I never met think. I care what I think about me. That's important."

  Chiun thought a moment. He did not understand what Remo meant about thinking about himself. Chiun did not think much about himself. He had understood at a young age, so young he could not even remember, that he was wonderful. And if someone else did not think the same way, a horrible death was too good for him. What was there to think about?

  He wondered if this was the madness of the willows spoken about in the Ming Dynasty. Royals would be found staring at willow branches, doing nothing else until servants brought them back to their palaces.

  What was this thinking about oneself? Chiun could not fathom it. Did it have to do with judging oneself? Why, that could mean disliking oneself, and that of course was impossible. He smiled briefly and decided to watch Remo closely for the rest of the day.

  Smith arrived at two a.m. and set up a meeting just outside the city limits in a car he had rented. Smith insisted Chiun be there. There were communications problems with the Master of Sinanju, and to be sure Smith had never quite understood what Chiun meant in some of his flowery language. But Chiun was a professional. And if there were questions about duties, an added weight of gold could always solve any moral dilemma. In fact, there were no moral dilemmas.

  Remo, on the other hand, was a patriot. He had been evaluated carefully through psychological tests before he was even considered. And the truth was, a patriot was a lot more difficult at times to deal with than a cash-and-carry mercenary.

  And there were special problems with Palmer, Rizzuto problems Smith wondered if either Remo or Chiun could handle.

  When he saw the headlights come up the dirt road he blinked twice. The other car blinked back twice. Then three times. Then the headlights went off. Remo had broken the lights when he got the signals wrong. He drove the last hundred yards on a starless, moonless night as dark as the bottom of a mineshaft, at seventy miles an hour, without so much as grazing the shoulder of the narrow road.

  Chiun and Remo got into Smith's rented car. They sat in the back, Chiun protesting that Smith deserved the place of honor and they as his loyal servants should sit up front as drivers.

  This was in English. In Korean he noted that this meeting at an ungodly hour on a dirt road was another sign of Smith's mental aberrations and sooner or later "this lunatic will get us killed."

  Smith did not understand Korean.

  "And greetings to you, Chiun," said Smith. "We have a problem. I had hoped that Remo might get some needed rest. Frankly, and you both know this, I've been most worried about Remo's actions lately."

  "Nobody has a gun to your head, Smitty. You don't have to use me," said Remo.

  "Please don't be defensive. But as a matter of fact, someone does have a gun to my head. Someone has a gun to the head of all America. And that's why I'm here. "

  In Korean, Chiun wondered how someone could hold a gun to the head of a country, since Smith was always claiming America did not have an emperor. Did one put a pistol against the Rocky Mountains? Did one shoot at the Mississippi? Or was that the knee of the country and not the head? But to Smith he commented gravely that a gun to a country's head was a disaster not only for the country but for everyone living there.

  He held his chin thoughtfully in his long fingernails and nodded, full of the gravity of the situation. "I don't know if you are aware of it, Remo, but America has became dangerously litigious."

  "What is this 'litigious'?" asked Chiun.

  "It means sui
ng, Master of Sinanju. Americans are using lawyers for every grievance, real or imagined. The courts are clogged. But that's not the problem."

  "Perhaps more assassinations and fewer lawsuits would solve the problem. As you know, Emperor Smith, each injustice dealt with by a head on a wall not only solves the immediate problem but five others as the wrongdoers see justice done swiftly and surely," said Chiun.

  "No. No. That's just what we can't have. That's just what America is not about, what we can't be about. That's just why we're here, working secretly, so that we'll have our laws to live by and still get through these times of chaos," said Smith.

  "Of course," said Chiun. "Your genius is simplicity itself. "

  He glanced at Remo to see if Remo understood what Smith was talking about. Remo was not smirking. He seemed to take it seriously.

  "Excuse me, Emperor Smith, but your wisdom has such power it envelops worlds too large for your assassin. I would understand it better in Korean. Would you be so kind as to allow Remo to explain it to me?"

  "Certainly," said Smith. "I think it would be helpful. Remo, explain it to him."

  "He's not going to understand it. He doesn't want to understand it," said Remo.

  "He expressed an interest, and I think the courteous thing to do is to accede to his request. I also think it might clear up some misunderstandings the Master has about this country," said Smith. "And make him even more effective than he is now."

  Chiun blinked. He could not believe his ears. He routinely treated Smith as an exalted emperor, referring to himself sometimes as a humble assassin. But this attitude was not intended to be taken seriously. It was only to show that besides Chiun's awesome magnificence, he was also capable of being humble. In fact, because he was so perfect in all manner of things, his humility was to be appreciated as even greater. But Smith had said, in words out of his own mouth, and Chiun had understood every one of them, that Chiun could be more effective.

  This meant there was something he did that might need improvement. The insult hit him like a steaming towel across the face. If he did not have perfect control of his breath he would have been aghast. Instead he waited to see if Remo would let that insult pass.

  And pain of pains, Chiun witnessed in his own grief that Remo said nothing, except to explain the nonsense of the American Constitution.

  "So what we do secretly, and why we do things secretly, is to support the belief that a nation can run by laws. And what we do is make sure it survives in those little extralegal ways it needs in a dangerous world," said Remo in Korean, knowing Chiun could never grasp the idea of a constitution because he believed that all governments were run by power and threat, and therefore needed assassins. If America were different, why then did it need the services of the grandest line of assassins of all time, the House of Sinanju?

  But Remo was not prepared for Chiun's enraged response.

  "How dare you talk to me of that drivel, when the one who has given you all you know, all you hold that makes you what you are, has been vilified in your presence?"

  "I didn't hear it. What did Smith say? Did I miss something?"

  "Did you miss something?" squeaked Chiun. He could not even bear to look at Remo anymore.

  "Yeah. What did I miss? What's wrong?" asked Remo.

  "What is wrong? What is wrong?" asked Chiun, his voice rising to a squeaky crescendo.

  Smith did not understand their Korean dialect. He had tried to study Korean once just to find out what the two were saying in his presence, but he discovered that many of the terms used in Sinanju were not in a Korean dictionary because they were so archaic. It was as if a time capsule had captured a language four thousand, five hundred years old and had kept it pure.

  Still, even though he did not understand what they were talking about, it seemed to him that they were being a bit too emotional for a discussion about the Constitution of the United States, especially since it was Smith's opinion that Chiun believed the Constitution was some form of American poem, like a religious chant that everyone said and did not really believe in.

  "That's what I said. What is wrong?" Remo snarled.

  "He asks what is wrong. Did you not hear the venom from Smith's own lips? Did you hear what he said?"

  "He was talking about the Constitution, which you don't think means anything to begin with."

  "He said to a Master of Sinanju that a Master of Sinanju could be more effective. That is what he said."

  "More effective in his context, protecting America through secrecy. Protecting the things of America that are valuable. Like the rights of people. "

  "What about the rights of a Master of Sinanju, respected lo these thousands of years in courts and palaces? Gloried from Samarkand to St. Petersburg. Honored by Ming and Claudian dynasties. What about the rights of the man you call 'little father,' the one you have just heard degraded with your own ears? Do these rights mean nothing?"

  "You don't understand what Smith meant. He wasn't talking about your skills . . ."

  "I understand. I understand that when you take insults and disrespect from a pupil, then you can expect it from the world. You have allowed me to be shamed in front of . . . of a white."

  "You don't like it from any color, so why do you pick on white?"

  "You're white. You're all white. You've always been white. You stick together, don't you?"

  "Little father, I love you. But Smitty doesn't even understand enough to know he insulted you. Believe me. If he had, I would have spoken up. I would never let anyone insult you."

  "Then let's work for a sane emperor. Or a tyrant. This is a rare time in history. Tyrants and kings are regaining their power. Look at Korea itself, once thought lost to communism in the north, which proved to be only an ugly mask for a beautiful kingly dynasty transferred from father to son. Communism is on the rise all over. And that means tyrannies, if not kingships. This could well be the glory age of assassins. Let us leave this insulting churl with the face of a lemon."

  "I love my country, too, little father," said Remo. "I'm sorry. I do. I just don't care about money."

  "A wound to a father's heart."

  "I'm sorry," said Remo. And the conversation over, Remo turned back to English and back to Smith.

  "Well, that was a spirited discussion on our legal system, wasn't it?" said Smith.

  "Yeah," said Remo. His voice felt hoarse, not because of the volume he had used but because of the emotion that had come upon him. He honestly did feel torn now between Sinanju and America. Once he thought he could make them work in harmony, each serving the other. Now he realized this was impossible. East was East. And West was West.

  "Your Constitution rings with the beauty of your greatest poets, its words such harmony of the soul that flowers blush in shame," said Chiun. "Now I fully understand that wonderful document."

  "Good, I think you do," said Smith. "I think he does in a deeper way than I might have imagined. Don't you think so, Remo?"

  "Sure," said Remo curtly.

  "Well, because we are a nation of laws, the legal system is crucial. As cumbersome and as difficult as it is, it is the one key protection we have from ourselves, from rapacious politicians and bureaucrats, from the powerful harming the weak, do you see?"

  Remo stared out the window into the darkness. Chiun examined his hands. Smith continued.

  "Because there are so many lawsuits nowadays, and because the judgments have become so high, costs of producing things have gone up. We're losing some of our finest surgeons because they refuse to pay the high insurance premiums. Obstetricians are so racked by lawsuits their malpractice insurance sometimes comes to three-quarters of their income; many are leaving the profession. Industries are being threatened with shutdown."

  Smith paused. Remo said, "Un-huh," and then examined his nails. Chiun said just about the same thing but it came out as a laudation of Smith's wisdom. Then Chiun looked out the window.

  "And we have found one particular law firm to be the biggest problem in
this area. They have raised ambulance-chasing to a science. I'm sure they're behind many of the terrible tragedies they jump on, but we can't prove it."

  "You want us to eliminate them?" said Remo.

  "No. This is a legal problem. You can't go around killing lawyers. What we must do is remove them from within the system. We have to get legal proof to get them disbarred and thrown in jail. Once they are ruined it will act as an example to other ambulance chasers, or at least cut down the number of industry-threatening negligence cases."

  "Just a minute. I know you have thousands of little gnomes everywhere, all of them feeding information into your computers without them knowing about it. Why can't you do it with that law firm?"

  "We have," said Smith. "And everyone has died-not just died, but died in an accident. A shower suddenly spits out scalding water at a secretary with a heart problem. She dies. A junior lawyer working undercover for one of the government agencies has his roof collapse on him, killing him. Now, the roof suffered what appeared to be normal decay in the joists. And this shower had always lacked protection against spurts of extra-hot water. So we can't prove a thing."

  "So?" said Remo.

  "So we want people to gather evidence who can't be killed by accidents."

  "I can be killed by an accident," said Remo.

  "Theoretically, I suppose, yes," said Smith.

  "It's not a theoretical life, Smitty."

  In Korean, Chiun said, "Charge him a higher price and say yes. It is all the same nonsense when you are working for a lunatic."

  "All right. Where do we begin?" said Remo in English.

  "There's been an accident in Gupta, India. We're sure Palmer, Rizzuto are behind it. Go there. See if you can figure out how they did it, and see if you can link it to those shysters. Rizzuto was on hand a little bit too early and seems to have the ear of the prime minister."