"I can't leave now, little father." Chiun nodded wearily.
"The whole country may be destroyed by those shysters Palmer, Rizzuto Do you know what they're going to do to the money supply?"
"Do not tell me, lest I lose sleep."
"They've figured out how to get two hundred million clients and sue the government at the same time. "
"What horror," said Chiun, folding his hands.
"But in doing so, they're going to wreck the government. I can't let them get away with that. Not after Debbie."
"Of course not," said Chiun. "What is one death alone? We must give them two."
"I know you're being sarcastic, but I believe every word I'm saying. I believe it deeply. I'm sorry."
"The problem was never that you didn't believe what you said. The heavens know how much I have prayed that one day you would learn that your body does not have to follow your tongue."
"I know how much you counted on leaving," said Remo.
"Would you mind terribly if you did not get yourself killed? Would you mind terribly acting like the professional assassin I trained you to be? Would you mind terribly killing Smith's enemy instead of getting killed yourself?"
"Of course not," said Remo, who knew that Chiun from the very beginning had railed against America's monuments to heroes who died an battle. To the House of Sinanju this only glorified getting killed, rewarding what should have been discouraged.
"There is a way we can win," said Chiun. "But I am afraid you are going to have to remember what I have only told you a thousand times a thousand."
Palmer was laughing. Rizzuto danced on the expensive table and Schwartz was on the phone simultaneously with his stockbroker and his Rolls dealer.
Their days of debt were over. They were going to have more money than they could spend, more money than Palmer could divorce away or Rizzuto gamble away, and even more money than Schwartz could brilliantly invest away.
"I am afraid to say it," said Palmer, bubbling, "but at last the world is turning our way. Nothing can go wrong. We've got the biggest client list possible. The right victims, the right victimizer, read money, and we're in position."
"Bless the name Robert Dastrow," said Rizzuto, kissing a gold chain around his neck where he used to wear a religious medal.
"I never thought of Dastrow as a good guy. I never thought he did anything benevolent in his life. But I take it all back," said Schwartz. "The man is not only all genius, he's all heart."
"He's decent is what he is, gentlemen. We have met the decent human being," said Palmer. "I didn't think they existed anymore. He knew we were in trouble. He knew we needed a big one to pull ourselves out, and he did it for us."
"You know our problem was that we didn't let him pick the overall situations, too," said Schwartz. "This man understands the law. From here on in, we follow. He's smarter than us and that's all there is to it. "
"He's better than us," said Palmer.
"He is us," yelled Rizzuto.
"What does that mean?" asked Schwartz.
"I don't know. I'm a trial lawyer. It sounded good," said Rizzuto.
Twenty minutes before, all three of them had been considering filing for bankruptcy, except Rizzuto, who was planning to leave the country because loan sharks did not accept pleas of insolvency without trying to collect pieces of the body.
And then Dastrow had phoned. He was initiating another case.
But this time Palmer was furious.
"We got nothing from the Grand Booree. The thing didn't even go off. We sent staffers out there. Staffers have to be paid. We got warning fliers printed up. Printers have to be paid. And what did we get? Less than Gupta, which wasn't enough to cover your fees to begin with. So, thank you for calling, but you are interrupting a liquidation meeting," said Palmer.
"I'm going to make you rich. You never specified rich before."
"Do we have to? Why do you think, people enter law, to exercise their gums?"
"I only followed orders before, or made suggestions. This time I'm going to make you the richest negligence-law firm in the country."
"What's the catch? How is it going to backfire?" asked Palmer.
"How much are we going to lose this time?" asked Schwartz.
"What kind of craps will show up on the dice?" asked Rizzuto, with the dourness of a man who has just lost his seventh sure thing in a row.
"Just wait one moment," came Dastrow's voice on the conference speaker box hooked up to the Palmer, Rizzuto telephone line.
"I'm waiting," said Palmer, who wanted to give this Midwest tinkerer not one more moment of PRS time.
"You should have a package out in your reception room. Have it brought into your office, but don't open it," said Dastrow.
"Certainly," said Palmer. Well acquainted with Dastrow's tricks, Palmer hung up the phone and called the bomb squad. He wasn't going to let Dastrow erase the only link to himself with one simple little explosion, not that Dastrow ever did anything that obvious.
The bomb squad cleared out the office and cautiously ran a portable X-ray scanner around the package, while men in Teflon armor jackets cringed outside in the hallway. But the picture on their screens set them laughing.
"An enemy didn't send you that package, Mr. Palmer. If he did, I wish I had enemies like that," said the chief of the bomb squad. "It's filled with dollar bills."
"Oh," said Palmer.
"He's up to something," said Schwartz.
"Turning on us at a moment like this," said Rizzuto.
"It's when you're down the world steps on you 'cause it can't do it while you're up."
Even the secretaries were moved by that little summation.
Remembering that Dastrow did warn them not to open the package, Palmer brought it to the conference room, past the old wooden desk from their storefront days.
Dastrow was on the phone in minutes.
"All right, now you know it's not a bomb," said Dastrow.
"Do you have us bugged?" asked Schwartz.
"Of course I have you bugged. And I'm not the only one who has you bugged. I've been protecting you for some time now from some interference from your attackers. But never mind. I didn't have to listen to you to know you'd have the package checked for a bomb. You think I'm running out on you and cleaning up the evidence. I knew you'd think that. You're still lawyers. You think like lawyers. You act like lawyers. You work like lawyers, at least most of them. "
"I resent that," said Rizzuto.
"Shhhh," said Schwartz. "Go ahead, Dastrow."
"Yes, Robert, please do," said Palmer.
"I want you to follow my directions precisely. Call in a secretary, have her open the package and take a handful of what's in there."
"Money is in there," said Palmer.
"Right," said Dastrow. "Do it."
Palmer called in the best secretary in the office, the one who could spell. Palmer knew she was the one who could spell because a client once commented that this was the first letter he had ever received without a spelling error. None of the partners knew that because they couldn't spell either. No one ever got rich by spelling.
The secretary was a bit mistrustful at first but when she saw the new dollar bills, she grabbed a handful with thanks.
"All right, now what?" asked Palmer.
"First, don't any of you dare touch that money."
"All right," said Palmer, looking at the stacks of dollar bills. If they were his he just wanted to pocket a handful. Rizzuto thought of how they would look stacked in front of him at a poker table. Schwartz knew he could leverage that little box of money into a prime inwestment on margin.
"If you got that out in the street, would you refuse to take it?"
"Of course not," said Palmer icily.
"Now go out into your outer office and say hello to your secretary."
"What's going on here? I'm not going to a secretary. She's going to come in here."
"Won't work that way," said Dastrow.
"
Don't tell me how my office works."
"Suit yourself," said Dastrow, and all three heard him whistle away the time while Palmer buzzed for the secretary who could spell. But she didn't come. Another one burst into the room.
"Mr. Palmer, she can't move. She says her hands feel numb and she's nauseous."
"I told you so," came the voice from the box.
"Who's that?"
"Never mind," Palmer told the secretary who had just entered.
When she had gone, Dastrow told Schwartz to take away the woman's pocketbook but be sure to wear gloves. He assured all of them their secretary would get better.
"But if she kept those dollar bills longer than a few moments, if she actually fingered them awhile, the damage would be permanent. She would lose her ability to perform good work, possibly even the ability to recognize loved ones, and she would never have a decent night's sleep again in her life. She's been poisoned."
On those words, Palmer, Rizzuto, and Schwartz began to understand the magnitude of their salvation. "The United States government, through its carelessness, has printed money that is toxic. You've got the United States government as your target. It's got all the money in the world. You've got everyone who handles money as your client. You're rich."
And then the laughter began. Dastrow even explained how it worked.
"At certain times during its destruction, paper money is naturally toxic. I just made sure that certain people readjusted the formula for the ink so that it would be toxic right away. The new ink isn't in place quite yet. But now is the time to get yourself on the ground floor. Now is the time for you to start accusing the Treasury of sloppy practices, perhaps even hint at the poisoning of innocent victims, everyone who trusts the American dollar."
Harold W. Smith could not miss the signs coming from Palmer, Rizzuto They were not only going to do it again, they were going to do it to America. But this time they made their biggest mistake.
At Grand Booree they had advertised they were coming. But in the new attack on the government money supply, Palmer, Rizzuto had made the fatal slip. Previously there had always been some form of protection on certain calls. Smith could tell when the blockages came up. But now these very calls from that source that had to be the source of all the accidents was open. And they had made the mistake of communicating with the government printing plant in Nevada, the one just outside the atomic testing range.
It was to this one that Harold W. Smith had ordered Remo, praying that it was not another trap like the Grand Booree. He really had no choice. If money could be made toxic, then there would be more than a negligence case. A whole nation would be crippled.
And Remo knew this. He knew the dangers as much as Smith. But someone, he said, had taught him a lesson about courage. Someone, he said, who had surprised him with her courage.
"We are not going down without a fight," he had said.
Smith felt relieved until his computers started picking up trouble at the atomic range site. It seemed that there was going to be an accident.
Robert Dastrow sat in his fixit shop, the perspiration pouring from his forehead. He wiped his hands several times on his slacks, and to take his mind off his worrying he played with his personal cyclotron for half an hour. But even that didn't help. He had finally come up against something he couldn't understand. This time he didn't know how things worked.
He had seen the reactions of Remo and Chiun, so he knew these were no ordinary men. But he realized they weren't mystical either. These two had perfected optimal use of the human body. Normally, less than ten percent of human physical potential was used in lifting and running. These two had somehow learned to use it all and maximize their power.
Everything Dastrow had done was done right. You examined something and then you fiddled a bit and then you knew how it worked. He had examined Remo and Chiun on the stage at the Save benefit performance. He had readouts that would have shamed an internist. Physically he knew exactly what they could do. They could do almost anything.
Then he did the fiddling. He tried them with guns, knives, and explosives, and that didn't work. So instead of fiddling some more he used what couldn't be dodged. A massive amount of water pressure, and the trap baited by triggering the patriotic urge of one of them.
It had worked perfectly even though it hadn't worked at all. They were better than he had thought. It was then that Robert Dastrow panicked and used a full court press.
He not only drew one of them to the atomic site, but he worked on what he had found out from Debbie Pattie. It was merely a tinkerer's kick at a machine. He was trying several things at once.
And so he waited, watching the clock and waiting for his machines to tell him that at least one of the enemy was dead. But the word didn't come. He made himself a peach milkshake with sweet marshmallow sauce and fruit sprinkles. He drank down the sweet goo, licking the faint pink mustache delicately from his lips. He had two more while waiting for Nevada to blow up. Instead of explosions he saw his machine answering someone, and then a red light when the machine indicated that it had a question from a caller it couldn't answer.
Robert picked up the phone, pressing a button for a fast review of the conversation. It was Chiun, the Oriental part of the two-part team.
"Here," said Dastrow. He tasted the residue of peach and marshmallow sticking to his teeth. He sucked it down his throat and rubbed a hand over his lip to gather the last traces of sweetness.
"Are you the voice that spoke to me from the walls of my motel in Booree?" came the high squeaky voice of the Oriental.
Dastrow checked his machines. The Oriental was no longer in Booree, but in Lockwood, Nebraska, less than an hour's drive away. That was a good sign.
"I have come to where you suggested. We have come for our payment. But I am afraid I am going to need more money."
"I don't know where you come from, sir, but when I make a deal, it's a deal."
"We too make a deal that is a deal. We have four thousand, five hundred years of deals that are deals. We have a tradition that I have told you to examine. "
"Yeah, well, I have found you mentioned."
"Found us mentioned? Found us? Before your little bud of a country was born, we were. When Angles and Jutes scrambled over the barren cliffs of England, we were. When czars were just a future dream of some barbaric animal-skinned tribes, we were. We were before Rome set one stone to another, and you in this town of Lockwood which has barely cut the first layer of its earth dare tell me you found us mentioned."
"You've been around a long time. But I've problems too. I'm not just a voice that comes from a wall, you know. That's a device I use. I need people to work for me, at prices that are sound and reasonable."
Dastrow looked over at his monitors. Why hadn't the bomb gone? Hadn't the white man, the only thing keeping the yellow man in service to Dastrow's yet unknown enemy, gone for the trap? He had to go after all. Dastrow had found out that the organization the white man served was supposed to save the country. Couldn't locate it because they had even more electronic baffles than he did at this point. But it was clear that was how he worked and why he worked, and when Dastrow set a trap, just like a mousetrap it always worked.
But the bomb had not gone off. It was all but certain a bomb had to be able to destroy one of these two. After all, they were flesh. And nuclear blasts turned flesh to vapor.
But it hadn't gone off.
"Ah, but I have good news. I bring you my son, who has seen the light. We have truly been betrayed in the contract with our current emperor."
"Who is it then?"
"Will you pay for both of us? We do not come separate, but let me assure you the quality of the work is more than doubled. And your glory and your life will shine for many ages."
"How do I know it's not a trap?"
"Fool, we have been doing business for four thousand, five hundred years. Certainly that was enough time to betray a client, to break our word. Did you not check us out? Do you hire assassins wi
lly-nilly?"
"I've checked you two out better than any men I've worked with. You've got to admit I have reason to be leery. After all, I tried to kill you, you know. I almost did it with the white guy."
"That's business. We are professional assassins. Do you think after four thousand, five hundred years we take it personally when someone tries to kill us? You know how things work. Can you possibly conceive of us betraying a client and history not revealing it once? Not once. Or were you lying to me when your voice came from a wall? Do you wish to hire us or not?"
"There was too much to read all at once. I fed it into a computer, but I wasn't looking for betrayal," said Dastrow.
"Look for it," said Chiun. "I will wait."
Dastrow always had all his information stored in a huge data base from which he could retrieve bits and pieces whenever he wanted. The problem was that the information on Sinanju went in with the rest of the world. And unable to isolate Sinanju at first, he saw centuries upon centuries of betrayal by everyone, but not one betrayal came up marked "Sinanju." In all the histories of corporations, countries, and leaders there was not one bit of evidence that Sinanju had ever failed a client, although there were many stories of gratitude by pharaohs and tyrants and other rulers toward the assassins from the little village on the West Korea Bay.
It made sense. The one thing of value in a dynasty of assassins was, necessarily, Sinanju's reputation. Otherwise they would be counted among the thousands, millions of petty killers throughout the ages who had killed or were killed.
So that was how it worked. It was an unbroken line through history. They naturally had to keep records, and as they grew, their records made them more knowledgeable about how the world worked.
And if the Oriental were going to double-cross him, would he really be bargaining so hard for an increased fee? "I won't go double for two," said Dastrow. "The younger one obviously lacks the experience, skill, and general worth that you've accumulated working around the world. After all, you are the teacher, aren't you?"
"Yes," said Chiun and then spoke to someone nearby. "He made us a good offer, Remo. He understands us."
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