"Pah. He made outlandish adventure tales," Chiun retorted. "He put sex and violence and low-brow ribaldry on every page to keep the dim-witted entertained, and he broke his stories into convenient segments that could be read quickly before the reader lost his concentration. From there it was just a few short centuries before that abominable playwright popularized the formula for the masses. Now the West produces hackneyed films and miserable, fatuous 'literature' that is all derivative of the abhorrent formula Homer scribbled on vellum three thousand years ago."
"I don't think you understand the true impact his writing had on the world," Smith insisted.
"Ungian poetry, on the other hand, is written without the artificial structure of a series of events that lead a character careening without purpose into one hair-levitating quandary after another. Ung explores a single, simple aspect of nature. It gives full value to its subject, be it a flower or a cliff face or a lichen mass in a tidal pool. It is truly in harmony with the nature it celebrates."
"But Homer can be appreciated by the common man," Smith countered. "In fact, the Iliad was likely a transcription of stories that had been in the oral tradition for centuries-the Odyssey may have been, as well."
"Circuses for the rabble," Chiun declared. "Thank goodness his rivals in certain neighboring empires saw wisdom in hiring competent assassins to carry out a literary coup de grace before he could distribute his other stacks of quill scratchings. I can't imagine what seventeen more 'epics' would have done to further degrade the Western intellect."
Smith was flabbergasted at the implication. "Are you saying Homer was assassinated by Sinanju?"
"Trust me, Emperor, the other epics are as lacking in merit as the two that are known to the modern world."
Smith's dismay deepened. "Master Chiun, are you saying Sinanju possesses them? That you've read them?"
"What is the purpose of your call, Emperor Smith? Remo has not yet returned, and when he arrives he will be indisposed for many hours."
Harold W Smith, with an effort, forced himself to focus on the cold data windows filling the display under the surface of his great, black onyx desk. These dispassionate reports were his world. Why had he become so distracted? "I am afraid Remo's not returning to Connecticut tonight. He's in Nashville."
"I see," Chiun said after a frosty silence.
"There's been another event. I'm hoping he'll be able to catch up to whatever person or group is making it happen."
"I understood that was the purpose for which he was dispatched to the city of beans and arsonists," Chiun retorted acidly. The old Master and his son had lived in Boston for years, the sole inhabitants of an old, renovated church. It was the closest thing to a real home the pair had known in all the years they were contracted to the organization Dr. Smith headed, but the building burned to the ground in a fire set by irate mobsters. The irate mobsters were extinguished not long after the blaze they set, but Chiun was still bitter over the loss of his Castle Sinanju.
"Remo was unable to identify the perpetrators in Boston," Smith explained.
"That is to be expected. He is a good son but, between you and I, Emperor, he is not the brightest bulb in the toolshed."
"Uh." Smith had to think about that one for a moment before he sorted out the mixed metaphor. This conversation was definitely not going as efficiently as he would have hoped. "Yes, Master Chiun, which is why I was hoping you would join Remo in Nashville. He could benefit from your incisiveness."
"Ah," Chiun said in a singsong sigh. "I understand. But I have no wish to leave my home at this time." Smith continued. "He is a skilled Master and he has been trained flawlessly-"
"Yes, that is certainly the case. But he lacks your wisdom."
"I understand completely, Emperor." Smith could almost see the appreciative half smile on the face of the Korean centenarian. "In the ways of the mind, he is a child, really."
"An amateur thinker," Smith added.
"Yes! Those are the perfect words," Chiun agreed with a squeal of enthusiasm.
"He may be biting off more than he can chew in Nashville if there is much deductive reasoning called for."
"We can only imagine what sort of mischief he might cause. I believe I should join him immediately."
"An excellent notion, Master Chiun."
Dr. Smith hung up feeling satisfaction with how he had handled Chiun. Getting Chiun to change his mind on anything was a major victory. Smith still shuddered at the memories of the contract-negotiation sessions he endured with the old Master.
In recent months Chiun had been somewhat of a recluse. Smith knew that, after the Rite of Succession, when the Reigning Master of Sinanju passed the torch to his protege, the elder Master often retired to a life of seclusion. Smith was aware that there was a cave outside the Korean village of Sinanju that was the traditional hermitage of retired Masters.
Smith had mixed feelings about this possibility. Remo Williams was extremely capable in his role, but Chiun could be a godsend at times.
It wasn't even that Chiun had time and again been the catalyst to success in the organization's various undertakings. It was that he was a part of a team. Remo and Chiun. There had never been a time when it had not been the two of them working together.
The pairing had come about many years ago, when Smith needed muscle-when his organization remade itself from being simply a clearinghouse of information to an agency of enforcement.
The agency was named CURE. Smith steadfastly thought of the name in all capitals, like an acronym, but it wasn't. The name had come from the mind of a U.S. President who decided that the escalation of crime and mayhem needed a solution-a CURE for a sick nation.
This President, as young and idealistic as he was, understood that the government agencies designed to rein in crime, within the limitations set by the U.S. Constitution, weren't doing the job. The laws of the land tied the hands of law enforcement, but the criminals ignored those laws.
So CURE was set up to maintain the integrity of the Constitution by ignoring the Constitution. To protect the freedom of Americans by violating their rights to privacy and due process.
Creating CURE would have decimated the reputation of even a wildly popular President if it became public knowledge, but the bigger worry came from the potential for abuse. CURE, operating virtually without accountability, represented incredible power. And power corrupts.
So the young President looked for an incorruptible man to run it. One whose ethics were incontrovertible, whose self-discipline was steel, whose patriotism was unquestionable.
Somewhat to his own surprise, the President, not long before he was assassinated before the eyes of the world, found a man to fit the bill. An ex-CIA computer expert, not the most charismatic man you'd ever meet, but Harold W. Smith had all the qualifications to take on the awesome responsibility of CURE.
That burden of responsibility expanded when it became clear that simply finding and exposing illegal activity had minimal impact. Smith and his network of oblivious operatives uncovered more illegal acts than the FBI and the CIA combined. but all Smith could do was surreptitiously pass the intelligence along to other agencies to take action. Sometimes they could not act, did not act, were prevented by manpower and corruption-and the credibility of the intelligence Smith funneled their way-from acting.
So CURE changed its strategy. It became an agency that took action, and the action it took was just as illegal as its blatantly unlawful intelligence-gathering.
CURE hired an assassin. They found him in the form of Remo Williams, a New Jersey beat cop and war veteran. Smith's right-hand man, Conrad MacCleary, made the choice. What CURE needed, after all, was a natural-born killer. Conn had witnessed Remo Williams in action in wartime and never forgot it.
Officer Williams, with a fiancee and a solid reputation and a bright future, was framed for murder. He was found guilty. He was sent to the chair and executed.
But the execution didn't take, thanks to Smith and MacCleary, who arrange
d the entire charade, and Remo Williams woke up with a surgically altered face and a decision to make. Join the team. Or die. For real this time. No hard feelings.
Remo Williams joined the team. He was trained in weapons and stealth. He was trained in Sinanju. Chiun was another one of MacCleary's choices. Smith had such faith in his old friend from the CIA that he acceded to what sounded like a bizarre training regimen. Sinanju, MacCleary said, produced the finest assassins the world had known. Ever.
Smith didn't quite buy into it. MacCleary wasn't known to exaggerate, but the feats that he claimed for these Sinanju masters were beyond believability. But Chiun proved Conn right.
Before long, Remo proved Conn right, as well. Even Chiun was surprised by Remo's ability to absorb Sinanju. No child of the village of Sinanju ever mastered the art as Remo mastered it. No adult had ever been able to learn more than a few rudimentary basics.
But Remo became Sinanju, and Chiun deemed that this American orphan would become his protege, a last-minute godsend for an elderly master who had lost two heirs already-one to tragedy and one to betrayal.
Chiun would not leave Remo, so CURE found itself with the most potent pair of assassins on the planet under its employ.
They worked side by side, a perfect team. The disasters that had been averted by Remo and Chiun were unfathomable in their scope.
Harold Smith didn't know what the future held for the world, but he knew the world wasn't ready to exist without CURE and its enforcement arm. Its enforcement team.
But he might have no say in the matter. If and when Chiun made up his mind to seek the comfort of retirement in a dark cave in North Korea, Smith certainly wouldn't be able to talk him out of it.
There was something else on Smith's mind. He had enjoyed his parlay with the old master about the merits of Ung and Homer. It had hearkened back to the discussions he enjoyed years ago, when he was considered a scholar of sorts. It was the kind of pastime he had looked forward to during that brief interlude in his life when he was retired from the CIA and had accepted a position as a university professor. All too quickly that future was erased with a summons from a U.S. President in need of a man just like him.
Smith hadn't refused the CURE assignment. His patriotism would not have allowed him to refuse. But there had been no personal considerations, really. From the moment of that meeting with the President until this day, decades later, CURE came first. Everything else in Smith's life came second. Wife. Family. Home. Enjoyable diversions.
That give and take with Chiun had been quite satisfying and novel. It had been a long time since he had that kind of, well, fun.
Chapter 8
Greg Grom evaded his security detail without trouble. He always did. Still, he followed orders and did the circle-the-block thing and tailback thing. There was no sign of the others.
He looked for a likely dark alley to do the park-and-wait thing. Sitting in the shadows for fifteen minutes watching for the tail he knew would not come. What a waste of time. Just this once he'd skip it and nobody would ever have to know.
But that was a fantasy. When it came time to report in, he wouldn't be able to hide his rule breaking. And then he'd be in big trouble.
"Dammit!" He shouted at the steering wheel, then turned the car quickly into a convenience store lot, parking in the shadows alongside the building where a security floodlight was inoperative. He waited and watched for fifteen minutes, as ordered. There was no sign of pursuit.
"Told you so," he said to nobody.
It was a two-hour drive to Lexington. It was a two-hour drive back.
He stopped for a short while at the Big Stomp Saloon, which was big. It had been a roller rink once. The "Stomp" referred to the type of dance favored by the clientele. It seemed to include a lot of cowboy-boot stomping.
The Big Stomp was now famous throughout Kentucky and Tennessee as the birth of country rave, the newest evolution in country music. The original raves had sprung up in the US in the 1990s, when the designer drug Ecstasy became all the rage. Kids took it and danced all night. That was a rave.
An Ecstasy high gave the user a high-adrenaline rush that lasted for hours, and rave music had a rapid, thumping beat. Country music took years to come up with a hybrid that fit the bill. It was mostly just Garth Brooks remixed over a disco rhythm track. Whatever. It was awful.
Greg Grom smiled broadly, at no one in particular. "Look like you got a stick up your butt and you really are enjoyin' it," commented an acne-scarred teenager in grease-blackened jeans and shiny, new imitation-rattlesnake cowboy boots.
"Do I?" Grom asked.
"What the hell you all smiley about?"
"I just made a big score," Grom explained.
The teenager looked around. "Oh, yeah? So where's she now?"
"Not a woman. Business. A deal. I just closed a big deal, and I made a hell of a lot of money off it. Buy you a beer?"
"Oh. Sure. Yeah." It was hard to stay antagonistic to a guy who paid for your brew.
"Give this man a beer!" Grom shouted at the bartender. He slapped a twenty on the counter. The twenty made the bartender his friend, too. "What the hell! I want everybody to celebrate-give everybody a beer!"
He thrust a few hundreds at the happy bartender and the party started. Word spread throughout the place and the dance floor emptied as the patrons crowded in for the free drinks. "Let me give you a hand," Grom shouted, and the bartender had no objections when Grom stepped behind the bar to help him man the tap and shove beer mugs across to the eager customers. The bartender never noticed that Grom's beer mugs received a quick sprinkling of white powder before they were rotated under the open taps.
"This is party night!" Grom shouted. "This is the most fun we have ever had! We need to keep dancing all night long!"
The bartender gave him a bemused smirk, but Grom thrust several more hundreds at him. "That should cover things for a while."
The bartender quickly estimated it would cover every customer's bar tab for the whole night and maybe the next. "The rest is yours, friend! Keep 'em coming!" Grom shouted, "This is the best night ever! We want to celebrate all night long!"
He sounded like an ecstatic idiot drunk, and that was perfectly okay to the Big Stomp patrons. The bartender figured he had to be some sort of foreigner. The guy didn't talk right, sort of. But the bartender wasn't about to upset this apple cart.
After the first free round was distributed, Grom slapped the bartender on the shoulder. "Thanks, friend! I need to step out for some fresh air-"
The bartender just grinned and kept pouring.
"Hey, you're the greatest, businessman!" shouted the acned teenager, waving his free beer at Grom. Other patrons came at him, shaking his hand, offering compliments. Grom was careful not to say anything more. One careless suggestion could ruin everything.
Every batch so far had technically worked. The formula he was searching for-the perfect formula-would be the one without side effects.
The original formula of GUTX, derived from nature, had no side effects. But there was no more natural source. Grom had one alternative only: a synthesis. It had cost him serious cash to have certain laboratories synthesize versions of GUTX, none of which perfectly replicated the natural substance. They were close, but, so far, not close enough.
Tonight he was taking a different approach to his suggestion-making, too. All positive statements. Have fun! Be happy!
Greg Grom had not even reached the door when he heard the sounds of violence. A stomp dancer had been jettisoned off a raised section of the dance floor into a table below.
A livid couple stomped off the lower-level dance floor. "You spilled my beer!" screeched the plump young woman. "His, too!" she added before her plump young boyfriend could add his two cents' worth. They started stomping all over the offending beer-spiller.
Their victim twisted free of the bruising boots just long enough to stab one finger viciously skyward. "'Twarn't me!" the poor man yelped. "Johnny Ogden throwed me!"
> Suddenly the plump couple and their heavily stomped victim were at peace with one another and forged an instant alliance against a common enemy.
"Johnny Ogden, you sheep-fucking son of a swine!" The woman had a piercing quality that cut through the disco-country soundtrack. Everybody looked at her. Nobody stopped stomping. The fallen man, one arm hanging limp, struggled to his feet and even he resumed stomping.
Oops, Grom thought. He'd suggested something about dancing all night long, hadn't he? And this was what these people called dancing.
The music stopped. The stomp dancing continued, but it was now the march of soldiers into battle, filling the vast saloon with the clomp-clomp rhythm.
The woman and her pair of male followers stomped up the ramp to the upper-level dance floor.
Other patrons stomped out of their way.
The plump young woman stomped at a big stomping man that could only be Johnny Ogden.
Greg Grom noticed the bartender. The only non stamper in the place. He was punching numbers into a cell phone and looking frantic. Calling the cops. Time to go, Grom decided.
The bartender looked right at him.
Grom's heart sank.
The guy would remember him. Recognize him. He would be lucid enough to give the cops a description. That would ruin everything.
Grom felt foolish. But he couldn't stop to berate himself now.
He had to solve the problem. "Stop!" he shouted.
They stopped fighting, Johnny Ogden and his three attackers. Everybody in the bar turned to Greg Grom, still stomping. The grinned and waved at their good friend, the guy who bought them the beer.
"Johnny Ogden is not a bad man." Grom declared. "Johnny Ogden is your friend! But there is someone else here who is the enemy! Someone you all hate!"
The stomping grew furious as fifty-three enraged beer-swillers craned their necks, trying to find the enemy. "Who?" squealed the plump lady. "Who is it?"
"It is-" he paused, just for the drama "-the bartender!"
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