"Have it your own way. After this is over, we'll file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board." Remo tumbled into a one-hand hand-stand against the far wall, and called upside down to Chiun: "C'mon. We've got to limber up."
"You limber up. I will watch and make comments."
But Chiun was silent as Remo went through almost an hour of gymnastics around the living room floor. Finally, he stopped and said: "Time to go. What makes it worse is that Smith is going to be skulking around, probably with six hundred agents. We've got to be careful we don't knock off any of his men."
"It will be easy," Chiun said. "Be on the lookout for the men wearing trench coats and carrying knives in their teeth." He allowed himself a smile, as he followed Remo to the door.
He watched Remo's smooth glide approach to the door, and again he worried. Not for himself, but for Remo because the force against them was powerful enough to kill the young American who would one day be Master of Sinanju. And Remo should recognize that force, but he did not. Yet, if Chiun should tell him, Remo's mistaken pride would force him to go onward, exposing himself to danger. As painful as it was, he must wait for Remo to find out himself.
"Do you never wonder who is behind all this terrorism?" Chiun asked Remo.
"I don't have to wonder," Remo said. "I know."
"Oh?"
"Yes," Remo said. "It's the dog who barks but sometimes bites, who will bite fat but prefers thin and who waits at the place of the dead animals for PUFF, the magic dragon."
"Let us hope he does not wait for you. Because while we protect these men today, nothing will be changed unless the one responsible for this is destroyed."
"That's next," Remo said.
Chiun shook his head sadly and moved into the doorway. "It can never be next. It must always be now."
Remo started to answer but was interrupted by the telephone behind him.
As Chiun waited at the doorway, Remo stepped back into the apartment to answer the call.
A girl's voice said, breathlessly, "Remo, you've got to come. This has all gotten out of hand."
"Joan," Remo said. "Where are you?"
"At the place of the dead animals. At the Mu . . ."
And the phone went dead.
Remo looked at the receiver for a moment, then slowly replaced it. It was the face-to-face he'd wanted. But where? And how? He turned to Chiun who saw the look of puzzlement on Remo's face, and said gently: "It will come to you. It has been planned that way."
Remo just stared at him.
On the other side and at the other end of town, Joan Hacker hung up the phone with a self-satisfied smile.
"How did I do?" she asked.
"Magnificently, my revolutionary flower." The man who spoke was small and yellow-skinned. him voice was even and placid.
"Then you think I fooled him?"
"No, my dear, of course you did not fool him. But that does not matter. He will come. He will come."
Remo and Chiun began the long walk uptown toward the United Nations Building. Remo tried to rebuild the girl's words in him mind; twice he bumped into people on the street; twice Chiun clucked disapprovingly.
They slowed down slightly as they heard the happy shouts of children playing in a playground. Remo turned to watch. A set of boy-girl twins were at the top of a large fibreglass slide. It was shaped like a brontosaurus, that biggest, fattest of prehistoric dinosaurs, and Remo noticed for the first time how perfectly its smooth sloping back had been designed for use as a slide. He smiled absently to himself, then looked again. Something about the shape of the slide; it was familiar; he had seen that shape in just that way before. Then it hit him-where Joan Hacker had called from, the place of the dead animals. And, for the first time, it also came to him who was behind the terrorists. Who it had to be.
He stopped and put his hand on Chiun's shoulder.
"Chiun," he said. "I know."
"And now you go?"
Remo nodded. "You have to go on and protect the delegates to the conference."
Chiun nodded. "As you will. But remember, care. Yours is the dog that bites; the ones I seek only bark."
Remo squeezed Chiun's' shoulder and Chiun averted his eyes at the rare display of affection. "Don't worry. Little Father. I'll bring back victory in my teeth."
Chiun raised his eyes to meet Remo's. "The last time the two of you met, I told you he was five years better than you," Chiun said. "I was wrong. You are equal now."
"Only equal?" Remo asked.
"Equal may be good enough," Chiun said, "because he has fears that you do not have. Go, now."
Remo turned and moved away from Chiun, quickly, melting and disappearing into the early-morning work-bound crowd. Chiun watched him go, then said a silent prayer to himself. There were so many things that Remo must yet learn, and yet one could not coddle the next Master of Sinanju.
Around the corner, Remo looked down the street. Every cab he saw had at least one head, and sometimes two in the back seat. Waiting for an empty might take forever.
He moved to the comer and when one cab slowed to pass workmen who were digging up the street, he grabbed the door handle, pulled the door open and slipped into the back seat, onto the lap of a young woman carrying a model's hat bag. She was beautiful, placid and serene and she said:
"Hey, creep. Wotsa mattuh witcha?"
"It's good to know your beauty's not just skin deep," Remo said, as he leaned across her, opened the door on her side, and pushed her out into the street.
He slammed the door again and said: "Museum of Natural History and step on it"
From the driver's seat, P. Worthington Rosenbaum started to protest. Then, in the rear-view mirror, he caught a glimpse of Remo's eyes, and decided to say nothing.
Remo sat back and thought of the Museum, which he had last visited on a bus trip from the Newark orphanage where he'd grown up. The square blocks of buildings. The floor after floor of exhibits. The glass cases showing different forms of life in their native habitat. And the room where the dinosaurs were. The brontosaurus with the playground-slide back. Tyrannosaurus with his foot-long teeth. Exact skeletal reproductions of the animals as they had been when they lived.
Joan Hacker had tried to tell him yesterday when she told him he was a dinosaur. She had been trying to tip him, but he was too dumb to grasp it.
And the call today was another put-up job, to try to get him there.
Well, now, Remo had an edge. The man who was behind it all had wanted Remo to come; but he could not be sure that Remo was coming. Surprise might be on Remo's side.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
There was something wrong with the entire thing, Chiun thought, as he moved speedily, but not even seeming to move, through the crowd miffing around at the United Nations building.
There had been too much advertising of the attack upon the delegates to the antiterrorist conference. Too many people knew. Dr. Smith knew and in his present state that might mean that half the people in the United States government knew. Remo knew. Chiun knew. That poor, simple girl knew.
It was not the way the thing should have been done. For was it not one of the precepts of Sinanju that the ideal attack must be quiet, merciless and unexpected? And this one violated all those rules, but especially the most important one-being unexpected. If one wished to assassinate the delegates to an antiterrorist conference, one did not wait until they were assembled behind the protective screen of thousands of policemen and special agents and what have you. One assassinated them in their beds, upon planes, in taxicabs, in restaurants, all more or less upon a given signal. The Americans had a proverb for it too, although he thought it might have been Korean: do not put all your eggs in one basket.
Perhaps Chiun was guilty of error; might he be overestimating the quality of their opponent? He thought about this as he moved. No, he had not. Their student was himself an adept at the secrets of Sinanju. There was no way that he would move stupidly.
And yet there had been much
seeming stupidity in everything done thus far.
Chiun put the question behind him as he moved closer to the entranceway to the U.N. building, sifting through policemen and guards and other people whose eyes lacked the power to fix upon him motion.
It was easy to see Smith's men. He and Remo had joked, but they were right Smith's men wore trench coats and hats with press cards in them, and carried cameras which they aimed at the crowds, without ever bothering to depress the shutters. And yes, there was Smith too, clad the same way, up on the steps of the building. Chiun shook him head. Oh well, he would be sure not to hit anyone wearing a trench coat.
Now-where would the attack on the delegates come from?
Deception was the keystone of everything that had been done so far. The attack would not be frontal. The assassins would be disguised.
Chiun looked around him. As newsmen? No, no one trusted newsmen, and policemen in emergency situations delighted in abusing them and demanding credentials. Perhaps as policemen? No, there were too many policemen who would have the opportunity to see through such disguises. As clergymen? No. There would be no reason for a group of clergymen to gather. Their presence alone would be suspicious,
Chiun looked around. Who could pass through the lines without question? Without the press interfering with them, without the police stopping them?
Of course.
He began to move toward the right edge of the plaza in front of the building's main entrance, toward a group of Army officers who were now moving resolutely through the crowd, through the police lines, toward the building. Chiun knew. The assassins had come as a military detail, and no one would question them, until it was too late.
It was adequate, Chiun told himself, but he still wondered why the attack was to be handled this way. It was defective in concept, and their opponent should have known better.
The front steps of the Museum of Natural History were sealed off by ropes with signs posted: closed today.
Remo went down the pedestrian ramp to the slightly below-ground first floor level. The door there was locked also and with the heel of his hand, he smashed out the locking mechanism so that the door opened easily. Behind him, in the taxicab, P. Worthington Rosenbaum wondered whether or not to call the police, then remembered the fifty dollar tip the man had given him, and decided that anything that happened at the museum was not the business of P. Worthington Rosenbaum.
Although it was summer, it was cool and dark in the building. Remo took a few steps forward across the highly polished marble floors into the central first floor reception hall. A long-ago memory told him that stairs were to the left and right of the passageway. In a small office on the corner of the first floor, a bearded young man sat, with a phone to his ear.
"He's here," he hissed.
He nodded as the voice came back: "Good. Follow him to the top floor. Then kill him."
"But suppose he doesn't go to the top floor?"
"He will. And when you are done with him, call me," the voice said, almost as an afterthought.
Remo moved to the stairs and started up. He would have to begin at the top floor; that reduced the chance of the prey escaping. It was one of the things Chiun had taught him.
On the top floor of the museum, the stairs led into a corridor at the end of which stood the dinosaur room. Remo moved into the room and looked around. There was brontosaurus, as he had remembered him as a child. He moved through the big, high gallery. There at the end was T. Rex, still evil and powerful looking although only a skeleton, towering high over Remo. This was the place. This entire building. The place of dead animals.
Remo heard a sound behind him and turned as the bearded youth came through the door corridor, clad all in black, wearing a black gi, a karate costume which in white is a formal attacking uniform, but in black is an affectation.
"Well, if it ain't the Cisco kid," Remo said.
The bearded man wasted no time. With a deep nimble of sound in him throat, he was in the air moving toward Remo, his leg tucked under him to unleash a kick, his right hand cocked high overhead to deliver a crushing hand mace.
The leap was long and high, right out of Nureyev. The conclusion was pure Buster Keaton. Before he could fire off a blow with either hand or foot,, his throat ran into Remo's up-thrust hand. The hardened heel buried itself deep in the man's Adam's apple. The bone and cartilage turned to mush under the hand and the man's leap stopped, as if he were a soft tomato plopping against a brick wall. He dropped heavily to the marble floor, without even a gasp or a groan.
So much for Cisco.
When the telephone had not rung in three hundred seconds, the small yellow man on the second floor smiled, and looked at Joan Hacker.
"He has breached our first line of defence," he said.
"You mean?"
"Our man in black is dead. Yes," the yellow man nodded.
"Why, that's terrible," Joan said. "How can you be so calm? That's just awful."
"Spoken like a true revolutionary. We capture airplanes and shoot hostages. Fine. We shoot unsuspecting athletes. Fine. We bring about the death of an innocent old butcher. Fine. We prepare this morning to kill a score of diplomats. Fine. But we should worry about the life of one high school dropout, whose karate technique was, to tell the truth, abysmal."
"Yes, but those other people are just . . . well, they're the enemy ... agents of reactionary Wall Street imperialism. And the man downstairs . . . well, he was our man."
"No, my dear," the yellow man said. "They are all the same. They are all men. No matter what label they bear, they are all men. Only the unthinking and the unmerciful label them as agents of this or that, and then only so that they can justify their own refusal to treat each of them as a man. It is a greater justice to kill a man, knowing full well that you are killing a man and not just ripping off a label. It gives meaning to that man's death and richness to one's own accomplishment."
"But that flies in the face of our ideology," Joan sputtered.
"As well it might," the yellow man said. "Because in this world, there is no ideology. There is only power. And power comes from life."
He stood up behind the small desk and leaned forward to Joan, who inexplicably recoiled in her seat. "I will share with you a secret," he said. "All these preparations, all these deaths, all have been undertaken with one purpose in mind. Not the glorification of some lunatic revolutionary ideal; not the bringing to power of unlettered savages whose unworthiness to rule is proven by their willingness to follow where ideology leads. Everything you and I have done has had only one purpose: the destruction of two men."
"Two men? You mean, Remo and the old . . . the old Oriental?"
"Yes. Remo, who would take unto himself the secrets of our ancient house, and Chiun, the elderly Oriental as you call him, who is the reigning Master of Sinanju and whose existence will always stand between me and my goals."
"I don't think that's revolutionary a bit." Joan Hacker sniffed. Suddenly she did not like this at all. It wasn't noble, like liberating an airplane or bombing an embassy. It was like murder.
"The man who wins can apply any labels he wishes," the yellow man said, his hazel eyes glinting. "Enough now. He will soon be here."
The fourth floor was empty and so was the third. Remo thought of the last time he had seen the museum, many years before. Remo was Just another faceless kid in a crowd of orphans, who had never seen anything. It was back before cultural enrichment was considered an alternative to learning to read and write, and it was only when the satire class had mastered reading and writing that the nuns agreed to take them to the museum. Then it had been packed and noisy, but today it was empty and still, cold drafts were sweeping down the high broad corridors and stairwells, and it seemed a fitting place for the legend of the dead animals to end.
Remo remembered how the entire class had suffered and waited while Spinky, the class idiot, had suffered through reading lessons until he finally grasped the concept of words. Every day had seemed like a
month. Well, Spinky was long behind him now; so was Newark and the orphanage and his childhood. All that was left of the Remo who had been was a first name. Not even a face or a random fingerprint existed to say that he had been here. And now as he moved smoothly down the wide twisting flight of steps to the second floor, he thought he would trade in everything to be back in the orphanage, to be wearing one dollar surplus Army sneakers along these halls, instead of thirty-four-dollar leather tennis shoes.
He stopped in the middle of the last flight of steps. At the bottom stood a big black man, wearing a dashiki. He looked up at Remo with a smile, then began up the stairs. Remo backed up until he was on the landing, midway between the third and second floor,
Right. He thought so. Another big black man was heading down on him from the third floor.
"Howdy," Remo said. "Ah come to jine up with yo third world."
"Ave atque vale," one of the men said. "That mean, hail and farewell," the other said.
"Good," Remo said. "Now do you know the 'Whiffenpoof Song'? If you want, I'll hum a few bars. Let's see. Through the tables down at Morey's ... or is it to the tables. Anyway, it goes, la, da, da, da, to the place where Louie dwells. . . ." To their blank look, Remo said, "Don't know that one, huh? How about 'The Crawdad Song'? If you sing it, I'll yodel in the high spots."
Remo's back was now against the marble wall on the landing. It felt cold against his back, through his thin shirt, and he tensed his muscles against it, feeling them writhe against the stone.
Then the two big men were in front of him, and without warning, they fired heavy fists at his face. Remo paused, waited, then slid under the two punches. Rather than hit the wall with their fists, the men recoiled, but Remo was now between and behind them. He leaped into the air, and then flailed back with both elbows. Each elbow hit the back of a head, and the force of Remo's blows drove the faces forward into the unyielding cold marble. He heard two separate sets of cracks: one set as his elbows hit the men's skulls; the second set as their faces splashed and broke against the stone wall.
He stepped away without looking and heard them sink to the floor behind him. Then he was moving down the stairs again, three at a time.
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