Chinese Puzzle

by Warren Murphy

  Smith had waited a long time before responding. Then he said: “It is dangerous, sir. Suppose I sought power to control the nation?”

  “I did not exactly pick you up off the street.”

  “I see. I assume, sir, you have some sort of program worked out to dismantle this project if necessary?”

  “Do you want to know about it?”

  “If I take this assignment, no.”

  “I didn’t think so.” He passed a portfolio to Dr. Smith. “Your budgetary procedures, operating instructions, everything I could think of are in these notes. There are many details. Cover stories for you and your family. Acquisition of property. Hiring of staff. It will be difficult, Dr. Smith, since no one is aware of it but we two.”

  The President added: “I will tell my successor and he will tell his successor, and should you die, Dr. Smith, your organization will automatically dissolve.”

  “What if you should die, sir?”

  “My heart is fine and I have no intention of assassination.”

  “What if you should be assassinated without it being your intention?”

  The President smiled.

  “Then it will be up to you to tell the next President.”

  So on a cold day, one November, Dr. Smith informed the new President of the United States of his organization. And this time, all that President had said was, “Shoot. You mean if Ah want you to rub someone out, anyone, Ah can just say so?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Cause for sure, Ah would have sent all you people out behind the barn to play in the daisies.”

  And that President had told this President, showing him the phone through which the headquarters of the secret organization, CURE, could be reached. And he had warned him that the only things a President could do were to dissolve the organization or ask for something within its mission. He could not order a mission.

  And now another President was asking.

  But for the light on the desk, it was dark and now the President queried, because the man before him had hesitated.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “I wish your people within the government could do the job.”

  “I wish they could too. But they have failed.”

  “I must seriously consider dismantling the organization,” Smith said.

  The President sighed. “It is very hard to be President sometimes. Please, Dr. Smith.”

  The President leaned into the sharp light on his desk and held his forefinger and thumb a pencil width apart. “We’re this close to peace, Dr. Smith. This close.”

  Smith could see the tired courage in the President’s face, the steel discipline pushing the man toward his goal of peace.

  “I will do what you ask, Mr. President, although it will be difficult. Exposing that person as a bodyguard or even an investigator might lead to someone who knew him while he was living, recognizing his voice.”

  “While he was living?” the President said.

  Smith ignored the unspoken question. He stood up and the President stood with him. “Good luck, Mr. President.” He took the offered hand, as he had failed, and since regretted many times, to take the hand of another President years before. As he turned to walk out the door, he said “I will assign that person.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  REMO WAS AT PEAK. He could see the old Korean looking for the slightest wrinkle on the toilet paper and finding none, looking up in surprise. He had been training Remo for almost a solid year now since a miscalculation had kept Remo at peak for three straight months.

  Remo did not wait for a compliment which would not come. In seven years of intermittent training, compliments had been rare. Remo got dressed by peeling off the ninja suit and putting on jockey shorts, white tee shirt, and covering them with slacks and a green sports shirt. He slipped into sandals, then brushed his short hair. He had gotten used to his face in the last seven years, the high cheekbones, the straighter nose, that hairline that receded just a little more. He had almost forgotten the face he used to have, back before he had been framed for a murder he did not commit and escorted to an electric chair that did not quite work, although everyone else but his new employers had thought it worked.

  “Good enough,” said Chiun and Remo blinked. A compliment? From Chiun? He had been acting strangely since August but a compliment for doing something right after failing so many times was incredibly strange.

  “Good enough?” Remo asked.

  “For a white man whose government is stupid enough to recognize China, yes.”

  “Please, Chiun, not that again,” Remo said in exasperation. It was not that Chiun resented America recognizing Red China, he resented anyone recognizing any China. And that had caused the incidents.

  Remo could not cry, but he felt moistness making demands on his eyes.

  “Even for a Korean, little father?” He knew Chiun liked the title. When Remo had used it in those first days when the burns were still on his forehead and wrists and ankles where the electrodes had been placed, Chiun had rebuked him. Perhaps it had been the joking tone of voice; perhaps it was that Chiun had not believed he would live. It was back in those early days when Reno discovered the first people who also believed that, as a Newark policeman, he had not shot that pusher in an alley.

  He knew he hadn’t. And that was when the whole crazy life began. With the monk in to give him last rites, with a little pill on the end of his cross, asking him if he wanted to save his soul or his ass. And the pill in his mouth, and the last walk to the chair, and biting into the pill, and passing out, thinking that this was the way all condemned men were brought to the chair, by lying to them that they would be saved.

  And then waking up and discovering others who knew he had been framed because they had framed him. It was really part of the price he paid for being an orphan. He had no relatives, and having none, he would be missed by no one. And it was also part of the price he paid for having been seen efficiently killing some guerillas in Vietnam.

  And so he had awakened in a hospital bed with a choice. Just start some training. It was one of those beautiful little steps that could lead to anything. To a journey of a thousand miles, a lifelong love affair, a great philosophy, or a life of death. Just one step at a time.

  And so CURE, the organization that did not exist, got their man who did not exist with a new face and a new mind. It was the mind, not the body, that made Remo Williams Remo Williams. Whether he was Remo Cabell or Remo Pelham or all the other Remos he had ever been. They could change neither his voice, nor his instant response to his name. But they had changed him, the bastards. One step at a time. Yet he had helped. He had taken that first step, and done, albeit laughingly, the first things Chiun had taught him. Now he respected the aged Oriental as he had respected no one else he had ever known. And it saddened him to see Chiun react so un-Chiun-like to the talk of peace with China. Not that Remo cared. He had been taught not to care about those things. But it was strange that so wise a man could act so foolishly. Yet that same wise man had said once:

  “One always retains the last few foolishnesses of childhood. To retain all of them is sickness. To understand them is wisdom. To abandon all of them is death. They are our first seeds of joy, and one must always have plants to water.”

  And in a hotel room many years from the time of that first wisdom of the little father, Remo asked:

  “Even for a Korean, little father?”

  He saw the old man smile. And wait. And then say, slowly: “For a Korean? I feel I must truthfully say yes.”

  Remo pressed on.

  “Even for the village of Sinanju?”

  “You have great ambitions,” Chiun said.

  “My heart reaches to the sky.”

  “For Sinanju, you are all right. Just all right.”

  “Is your throat all right?”

  “Why?”

  “I thought it hurt you to say that.”

  “It most certainly did.”

  “It is an honor, litt
le father, to be your son.”

  “Another point,” Chiun said. “A man who cannot apologize is no man at all. My bad temper the other night came from the relief of my fear that you would be hurt. You came down the wall perfectly. Even if it took you ninety seven seconds.”

  “You went up perfectly, little father. And even more quickly.”

  “Any schmuck can do a perfect up, my son.” Chiun had been picking up those Jewish words again. He learned them from the elderly Jewish ladies he liked to converse with, discussing their common interest: their betrayal by their children and the personal misery ensuing therefrom.

  Mrs. Solomon was Chiun’s latest. They met every day for breakfast in the restaurant that faced the sea. She would repeat how her son had sent her to San Juan for a vacation and did not phone, even though she had waited by the phone the entire first month.

  Chiun would confide that his most loved son of 50 years ago was doing an unspeakable thing. And Mrs. Solomon would put a hand to her face in shared shock. She had done it for the last week and half. And Chiun had yet to tell her the unspeakable thing.

  It was fortunate, Remo had thought, that no one laughed at the pair. Because there would surely be a laughter with an extra thoracic cavity.

  It had almost come to that the day the young Puerto Rican busboy had sassed Mrs. Solomon for saying the bagels were not fresh. The busboy was the amateur middleweight champion of the island and was just holding the job at the Nacional until he turned professional.

  One day he decided he did not want to be a professional. It was approximately the time he saw the wall coming at him, and the unfinished bagel going seaward.

  Mrs. Solomon had personally registered a complaint about the young ruffian attacking a fine, warm, sweet, old man. Chiun had stood there in innocence as the ambulance attendants carried the unconscious busboy out of the dining area and into the ambulance.

  How had the young man attacked the elderly gentleman? asked the Puerto Rican police.

  “By leaning, I think,” Mrs. Solomon said. That was definitely what she thought. After all, Mr. Parks certainly would not have reached across the table and thrown the person into a wall. Why, he was old enough to be her… well, uncle.

  “I mean, there was this snort from that young man and the next thing I saw, well, I guess, he was like kissing the wall and falling back down. It was very strange. Will he be all right?”

  “He’ll recover,” a policeman said.

  “That’s nice,” said Mrs. Solomon. “It will certainly make my friend feel better.”

  Her friend had bowed in his Oriental way. And Mrs. Solomon thought that was just adorable for a man carrying the burden of a son who had done an unspeakable thing. Remo had been forced to give Chiun another lecture. They had become more frequent since the President had announced plans to visit Red China.

  They had sat on the beach as the Caribbean sky became red, then gray, then black, and when he felt they were alone, Remo had scooped a handful of sand and let it sift through his fingers, and said: “Little father, there is no man I respect like you.”

  Chiun sat quietly in his white robes, as though breathing his salt content for the day. He said nothing.

  “There are times that pain me, little father,” Remo said. “You do not know who we work for. I do. And knowing that, I know how important it is that we do not attract attention to ourselves. I do not know when this retraining will end and we will be separated. But when you are with me… Well, we were very lucky that the busboy thinks he slipped on something. We were lucky in San Francisco also last month. But as you yourself have told me, just as luck is given, it is taken away. Luck is the least sure of all events.”

  The waves made steady slapping sounds and the air began to cool. Softly, Chiun said something that sounded like “kvinch.”

  “What?” said Remo.

  “Kvetcher,” said Chiun.

  “I do not know Korean,” said Remo.

  “It is not Korean, but is apt anyway. Mrs. Solomon uses the word. It is a noun.”

  “I assume you want me to ask you what it means.”

  “It is of no matter. One is what one is.”

  “All right, Chiun. What is a kvetcher?”

  “I do not know if it translates that well in English.”

  “Since when are you a rabbinical student?”

  “This is Yiddish, not Hebrew.”

  “I’m not auditioning you for Fiddler on the Roof.”

  “A kvetcher is one who complains and complains and worries and complains over the slightest little nothing.”

  “That busboy will not walk without crutches for months.”

  “That busboy will no longer be abusive. I have given him an invaluable lesson.”

  “That he should never be off balance when you’re in one of your moods?”

  “That he should treat the elderly with respect. If more youngsters respected the elderly, the world would be a far more tranquil place. That has always been the trouble with civilization. Lack of respect for age.”

  “You’re telling me that I should not talk to you like this?”

  “You hear what you will hear and I say what I will say. That is what I am telling you.”

  “I may have to terminate this training because of what happened,” Remo said.

  “You will do what you will do and I will do what I will do.”

  “Will you not do what you have done?”

  “I will take into account your nervousness over a nothing.”

  “Were those football players a nothing?”

  “If one wants to worry, he will find no shortage of subjects.”

  Remo threw up his hands. Invincible ignorance was invincible ignorance.

  Later, the phone rang. Probably the signal to abort. Of 10 alerts a year, if Remo went into action once, it was a lot.

  “Yes,” said Remo.

  “Nine o’clock tonight in the casino. Your mother will be there,” said the voice. And then the receiver clicked down.

  “What the hell?” Remo said questioningly.

  “Did you say something?”

  “I said a bunch of idiots are acting pretty peculiar.”

  “The American way,” said Chiun happily.

  Remo did not answer.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE CASINO WAS LIKE A LARGE living room with anxious muffled sounds and subdued lighting. Remo arrived at 9 p.m. He had checked his watch 45 minutes earlier and was checking to see how close he could come to approximating minutes. Forty-five minutes was perfect because it came to exactly three short times, the units of time upon which Remo had built his judgment.

  He looked at the second hand of his watch when he entered the casino. He was 15 seconds off. Which was good. Not up to Chiun, but still good.

  Remo wore a dark double-breasted suit with a light blue shirt and dark blue tie. His shirt cuffs were double buttoned. He never wore cufflinks since extraneous metal hanging from his wrist by threads could never be controlled.

  “Where are the smallest bets allowed?” Remo asked a tuxedoed Puerto Rican whose aplomb showed he worked there.

  “Roulette,” said the man, pointing to two tables along a wall, surrounded by a gaggle of people identical to the other gaggles of people surrounding other tables. Remo moved easily through the crowd, spotting a pickpocket at work, and casually grading his technique. His moves were too jerky; he was barely adequate.

  His ears picked up an argument over the size of bets and he was fairly certain by its nature that Dr. Smith was in it.

  “Minimum bet is one dollar sir,” repeated the croupier.

  “Now I purchased these 25 cent chips and you sold them to me, thus making a mutual contract. Your sale of a 25 cent chip commits you to allowing 25 cent bets.”

  “At times we do. But now we do not, sir. The minimum bet is one dollar.”

  “Outrageous. Let me speak to the manager.”

  There was a small whispered conference of the two casino men at the table.
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  Finally, one said, “If you wish, sir, you may cash in your chips now. Or, if you still insist, you may bet 25 cent chips.”

  “All right,” said the bitter faced man. “Go ahead.”

  “Are you going to make your wager now?”

  “No,” said the man, “I want to see first how the table is running.”

  “Yes sir,” said the croupier, called all bets and spun the wheel.

  “Good evening, sir,” said Remo, leaning over Dr. Smith and brushing his jacket ever so gently. “Losing?”

  “No, I’m seventy five cents ahead. Wouldn’t you know that as soon as someone starts to score on them, they try to change the rules?”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “An hour.”

  “Oh.” Remo pretended to take from his pocket the wad of bills he had just extracted from Dr. Smith’s pocket. He glanced through it. There was more than two thousand dollars. Remo bought mounds and mounds of $25 chips. Two thousand dollars worth. He blanketed the table with them.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Dr. Smith.

  “Betting,” Remo said.

  The ball bounced and spun and clinked to a hard stop. The croupiers almost instantly began collecting chips and paying off bets. Remo almost broke even.

  And again he spread out his money in bets. He did this five more times as he saw the controlled anger well in Dr. Smith. Since Remo was obviously a lunatic, the croupiers did not enforce the house limit of $25 a number on him. So on the sixth roll, Remo had $100 on number 23 when it came out, and he collected $3,500 on the bet.

  He cashed in his chips and left with Dr. Smith behind him. They entered the hotel’s night club where the noise would be loud and where, if they sat up front and faced the noise, they could talk without being overheard. Talking into noise provided an excellent sound seal.

  When they were seated, to all eyes apparently watching the bouncing breasts bathed in neon and incredible metallic costumes, Dr. Smith said:

  “You gave that man a $100 tip. A one hundred dollar tip. Whose money did you think you were betting?”