Remo The Adventure Begins (19 page)

“Hi,” he said.

“Hello,” she said, and immediately broke eye contact.

“That’s a nice uniform,” said Remo.

“Yes, a whole army wears them,” said Major Fleming. Why did she always seem to get these types on elevators?

“Are you putting me down?” asked Remo. This was his variation of a sexual technique Chiun had mentioned briefly only to illustrate the proper footwork necessary when approaching a wall. Chiun called it accosting. Of course, correctly done, accosting had to do with the Korean festival of the blossom and you were supposed to be dancing at the time. It was harder to pull off in an elevator.

The major did not answer him.

“Nice buttons on the uniform,” said Remo. He had never been good at elevator conversations, and establishing contact under orders was even more cumbersome. And what made it worse, she seemed like a nice decent woman, the sort of woman he would have liked to meet if this weren’t work. What a stupid remark about the buttons, he thought.

She didn’t answer that either.

“I like elevators,” said Remo. Did he actually say that? It was even more stupid than the previous comment.

Major Fleming looked at her watch, as though timing the descent.

“No, really I find them very . . . stimulating,” said Remo. His mouth said that, though no human brain, he thought, could have come up with it.

She still didn’t answer, and since he couldn’t back off now, he continued.

“Something about the small enclosed space . . . the smooth walls . . . the tight air . . . the canned music . . .”

Major Fleming smiled. It was too much. She couldn’t help herself.

“Okay, not the music,” said Remo.

“Enjoy your ups and downs,” said Major Fleming as the doors opened. Remo followed her out of the elevator, out of the building onto the street. She was trying to get away from him, walking very quickly across the street to a car that seemed to be ready to offer her a lift. But something was strange about the driver. She couldn’t tell just what it was until she realized his mouth glinted in the sun. He had a large diamond set in a front tooth.

12

R
emo moved right into the street, getting a hand on Major Fleming’s briefcase and holding her with it, securely but not with a jerk that would have knocked her off her feet. His grip was more like a tug on a fish at the end of a line.

“Let me do this. You’ve got your hands full,” said Remo, whistling for a cab. She wouldn’t leave the briefcase. She shot him a deadly look.

“Never a cab when you need one,” said Remo. He saw Stone. He had spotted him before. That was what held him up a fraction. He had to know where her death was coming from, so he could do something about it.

“Thanks for your help,” said Major Fleming, pulling on the briefcase, “but I think I’ll walk.”

The car driven by the man with the shiny mouth pulled out from the curb to help. Without letting go of the briefcase, Remo stepped in front of a cab. He opened the door. He guided Major Fleming in, briefcase first. There was a minor problem. A passenger was already in the cab. Remo removed the problem. The cab driver didn’t want to move. Remo gave the cabbie two things to encourage him to take the fare. A very nice ten-dollar bill and an intense finger pressure which crumbled the cabbie’s change machine over the cabbie’s lap. The driver pulled away, taking Major Fleming with him. Cars were honking as Remo assured the former passenger that he would get him a ride. Just wait in the middle of the street. The former passenger just spit and walked away. Remo dodged the saliva.

He also stepped in front of the car driven by the diamond-toothed man. He was trying to follow the cab.

“Got a problem, buddy?” Remo said to the man with the tooth, the man he had identified as Stone by description. After all, a diamond tooth was not exactly a hard thing to spot even in New York City.

Remo could sense the tense anger in Stone behind the wheel. He felt Stone about to step on the accelerator. He did not see the feet. He did not have to. It was all over the man’s body. Strange, thought Remo, how when someone moves a foot, his shoulder lowers also. Most people did not realize how many parts of the body they used in each movement, or even how they breathed.

At the moment Remo realized he was thinking about his breath, at the instant he was about to be run over, he understood that everything was going to work. He was not thinking about trying not to be killed. He was the best of all things in this noisy New York City street, with the man about to drive a car through him, a traffic policeman strolling toward him to see what was wrong, and McCleary due to exit in a moment. He was beyond “good.” He was correct. He was sure as sunrise, and cool as water. He was Sinanju, he was sure.

Before Stone could move, Remo moved. He was at the window of the car.

“Am I keeping you?” said Remo.

“Get out of the way,” said Stone.

“You go wherever you want, sweetheart, just leave your throat with me,” said Remo pleasantly. His hands cupped Stone’s Adam’s apple. He would not tear it out. However, if Stone wanted to start the car and leave it with Remo, that was Stone’s business. Stone did not decide to leave.

“And don’t honk. That will give the impression New Yorkers don’t have manners,” said Remo. He glanced down the street. Major Fleming’s cab was on its way. Stone was trying to breathe. Remo knew this because the mouth was open. He stared at the tooth.

“Jeez. Who’s your dentist? Tiffany’s?”

Finally the cab was out of sight, the traffic cop had arrived to see what was holding up everything and, best of all, McCleary was moving out of the auditor general’s office.

Done. Remo released Stone and gave McCleary a little nod. McCleary did not return it. McCleary was thinking, I am going to have to tell him about those little nods. A pro would pick that up.

Stone rubbed his neck with his left hand. With his right, he pressed the little rubber ball that clicked the camera in the lapel. He had seen the nod.

Remo returned to his training house, proud of himself for exactly three seconds.

McCleary was waiting. He explained in front of Chiun that Remo should never give an acknowledgment when they were not supposed to be working together. McCleary would take care of any acknowledgment if it were necessary.

Chiun, of course, did not understand a word of what McCleary was saying. He never quite understood why these people were keeping so much secret. Had Remo failed at a target?

No, McCleary said. Remo had not failed.

Then the enemy of the glorious Emperor Smith was dead.

No, said McCleary, the enemy was not dead. Today’s assignment was not to kill someone. It was to protect someone.

“The greatest protection a man has is a dead enemy,” said Chiun.

“They are not enemies so to speak,” said McCleary. “But other than the nod, you did fine, laddie. That Fleming is some piece of work, isn’t she?”

Chiun decided to keep quiet. There was an emperor who claimed he was not an emperor, nor did he want to be. That emperor wanted an assassin, but not for enemies. And the conversation had abruptly turned to the external form of a woman.

Chiun watched Remo closely. He obviously didn’t think this was insane. He continued to talk about the woman. And it was not a code, Chiun determined quickly. There had been a woman in an elevator.

“Your training is good,” said McCleary finally. “First mission passed almost perfectly.”

“Thank you,” said Remo.

There it was again. Almost perfectly. And Remo was thanking him for something. McCleary was waiting for Chiun to say something. What should he do at this moment with these whites? Talk about the attributes of his first wife?

“Good training,” said McCleary again.

Chiun looked to Remo. Remo seemed happy.

“The assassination was correct?” asked Chiun.

“There was no killing,” said the American McCleary.

“The person was almost dead. You delivered a head cold instead of a blow?”

“No. No. No kill,” said McCleary. And he was happy with almost perfect and Remo was happy with almost perfect. Chiun decided to make some rice.

“A tribute to you and the House of Sinanju,” said McCleary when he left.

“Of course,” said Chiun. Remo couldn’t explain it any better. He rambled on about the country, and the country’s needs, about his pride in the country, and his love of the country.

Of course, he could not explain what the country had ever taught him, or done for him, he just kept saying how wonderful this country was, Chiun noticed.

And then Remo said:

“You know. Out there today, for the first time, I realized I was Sinanju, little father.”

“Don’t ever call me little father. I am not your father,” said Chiun.

“I am sorry,” said Remo. “It just came out.”

“I am not your father. I am the Master of Sinanju, contracted to your Emperor Smith. Do not call me father.”

“All right.”

“Never call me father.”

“I heard you. What’s your problem?”

“I have no son.”

“All right,” said Remo. He had never seen Chiun so disturbed.

“And you are not Sinanju.”

“Well, I felt it. I felt what you gave me.”

“You are not Sinanju. You are not my son.”

“Okay.”

Chiun was quiet a moment. He looked at the boiling water and then back to Remo.

Finally he said:

“You must work on heights.”

“Okay,” said Remo.

“Heights are a thing that must be known by you.”

“I understand.”

“You are your own father, Remo.”

“I understand. But I did know Sinanju out there in a New York City street with someone who was ready to drive a car into me. I knew that. I never knew my father or my mother, or half the things that went on in my life, but Chiun, Master of Sinanju, I knew out there at that moment, I was Sinanju.”

“How, insolent pale piece of a pig’s ear, did you know that?”

“Because when I thought the man might be killing me, I wasn’t thinking about dying. I was thinking about breathing and movements and almost anything else in the world.”

Chiun did not answer because he knew Remo was right. But while he was at that moment Sinanju, Sinanju was not his. It could leave him when he needed it most to survive, and then of course, all would be wasted. Remo would die.

Chiun thought of the promise made easily to Smith in secret, a promise that would not be easy now. He tried to explain to Remo what a professional assassin was, what Sinanju was in regards to the village.

Once upon a time, Sinanju was so poor, babies could not be fed and had to be put under the waters of the cold West Korea Bay. It was this poverty that led the Masters of Sinanju to give their services to the rich to feed the village. With each generation, more was learned. The genius of one Master could be built on by the next until they discovered the true powers of man, which they were.

“I know that,” said Remo. “What are you getting at?”

“Every Master of Sinanju, if he fails to perform for the proper tribute, actually murders the babies of the village. So that we do not have choices sometimes.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“We will work on heights,” said Chiun to the man who had the glint of the stars in his eyes even though he was white. “We must conquer that.”

“I don’t know you at all, Chiun,” said Remo. “And I will tell you something else. I don’t want to know you.”

“Good,” said Chiun.

“Good,” said Remo.

And that night they ate alone in silence.

Wilson had not failed. He had turned a setback into what could be the final breakthrough against “them,” that hidden adversary who was getting less hidden by the moment.

“I think they’re all here,” said Wilson, throwing down three photographs onto Grove’s desk, right next to the model of the Strider antiship torpedo, a unique device that could eliminate an entire convoy by homing in on the ship’s munitions magazines. The Strider looked like an oblong silver sausage, with a slightly larger tip. The joke in Grove Industries was that the single women might be stealing the models to take home for private use. But it was not such a joke.

George Grove understood that if you could make a weapon a symbolic large male organ, without knowing it both Congress and the military would want the biggest ones they could buy.

The psychology department had come up with that one, and it had worked. The Russians responded without ever realizing what they were competing about. They built bigger ones.

One general once said over a minuscule difference, “Those Russians have us by six inches. Six crucial inches.”

An Israeli general, committing his country to financial ruin, said his people needed the biggest ones around. An Arab sheik responded by saying he would drain all the oil from his country to assure that he, not the Jews, had the big ones.

He blamed American financial aid to Israel for the imbalance.

Many antiwar groups protested military aid and military expenditures by marching with placards demanding, “America; cut it off now.”

The one thing Grove Industries would never acknowledge publicly was the subliminal message of many of their weapons designs.

The three photographs fell next to the model of the Strider.

“Wilson. I think you’ve done it. You couldn’t have done better,” said Grove. “May you miss like this all the time.”

There, right before him, was the connection to all their recent troubles. The phony IRS investigator was now an equally phony bird colonel. And nodding to him was a man who had that very day prevented Stone from eliminating the problem of Major Rayner Fleming.

“This is it,” said Wilson. “Here they are. Here is the reason for the mislead. Here are the reasons for our problems. They saved that bitch from being committed by General Watson to the funny farm, and then they saved her from elimination for good.”

“There they are,” said Grove.

“If they use a computer, and they do, we’ll nail their headquarters within days. Days, George. Days. We’ve got the greatest technological resources of all time at our disposal. I hate to get overconfident, but we have it nailed. This is what we’ve been waiting for.”