REMO HAD JUST PICKED UP THE telephone to call Smith when there was a knock on his hotel room door. He put the phone back down and was about to yell “Come in, it’s open,” when the door flung open and Chiun stood there. Behind him were two bellhops and Chiun’s luggage. Three large steamer trunks.
Chiun could travel for a year with a manila envelope if he had to. If he didn’t have to, he could fill two baggage cars. So when Remo had phoned Miami to tell Chiun to follow, he had limited the luggage to three trunks. No more.
Chiun left as soon as the soap operas were over, not even waiting to play his special TV tapes of the simultaneous programs. He would wait, he told Remo, until he reached Washington.
Remo had thanked him, knowing Chiun considered this truly a sacrifice.
Because of American stupidity, as Chiun put it, all the good shows ran at one time, so that a person could not watch them all. To compensate for the gross obtuseness of American television functionaries, Chiun therefore would watch Dr. Lawrence Walters, Psychiatrist-at-Large, while on two portable machines he would tape Edge of Dawn and As the Planet Revolves.
Chiun allowed the bellboys to precede him into Remo’s hotel suite. Remo stepped away from the phone, reached in his slacks pocket and unpeeled two single dollar bills. This would ease the departure of the bellboys. Chiun never tipped. He considered “the bearing of loads” a hotel service, not to be unduly recompensed. In lieu of a tip, he would grade the bellboys on their chores from inadequate to good. He had given one good in his lifetime and many inadequates. Today the two bellboys got adequates. They stared at the frail Oriental in disbelief. Remo waved the money at them and they left shaking their heads.
“Throw money hither. Throw money yon. Spend, spend, spend until pauperdom. You, Remo, are truly an American.”
The voice was mild but it was Chiun’s ultimate insult. Next worst was “you are a white man.”
When Remo was first in training, a basic training that had never before been seen outside Chiun’s village of Sinanju, Korea, Chiun had explained to him the formation of the world and its peoples.
“When God created man,” Chiun had said, “he put a lump of clay in the oven. And when he took it out, he said, ‘It is underdone. This is no good. I have created a white man.’ Then he put another lump of clay in the oven, and to compensate for his error, he left it in longer. When he took it out, he said, ‘Oh, I have failed again. I have left it in too long. This is no good. I have created a black man.’ And then he put another lump of clay in the oven, this time a superior clay, molded with more care and love and integrity, and when he took it out, he said: ‘Oh, I have done it just right. I have created the yellow man.’
“And then to this man in whom he was pleased he gave a mind. To the Chinese, he gave lust and dishonesty. To the Japanese, he gave arrogance and greed. To the Koreans, he gave honesty, courage, integrity, discipline, beauty of thought, heart and wisdom. And because he had given them so much, he said, ‘I shall also give them poverty and conquerors because they have been given more already than any other man on earth. They are truly the perfect people in my sight, and in their wonderfulness, I am well pleased.’”
Remo was still recovering physically from his electrocution. He had been only half listening but he had caught the direction of the lesson.
“You’re Korean, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said the smiling old man. “How did you know?”
“I guessed,” Remo said.
The lesson, in all its variations, had been repeated many times during Remo’s training all those years ago. Once when Remo had done a particularly difficult exercise without flaw, Chiun had shrieked, “Excellent.”
“Excellent, little father?” Remo had said in pleasant surprise.
And recovering, Chiun had said: “Yes. For a white man, excellent. For a Korean, good.”
“Dammit,” Remo had said, “I know I can take just about any Korean around. I’d say almost everyone, except you.”
“How many Koreans do you know, oh, open-mouthed shouter of an American white man?”
“Well, just you.”
“And you can defeat me?”
“Not you, probably.”
“Probably? Shall we find out?”
“No.”
“You are afraid of hurting me?”
“Well, blow it out your ears,” Remo had said.
“Here, we see American logic. You are sure you can defeat any Korean except one. And that one is the only Korean you know. And in response to his efforts and teachings to try to make something of the undercooked lump of clay which is yon, he receives ‘Blow it out your ears.’ Oh, perfidy.”
“I’m sorry, little father.”
“Do not be sorry afterwards. Be sorry before. Then you will be a man who uses his mind to make his way instead of to repair it.”
Remo had bowed and Chiun had said: “You can defeat any Korean, except probably one.”
“Thank you, little father.”
“For what? You thank me, for an observation that my skills at teaching are so powerful that I can even impart some of them to a white man. I will accept your admiration, not your thanks.”
“You have always had my admiration, little father… ”
Chiun had bowed.
And Remo had never let Chiun know that when Chiun saved him from the Chinese conspirators, Remo had, in a mind that functioned even while he was near death, heard Chiun scream in his search for Remo: “Where is my child whom I have made with my heart and my mind and my will?”
Remo never let him know he had heard because that knowledge brought to light would have embarrassed Chiun, exposing that he now thought of Remo as a Korean.
Remo picked up the phone while Chiun was unpacking. First out came the TV tape players and then from the folds of his golden robe, Chiun removed the tapes of Edge of Dawn and As the Planet Revolves.
Chiun did not trust the tapes to luggage. Luggage could be lost. He plugged in his portable tape receiver deck and then, sitting down on one of the trunks that blocked passage in the suite, he began intently watching Laura Wade disclose to Brent Wyatt that she feared the famous nuclear physicist Lance Rex would suffer a nervous breakdown if he discovered that his Tricia Bonnecut really loved the Duke of Ponsonby who had just inherited the main salmon and silk factories in Mulville.
Remo heard the phone being picked up at the other end. “Seven-four-four,” Smith said.
“Open line,” said Remo.
“Yes, of course. You’ve read in the papers about our friend in the library?”
“Yes.”
“He was part of it too.” Smith changed his tone, becoming conspiratorial. “I would think you need a rest. A very good place to rest is the Human Awareness Laboratories, about fifty miles outside Baltimore. Go there and rest up. Register as a patient. They might be interested in having Mr. Donaldson as a patient.”
“Anything I should specialize in?”
“I imagine you might jump the line,” Smith said.
Remo grunted and hung up. Jumping the line meant that Remo should allow himself to be the target of attack, then follow the attack back to its source and then kill the source. It was effective and dangerous, an easy way to get killed. Still an open telephone line in Washington, D.C., was not the worst way to attract attention. Besides, Remo was already a target for someone, as the Silver Creek Country Club had proved.
Remo began to strip for his exercises, which would begin after As the Planet Revolves. He would wear a blue uniform today. The colors meant something to Chiun, if not to Remo, and Chiun always seemed to be in a better humor when Remo wore blue.