"And what you're reading, Remo, is the organization finally working. This is the pus coming out of the 30.lanced boil. Nixon wasn't the first president to do such things, he was just the first not to get away with it. His successors won't try it again. Didn't it strike you as strange that half a dozen CIA men should bungle a simple burglary? Didn't it strike you as strange that suddenly tape recordings that the former president didn't know about suddenly appear? And he can't destroy them? Remo, just how do you think we work? What you're seeing is the organization working."

Remo c.o.c.ked a quizzical eyebrow. Smith continued.

"You're not seeing new crimes, Remo. You're seeing people not get away with the old ones. That nursinghome scandal goes back more than ten years. Cops on the take go back to the Revolutionary War. Cops getting sent to jail for it is new. You're seeing this country do what no other democracy has been able to do. We're cleaning house."

"Then how about the streets?"

"A little adjustment. Give us five years. Five years and the doomsayers will crawl back under their rocks. This country is coming out stronger and better."

"Why didn't I know about this?"

"Because we only use you for emergencies. You're what I use when things go wrong or can't go right any other way."

Now the Master of Sinanju had listened to this and had been quiet, for when Westerners talked silliness, no light could penetrate their shroud of ignorance. And seeing that they were now satisfied with themselves, he spoke.

"Oh, gracious Smith, how wondrous has been your success, how firm your guiding hand. Your kingdom is in order and gratefully, the House of Sinanju must 31.take its leave, singing always the praises of Emperor Smith."

"If you wish, Chiun," said Smith. "You have trained Remo well and we are grateful, but he knows enough now to operate without you."

"There's a little problem here, Smitty," said Remo and Chiun raised his long delicate fingers, silencing Remo.

"Gracious emperor," said Chiun. "The Remo who once belonged to you now belongs to Sinanju." And seeing confusion on Smith's face, he explained that when he began training Remo, Remo had just been another American, but there was so much Sinanju training in him now that he was Sinanju, and therefore no longer Smith's but Sinanju's.

"What's he talking about?" asked Smith.

"Look," said Remo. "You give a guy a pot, right. A little d.i.n.ky metal pot."

"A pale pot," added Chiun. "A miserable worthless pale pot."

"And he adds a gold handle. And a gold top. And a full inch of gold outside," said Remo.

"I like your choice of metals," said Chiun.

"Shut up," said Remo.

"Grat.i.tude is dead," said Chiun.

"And now you've got this golden vessel with just the bare little metal left of the original pot."

"The ingrat.i.tude is what is left," said Chiun.

"Well, it's not your pot anymore," Remo told Smith.

"What are you talking about?" asked Smith.

"The mountain is not the pebble," said Chiun. "And you cannot violate this law of the universe. It is sacred."

"I'm not sure what you are getting at, Master of Sinanju, but we are willing to double in gold the pay- 32.ments to your village for your services. Since you regard Remo now as of Sinanju, a someday Master of Siuanju, we will pay your village for you and him. Double payment for double services."

"You don't understand, Smitty," said Remo.

"He most certainly does," said Chiun. "Listen to your emperor and learn of him what is your next mission."

Smith opened his briefcase. There was a problem in the Chicago grain markets that just might prove to be more disastrous for the survival of the nation than anything Remo had handled before. It had to do with the purchase of grain and famine spreading to the Western world. Even with its vast network and computers, CURE had been unable to ascertain just what was the matter. A lot of money was making peculiar things happen.

And bodies were floating up around Lake Michigan.

CHAPTER THREE.

The morning sun came up over Harborcreek, Pennsylvania, as winds blew the chemical waste breezes across Lake Erie into Remo's car. Remo explained the mission to Chiun. This Chiun had demanded, since he was no longer just the trainer in the eyes of the organization. He was a coequal partner. It always amazed Remo how Chiun managed to grasp sophisticated Western concepts when it suited his purpose, like coequal partner.

This, Chiun hastened to point out, did not mean that Remo was his equal in the eyes of the universe, but only in the blurred and narrow vision of the white organization for which they worked.

"I understand, Little Father," said Remo, turning off the asphalt road into a dirty driveway. Remo could only use the sideview mirror because Chiun's lacquered wooden chests jammed full the back seat and made the rearview mirror useless unless Remo wanted to look at a pink dragon on a bright blue background.

34."We are looking for a man named Oswald Willoughby, who is a commodities broker. He is going to testify about price-fixing on the commodities exchange. Someone or some organization dumped twentyfive million dollars worth of winter wheat on the exchange just at planting time. This caused one of the smallest plantings on record just when the world needed the most plantings. No one knows why this dumping occurred, but of the dealers who handled the bulk of the selling, two came up dead in Lake Michigan and the third is Oswald Willoughby. We're supposed to keep him alive."

Chiun thought a moment. Then he spoke.

"However," he said, "coequal does mean equal payment to Sinanju. It is good that we can get as much for quality as we can for shoddy. The villagers will appreciate my business ac.u.men."

"You didn't understand a word I said, did you?"

"We are to keep a man alive and then you mentioned some things that could not be true."

"Like what?" snapped Remo.

"For instance, no one knows why these men were killed. This is not true. Someone knows why."

"Well, I meant we don't know."

"I could have told you of your ignorance before we left."

"You don't understand how the market works, do you? Do you?" Remo looked for a white frame cabin with a green fence. He could see steam rise from the night-cool stream flowing through the hot morning.

"You didn't understand a word about winter wheat and prices. Well, I'll tell you. If prices are high at planting time, farmers plant more grain. Most people don't buy the grain to keep. They buy it to sell. They buy it 35.now to sell at a future time, like harvest time, when they expect the price will be more. Well, someone at planting time bought up a lot of what they call futures and dumped them on the market. Twenty-five million dollars worth. Now, while that's not much considering the total, the sudden dumping all at once sent the price skidding. Real low. It was perfect timing. Farmers couldn't get credit for large plantings and they didn't want them. So we've got a short crop this spring which explained part of the price rise in food."

"So?" said Chiun.

"So we're afraid it might get worse. That's why we've got to figure out what or who was willing to lose the bulk of twenty-five million dollars. There's a food crisis in the world."

"Why are you so worried? Sinanju has known food crises. You are telling me, you dare to tell me about food crises, you who were raised on meat and never went hungry a day in your life."

"Oh, Jeez," moaned Remo for he knew he would now hear the story of Sinanju, how because of starvation the village of Sinanju had to put their newly born babies into the cold waters of the West Korea Bay, how the village was food-poor, and how the Masters of Sinanju were born in desperation, how each Master for centuries had rented his services as an a.s.sa.s.sin to emperors and kings in far-off lands so that never again would the villagers have to send the babies "back to sleep" in the waters of the bay.

"Never again," said Chiun.

"It's more than fifteen hundred years since that happened," said Remo.

"When we say never again, we mean never again,"

36.said Chiun. "This is your tradition now also. You should learn it."

It sounded like a pot banging a pot down the road, through the scrub pines, whipped short with almost greenless branches by the Lake Erie winds. It sounded dull in the morning air that made the car seat sticky. It sounded like a little pop that morning sleepers shouldn't notice. It was a shot.

Remo saw a dark man run from the white house with the green fence. He tucked something into his belt as he trotted to a waiting pink Eldorado with its motor running. The car took off before the door was shut, a fast but not screeching start, kicking up little dust flurries. The driver intended to pa.s.s Remo on the left as all oncoming cars should. Remo occupied the lane. Chiun, who thought seat belts were bondage and was not about to wear one, caught the car crash with a slight upward motion lifting his light frame so that at the moment of impact, he was aloft. Two long fingernails of the right hand caught the dashboard in such a way that it looked as if he were doing a mild vertical one-handed pushup. The other hand caught flying gla.s.s. Remo stopped his forward motion with an elbow against the wheel and the same free flight uplift as the Master.

The door popped open and he was out of the car, on the road before the cars stopped their first spin. He caught the Eldorado, snapping open a door, and reached in past a b.l.o.o.d.y body to put on the brake.

He dragged the two still forms from the Eldorado and saw that the dark man had a gun in his belt. It smelled of a fresh shot. Remo felt for a heartbeat. It was the last strong flutter of a muscle about to die. It stopped.

37.The driver's heart was better. Remo felt around the body. Only a shoulder bone had that squishy loose feeling of a break. The face flowed red from gla.s.s cuts but it was not serious. Remo maneuvered his hand underneath the man's jaw, working on veins going up through the neck. The man's eyelids opened.

"Ooooh," he groaned. "Ooooooh."

"Hi there," said Remo.

"Oooooh," groaned the man. He was in his late forties and his face was a remnant of a teenage battle with acne. The acne had won.

"You're going to die," said Remo.

"Oh, my G.o.d, no. No."

"Your partner made the hit on Willoughby, didn't he? Oswald Willoughby."

"Was that the guy's name?"

"Yes. Who sent you?"

"Get me a doctor."

"It's too late. Don't go with this sin on your soul," said Remo.

"I don't want to die."

"You want to go without a confession? Who sent you?"

"No one special. It was just a hit. A five-grand hit. It was supposed to be easy."

"Where'd you get the money?"

"Joe got it. At Pete's."

"Where's Pete's?"

"East St. Louis. I was needing. I needed the dough. I was just out of Joliet. Couldn't get work."

"Where's Pete's?"

"Off Ducal Street."

"That's a great help."

"Everybody knows Pete's."

38."Who gave you the money for the hit?"

"Pete."

"You're a great help. Just Pete at Pete's in East St. Louis."

"Yeah. Get me a priest. Please. Someone. Anyone."

"Just rest here," said Remo.

"I'm dying. Dying. My shoulder's killing me."

Remo checked out the small white house. The door was shut but unlocked. The killer had had the presence of mind not to leave it ajar so that the body would probably not have been found until it made a stink.

Willoughby probably got it in bed, thought Remo, as he entered the house. But then he saw the TV lit with the sound turned low, and a silent interviewer asking a silent question to elicit a silent response, and Remo knew Willoughby had spent the night here in the living room. His last night.

The room smelled of stale whiskey. Willoughby lay on a couch behind the door, an open bottle of Seagram's Seven and an unfinished Milky Way on a tarnished end table. Willoughby's brains were spread out on the high back of the couch, powder burns on the close temple. A phone rang. It was under the couch. Remo answered it.

"Yeah," he said, lifting the phone and resting the base on Willoughby's stomach.

"Oh, h.e.l.lo, darling." It was a woman's voice. "I know I'm not supposed to phone but the garbage disposal is stuck. It's been stuck since dinner, Ozzie. I know I'm not supposed to call. Should I get the repairman? I'll get the repairman. It's the cauliflower that does it. And we don't even like cauliflower. You like it. I don't know why cauliflower. I don't even know why they told you not to give me the number. I mean, who 39.have these few phone calls I've made hurt? Right? Who have they hurt? Ozzie .. . are you there?"

Remo tried to answer but the only suitable answers were lies and he pressed down the receiver b.u.t.ton terminating the conversation. He left the phone off the cradle, buzzing a useless dial tone.

What was he going to tell her? That her phone calls had ruined Willoughby's only protection, the secrecy of his whereabouts? She had enough grief coming. By the time the dial tone turned into a continuous out-of-order whine, Remo found a stack of notes in the kitchen. They were in an old Eaton Corrasable Bond Box and there was a t.i.tle page: "Testimony of Oswald Willoughby."

Remo took the box. Outside, the driver of the hit car was discovering that he only had a broken bone. He leaned against the fender of the smashed-up car, pressing tight his injured shoulder with his free hand.

"Hey, I'm not gonna die. You're a d.a.m.ned liar, fella, a d.a.m.ned liar."

"No, I'm not," said Remo and with an ease of motion that made his right hand seem hardly to move at all, he let his index and forefinger out, penetrating the skull, which jerked the man's head back as if it had met a crane-hoisted wrecking ball. The feet flew over the head and the man slapped into the dust, silently and finally, without even a twitch of the spine.

Chiun, noticing that even to the breathing the blow had been without flaw, turned back to his trunks. They were undamaged. But they might have been and he told his pupil that such carelessness as his car driving could not be tolerated.

"We've got to get out of here and your trunks are 40.slowing us down, Little Father. Maybe I'd better do this a.s.signment alone," Remo said.

"We are coequal. I am not only your superior in training but on a.s.signments now, by order of Emperor Smith I am on the same level. My judgment is of equal weight to yours. My responsibility is equal to yours. Therefore you cannot say anymore, go home, Master of Sinanju, I will do this or do that alone. It is we. We do this or we do not do that. It is we. Never you anymore, but we. No more yous. We."