"Yes. The new President is elected in November, but does not actually take office until the following January."
"Then there is a period of three months in which you may have need of our services," said Chiun happily.
"Yes," Smith admitted slowly. "But as you know, things have been very quiet over the last year. I hardly think that anything crucial will come up, although one never knows. The truth is, Master of Sinanju, even if we are not ordered to disband, CURE may no longer need an enforcement arm."
"Nonsense," snapped the Master of Sinanju. "An assassin is as indespensable as breathing. But let us accept your argument for the moment. If you, as you say, fear the termination of your office, then there is no loss in renegotiating now. If you are laid off, Remo and I will go our separate ways."
"I'm afraid we can't negotiate Remo's role at this time," Smith pointed out. "The current President believes him to be dead. Killed during that crisis with the Soviets last year, remember?"
"We will discuss Remo's role at a later date, then," Chiun said firmly, settling onto the rug.
Smith, knowing that was the signal that negotiations had formally begun, joined him on the floor, a yellow legal pad on his lap. He held a number-two pencil poised to record the terms.
"I propose renewing our contract under its present terms. No additional payment is required," Chiun said loftily, certain that Smith would jump at the chance. Chiun had stuck him with a substantial increase every year for the last decade.
Smith hesitated. His mouth opened to say yes, but he snapped it shut before the word escaped.
"Too high," Smith said flatly.
"Too..." Chiun began, his face clouding. He restrained himself. In the entire history of the House of Sinanju, no Master has ever renewed a contract at terms inferior to those of the preceding year. But Chiun desperately wanted this contract renewed, so he kept his anger within him. Next year-if there was a next year in America-he would more than make up for this indignity. "Make a counteroffer, then," Chiun said stiffly.
Smith considered. "I really think you should make the next offer," he said craftily.
Chiun thought rapidly. He knocked forty percent off the basic terms, and calculated the loss. It made him cringe, but he offered that amount to Smith. "No more, no less," he added.
"Another ten-percent reduction might persuade me," Smith said unconcernedly.
The Master of Sinanju leapt to his feet in a swirl of kimono skirts. His cheeks puffed out. His fingernails, like a thousand flashing knives, made dangerous patterns in the air. Smith recoiled.
The, getting a grip on himself, the Master of Sinanju gracefully sank back onto the rug like a dandelion see alighting on a lawn.
When he spoke, his soft voice contained the merest breath of menace, like poisoned honey.
"Done," Chiun said.
"Draw up the contract and I will look it over," said Smith.
Stonily the Master of Sinanju found his feet and executed a brittle bow, and without another word he walked stiff-legged from the office.
Harold Smith returned to his desk and allowed himself a rare smile. Never in all his years as director of CURE had he gotten the better of the Master of Sinanju. Smith was a parsimonious man. But each year he had regularly shipped enough of the taxpayers' money to the tiny fishing village of Sinanju to refloat the collective debts of many third-world countries.
Too bad that it was all probably going to be for nothing, he though as he brought up the CURE computer terminal for a final news-digest check before going home for the evening.
The first item wiped the remnants of the smile from his dry-as-dust face.
It was the news summary of a speech given by the Democratic presidential candidate, Governor Michael Princippi. The gist of his speech was a pledge to transfuse money in the social-security system from the intelligence budget. Specifically, Princippi promised to go after the countless "black projects" that were built into the federal budget, the namelsss accounting fictions that enabled the federal government to channel billions of tax dollars yearly into covert operations and defense projects so sensitive that they could not be named or described for Congress except behind closed doors.
"Let's shine a light into the so-called black budget and see who and what we find," Governor Princippi was quoted as saying.
Smith clutched the edge of his oak desk as if to get a grip on himself. First the Vice-President and now this. It was obvious that this speech was a tit-for-tat response to the Vice-President's call for an end to rogue intelligence operations. It did not mean that Governor Princippi knew about CURE. That would be a worst-case scenario if one ever existed.
But in the final analysis, it might not matter. CURE was funded by black-budget money. Fully half of the black-project money appropriated for the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency, not to mention certain segments of the defense budget, actually wound up under Dr. Harold W. Smith's operational control.
Either way, it looked as if CURE were going to go under with the installation of the next President, no matter who won the election. Assuming the presidential candidates kept their campaign promises.
Smith groaned and reached for the shattered bottle of children's aspirin. If this kept up, he'd have to go back to adult dosages, and hang his ulcer.
Chapter 7
It had been so hard.
First, in Sinanju. He had summoned the purple birds to scare off the villagers before he entered the village itself. He could have slipped in at night, unseen. But a sleeping guard might have tempted the beast within him. He had let the beast out in Beirut. The beast had decimated Jalid's Hezbollah bandits. That had cooled its lust to kill.
On the flight to America, he had had to restrain himself again. He hadn't believed it was possible to shackle the beast during the long transatlantic flight, but he had. He wondered if he were mastering it at last. He doubted it. But he was older, wiser, and stronger than the last time.
The problem was, so was the beast.
He pulled the rental car off the road when he came to the great piney woods of Maine's Allagash Wilderness. There would be no people in these forsaken woods. No people meant no temptation to kill.
He stepped out of the car and stripped off the American-style clothes that felt so heavy and coarse against his pale white skin.
He was nude only as long as he needed to be to don his purple silk fighting suit. He belted the yellow sash around his waist.
He walked into the forest on his bare feet because he liked the feel of pine needles against his naked soles. As a child, growing up on a Kentucky farm, walking barefoot through the corn meant washing manure off your feet afterward. He carried his white sandals in his hands. That was all he carried. He had no need of possessions. He had nothing. He needed nothing. His life was empty except for the goal which had driven him to Sinanju in the first place.
Even the squirrels fled at his approach. He wondered if it was a scent or a vibration or an aura that caused all animals and children to recoil from him. He was not ugly. He had a pleasant face. Yet they broke before him, the beaver and the bear alike, like the Red Sea parting before the wrath of God.
There was a tiny brown doe nibbling at the grass. He saw her before she saw him. She was beautiful. Just once, he would like to pet an animal. But the beast within him heard and grew jealous.
The doe looked up, saw him, and exploded into a rain of blood, flesh, and fragments of raw bone.
He wept for the doe, even as the beast within him rejoiced at the scent of fresh blood. He walked on.
The cabin stood in a clearing of scattered pine needles. The spiders had retaken the eaves as they always did each summer. The intact webs across the door told him no one had intruded upon his home since he was last here, so many weeks ago.
He opened the door. He had not bothered to lock it. The furnishings were sparse. There was nothing worth stealing, unless someone was desperate enough to walk off with the old black-and-white television that sat in the middle of the living room floor.
He stepped over to the TV and squatted before it like a votary before a pagan idol. He switched it on, but kept the sound turned down. He did not want anything to intrude upon his thoughts.
The television would be his window to the outside. It would tell him when Jalid first struck. That would be his signal that it was time to rejoin the civilized world. In the interim, it was too dangerous for him to remain in the city, where the beast would hunt the innocent, not because he wished it, but because the beast was greater than his own will to achieve his ends.
He focused on the television screen, but it was late and there were only test patterns on all channels. It did not matter. He settled on one and focused all his attention upon it.
It was the only way he knew to focus himself so that the beast remained shackled.
Above his head, the naked ceiling bulb exploded into hundreds of opaque slivers. He had not touched it, except with his mind.