"I love my country, too, little father," said Remo. "I'm sorry. I do. I just don't care about money."
"A wound to a father's heart."
"I'm sorry," said Remo. And the conversation over, Remo turned back to English and back to Smith.
"Well, that was a spirited discussion on our legal system, wasn't it?" said Smith.
"Yeah," said Remo. His voice felt hoarse, not because of the volume he had used but because of the emotion that had come upon him. He honestly did feel torn now between Sinanju and America. Once he thought he could make them work in harmony, each serving the other. Now he realized this was impossible. East was East. And West was West.
"Your Constitution rings with the beauty of your greatest poets, its words such harmony of the soul that flowers blush in shame," said Chiun. "Now I fully understand that wonderful document."
"Good, I think you do," said Smith. "I think he does in a deeper way than I might have imagined. Don't you think so, Remo?"
"Sure," said Remo curtly.
"Well, because we are a nation of laws, the legal system is crucial. As cumbersome and as difficult as it is, it is the one key protection we have from ourselves, from rapacious politicians and bureaucrats, from the powerful harming the weak, do you see?"
Remo stared out the window into the darkness. Chiun examined his hands. Smith continued.
"Because there are so many lawsuits nowadays, and because the judgments have become so high, costs of producing things have gone up. We're losing some of our finest surgeons because they refuse to pay the high insurance premiums. Obstetricians are so racked by lawsuits their malpractice insurance sometimes comes to three-quarters of their income; many are leaving the profession. Industries are being threatened with shutdown."
Smith paused. Remo said, "Un-huh," and then examined his nails. Chiun said just about the same thing but it came out as a laudation of Smith's wisdom. Then Chiun looked out the window.
"And we have found one particular law firm to be the biggest problem in this area. They have raised ambulance-chasing to a science. I'm sure they're behind many of the terrible tragedies they jump on, but we can't prove it."
"You want us to eliminate them?" said Remo.
"No. This is a legal problem. You can't go around killing lawyers. What we must do is remove them from within the system. We have to get legal proof to get them disbarred and thrown in jail. Once they are ruined it will act as an example to other ambulance chasers, or at least cut down the number of industry-threatening negligence cases."
"Just a minute. I know you have thousands of little gnomes everywhere, all of them feeding information into your computers without them knowing about it. Why can't you do it with that law firm?"
"We have," said Smith. "And everyone has died-not just died, but died in an accident. A shower suddenly spits out scalding water at a secretary with a heart problem. She dies. A junior lawyer working undercover for one of the government agencies has his roof collapse on him, killing him. Now, the roof suffered what appeared to be normal decay in the joists. And this shower had always lacked protection against spurts of extra-hot water. So we can't prove a thing."
"So?" said Remo.
"So we want people to gather evidence who can't be killed by accidents."
"I can be killed by an accident," said Remo.
"Theoretically, I suppose, yes," said Smith.
"It's not a theoretical life, Smitty."
In Korean, Chiun said, "Charge him a higher price and say yes. It is all the same nonsense when you are working for a lunatic."
"All right. Where do we begin?" said Remo in English.
"There's been an accident in Gupta, India. We're sure Palmer, Rizzuto are behind it. Go there. See if you can figure out how they did it, and see if you can link it to those shysters. Rizzuto was on hand a little bit too early and seems to have the ear of the prime minister."
"India?" said Chiun. "Ah, the Moguls. The grandeur of the rajahs. India has always been a second home to the House of Sinanju."
"Be careful, Remo," said Smith. "We don't know how these guys work. They even have programs that seem to foil our computers. They can conduct conversations we can't break into. And they seem to be able to cause accidents at will. They can make anything not work."
"So can I," said Remo.
"On purpose," said Smith.
He wondered why there was a sudden change of activity. He was good at wondering. But when he wondered, it was different from others, and it always had been. He wondered what he would find when he saw something that was not working properly.
It did not have to be a big thing. It just was very clear to him, clearer than sunshine. He could not remember when things like clocks and faucets were not obvious in their workings.
And so when he tinkered with the program systems of Palmer, Rizzuto the thing that stuck him this day was that an element of surveillance had changed.
First, there was the increased activity in the database of Palmer, Rizzuto That meant at one time someone was doing something to the Palmer, Rizzuto information that he, or she, shouldn't have been doing. This had led to a simple refraction program based on binary algorithms that spit out the names of the perpetrators as easily as if it were a list of clients.
There were four so far, including a secretary and a young lawyer.
But what was apparent most of all in these strange intrusions into the sanctity of Palmer, Rizzuto was the hint of a larger system.
It was as obvious as a leaky faucet. Someone meant Palmer, Rizzuto no good and was watching them. And when this system, so organized and relentless, suddenly downgraded its attempt to rifle information from the law firm's computers, this man who knew how things worked understood there was a different, more subtle attack coming against the people who had made him so wealthy.
He phoned Palmer at his home even though it was Palmer's wedding night.
Palmer's wife answered, screaming.
"You can speak to that bastard anytime. I'm leaving," she said.
"Hello, Nathan," he said. "It's me."
"I can't afford any more help. We haven't made anything on Gupta yet."
"I've called with a warning."
"How much?"
"No charge this time. I was just tinkering. You know how I love to tinker."
"What's the warning?"
"You're going to come under attack from a new direction. "
"Well, that's a relief. I wasn't trusting anyone there for a while."
"I am afraid this one is going to be more dangerous than the others. You see, from what I can tell just by understanding the programs they used to get at your confidential information, this is not the kind of organization to pull back. If it appears to be pulling back, it's only bringing in something far more dangerous."
"We don't have money yet. Can you handle it?"