His body was going and now the world was going too.
Smith tried one more time to reach Remo or Chiun at all the possible access numbers. All he got was a hotel in New York City and an unanswered ringing telephone in a room.
Smell the flowers. He never liked smelling flowers. He liked succeeding. He liked his country being safe. He liked doing his job. He wouldn't even have flowers in his office. Waste of money. Belonged in a field somewhere. Or a vase.
"Where are you, Chiun?" he muttered. "Where are you, Remo?"
Like a prayer answered, the telephone rang.
"Smitty," Remo said, "I can't make head or tail out of this."
"Out of what? Where are you? Where is Chiun? What's going on?"
Remo simulated a referee's whistle. "Hold it, hold it. Time out. Me first."
"All right," Smith said. "What have you got?"
"We started to get close last night to whoever's messing with the computers and all, and he erased some bank records on me. The last message said 'Good night Malibu.' What do you think that could mean?"
"Malibu as in California?" Smith asked.
"Right. Just 'Good night Malibu.' Any ideas?"
"You think the person behind this might be in Malibu?" Smith asked.
"It's a possibility," Remo said. "I don't know."
"What time was this? What time did it all happen?" Smith asked. "Try to be exact."
"At exactly five-fifty-two A.M." Remo said. "Think you can do anything?"
"I'm going to try."
"Good," Remo said and gave him a New York City telephone number where he could be reached. "Try to get me a lead."
"All right," Smith said. "I'll work on it. Do you know where Chiun is?"
"Probably back at the hotel room. Or in Central Park cleaning up candy wrappers. You never know. Why?"
"Because, Remo-- because-- well, dammit, he's trying to publish his autobiography," Smith said, his voice crackling with intensity.
"Let's hope we're all around to read it," Remo said as he hung up.
sChapter Seven
Reigning Master, Glory of the House of Sinanju, Protector of the Village, Holder of the Wisdom, Vessel of Magnificence, Chiun himself had entered the office of the senior editor of Bingham Publishing, then demanded to be escorted out.
"I said 'senior editor,'" said Chiun, disdaining the small cubicle with the manuscripts piled on chairs and the single plastic couch. There was hardly room to stand, let alone to move.
In the time of the first great Master of Sinanju, Wang the Good, when he served one of the greater dynasties of China, a punishment for a minor official was to move him from his office into a cubicle in which one step in any direction would have him nose-first against a wall. Some Confucian scholars took their own lives rather than be humilated in such an office.
"Mr. Chiun," said a pleasant woman with a southern drawl that could smother a sidewalk. "This is the senior editor's office."
Chiun looked around once more, very slowly, very obviously.
"If this is the senior editor's office, where do the slaves work?"
"Golly, we are the slaves," laughed the woman and called in several other editors to hear the comment made by this absolutely wonderful old gentleman.
Everyone thought it was funny. Everyone thought the absolutely wonderful old gentleman was funny. Everyone thought the book was absolutely wonderful. The editor most of all. She had some wonderful suggestions for this wonderful manuscript. Just wonderful.
She talked like one of those young women Chiun had seen wearing pompoms. Lots of enthusiasm. There probably had not been so much enthusiasm since Genghis Khan went through his first Western army in less than an hour and thought all Europe was his.
There was even an editor who had cried at the end when she read about the ingratitude of the first white ever to learn Sinanju and how forgiving Chiun was and how much Chiun had endured.
"I have told few," Chiun said in quiet righteousness, content that lo, now after these many years, the full story of the injustices imposed on him by Remo would be shown to the world, so the whole world could see how Chiun would properly forgive Remo. The difficulty in forgiving Remo in the past had always been that Remo so often failed to realize that he had done anything wrong.
Now he would have to know. The history of Sinanju and Chiun's reign would be in print.
The senior editor, her little fists punching in the air, couldn't get over how much she loved this wonderful book. She could hardly go to sleep, she loved it so much. It was wonderful and she had just a few wonderful suggestions.
"Sub Rights has this wonderful idea to increase sales," she said. "Could we make the assassins crazed killers let loose on the world? That would be even more wonderful."
Slowly, Chiun explained that the House of Sinanju had survived precisely because the Masters were not crazed killers.
"Golly," sounded the editor, again punching the air like a cheerleader. "You've got more than fifty assassins and every one of them is nice. There have got to be some bad assassins. Some real rotters. Someone the reader can hate. Do you see?"
"Why?" asked Chiun.
"Because you have too many nice guys. Too many. We don't need all these assassins. Let's have one. One single focus. One assassin and he is crazed. Let's make him a Nazi."
A red pencil flew through the manuscript.
"Now that we have the Nazi murderer, we've got to have the good guy chase him. Let's make him a British detective. Let's have a single focus of place too. What about Great Britain? Let's have something hang in the balance. World War II. Got a Nazi, got to have World War II." The red pencil flew again. "Golly, this is wonderful."
"But Great Britain is not Sinanju," Chiun said.
"We'll call it Sinanju. A sleepy little English village called Sinanju. We're just making the book work better. You can't have more than fifty assassins from generation to generation. Give us a break, Mr. Chiun. I don't want to force my views on you. You can do what you want. It's your book. And it's wonderful."
"Will there be that part about the ingratitude of the white?" Chiun asked.
"Of course. I loved it. We all loved it. Speaking of which, let's get to some love interest. Bipsey Boopenberg in Binding had some problems because there was no strong woman character. So we have Nazi for Sub Rights and we have a woman for Binding. A strong woman. Let's say she's on an island. Along with her crippled husband. And she's not getting along with him. And the Nazi murderer falls in love with her and she realizes she has got to stop him from getting his information to, let's say, Hitler. Why not Hitler? It was the Second World War, right? Gosh, this is wonderful."
"You will leave in the part about the white ingratitude?"
"Absolutely. Now Dudley Sturdley in Accounting had some problems too. He really loved the book. But he didn't like the opening about this Korean fishing village that couldn't support itself so the best capable man went out to hire himself out as an assassin-- a tradition there ever since the dawn of history. Let's keep in line with our modern approach. Let's have the Nazi being discovered by a British housewife and then he kills her and that starts the whole book."