"And yet the glory of Sinanju, the days when the great House of Assassins was properly honored by civilized nations, surprises you. Persians remember their assassins. Americans remember nothing, especially not gratitude."
"I am very grateful to you, Little Father, for all you have taught me," Remo said.
"You're the worst of whites," said Chiun.
"When it comes to knowing what is, there is no match for you," Remo said. "I have never questioned that. Not once."
"The French are acceptable although they do not wash. The Italians, yes, even Italians are acceptable although their breath is foul. Even the British. But I was cursed with an American student. A hybrid white. And yet I gave without stint or complaint. Your lunatic government contracted for my services and then gave me a thing like you to turn into an assassin. I should have returned home. I would have been justified. I could simply have said this pale piece of pig's ear is much too ugly to allow in my presence and I could have walked away from you and this imbecilic country of yours. But instead I stayed and I trained you. And what do I get? Ingratitude. Surprise that what I say is true."
"All I'm saying," Remo said, "is that the old legends tend to get a bit, well, glorified."
"Of course. How else could one treat the awesome magnificence of the glory of the House of Sinanju?" Chiun asked.
Remo sat down in front of Chiun. The old man turned within his yellow robes. He turned so that he faced away.
"Little Father," Remo said to the back of Chiun's head. "I respect what the House of Sinanju is because I have Sinanju. I am part of it. But the rest of the world doesn't have quite that high opinion of assassins. And that Sinanju was remembered in Iran after centuries was gratifying-- yeah, gratifying." Remo liked that. He thought he had really come out of that one well.
Chiun was quiet a moment. And then he turned. Remo had done it. He was so surprised that he couldn't quite remember if it were the first time Chiun had ever responded to his reasoning and his apology. He would have to remember how he did it. He felt quite confident and he smiled.
"Did you remember heads like melons on the ground or did you just say fruit?" Chiun asked.
"I got to melons," Remo said.
"You forgot melons," said Chiun, and a bony finger with a long tapering nail came out from the robe and rose toward the ceiling of the penthouse suite of the Peachtree Plaza. Chiun was making a point.
"If you had listened well, you would have remembered the melons. You would have remembered heads littering the fields like melons. You would have performed better. But why should I be listened to? It is impossible to teach someone who thinks he knows everything."
"Of course I don't know everything," Remo protested.
"Well, I do," Chiun said. And on that he contended that Remo should listen to everything in the future, as he should have been listening in the past.
Chiun was not the only problem with the Iran assignment. There was a message waiting for Remo at the desk of the hotel. Aunt Catherine had called. Therefore Remo was to phone the coded number that would automatically scramble from both ends.
It was answered far north in a sanitarium overlooking Long Island Sound. Headquarters.
"Where have you been? Remo, the White House is desperate. We promised them protection for the next crucial month and then you disappear."
"They have it," Remo said. "They have the best protection."
"Remo, the White House had to publicly ring itself with concrete barricades to stop truck bombers. That's an international admission of weakness. But we know there are suicide groups aimed at the President's life. We can't stop them with normal security. We had your assurance that the President would be protected. Where are you?"
"Home, or whatever passes for it this week."
"What about the protection?"
"The President's got the best kind," Remo said.
"He doesn't see you. Where is his protection?"
"Because he can't see it doesn't mean he doesn't have it."
"Please don't get Oriental with me, Remo. We have a problem here of Iranian suicide squads who have vowed to kill the President."
"Smitty," Remo said patiently. "Don't worry about those things, will you? It's taken care of."
Dr. Harold W. Smith found himself looking at the telephone now when he talked to Remo. If Remo said it was taken care of, it was taken care of, and that was that and Smith wanted to get off the telephone. Keeping a phone line open longer than he had to extended the risk, scrambler or no scrambler, and Smith found himself worrying more and more these days about the security of the secret organization, CURE.
In his years as the head of CURE, Harold W. Smith had grown old. His hands were not as steady nor his movements as quick. Even his mind had dulled somewhat. But what really had grown old was his spirit. He was tired.
Maybe it was because when the organization began, there was so much hope. A secret agency to work outside the Constitution to fight America's enemies. Someday, a crime-free society. It was a grand goal, but it had never been reached. CURE struggled all the time, just to stay even, and when they had added Remo as their enforcement arm, to punish those who somehow the law missed, it was all just more of the same. More treading water. It wasn't progress, just survival, and it had made Smith a tired old man who worried too much.
But in all those years, not once had Remo told Smith something was taken care of when it wasn't.
"All right," Smith said. "I'll tell him."
He put down the telephone and looked through the one-way windows of Folcroft Sanitarium. The Long Island Sound was churning with dark clouds overhead and the winds whipped silly sailboats toward shore where they should have been an hour before. Smith's mouth felt dry and he looked at his hand. It had age spots. Remo's teacher was old, but he never seemed to get any older. And Remo hadn't seemed to age a day. But Smith had. Yet what worried him was not that his body was aging but that his mind was aging faster. He was slipping.
He pulled out a drawer, picked up a small red telephone and waited. He recognized the voice. So would most Americans. It was the voice of the President.
"Sir," said Smith. "Everything has been taken care of."
"Where is he? I haven't seen him."
"It's taken care of. Those concrete barricades against the trucks aren't really necessary now."
"You were supposed to have him here to protect me. I didn't see him," the President said.
"He handled it, sir."
"I know this sounds a bit far-out, but can he make himself invisible?"
"I don't know. He is aware of how people move their eyes, but I really can't say," Smith said.
"And the older one is even better, right?"
The President often asked that question. He liked hearing that there was a man at least eighty years old who was physically superior to Smith's awesome assassin. The President did not even know that the assassin's name was Remo and that his teacher was named Chiun.
"In many respects, the older one is better," Smith said.
"At least eighty, huh?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you say we're safe?"
"You're safe from the truck bombers, the people who'd give up their own lives to get yours."