"Hello," he said and no one answered.
Within the hour, Ree Wok, the man who was not at the family gathering, telephoned.
"Thank you," he said. "Thank you for saving me."
"Did any escape?" Reggie asked.
"None. The entire house collapsed. Pieces were found a half-mile away, I have heard."
"Ree Wok, we declare you now head of the Wok clan."
"Yes, great Prince. But there are no Woks left."
"Take a wife," said Reggie. "We command it."
"Yes, great Prince."
Father was on the phone shortly thereafter and Reggie had to explain that he had reasons for what he did and the family had grown quite sloppy over the centuries and that finally the family would return to its full glory with the Koreans gone.
"Father," he concluded. "We just don't have time for you."
"Are they gone yet, the Koreans?"
"You don't even know who they are," said Reggie to the silly old man.
"Have you killed them?"
"We will," Reggie said.
(History of Sinanju from the gracious pen of Chiun, for those to come, that the House of Sinanju shall in its glory prosper and survive.)
"And through the years, Chiun would accept no obstacle, even though the pupil was not from precisely what was considered the old borders of the village. As has been mentioned in the histories, these borders changed often. Sometimes those who lived west of the mill were considered Sinanju. Sometimes not. Who was to say where the borders in one age began and where in another they left off? As has been mentioned in previous histories by Chiun, there might be those who would question, not without some foundation, whether Chiun's pupil was indeed born within the formal boundaries of the village. There are always those who will quibble.
"Nevertheless, through the years, Remo showed that Chiun could raise him to that level which could not be denied. He was Sinanju, even if he had been born as far away as the south village. Nay, even Peking or Tokyo, which he was not.
"During the time of rest, Chiun took Remo to an island in the new world Chiun had discovered. (See: Discovery of America, Emperor Who Would Not Serve.)
"And it came to pass that a total stranger came into Chiun and mentioning that Remo had been gone many days now bordering on weeks, said, 'Where has your son gone?'
" 'Son,' answered Chiun. 'Why do you say that?'
" 'Because,' said this simple but wise stranger, 'there is something about him that is so much your son. Or even your brother.'
"Here, from the lips of a third person, was proof that Remo, the pupil, was definitely of Sinanju even if he had been born, in the eyes of some, far west of the old mill."
"Yes, Mr. President," said Smith into the special device that would allow his voice to be scrambled. Only a telephone in the White House could unscramble it.
"He has been there for a week, sir," Smith said.
"Then why hasn't he stopped it?" the President said.
"I don't know, sir."
"Should I leave Washington?"
"I don't know."
"Well, dammit, Smith, what do you know? You run the organization that's supposed to know everything. What do you know?"
"He's on it, sir. And I don't know his methods. Only one other person does."
"The old Oriental? I like him. Use him too."
"I am afraid, sir, that according to the protocols under which I operate, you cannot order me to do things. You can only suggest or order me to disband. This was to protect the country from my organization in case a President should try to misuse it."
"I don't see how trying to save twenty million people from dying a horrible death is misusing your organization."
Smith knew that the death threats and that crazed Indonesian newsman trying to kill him with a sword had gotten to the President. He was not about to tell this distraught leader that the Oriental whom the President liked so much because he was old too had become difficult because Smith was using Remo when Remo should have been resting.
Smith was only glad that Remo demonstrated that even while he was at less than peak, he was still far beyond anything else in the field he might come up against.
So Smith assured the President that the Oriental was not needed.
"I will call you again only if it is absolutely necessary, sir. I don't think for the sake of our ongoing cover, we should be talking this much," Smith said.
"All right," said the President.
But before the day was out, Smith was phoning him. He had seen projected weather reports about a change in the jet stream and the President was going to have to leave Washington. The whole east coast would be in danger too.
Chapter Six
It was Indian country but the danger wasn't the Indians. They were the victims. The rolling hills where antelope and buffalo had grazed until the introduction of the rifle and cash for their skins, actually covered in their scenic beauty a bureaucratic foul-up so dangerous that every department had kept passing it to another department since the First World War.
Underneath grass, far beneath where gophers made their underground villages, were four square miles of nerve gas, the first containers put there in case Kaiser Bill didn't learn his lesson and America needed to use gas warfare in the trenches of France. But at the end of the Great War, later to be given number one, gas warfare was outlawed.
Like all the other countries with standing armies, America kept the gas just in case anyone else would violate the treaty. And then World War II broke out and new, more virulent gas was manufactured in case anyone broke the treaty in that war.
And then the cold war started and one never knew what Russia might do, so more new gas was manufactured.
And there was never a war in which America used gas, nor did any other country, no matter how base its philosophy, until in the Middle East an Arab country based on the principles of "compassion and justice" used it against a fellow Islamic country, based on "justice and compassion."
Like all the other civilized countries who had never used their gas in war, America had been making it since Woodrow Wilson and the Sopwith Camel airplane and had an awful lot of deadly gas. Acres of it. Miles of it.
In the early 1900s, they started stockpiling it with a friendly tribe of Indians in the Pakeeta reservation. The deal was one bottle of whiskey for one can of gas. The can would be buried underground and the Pakeeta would never even have to see it, much less smell it. The Pakeeta had the word of the United States government, a sacred promise from its leader and people. The gas was safe.
Since the Pakeeta chief had already sampled an awful lot of the whiskey the government would give just to store the gas on the Pakeeta reservation just south of Billings, Montana, he took the sacred word of the white man.