"Worse," Chiun snapped. "You would make yourself a martyr to a cause no one but you understands."
"Nope," Remo said. "Not in the martyr biz. Actually, I was just gonna go get you. I'm glad you're here. You saved me another trip out to that dump."
Chiun's face hardened. "Do not dare speak ill of Luzuland, American. Yes, American," he stressed, as if employing the most vile of curses. "Those simple people have something you will never have."
"Cholera?" Remo suggested.
The tiny Korean stomped his feet in anger. "Respect for their elders," he hissed. "Bubu would never abandon his chief to an idiotic boom device."
"There's more than one bomb, Little Father."
"Worse still," Chiun accused. The anger seemed to drain from him all at once. "Oh, Remo," he lamented. "Have these visitations so hardened your heart? Do you now covet the title of Reigning Master so greatly that you would not even give me time to at least make peace with my ancestors?"
It was an accusation Remo had endured before. This time, however, it took on special meaning. "Don't say that, Chiun," he said quietly. "And I was coming to get you. The bombs aren't due to go off until midnight. We'll get out of here in plenty of time."
He headed for the bathroom. Chiun trailed him inside.
"We are not going anywhere," Chiun insisted. "Well, we're sure as hell not staying at ground zero," Remo replied. Running water in the basin, he splashed some on his face.
As he stood in the door, Chiun saw Remo's sewer clothes stuffed in the toilet. Some water had spilled over onto the tile floor. His nose rebelled at the stench.
"What is this?" he demanded.
"Didn't Bubu tell you?" Remo asked, drying his hands.
"He mentioned some misadventure the two of you shared in a cesspool. I assumed you were on yet another quest to root out other ancestors of yours who are not of Sinanju."
"Lay off," Remo griped.
Flinging down the towel, he left the room. Chiun followed him into the living area of the suite. "Very well," the Master of Sinanju replied. "I will not speak ill of your mongrel heritage or your quixotic search for the ragpickers who hatched you, but if I am going to be that nice to you, you must give something to me in return. The location of the boom devices."
Remo shook his head firmly. "You've got a lot to learn about sucking up," he said. "And I'm not telling."
Chiun pulled at the tufts of hair above his ears. "Stop this madness!" he demanded, jumping up and down. "Do you care nothing for the Luzu? If these devices go off, they will be destroyed, as well."
"You don't know that," Remo said, his brow furrowing. "Luzuland is pretty far away from Bachsburg. If the cloud blows the right way, they could come out of this fine."
Chiun threw up his hands. "Woe to the Luzu that they must risk their futures on your feebleminded guesses."
"Well, why don't you go back and get them the hell out of there?" Remo snapped, color rising in his cheeks. "Chiun, if these bombs go off, the whole world wins. Don't you think I haven't thought about the people here? I have. But when I weighed them against the whole rest of the planet, I'm sorry. They lost."
"I cannot believe what I am hearing," Chiun gasped. "You have truly gone mad."
"I was mad before I got here," Remo said. "Mad that we were losing the fight. Mad that I wasn't making a difference. Now I've been given a chance to do what I couldn't do on my own. When the bombs go off, we sweep the planet clean of nearly every bigwig bastard there is. We can start again with a clean slate."
"Oh, why did you have to be afflicted with Master's disease?" Chiun wailed. "Could I not have a pupil who was blind? Or lame?" He stabbed a sharpened fingernail at Remo. "You say you are worried about the entire world. Tell me, Remo Williams, what has the world ever done for you?"
Remo's shoulders sank imperceptibly. Only the Master of Sinanju would have seen the subtle motion.
"Not much, I guess," he answered quietly
"How dare you!" Chiun shrieked, his shrill voice rising ten octaves. Stemware in the hotel bar twelve stories below rang in protest. "The world has given you me! And what have I ever asked from you? Nothing! I give, give, give while you take, take, take. Well, I am asking for something now. I command you to tell me where those booms are!"
When Remo spoke, his voice was small. "I'm sorry, Chiun. I can't."
Chiun studied his pupil's face for a long moment, his thin lips fading into an invisible rictus of disgust. Remo refused to meet his teacher's penetrating gaze.
"Pah!" Chiun spit all at once. "You are an obstinate fool." He spun away from Remo, his kimono swirling wildly at his ankles. He marched into the bedroom, calling angrily over his shoulder as he went, "If you will not listen to true reason, perhaps you will give ear to the idiot logic of another blockheaded white."
"YOU WHAT!?"
The voice of Harold W. Smith over the international line was a mixture of shock and horror. Remo could actually hear the crack of Smith's arthritic knuckles as they tightened on the receiver.
"Aside from his overuse of the word 'lunatic,' Chiun got it about right," Remo replied thinly. The Master of Siaanju had placed the call to Smith from the bedroom. He was on that extension now as Remo spoke on the living-room phone.
"It is the waning days of his illness that has made him do this thing, Emperor," Chiun interjected. "The Master's disease I told you about many years ago has nearly run its course. He has decided to mark the occasion of his recovery with an act of utter lunacy."
The old Korean had mentioned Remo's illness when first he called Smith. It had been so many years since he had heard of it that it took the CURE director a moment to remember.
"Illness or not, this is totally unacceptable, Remo," Smith insisted.
"Accept it," Remo said flatly.
"How many bombs are there?" Smith begged.
"I don't know," Remo replied honestly. "I only saw the one. But Deferens said there were more."
"You must find out their exact locations," Smith said, trying to inject a reasonable tone into his lemony voice. "They must be disarmed."
"No way," said Remo. "I didn't decide on this on a whim, Smitty. We've been presented with a real opportunity here. Think about all the skunks who are in this town right now. We could get them all. No more of this nickel-and-dime water-treading crapola we've been doing all these years."
Smith did not allow his own earlier doubts to invade their conversation. "That cannot be a factor," he said.
"Why not?" Remo pressed, his voice passionate. "These creeps are like weeds. We pull one out, and another five sprout up. We've been giving the world's problems an ounce of CURE all these years when what they've really been screaming for is a pound of prevention. We can do that here. Today. Think about it, Smitty. We'll finally have the upper hand after all these years. That's got to be worth one crummy city."
Smith remained unmoved. "And what of the innocent people in Bachsburg?" he asked. "Have you given them any thought at all?"
"Yeah, as a matter of fact, I have," Remo said. "What's the population of Bachsburg?"
Smith hesitated. "About one hundred and fifty thousand, including the wider metropolitan area," he replied slowly.
"And how many people are victims of crime every year?"
He saw now where Remo was headed. "On a global scale, those statistics are not available," Smith insisted.
"You don't have to tell me," Remo said. "I know it's more than the population here. A lot more."