"It's the best I can do until you get back the treasure of Sinanju."
"That's still lost, is it?" laughed Arieson.
"How do you know so much?" asked Remo.
"I just watch you guys hack around and laugh my insides out," said Areison. "Let me tell you about this city. It's good to be home again. I hated Hibernia, and your new country, Remo."
"What the hell do you want?" asked Remo.
"To do what I do. I'll get what I want unless you fellas give me what I deserve."
"And what does that mean?" asked Remo.
"Chiun will tell you. Don't worry, only the dead have seen the last of me."
"Well, you haven't seen the last of me," said Remo.
"Wanta fight, big boy?" laughed Arieson.
This time Remo tried something entirely strange. If all the blows of Sinanju had not worked, then perhaps a straight punch to the stomach, fairly slow, not much faster than a professional boxer, would work. Remo let it go and shattered the fine wooden chair on which Mr. Arieson had sat.
The room was filled with the dead and the quiet. But not with Mr. Arieson.
"I can believe this troublemaker has some strange powers. But I can't believe, Little Father, that pile of junk you call the treasure of Sinanju has any bearing on this. You just want it back."
"Until we regain the treasure of Sinanju, Remo, we will be helpless against Mr. Arieson. I am sorry you do not believe me. But you can believe this. Until we regain that treasure, I will consider you obliged to consummate your marriage with Poo."
"But you heard the pope. I'm not married. I've never been married."
"That's for Roman Catholics, Remo. You're Sinanju."
"But you said you followed the Catholic laws."
"And since when, Remo, do you believe anything I tell an emperor?" said Chiun.
They left the Vatican the way they came. Out on the street in front of the restaurant, where the owner was trying to have the two arrested for ruining his basement, Chiun said:
"We have missed the glorious ages of Sinanju, Remo. Make a son for us, so that he might see an age of assassinry, where the corrupt and despotic do not take their people to war, but hire professionals like ourselves to do the proper work."
"I'm happy with the time I'm in," said Remo.
"You're never happy," said Chiun.
"Neither are you," said Remo.
"No," said Chiun, "I always say I am unhappy but I enjoy it. You always say you are happy but you never enjoy it."
"I'm not going back to Sinanju, Little Father."
"And I am not leaving Sinanju until you recover the treasure."
"Then good-bye, Little Father," said Remo.
"Good-bye," said Chiun, refusing to look at him.
"Would you want to marry Poo if you were me?" asked Remo. But Chiun did not answer. He chose to walk around one of his favorite cities as Remo hailed a cab to take him to the airport.
Back in America, Smith made the rare gesture of allowing Remo to return to Folcroft, an area he was supposed to avoid to help sustain the cover of the sanitarium. Remo as well as Chiun had been seen at random points around the country, but no one had yet connected them to the organization housed on Long Island Sound. No one, that is, who was allowed to live.
Smith was even more serious as he brought Remo into a special situation room, with maps on the wall and grids on a table. They were alone here, and Remo could see that Smith was figuring out patterns of Mr. Arieson.
"So far, Mr. Arieson has been random, like a ball in a roulette wheel. He would bounce into a major area of conflict and bounce to a minor one."
Remo nodded this was true.
"Now, he is back to the most major of all. I think we're going to have a war with Soviet Russia, and you may be the only one who can stop it," said Smith.
"Stop it?" asked Remo. "I can't even lay a hand on the guy." But even now, he was having an especially good thought about Russia, and her name was Anna.
Chapter 10
Anna Chutesov once again saw the panic. It always came with field marshal's braid on its shoulders, and the traditional ranking officer's field cap.
Panic came in stone faces talking with apparent calm about opportunities and risks. It always came cloaked in that all-encompassing garbage bag called: "National Security."
In Russia those words were more holy and central to life than Jesus was to Christianity. And they were always invoked when the military leadership was being pressured to act rationally in a time of crisis.
"Comrade Sister Chutesov, you cannot call in the Americans. You are endangering national security," said a field marshal who had survived the Second World War and Stalin and had enough big shiny medals on his chest to fill a checkerboard. He was indeed a hero of the Soviet Union, known for his implacable calm in the face of danger.
All heads nodded around the little clearing in the woods just south of Moscow. There were fifteen generals and Politburo members. Their most loyal aides, some colonels, some majors, stood just beyond the clearing with AK-47's at the ready. Some of the men stamped their feet to keep out the early-autumn cold. Someone passed around a lone hot cup of tea. Anna ignored the cold. She always wore the latest thermal underclothes from the West as soon as September came and switched to lighter clothes only in the middle of April.
Her head was bundled in a fur hat and her fine beautiful high-cheekboned features were framed by a band of silvery fur. If anything, this strategic adviser to the Premier looked like a Kewpie doll. She spoke in a low whisper that forced the taller men to lean down to hear her.
"And you think national security has not been breached? What, then, is the top military command doing meeting here like frightened rabbits in a hole?"
"But to willfully invite an American operative into the inner reaches of our command structure. To invite a foreigner here to attack Russians. It is treason." This from the commander of the KGB, a field marshal in a stiff'green uniform.
"Tell me, field marshal, what would you propose instead? The fact is, you are supposed to run the finest security network in the world. The fact is, comrade field marshal, you are helpless."
"If the Premier-"
"The Premier is not here. Most of your junior officers are not here. We do not know which units of the KGB are with the government and which are not. We do not know which units of the great Red Army are with us or not. We do not know which units of the air force and the navy are with us or not. We know one thing: major elements of our defensive structure have suddenly gone berserk. We cannot control them and the government is terrified that we are definitely heading into a major war with America."
"Well, that's our problem," said the KGB commander. His name was Nevsky. He had a face like a beagle's. It looked kind. But the man wasn't. He made a motion with his hands indicating the case was closed.
"It's our problem," said Anna. "And there is nothing anyone of us here can do about it. We are meeting here in these woods instead of the Kremlin precisely because none of us knows which of his own units will kidnap him the way our premier has been kidnapped. We are here because we cannot solve the problem."