"I understood that was the purpose for which he was dispatched to the city of beans and arsonists," Chiun retorted acidly. The old Master and his son had lived in Boston for years, the sole inhabitants of an old, renovated church. It was the closest thing to a real home the pair had known in all the years they were contracted to the organization Dr. Smith headed, but the building burned to the ground in a fire set by irate mobsters. The irate mobsters were extinguished not long after the blaze they set, but Chiun was still bitter over the loss of his Castle Sinanju.
"Remo was unable to identify the perpetrators in Boston," Smith explained.
"That is to be expected. He is a good son but, between you and I, Emperor, he is not the brightest bulb in the toolshed."
"Uh." Smith had to think about that one for a moment before he sorted out the mixed metaphor. This conversation was definitely not going as efficiently as he would have hoped. "Yes, Master Chiun, which is why I was hoping you would join Remo in Nashville. He could benefit from your incisiveness."
"Ah," Chiun said in a singsong sigh. "I understand. But I have no wish to leave my home at this time." Smith continued. "He is a skilled Master and he has been trained flawlessly-"
"Yes, that is certainly the case. But he lacks your wisdom."
"I understand completely, Emperor." Smith could almost see the appreciative half smile on the face of the Korean centenarian. "In the ways of the mind, he is a child, really."
"An amateur thinker," Smith added.
"Yes! Those are the perfect words," Chiun agreed with a squeal of enthusiasm.
"He may be biting off more than he can chew in Nashville if there is much deductive reasoning called for."
"We can only imagine what sort of mischief he might cause. I believe I should join him immediately."
"An excellent notion, Master Chiun."
Dr. Smith hung up feeling satisfaction with how he had handled Chiun. Getting Chiun to change his mind on anything was a major victory. Smith still shuddered at the memories of the contract-negotiation sessions he endured with the old Master.
In recent months Chiun had been somewhat of a recluse. Smith knew that, after the Rite of Succession, when the Reigning Master of Sinanju passed the torch to his protege, the elder Master often retired to a life of seclusion. Smith was aware that there was a cave outside the Korean village of Sinanju that was the traditional hermitage of retired Masters.
Smith had mixed feelings about this possibility. Remo Williams was extremely capable in his role, but Chiun could be a godsend at times.
It wasn't even that Chiun had time and again been the catalyst to success in the organization's various undertakings. It was that he was a part of a team. Remo and Chiun. There had never been a time when it had not been the two of them working together.
The pairing had come about many years ago, when Smith needed muscle-when his organization remade itself from being simply a clearinghouse of information to an agency of enforcement.
The agency was named CURE. Smith steadfastly thought of the name in all capitals, like an acronym, but it wasn't. The name had come from the mind of a U.S. President who decided that the escalation of crime and mayhem needed a solution-a CURE for a sick nation.
This President, as young and idealistic as he was, understood that the government agencies designed to rein in crime, within the limitations set by the U.S. Constitution, weren't doing the job. The laws of the land tied the hands of law enforcement, but the criminals ignored those laws.
So CURE was set up to maintain the integrity of the Constitution by ignoring the Constitution. To protect the freedom of Americans by violating their rights to privacy and due process.
Creating CURE would have decimated the reputation of even a wildly popular President if it became public knowledge, but the bigger worry came from the potential for abuse. CURE, operating virtually without accountability, represented incredible power. And power corrupts.
So the young President looked for an incorruptible man to run it. One whose ethics were incontrovertible, whose self-discipline was steel, whose patriotism was unquestionable.
Somewhat to his own surprise, the President, not long before he was assassinated before the eyes of the world, found a man to fit the bill. An ex-CIA computer expert, not the most charismatic man you'd ever meet, but Harold W. Smith had all the qualifications to take on the awesome responsibility of CURE.
That burden of responsibility expanded when it became clear that simply finding and exposing illegal activity had minimal impact. Smith and his network of oblivious operatives uncovered more illegal acts than the FBI and the CIA combined. but all Smith could do was surreptitiously pass the intelligence along to other agencies to take action. Sometimes they could not act, did not act, were prevented by manpower and corruption-and the credibility of the intelligence Smith funneled their way-from acting.
So CURE changed its strategy. It became an agency that took action, and the action it took was just as illegal as its blatantly unlawful intelligence-gathering.
CURE hired an assassin. They found him in the form of Remo Williams, a New Jersey beat cop and war veteran. Smith's right-hand man, Conrad MacCleary, made the choice. What CURE needed, after all, was a natural-born killer. Conn had witnessed Remo Williams in action in wartime and never forgot it.
Officer Williams, with a fiancee and a solid reputation and a bright future, was framed for murder. He was found guilty. He was sent to the chair and executed.
But the execution didn't take, thanks to Smith and MacCleary, who arranged the entire charade, and Remo Williams woke up with a surgically altered face and a decision to make. Join the team. Or die. For real this time. No hard feelings.
Remo Williams joined the team. He was trained in weapons and stealth. He was trained in Sinanju. Chiun was another one of MacCleary's choices. Smith had such faith in his old friend from the CIA that he acceded to what sounded like a bizarre training regimen. Sinanju, MacCleary said, produced the finest assassins the world had known. Ever.
Smith didn't quite buy into it. MacCleary wasn't known to exaggerate, but the feats that he claimed for these Sinanju masters were beyond believability. But Chiun proved Conn right.
Before long, Remo proved Conn right, as well. Even Chiun was surprised by Remo's ability to absorb Sinanju. No child of the village of Sinanju ever mastered the art as Remo mastered it. No adult had ever been able to learn more than a few rudimentary basics.
But Remo became Sinanju, and Chiun deemed that this American orphan would become his protege, a last-minute godsend for an elderly master who had lost two heirs already-one to tragedy and one to betrayal.
Chiun would not leave Remo, so CURE found itself with the most potent pair of assassins on the planet under its employ.
They worked side by side, a perfect team. The disasters that had been averted by Remo and Chiun were unfathomable in their scope.
Harold Smith didn't know what the future held for the world, but he knew the world wasn't ready to exist without CURE and its enforcement arm. Its enforcement team.
But he might have no say in the matter. If and when Chiun made up his mind to seek the comfort of retirement in a dark cave in North Korea, Smith certainly wouldn't be able to talk him out of it.
There was something else on Smith's mind. He had enjoyed his parlay with the old master about the merits of Ung and Homer. It had hearkened back to the discussions he enjoyed years ago, when he was considered a scholar of sorts. It was the kind of pastime he had looked forward to during that brief interlude in his life when he was retired from the CIA and had accepted a position as a university professor. All too quickly that future was erased with a summons from a U.S. President in need of a man just like him.
Smith hadn't refused the CURE assignment. His patriotism would not have allowed him to refuse. But there had been no personal considerations, really. From the moment of that meeting with the President until this day, decades later, CURE came first. Everything else in Smith's life came second. Wife. Family. Home. Enjoyable diversions.
That give and take with Chiun had been quite satisfying and novel. It had been a long time since he had that kind of, well, fun.
Chapter 8
Greg Grom evaded his security detail without trouble. He always did. Still, he followed orders and did the circle-the-block thing and tailback thing. There was no sign of the others.
He looked for a likely dark alley to do the park-and-wait thing. Sitting in the shadows for fifteen minutes watching for the tail he knew would not come. What a waste of time. Just this once he'd skip it and nobody would ever have to know.
But that was a fantasy. When it came time to report in, he wouldn't be able to hide his rule breaking. And then he'd be in big trouble.
"Dammit!" He shouted at the steering wheel, then turned the car quickly into a convenience store lot, parking in the shadows alongside the building where a security floodlight was inoperative. He waited and watched for fifteen minutes, as ordered. There was no sign of pursuit.
"Told you so," he said to nobody.
It was a two-hour drive to Lexington. It was a two-hour drive back.
He stopped for a short while at the Big Stomp Saloon, which was big. It had been a roller rink once. The "Stomp" referred to the type of dance favored by the clientele. It seemed to include a lot of cowboy-boot stomping.
The Big Stomp was now famous throughout Kentucky and Tennessee as the birth of country rave, the newest evolution in country music. The original raves had sprung up in the US in the 1990s, when the designer drug Ecstasy became all the rage. Kids took it and danced all night. That was a rave.
An Ecstasy high gave the user a high-adrenaline rush that lasted for hours, and rave music had a rapid, thumping beat. Country music took years to come up with a hybrid that fit the bill. It was mostly just Garth Brooks remixed over a disco rhythm track. Whatever. It was awful.