Smith hung up. He turned up the sound. As he watched the bearded man rant on, his mind went back over the years.
The President of Cuba had been a thorn in the side of the United States for as long as Harold Smith had been sitting at this anonymous desk. Longer. Smith had once been a CIA bureaucrat, and Castro had been a CIA obsession even in those early days. Smith had been privvy to the Bay of Pigs plan, and his advice that the operation was ill conceived and would prove counterproductive if not carried out correctly was pointedly ignored.
The ultimate failure of the operation had made Smith a man with an uncertain future at the CIA. Then had come the summons to the White House and the offer to head the agency that did not exist.
Within a year, the young President had been assassinated. To this day, there were those who pointed the finger of blame for that heinous act at Havana.
But Smith wasn't thinking of that. He was thinking of the global turmoil this one driven individual had caused. The Cuban Missile Crisis had simply been the earliest and most dangerous incident.
Smith knew, because recent revelations had brought it to light, that Havana had attempted to egg the Soviet Union's Khrushchev into nuking the U.S. to protect a tiny island that had never contributed anything more important to the world than sugar and tobacco, one that had been built on the slave trade and was the last in the Western hemisphere to renounce it.
The memory made Harold Smith shudder. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. nuking themselves, and human civilization, into hot smoking ash-over a useless green speck in the Caribbean. All because of one man's rabid antiAmericanism.
Smith thought of the events of his life since 1961, of the people who had been born, the scientific and cultural achievements of mankind. None of them Cuban. And none of them would have happened had Havana gotten its way.
While the first man was walking on the moon, Havana was overturning elected governments in Latin America and Africa. While human hearts were first being successfully transplanted, Castro was ordering Cuban cows to mate with zebu in defiance of elementary genetic logic, in an insane gambit designed to produce an animal that produced both meat and milk.
On the television screen, Fidel Castro shook his fist and dripped spittle onto his iron-gray beard. One man. One madman. From Attila the Hun to Adolf Hitler, it was usually one power-crazed lunatic who piled up the most bodies.
Perhaps he had made a mistake in not ordering the man terminated years ago, after CURE had gotten its enforcement arm.
Now it was too late. By presidential decree, CURE could not undertake that task. It shouldn't even have been necessary. The Cold War was over.
Yet there he was: the last Cold Warrior, trying to push the world to the brink once more ....
Chapter 10
Remo left the out-of-the-way gas station pay phone off the loop road, with a slow look of uncertainty settling over his lean features.
The Master of Sinanju saw this as his pupil approached their rented car.
"You are troubled," he said.
Remo eased behind the wheel. "Smith just ordered Ultima Hora hit."
"What is so troubling about this? They are enemies of the Emperor. They live to die."
"No," said Remo, starting the car. "They are Cuban patriots. All they want is to take back their homeland. Nothing wrong with that." He sent the car running down the long tunnel of a Spanish moss-overhung road. "We're supposed to be on the same side."
"They are pawns," Chiun said coldly. "As are you."
"Maybe. But I thought this kind of crap went out with the Cold War."
"If you wish, I will dispatch them."
"You will?"
Chiun raised a wise finger. "But you must tell Smith you accounted for some of the vanquished."
"Why?"
"Because while I wish the credit, I am negotiating a contract for your services as well. You must demonstrate your worth."
"I haven't done so badly this far," Remo growled, swerving to avoid a road-crossing armadillo.
"For a white. A parentless white."
"Get off that kick. And while you're dismounting, how about clueing me in on the bone that's caught in Smith's throat?"
"What is this you ask?"
"The sticking point in the contract. It's gotta be pretty big."
"If you must know, I am seeking a new residence. One worthy of our station in this ugly land."
"Yeah?"
"One with battlements and great stonework and other accoutrements befitting our worth."
Remo's bright expression darkened. "Sounds like Dracula's castle. Where is this place?"
"It is a surprise."
"Uh-huh."
They drove along in tight silence. At length, the Master of Sinanju broke it.
"What do you think of this province?" he asked.
"Florida?"
"Whatever it is called," Chiun said with a vague wave.
"Well, it's hot and steamy where it's not dank and swampy, heat rash is a big problem, the cockroaches are almost indestructible but not as bad as the snakes and gators, and there are the hurricanes."
Chiun looked over. "You prefer a northern clime?"
"Just so long as we're talking south of the North Pole," Remo said.
"My native Korea is not hot like this place. But one could get used to the heat. If one had a suitable cool place in which to dwell."
"Castles aren't cool. They're dank."
"The castle I would dwell in will be cool," Chiun sniffed. They followed their headlights back into the swamp. When the road petered out, they got out and started across the swampy terrain. The air was moist yet unseasonably cool. Katydids chirred amid the bullfrog croakings. Red eyes low in the water told of lurking gators.
The Master of Sinanju's black silk kimono became a flitting thing in the darkness, like an ebony bat on wing. Remo, also in black, moved easily between the cypress trees, avoiding when he could the watery sloughs and, at all costs, the black, sucking muck. Even in the water, their feet made no sound warning of their approach.