Chiun ignored the waiter's grinding teeth. "Did you know, Remo, that washing day used to come only once a year in France? It was canceled after the one Frenchman in the entire country who celebrated it died of syphilis. Heh-heh-heh. Frenchman's feet. Heh-heh-heh."
The old Korean turned his attention to his meal. Remo had picked up the stemmed glass. He sniffed the wine. The waiter looked on anxiously.
Remo didn't drink. He just sniffed. After a moment's sniffing, he looked up at the waiter with hooded eyes.
"It has a good nose, no?" the waiter asked.
"Yeah," Remo said. "Smells real swell."
The waiter was still waiting a little too eagerly for Remo to put the wineglass to his lips. Instead, Remo poured the wine onto the tabletop.
The table immediately began fizzing. The white linen tablecloth smoked. The wine proceeded to chew a hole straight through to the floor.
"Nice try," Remo said. "Next time try doing a little research, Frenchie. I don't drink wine, beer or spirituous beverages of any kind. You mind getting me some water?"
"Make that two," Chiun said, seemingly oblivious to the smoking crater in the middle of the table.
The waiter's smile tightened nervously to the point where his face looked as if it would shatter into little unctuous shards. His little mustache twitched. A creeping dark stain spread across the front of his uniform trousers.
"I do apologize," the waiter mumbled. "This wine has obviously gone off."
Leaving the bottle on the table, he marched woodenly into the back of the restaurant.
"And bring back a new table while you're at it!" Remo hollered at the retreating waiter.
The man offered a numb "oui." His entire body shaking, he disappeared into the kitchen.
"That's a relief," Remo said, chewing a forkful of rice. "For a minute I thought he was going to surrender."
"That is not permitted," Chiun insisted sternly as he ate. "The French contestant throws up his hands in surrender nearly every time the Time of Succession comes around."
"It happen to you?"
"No, but the Frenchman who tried to assassinate my father tried it."
"Bet that got him far."
"Actually," Chiun mused, "he was particularly sniveling, even by French standards. My father took pity on him and accepted his surrender."
"No kidding. What did he do with him?"
"He brought him back to Sinanju. Some of my earliest memories are of that smelly round-eye wandering lost around the village licking the worms from the undersides of rocks."
"Mmm?" Remo said, chewing slowly. "What happened to him?"
"He attempted to sully the virtue of my father's sister. His head is in the attic somewhere. I can show you when we next return to Sinanju."
"Pass," Remo said.
The waiter returned from the kitchen with their water.
He had gotten control of himself once more. His body no longer shook. His hands gripped the heavy crystal water glasses with determination.
"Your water, gentlemen," he said, setting down the glasses. "I apologize again for the problem with the wine. I am certain I do not know what happened."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Remo said. "If you're gonna keep up the waiter shtick, do it downwind."
"I will see now to moving you to another table." The man took a step back, out of Remo's line of sight.
Behind Remo the waiter pulled out a razor-thin garrote that was stitched into the hollow seam of his shirtsleeve. With a hiss he flung it around Remo's neck, pulling tight. He yanked, grunting triumphantly.
The wire should have sliced through flesh and bone. But to the waiter's intense frustration, his victim didn't appear to even notice that he was being strangled.
Remo didn't pause in his chewing. "I hope they get better than this," he commented to the Master of Sinanju as the French assassin tightened the wire even more.
"Are you going to eat that?" the old Korean asked, pointing at the fish on Remo's plate.
"You ordered the duck, you live with duck."
"I want duck," Chiun insisted.
"Good, because that's what you ordered," Remo said.
"Die!" growled the French killer. Muscles in his arms bulged. Sweat had broken out across his forehead.
"Are you still here?" Remo asked, irritated. Reaching up, he snicked the garrote with his index fingernail. The wire snapped and the waiter flew backward, knocking over two tables. Plates crashed to the floor and silverware flew everywhere.
"And I can do without the Jerry Lewis impression," Remo said.
As he spoke, Remo snagged the wine bottle from where it still sat on the table. While the waiter struggled to get up, Remo stuffed the bottle's neck far down the man's throat.
Burning wine came out the man's nostrils. The killer tried desperately not to swallow. Then he swallowed. He wiggled for a moment in furious death before growing still.
The instant the waiter's arms flopped to the floor, a group of men hurried efficiently from the kitchen, calming the other restaurant patrons. Thanks to the upturned table, no one had seen quite what had happened.
The waiter's throat and stomach were dissolving into open hissing sores. Someone posing as a maitre d' threw a clean white linen tablecloth over the body. The man bowed his head respectfully to the Master of Sinanju.
"I will inform the president, sir," he said crisply.
"Before you do that," Chiun said, "tell the serving staff that I would like this order to go." He pointed a long fingernail at his plate.
Remo noted that, in the confusion, his plate of fish had somehow found its way in front of the Master of Sinanju.
Chapter 12
Word of the dead French assassin found its way to Folcroft Sanitarium by the normal CURE means. Electronic tendrils extending from the basement mainframes collected the data in secret from an unknowing French intelligence computer. It was detected, translated and forwarded to the appropriate computer terminal for analysis.