"Something is wrong," Smith said hoarsely. "Something is very wrong. According to my data base, Roger Sherman Coe is not and never has been married. In fact, he is a homosexual."
"Then he deserved to die," said Chiun loudly. "Hobosexualism is a despicable crime-unless one is a soldier in the U.S. Marines."
"The Roger Sherman Coe I killed had a wife and daughter," insisted Remo. "She couldn't have been more than five years old."
"The Roger Sherman Coe on my data base in fifty-six years old, red haired, and has committed an estimated sixteen contract killings that have been tied to him."
"This guy was on the sunny side of forty."
"Oh, my God. You may have killed the wrong man."
"Smith, don't say that. Don't tell me that. Making a widow and an orphan is bad enough, but don't tell me I hit the wrong guy."
Chiun bustled up to the telephone. "Remo, take heart. If a mistake was made, it falls not on your shoulders." Then, in an urgent voice, Chiun added for Smith's benefit, "Take responsibility, quickly. Remo is in a very fragile state of mind. We must not lose him to this tragedy."
"But my computers do not make mistakes," Smith said dully.
"Yeah? Well, they did this time," Remo Williams said bitterly. "Thanks a lot, Smith. Remember what I said earlier about picking my assignments? Cancel that. I quit. I'm through. Take CURE and shove it up your tight New England ass."
"Remo, you do not mean that!" Chiun wailed, seizing the phone. "Tell Emperor Smith you did not mean that! Smith, do not sit there like a ghost-faced white. Say something to absolve my son and my heir of this terrible guilt that overwhelms him."
"Stuff it," said Remo. And he hung up again. Harold Smith sat in his cracked leather executive's chair and stared into space. He seemed oblivious to the buzz of the dial tone in his ear. He seemed oblivious to the Master of Sinanju as he tore at the puffs of hair over each ear and paced the room in frustration.
"My contract! That impulsive white idiot has ruined a perfect negotiation," Chiun wailed.
And all Harold W Smith could do was mutter as if to himself, "My computers have never been wrong before. Never."
He sounded like a man who had lost faith in the sanity and order of the known universe.
If he was aware of the Master of Sinanju leaving his office, it was not reflected in his shell-shocked face.
Chapter 5
Hurricane Elvis had skirted Long Island, started out to sea and run into a cold-air mass that stalled it thirty miles out in the Atlantic. It couldn't go forward. Unable to go back, it festered over the water, churning up ocean brine and recycling it as hard, bitter rain that flattened spirits and human activity from Eastport to Block Island.
One by one airports up and down the affected area reopened, and Remo Williams was on the first flight out of Wilmington. Maybe it was the dampening effects of the overcast skies and the relentless rain, or maybe it was the hard scowl he wore on his face, but the stewardesses all left him alone during the short flight to Boston.
At Logan Airport Remo recovered his car and drove south to Quincy, Massachusetts, and home.
Home had long been an unknown concept to Remo Williams. In his pre-CURE days, a succession of walkup flats in Newark, New Jersey, and after that, motel rooms and hotels all over the US., had served as temporary residences. Every time he and Chiun had settled down in a condo or a house, security considerations beyond their control drove them out.
For the past year home had been what Remo mentally thought of as a Swiss/ Gothic/mock-Tudor stone church converted into a condominium. Chiun had dubbed it Castle Sinanju. It looked enough like a castle that at the last contract negotiation, Smith had been able to foist it off on the Master of Sinanju as a pre-Revolutionary War American castle. And Chiun had happily accepted it. Remo had not. But he had grown to enjoy having its sixteen units and accompanying parking spaces all to Chiun and himself.
Now Remo thought of it as home, and in his pain, it was where he was retreating to.
Chiun would not be home. Knowing the Master of Sinanju, he would be on his way to Wilmington to talk sense to him. Remo didn't want to talk to anyone right now. He just wanted to be alone. He just wanted to think. He had a lot of serious sorting out to do.
As he sent his blue Buick coupe into the handicapped parking slot, Remo thought of how for the past twenty years of his life he had been pulled in two opposing directions. There was his duty to CURE and his country. And there was his growing and unwanted responsibility to Chiun and the House of Sinanju that he would one day inherit. He used to feel good about being the first white man to master Sinanju, but as he unlocked his front door, he felt only a cold emptiness in the pit of his stomach.
The inner door surrendered to his key, and he stepped in.
Instantly his senses, numbed by his grief, came alive. Someone was in the building.
His highly attuned ears telling him that no one was on the ground floor, Remo floated up the stairs. On the second floor the distant heartbeat clarified. He did not recognize it. But the second floor was empty. So was the third.
That left only the tower. The church, when it had been a church, had had a crenellated square tower instead of a steeple. Each face was dominated by a great window facing the four compass points.
A flight of steps led up to this space.
Remo went up like a ghost in a tight black shroud, making no sound, giving forth no scent of fear or other warning of his approach.
If it was a burglar, he was going to be one sorry burglar.
The door was ajar. Remo moved off the top step and without pausing went through the door, ready to meet any threat.
Except the one that grasped the exposed front of his T-shirt and used his forward momentum to propel him across the room and into one of the great windows.
Caught off guard, Remo came off his feet and literally flew across the space, headfirst.
His training kicked in then. There was nothing to grab in flight to arrest him. The windows were too wide for Remo to splay his arms and legs and catch the edges.
So he closed his eyes and willed his body full of air until he felt light in every bone, soft as a pillow and weighing no more than a marshmallow.
He bounced off the glass with no more sound than a nerf ball rebounding off glass. Landing in a crouch, he snapped to his feet, hands jutting like spear points.
"You entered like a water buffalo blundering into quicksand," a cold voice said.
"Huh?"
"But you acquitted yourself in the end. You entered western and you preserved your life by the Eastern way. A balance has been struck, and given the circumstances, neither blame nor shame will attach themselves to you."
"Chiun," Remo breathed, straightening to his full height. "I don't get it. That wasn't your heartbeat I heard."
"Nor was that the Remo I trained whom I flung like a soggy sack of potatoes," countered the Master of Sinanju. "But the Remo who made his body the consistency of a feather-that is the Remo I trained."
"You screwed around with your heartbeat."
Chiun nodded slightly. "Inelegantly put. But accurately put."
Chiun regarded him with opaque eyes as his hands came together, fingers wrapping around the opposite wrists and the wide sleeves of his tiger-stripe kimono coming together to hide all from view.
Two tatami mats had been placed in the center of the room. Chiun indicated them with a tipping of his bearded chin.
"If you will sit, I will sit with you," he offered. Remo hesitated.
"I came here to be alone."