Remo saw that the CURE director was entranced by whatever was on his computer monitor. Smith's lips moved as if he were reading something on the screen.
"What now?" Remo asked from the sofa. "MacGulry have Hooters girls reading the stockmarket report?"
Smith stopped reading. The gray shards of flint behind his rimless glasses were flat.
"One moment, Remo," Smith said dully.
Remo watched the CURE director lean over. He heard the sound of a drawer opening. A moment later, Smith reappeared, his service automatic clasped in his arthritic hand.
The explosion was sharp and sudden. Stuffing blew out of a smoking hole in the sofa cushion against which Remo had been leaning.
"Have you blown a gasket!" Remo snapped, hopping to his feet.
Wordlessly, Smith fired again.
Remo whirled from the bullet's path. It slammed into the soundproof wall. The bullet had barely struck the wall before Remo was skittering across the room.
Smith fired twice more, missing both times. Remo darted around the desk and snatched the gun from Smith's hand. He flung it into the open desk drawer. Smith sprang for the pistol.
"Oh, no," Remo said. "Smitty have enough bang-bang for today." He kicked the drawer shut.
Smith struggled with the handle. When Remo's ankle refused to budge out of the way, he tried to bite it.
Remo attempted to coax him back in his chair. Smith tried to wrap his hands around Remo's throat.
"Okay, so you're not happy about Chiun's show. I'm sensing that. I'll talk to him again," Remo offered.
He was nudging Smith back into his seat once more when he noticed a familiar flicker of light from the corner of his eye. He glanced down at Smith's computer screen.
"Not again," Remo moaned.
The pulsing flashes of the hypnotizing signal were clearly visible to Remo. His eyes broke down each individual flash as if it were a single pop from a camera.
But unlike before, this time the subliminal message took on a special, chilling urgency.
"Uh-oh," Remo said softly as he read the words staggered beneath the flashes. Harold, kill Remo...Harold, kill Remo...Harold, kill Remo... Harold, kill Remo... Harold, kill Remo...
The message repeated over and over.
"You think this is for us?" Remo asked worriedly. He looked down at Smith.
Remo had the CURE director pinned in place with one hand against the older man's chest. Smith had spent the past few seconds as Remo read the computer message trying to punch CURE's enforcement arm in the throat. He refused to give up, continuing to throw futile roundhouse punches.
"I thought they were out of business," Remo said, more to himself now than to the sweating Smith. The CURE director didn't seem to hear. He had found a letter opener in another desk drawer. He tried to stab Remo in the head with it.
Remo sighed. "Say goodnight, Smitty," he said. With his free hand, he tapped the CURE director in a spot dead center in his forehead. Smith went limp. Eyes rolling back in his head, the crazed glint was replaced by bloodshot whites. The lids fluttered and closed.
"Great," Remo muttered worriedly. "One down, two to go. And we don't even know who we're up against."
Face drawn in concern, he took Smith under the arms, rolling him up over a shoulder.
This was no longer coincidence. Whoever had sent this new signal obviously knew about CURE's personnel. And without Smith as a guide, Remo had no idea how to track them.
Leaving the computer on, he carried from the office the limp bundle that was Harold W. Smith.
FROM THE BACK SEAT of a Rye taxi, the Master of Sinanju watched the skyscrapers of Manhattan grow up from the benighted New York landscape.
He was alone in the cab, thank the gods.
When Remo insisted he be allowed to tag along to this important meeting, Chiun dropped his objections. Why object? After all, Chiun knew his pupil. If he told Remo in no uncertain terms that he couldn't come, Remo would insist on going even more. The boy was so willful he'd always do the exact opposite of whatever Chiun wanted just out of spite.
Luckily, Remo had never been one of the world's greatest thinkers. When he wasn't looking, Chiun had taken all their rice and flushed it down the toilet then told Remo they were out of rice. Five minutes after Remo had gone to the store to get more, Chiun was climbing into the back of a cab.
He had enjoyed the solitude of his ride into the city. Remo's attitude had been unbearable of late. Ever since he had decided to assume the mantle of Reigning Master, his mood toward his teacher had become too conciliatory. All at once Chiun was a frail old man whose every breath might be his last. Remo was the dutiful son taking care of his elderly father in the final creaking moments before death.
This new attitude of Remo's made Chiun long for the early days of their relationship. Back then Remo was a foul-tongued lout with no respect for anyone. Eventually as time went on, his growing fondness for his Master had softened his earliest attitude, but he had never completely lost his edge. Until now. Now he was all sweetness and helping, and even when he lost his temper he didn't seem to really mean it.
Of course it was Remo whose outlook had changed. It certainly wasn't Chiun. No matter what Remo said.
The boy was like that. If he wasn't clinging too tightly, he was rudely forcing his teacher aside. Lately, he'd been managing to do both things simultaneously.
If there was one thing that Chiun didn't like it was mood swings. The world could learn a thing or two about moods from the Master of Sinanju. His own mood was always good. Except, of course, in those moments when the world's mood changed and he was forced to alter his own accordingly. But as long as the world's mood remained good, Chiun's mood remained good and Remo had a perfect example to follow.
Morning traffic clogged Manhattan's dirty streets. Chiun had lately found a new distraction to fill the idle moments in traffic. Whenever he saw a driver talking on a cell phone, the Master of Sinanju would snake his hand out the open car window and flatten their tires with the sharpened end of an index fingernail.
Remo didn't like Chiun's new hobby. But Remo wasn't there to whine, and New York City was filled with many cars and many drivers with cell phones. Chiun spent the entire trip through the steel-and-glass canyons of New York with one hand hanging out the taxi's rear window.
When his cab finally stopped in front of the Vox building in midtown Manhattan, the late-morning sun had just broken through the winter cloud cover. Yellow sunlight glinted off gleaming windows as Chiun climbed from the cab.
His delicate ears listened in satisfaction to the sound of air hissing from his last set of punctured tires. Down the street a BMW was settling to its wheels with a rubbery wheeze. The noise was accompanied by angry shouts and honking horns.
Without a glance to the growing commotion, the Master of Sinanju breezed through the Vox building's revolving door.
Inside, Chiun sensed the tracking movements of dozens of wall-mounted security cameras. Still more were hidden in suspended ceiling bubbles, behind reflective glass panels and beyond latticed plastic ceiling panels.
A very pale man in a flawlessly tailored blue suit stood at attention near a bank of elevators. He was scanning faces as people entered. The instant he spied Chiun sweeping into the lobby, the man marched smartly up to greet him.
"Most gracious and glorious Master," the man said in a British accent so precise you could have set your watch by it, "welcome to Vox. I'm Mr. Cheevers, Mr. MacGulry's personal assistant when he is in America. Mr. MacGulry is expecting you. Would you kindly come this way."
He ushered Chiun away from the common elevators and down a hall to a private car. A key opened the gold doors, and the two men rode up to the thirtieth floor.
Mr. Cheevers brought Chiun through another lobby and down two halls to a private corner office. The room was massive, with glass that overlooked two clogged streets.
"Mr. MacGulry will be a moment," Cheevers said. "In the meantime, may I get your brilliant magnificence anything?"
Chiun shook his head. "I await only your master."