"The only thing I'm pitching is MacGulry out the nearest window," Remo said. "He's in on this hypnotism thing somehow. They got to Smith."
This caused the Master of Sinanju to finally turn from the window.
"Is he alive?"
"Yeah, he's alive," Remo answered. "Out like a light for the time being. Is MacGulry in there?" Storming over, Remo kicked open the bathroom door.
"Stop that!" the Master of Sinanju commanded, flouncing up beside his pupil.
The bathroom was empty. Another door on the other side of the room opened into a private hallway. "Dammit, he's gone. You know where he went?"
Chiun's face was hard. "Perhaps he fled when he heard there was a door-kicking maniac loose in his castle."
Remo saw the phone was dangling off the hook. When he checked it, he heard only a dial tone. "Double crap," he said. "You listen in on the call?"
Chiun's eyes grew wide. "I would not listen in on the Sea-O's private conversations," he said, deeply offended.
"Right," Remo said. He slapped a palm against the tile wall. As he suspected, it absorbed the vibrations. "Soundproof walls. Ordinarily, I'd say he had them for privacy when he was on the can if it wasn't for that."
He jerked a thumb to the security camera in the corner of the room. The lens was focused squarely on Remo.
"Must be for that great new Vox special, 'Caught on Tape: Australia's Biggest Piles of Shit III.' MacGulry'd certainly qualify. This is just great, Chiun. That call was probably a heads-up that I was coming."
Spinning on his heel, he marched back out into the office. The Master of Sinanju charged out after him. "What is the meaning of all this?" Chiun demanded. "Just because something has happened to your precious Smith does not mean you have a right to come stampeding through the Sea-O's offices."
"CEO, not Sea-O," Remo said angrily. "And try to follow this. Someone tried to get Smith to Swiss cheese me. It was a Vox broadcast he was watching that told him to do it. MacGulry owns Vox. And if MacGulry knows about me and Smith, then he knows about you."
"Of course he knows about me," Chiun sniffed. "I am the man who is going to save his network. Now get out of here before you ruin this for me."
"This is serious," Remo insisted. "Smith is flat on his back in a hospital room right now because of all this. "
"Smith will be fine," Chiun dismissed. "I thought at one time he would eventually go the way of all men, but at the feeble rate that lunatic has been shuffling toward his end lo these many years, he will live to vex you long after my tired bones have turned to dust. Now leave me be. I have finally met someone who recognizes my talent."
"Dammit, Chiun, we're assassins. We're not writers or TV pitchmen or counterassassins or anything else. You're the one who drilled that into my damn head all these years. Now let's get out of here and go do our job."
"You are forgetting that it will soon no longer be my job," the Master of Sinanju said thinly. "You are the Master who will succeed me. You do it."
Remo sensed it. Beneath the sarcasm was hurt. He'd assumed this was all about Chiun being his usual thin-skinned self, but Smith had sown the seeds of doubt in the younger Master of Sinanju's mind. Maybe Remo's attitude had changed.
"I can't do it without you, Little Father."
His pupil's softened tone touched off a spark of fury in the old man's hazel eyes.
"Do not patronize me, Remo Williams," he demanded, stamping a furious sandaled foot on the floor.
Remo's mood flashed back to anger. "I give up," he growled, flinging up his hands. "Tell me, Chiun. Tell me what the hell it is I'm supposed to do."
"I want you to stop treating me like an invalid," Chiun snapped.
"I'm not. You're off on this self-pity binge all because you want me to want you around, then you get mad at me for saying I want you around when I really do want you around. Well, this is it. I've had it. Cut a deal with Vox TV if you want. And while you're at it, make sure you don't lose a minute's sleep over Smith or the fact that someone's trying to sabotage the organization that's been keeping us in rice and Twizzlers for the past thirty years."
He spun on his heel.
A bank of television sets lined one office wall. Remo had taken but a single step toward the office door when every screen suddenly flickered to life. "What now?" he grumbled.
The same daytime talk show was playing across all the screens. Superimposed faintly in the lower righthand corner was the Vox logo.
That was all the world was meant to see.
In addition to the logo was something else. Remo noted the timed pulses of brilliant hypnotic light flashing just beyond the fringes of ordinary human awareness. And at the bottom of the screen flashed a single subliminal command. Remo, kill Chiun.
"Dammit, not again," Remo said.
"What is wrong now?" the Master of Sinanju asked tersely as he swept up beside his pupil. "They're at it again. You better not look at it, Chiun," he cautioned.
But the old Korean had already glanced up at the bank of television screens.
"This is terrible," the tiny Asian proclaimed.
Some of the tension fled Remo's face. "You see it?"
"Of course," Chiun sniffed. "Fat whites blabbing at other fat whites about still more fat whites. If this is the sort of trash the Sea-0 puts on his broadcasts, it is amazing he did not run to me for help ages ago." "Not the talk show, Little Father."
Remo looked back at the screens. The message was clear to his sensitive eyes. Timed to pulse with the hypnotic flashes of light. Remo, kill Chiun.
The original concern that he'd had back at the Harlem police station had been borne out. Either due to age or years of television viewing, Chiun's eyes weren't focused enough to make out the subliminal commands.
"Trust me, it's there," Remo insisted. "And you don't wanna know what it says. Now let's get out of here before-" His voice grew small. "Oh, crap."
"What is wrong?" asked the Master of Sinanju, peeved. He followed Remo's gaze to the televisions.
"Chiun, don't!" Remo shouted, jumping forward. But it was too late. Before Remo could stop him, the old Korean had turned his attention back to the screens.
The hypnotic colors continued to pulse on all the televisions. Buried within the colors was a new command. Chiun, kill Remo.
The room grew very still. With agonizing slowness, Remo turned his worried gaze to the Master of Sinanju. An odd blankness had settled on the old man's wrinkled face.
Chiun stared at the screens, mesmerized. His almond-shaped eyes were unblinking. He didn't move so much as a millimeter. Even his tufts of yellowing-white hair seemed to still in the eddies of recirculated office air.
Very, very slowly, Remo took a half step back. "Chiun?" he asked cautiously.
With a terrible quiet suffusing his entire being, the Master of Sinanju turned to his pupil. The instant their eyes locked, the old man's arms became twin blurs. Fingernails honed to razor-sharp talons flew in slashing strokes at Remo's exposed throat.
Before the nails could slice soft flesh, Remo dropped backward. As Chiun's nails clicked viciously at empty air, Remo's back was brushing the floor.
Palms flattened against the carpet. Up and over. Spinning in air like a coiled spring, Remo flipped away from Chiun, landing on his feet near the bank of TV screens.