"Presents?" Chiun gasped. "For me?"
"Yeah. That's the tradition. I put presents under the tree for you and you put them under the tree for me." Chiun looked down at the foot of the tree. He saw no presents.
"When?" he asked sharply.
"What?"
"When will these alleged presents appear?"
"Christmas Eve. That's Sunday night."
"You have bought them?" Chiun asked skeptically.
"No, not yet," Remo answered vaguely.
"I have bought none for you, you know."
"There's time yet."
Chiun examined Remo's tight profile curiously.
"In past years you were not so obsessed by this Christmastime," he ventured.
"In past years I never had to kill Santa Claus."
"Ah," Chiun said, raising a long-nailed finger. "At last we come to the heart of the matter."
Remo said nothing. He lifted a spindle-shaped ornament from its box and plucked straw packing from dangling silver bells.
"Your mission," Chiun said expectantly, "it was successful?"
"He's dead if that's what you mean." Remo reached up and pulled the flexible treetop down. He slipped the ornament over the top. When he let go, it sprang erect. The tiny bells tinkled merrily.
"You do not look happy for one who has avenged the children of this land."
"The killer was a child himself."
Chiun gasped. "No! You did not kill a child. It is against everything I taught you. Children are sacred. Say this is not so, Remo."
"He was a child in mind, not body."
"Ah, one of the many mental defectives that populate America. It is sad. I think this stems from the hamburgers everyone devours. They destroy the brain cells."
"I wanted to kill this guy so bad it hurt."
"Your job is not to hate, but to eliminate your emperor's enemies with dispatch and professionalism."
"I did it right. He didn't suffer."
"But you did."
Remo stopped what he was doing. He put aside a box of silver-blue bulbs and sat down on a tatami mat. Quietly, fervently, he told the Master of Sinanju what he had encountered. When he was done, he asked a question: "Did I do the right thing?"
"If a tiger turns man-eater," Chiun intoned sagely, "he must be hunted down and destroyed."
"A tiger knows what he's doing. I'm not sure he did."
"If a tiger cub mauls a child, he too must be put down. It matters not whether he knows that what he did was wrong, for he has tasted blood, and the taste will never cease haunting him. So, too, was it with this unfortunate cretin. He committed great evil. Some might not judge him harshly, but in truth that is not the issue. He had tasted blood. Better that he be liberated from his physical prison and be free to return to earth in another life, to atone for his transgressions."
"You sound like Shirley MacLaine."
"I will take that as a compliment."
"Don't."
"Then I will assume it is an insult," Chiun snapped, "and leave you to your misery, you who would rather suffer in ignorance than be unshackled by wisdom."
And with that, the Master of Sinanju jumped to his feet and flounced back to his room. The door closed so hard it made a breeze that ruffled Remo's hair. Oddly, for all that violence, the door closed without a sound.
Remo went back to his tree. But his mind was troubled. The phone rang. Remo went to answer it. "Remo. I need to see you," the lemony voice of Dr. Harold W. Smith told him. Smith was the head of CURE, and Remo's boss.
"Don't you want to hear about the mission?"
"No, I assume that if it had gone awry, you would have reported it before I called."
"Take me for granted, why don't you?"
"I have something more important. Please come to Folcroft at once."
"Chiun and I will be there in a half-hour."
"No," Smith said hastily. "Just you. Please leave Chiun out of this."
The door to Chiun's bedroom opened suddenly. The Master of Sinanju appeared, his mien hard.
"I heard that!" he said loudly.
"I guess you just stepped in it, Smitty," Remo said. Harold Smith sighed.
"Contract-renewal time is coming up. I wanted to avoid premature negotiations."
"No negotiations are premature," Chiun announced, loud enough to carry to the receiver.
"Are you using a speakerphone?" Smith asked sharply.
"No. You know Chiun can hear an insult clear across the Atlantic Ocean. "