Remo started for the door. Smith shot out of his seat as if it had sprouted porcupine quills.
"Remo," he begged, "don't leave me alone with him." Remo paused at the door.
"Why not? You two deserve one another."
"You'll need your contact's name," Smith pointed out.
"Damn," Remo said. He had forgotten that little detail.
"There!" Chiun cried. "Proof that Remo is incapable of fulfilling this mission without my help. He very nearly went off willy-nilly, without direction. He would no doubt have blundered into the wrong movie and ruined everything."
"Earlier, you told me that Remo didn't require you on missions," Smith pointed out in a reasonable voice.
"Ordinary missions," Chiun flung back. "This is an extraordinary mission. Neither of us has made a movie before this."
"Sorry."
"I am willing to dispense with the requirement that my presence on future assignments receive extra compensation," Chiun said stiffly.
"That's very generous of you, but my hands are tied."
"Then I will pay you. I can make up the difference when I am cast in a movie of my own."
"Nice try, Little Father," Remo said, "but I don't think it will wash. Smitty looks like he's made up his mind. "
Smith nodded. "None of us have any choice in this matter. I'm sorry, Master of Sinanju, I have no way of getting you onto the set."
"That is your final word?" Chiun asked coldly.
"I am afraid so."
"Then send this white ingrate on his way," Chiun said brusquely. "And prepare yourself for a negotiation the likes of which you have never before faced."
"Sounds grim, Smitty," Remo joked. "Better tell the wife to hold supper until the new year."
"Just be certain not to specify which year," Chiun added darkly.
Smith went ashen. Woodenly he took a folder from his desk and slid it across to Remo.
"Everything you need to know is there," Smith told him.
Remo picked up the folder and opened it.
"I didn't know I was in King Kong Lives," he said.
"You were?" Chiun asked, shocked.
"Phony background," Remo explained. "According to this, I'm Remo Durock. Well, I guess I'm off to seek my fortune."
"Break a leg," Chiun called tightly.
"They say that to actors," Remo said. "I'm a stunt man. It has a whole different meaning for stunt men."
"Then break an arm, ingrate."
Remo only laughed. The door closed after him and the Master of Sinanju abruptly turned to face Smith. The elemental fury on his visage was tightly reined in, but it was all the more frightening for that reason.
Without a word, C'hiun settled onto the bare floor. Smith took a yellow legal pad from his desk, two number-two pencils, and joined him there.
"I am ready to begin negotiations," Smith said formally.
"But are you ready to negotiate?" Chiun asked flintily. "That is the true question."
Chapter 6
Senator Ross Ralston was not above what he jokingly called "a little honest influence peddling," but he drew the line at selling out his country. Not that anyone had ever asked him to sell out America. But if they had, Senator Ralston knew what he would say. He had served his country in Korea. He still had his Purple Heart to prove it. Probably no one had been more surprised than Lieutenant Ross Ralston that day in 1953 when his Purple Heart came in.
"What's this for?" asked Ralston, who was division liquor officer in Mansan, a rear area.
"Your eye injury."
"Eye injury?" Ralston had nearly burst out laughing. He had sustained it in the mess hall while attempting to crack a soft-boiled egg. The thing wouldn't budge. He gave it a good whack with a spoon and pieces of shell flew in all directions. One got into his right eye. A medic removed it with saline solution.
"Yeah, eye injury," the major said. "According to this, you caught a shell fragment. If this is another Army snafu, we can send it back."
"No," said Lieutenant Ralston quickly. "Shell fragments. That's right. I got hit by a shell fragment. Sure. I just didn't expect a Purple Heart out of it. I was hit pretty bad, sure. But it's not like I'm blind or anything. In fact, the dizzy spells have almost stopped. So what are you waiting for? Pin that baby on."
It wasn't technically a lie. And Ross Ralston consoled himself with the knowledge that he hadn't put in for the medal. It had been automatically processed from the medic's routine notation. Ralston knew that in his plum station-arranged for by his father, Senator Grover Ralston-he couldn't hope to steal a Purple Heart.
For Ross Ralston, it had started with that Purple Heart. The little evasions, the minor distortions. A career in politics and a steady but inevitable walk to the U. S. Senate. But Arizona Senator Ralston knew where to draw the line. He did it every day. He was a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was willing to do favors, but only as long as they didn't compromise the higher interests of the United States.
Senator Ralston never realized that the trouble with being only a little dishonest was that it was like being only a little pregnant. It was either all or nothing.
So when he was asked by no less than superstar Bartholomew Bronzini to bend the Gun Control Import Act of 1968 just a hair, he had no hesitation. Everyone knew that Bronzini was a patriot. Everyone who had seen him in Grundy I, II, and III, that is. No question of conflict of interest here. The man was as American as apple pie, even if he did look like a sicilian leg-breaker with a chromosome imbalance.
"Tell me again why you need this waiver," Ralston prompted.
They were seated in Senator Ralston's well-appointed Capitol Hill office. There was a tiny Christmas tree on his desk made of glazed clay and plastic ornaments.
"Well, sir,"-Ralston smiled at the idea of being called sir by Bronzini-"it's like this. I'm making a movie in your home state. In Yuma."
"Is that in Arizona?" Ralston asked.
"Yes, sir, it is."
"Oh. I don't get back home much anymore. Washington keeps me pretty busy."