Before Remo could say "What?" the line went dead in his ear.
Remo slammed down the telephone, saying, "Damn it!"
"What is wrong?" asked Chiun.
"That was Smitty. And he's so paranoid he said to meet him in the logical place. Then he hung up before I could ask him what the logical place is."
"The logical place is the logical place," Chiun said blandly.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Remo fumed.
"It is logical because it is obvious."
"Well, it isn't obvious to me."
"That is because you do not have a logical mind."
"And I suppose you do?"
"Bring me a guide to the attractions of this latterday Athens."
Remo grabbed a thick guidebook off the writing desk and laid it at Chiun's sandaled feet, simultaneously scissoring down into a lotus position, facing him.
"I defy you to find the logical meeting place in that," he said.
The Master of Sinanju frowned and brought his long nailed fingers together prayerfully. He closed his eyes. The nails touched, but his palms did not. He might have been communing with his ancestors.
Abruptly Chiun's eyes opened, and his hands, as if moving of their own volition, pried open the book at random. He looked down. His wide hazel eyes darted along the open pages.
"Well?" said Remo.
Without warning, the Master of Sinanju clapped the guidebook shut.
"Finish your rice," he said. "For we have less than twenty minutes to meet our emperor at the logical and obvious place."
Scooping the last chopstickfuls of rice into his mouth, Remo muttered, "This, I have to see."
TEN MINUTES LATER, Remo stood alongside the Master of Sinanju outside the Watergate Hotel while the doorman signaled a cab. One pulled up instantly.
Remo opened the door and allowed the Master of Sinanju to enter. By the time he got around to the other side and got in himself, Chiun had instructed the cabbie where to go.
"Don't I get let in on the secret?" Remo asked Chiun as the cab sped off in the late-afternoon twilight.
"If you had a logical mind such as mine, you would not need to be told."
"I have a logical mind," Remo insisted.
"No, you have an obvious mind. It is drawn to the obvious, never the logical."
"Blow it out your kazoo," said Remo, momentarily distracted by a passing set of D-cups bouncing before a leggy brunette.
Chiun rearranged his kimono skirts in a more artful manner and said nothing. Some truths were so obvious they required no repeating.
When the cab drew up to an imposing stone castle on the National Mall in the heart of Washington, Remo got out and asked, "Where are we?"
"The logical place," said the Master of Sinanju, drifting toward the great entrance.
Remo followed. His eyes went to the name carved deep into the facade over the massive entry.
It said Smithsonian Institution.
"Oh," said Remo.
"Is it not both logical and obvious?" asked Chiun.
"I guess," Remo said doubtfully. "It would have been a lot more logical to just tell me where to meet. It's not as if this isn't a public place."
"That would have been too obvious," said Chiun, walking with his hands firmly tucked into his kimono sleeves.
"You know," said Remo, as they walked into the vast vault of the Smithsonian Museum, "I thought I'd broken Smitty of all this supersecrecy bullcrap years ago."
"A good emperor keeps his secrets. As does a good assassin."
"You should talk, the way you spilled your guts to Pepsie Dobbins."
"I merely spoke the truth. If more rabble knew that we stood beside Smith and Smith stood behind the puppet President, no rival assassin would dare to threaten either."
"Not in this country. We grow more nuts than Lebanon and Iran combined, and every one of them wants to take a whack at the President."
The Master of Sinanju looked both ways. "Which way do we go?"
"The logical way."
Chiun made a wrinkled face. "There is no logical way."
"Maybe there's an obvious way," said Remo, happy to have the upper hand for a change.
In the end they split up, Remo going one way and Chiun the other.
Remo found himself in the section devoted to TV show memorabilia, and it made him wonder what future generations would make of the latter years of the twentieth century when a black leather jacket worn by a comic actor occupied the same weight as the Spirit of St. Louis or the Gettysburg Address.
After making a circuit of one wing and finding no trace of Harold Smith, Remo started wondering if Chiun had been mistaken. The thought gave him a moment of quiet joy, until he realized that if it were true, finding Smith would be impossible.
Remo found Chiun pestering a woman at an information booth.
"I seek the emperor," Chiun was whispering.