"You know I am not going to sign. I can't sign," said Remo.
"I know now that you are not going to sign. I know now that gratitude has its limits. That the finest years of a lifetime have been for naught, that the very blood of life I poured into a white thing has proven again to be worthless. I do deserve this," the old man said.
"Little Father," said Remo to the only man in the world he could call friend, Chiun, Master of Sinanju, latest grand assassin of the House of Sinanju, keeper of all that house's ancient wisdoms which Remo too now had in his being, "I cannot sign that document. I told you that before I left. I told you why before I left."
"You told me why when we had only my signature," Chiun said. "Now we have others. We are growing. This city and then the nation will be the pioneer group of a new mass movement, returning the world to sanity and mankind to justice."
"What do you mean, justice?" Remo asked.
"All movements talk of justice. You can't have a movement without a call to justice."
"This isn't justice we're talking about," Remo said.
"It is just," Chiun said solemnly. His English was precise, his voice high-pitched. "The most just. And for the public good, for their safety and eternal freedom."
"What safety? What freedom?" Remo said.
"Read," said Chiun proudly. He handed Remo the rough copy of the new poster he had been drawing. The English letters were scrawled like the writing of a palsied man, but the Korean characters were clean and artistic, with a clarity that approached grace. Remo had never been good at foreign languages, but he had learned Korean over the years as Sinanju had been drilled into his body and mind and soul. So he read.
The poster called for an end to amateur assassins: "STOP WANTON KILLING," it read. "THE AMATEUR ASSASSINS LITTER YOUR STREETS WITH BLOOD, YOUR PALACES WITH CORPSES, AND RUIN A VITAL PART OF ANY ECONOMY. BRING BACK ORDER. BRING BACK A SENSE OF DIGNITY TO THE KINGDOM. END THE BLIGHT OF THE AMATEUR ASSASSINS WHO KILL WITHOUT PAY OR REASON. HIRE ONLY THE PROFESSIONAL FOR YOUR NEEDS."
Remo shook his head sadly. "What do you think this is going to do, Little Father? It's already against the law in America to kill someone."
"Of course. And why? The amateur assassin, the spouse-basher, the political murderer, the thrill-seeker who does not care about professional standards. Of course it is outlawed. I would outlaw it too the way it is done nowadays."
"It is killing, Chiun," said Remo, and he went to the window overlooking a very old piece of real estate, acres of lawns and gardens in Boston that once the goodly citizens were allowed to use as common pasturage, now called the Boston Common. Those citizens had belonged and now their descendants belonged. A sharecropper from Georgia could come to the Roxbury district of this city and belong. Someone could sail in from Portugal and find a community where he belonged. But Remo did not belong; he would never belong.
"It's killing, no matter how well it's done," he said, without turning around. "That's what it is and maybe those old emperors feared Sinanju and paid Sinanju, but they didn't want them around for breakfast or for an afternoon party."
"They were emperors. They had their ways. Every great emperor had his great assassin," said Chiun. He smoothed his kimono and assumed the posture of powerful presence, the one of dignity and respect which another Master of Sinanju, many centuries before, had demanded that the Ming Dynasty rulers show him.
"They had them where no one could see them," Remo insisted.
"Where everyone saw them. Where everyone saw them," Chiun said, his squeaky voice rising to tea kettle shrillness from the indignity of it all. "For here is the truth. Only in this country is it a thing of shame."
Remo did not answer. How many hundreds of times, thousands of times, in fact, had he tried to explain that they worked for an organization which had to remain secret? Two decades before, the people who ran the United States had come to realize that the country could not survive the coming turbulent years while living within the strict confines of its Constitution. So they set up an organization that did not exist, because to admit that it did would be to admit that the basis of the country-the Constitution itself-did not work.
The organization was named CURE and it would operate outside the law to try to preserve the law and the nation.
Of course, eventually, there had to be an enforcement arm to mete out the punishment that the courts could not or would not mete out. The enforcement arm was Remo Williams, former policeman who had been framed for a murder he did not commit, and sentenced to die in an electric chair that did not work. It had happened a long time ago in a state Remo had once called home. A long time ago, when he had had a home. Now his only place was not a place at all. It was his training as an assassin, given in full measure by Chiun, the reigning Master of Sinanju, only because he expected Remo to follow him as the next reigning Master.
CURE thought it had paid, in gold, for Chiun to train Remo. It did not understand that what Chiun had given Remo could not have been purchased at any price. It had been given to Remo because Chiun had found no one in Sinanju, a rocky windswept village in North Korea, who had the character to become the next Master in the long unbroken line of assassins from Sinanju. Chiun never admitted this in so many words to Remo. Chiun did not admit such things to whites. And there was another reason also. One of the ancient scrolls of the House of Sinanju talked about a white man who would be dead, but who would nonetheless, be trained to become the Master of Sinanju. This white man would become the greatest Master of all, because he was more than just a man: he was the enbodiment of Shiva, the Destroyer God. Chiun believed that Remo was this white man. Remo thought that this was a porcelain crock of crap. But he did not tell Chiun that, one did not tell Chiun such things.
Remo was still silent and Chiun said, "Sulking is never a sufficient response to anything."
"I could tell you again but you wouldn't hear it."
"I have given the best years of my life, the sacred years of my life, to breathe Sinanju into your soul, and now you are ashamed of it."
"I'm not ashamed."
"Then how can you label what an assassin does as killing? Simple killing. An auto kills. A fall kills. A mushroom kills. We do not kill."
"What do we do, then?" Remo asked.
"There isn't a good word in English for it. It lacks majesty."
"Because it's the right word," Remo said stubbornly.
"Never," Chiun spat. "I am not a mushroom. Maybe you are but I am not and I never will be. I have tried to take what was given me, ignoring the fact that you are white. I have always ignored it."
"You've never stopped mentioning it, Little Father."
"You mention it and bring it on yourself. Ignoring the fact that you were white, I gave all to you. I gave you Sinanju."
"Nobody in Sinanju could get it right. That's why. You thought you would teach me a few blows, pick up a bag of gold, and go home. I know why you stayed on to really teach me. Because I was the only one who could learn. This century. Not in the Mings or the Fus or any dynasty from Persia to the golden blossom courts of Japan. Today. Me. I was the only one."
"Trying always to ignore the fact that I was dealing with an ungrateful white, I gave you what centuries have blessed only one house of assassins with," Chiun said solemnly.
"And I learned."
"And if you learned, then you cannot call what we do ... that word."
"Killing," said Remo. "We do killing."
Chiun clasped his breast. Remo had used the word. Chiun turned his head away.
"Killing," Remo repeated.
"Ingrate," Chiun said.
"Killing."
"Then why do you do it?" Chiun asked.
"I do it," said Remo, "because I do it."
Chiun lightly waved a long-nailed, delicate hand into the air of the penthouse suite.
"Of course. A reason without a reason. Why should I have ever expected that you would have performed for the House of Sinanju or for me? What have I done to deserve the slightest inkling of respect from you?"
"I'm sorry, Little Father, but . . ."
Remo did not finish. Chiun had clapped his hands over his ears. It was now the proper time for sulking and Chiun was doing it. He had one last word for Remo before he went to the large picture window where he could best be seen sulking.
"Never say that word again in my presence." Chiun lowered himself into a lotus position facing the window, his back to the room and Remo, his head in perfect balance with his perfect spine, his face a rhythmed stillness of poise and silence. It was a graceful sulk. But then again, he was the Master of Sinanju.