Chiun had heard Remo's last remark, and when he turned to Smith, he was all sweet oil and incense. His long fingernails made the gentle but flamboyant sign of the fan in Smith's honor.
"Emperor Smith," Chiun said. "We must apologize for the disrespect of our pupil. He does not know that an emperor cannot mistreat anyone. Whatever you did, we know was justified. It should be even more. Speak. Tell me who is this insolent one who has deserved even harsher treatment from your mightiness. Give me but his name and I will make him quake in honor of you."
"No one, Little Father," said Remo without taking his eyes off Smith.
"Silence," Chiun commanded him, and turned back to Smith. "Speak but the word, O Emperor. Thy will be done."
"It's all right, Master," Smith said. "Everything has been settled."
"I bow to your wisdom," said Chiun in English. In Korean he muttered to Remo: "This is an emperor. Tell the idiot anything he wants to hear."
"Thank you, Chiun," said Smith, who did not understand Korean. "You've been . . . uh, very gracious."
"Good-bye," said Remo.
"Good luck," said Smith.
"May the sun reflect your awesome glory," said Chiun in English; and in Korean: "He certainly has a lot of work for us lately. Maybe we are not charging him enough. "
"It's not that," Remo said in Korean.
"It's always that," Chiun said. "Should I ask him to sign my petition?"
Remo's loud laughter followed Smith from the hotel suite. When he was gone, Remo told Chiun: "Smith is not an emperor. We don't have emperors in this country."
"They all like it, though," Chiun said. "It's standard in the vocation of assassins. Always call them Emperor."
"Why?" Remo asked.
"If I must explain it now again, then certainly I have wasted my time with you these many years," said Chiun, the squeaky voice again resonating with the magnitude of the offense.
Chiun was still offended when they reached Denver, Colorado, the headquarters city of just Folks Airlines. Remo was to be identified as an agent of the NAA, the National Aeronautical Agency, and Chiun-if he would wear an American suit and take off the more extravagant wisps of hair around his chin and ears-could do the same.
Or, refusing that, Chiun could stay at the hotel. Remo explained this to him. Chiun had a choice. One or the other.
There was a third way available, Chiun explained, as without changing anything, he accompanied Remo to the offices of just Folks. On the way, he explained the virtues of the kimono over the tight three-piece suits that white men wore and which Chiun called "caveskins."
Aldrich Hunt Baynes III, president of just Folks Airlines, was wearing a gray "caveskin" with a dark tie. He had set aside up to ten minutes for the NAA representatives who wanted to see him.
A. H. Baynes had a smile with all the warmth of a giant salamander. His fingernails were polished and his light blond hair looked as if it were cared far by a nurse. He believed in the old adage that everything in life has its place. He had a time for emotions, too, all the emotions, as he often told key stockholders and others close to him. He even liked to roll around in the dirt once in a while. Usually, around late May, for seven minutes in the sunshine with a company photographer present to record his humanity for the company's annual stockholders' report.
A. H. Baynes was thirty-eight years old. He had been a millionaire since he was twenty-four, a year after he graduated from the most prestigious business school in America. When he had entered Cambridge Business School, he put down on his application under, "goals": "I want to be the richest son of a bitch in the world and I have absolutely no qualms or inhibitions about what I do to get there."
He was told that sort of statement was unacceptable. Accordingly, he wrote: "I hope to be part of a community-based synergism, responsibly and effectively answering the deepest needs and aspirations of all people within the structure of a free-market economy."
It meant exactly the same thing, he knew. He was president of just Folks by twenty-six and at thirty-eight, with two children, one white male, age eleven, one white female, age eight, a white female wife and a photogenic dog, he kept piling up money by answering the deepest needs and aspirations of all people.
A short while before, he had bought a company in a small Ohio town. The company was barely breaking even and was a prime candidate for closing down, even though everyone in town worked for the company. The town was so happy when Baynes bought the company that it held an A. H. Baynes Day.
He arrived with wife, two children, dog, smiled for the photographers, and two days later assured the department that made the cases for shipping the product that they would never lose their jobs if they worked for him. The cases continued to be made in the Ohio town; they continued to read "Made in the USA." The products that went into the cases., however, were subcontracted out of Nepal, Bangladesh, and Ramfrez, Mexico, cutting labor costs to six cents an hour, seven cents if the workers got an extra bowl of rice.
When his secretary came in and told him that the two NAA men were here for their meeting and one of them was an Oriental, Baynes thought that there must be a mistake in his appointment book and that one of his subcontractors was visiting him. He decided to see them anyway.
"Hi. A. H. Baynes, and you two are from ... ?" The white man looked at a card he took out of his pocket. Baynes thought it was a business card and reached to take it. But the white man was reading it. "We're from National Aeronautic something," he said.
"I thought you were from Asia," he said, smiling to the old man in the kimono.
"Sinanju," said Chiun.
"North Korea?" said Baynes.
"You have heard," said Chiun serenely.
"Everybody has heard of North Korea," Baynes said. "A great work force. Even better than Bangladesh. They eat every other day in North Korea, I've heard. And they've got to like it."
"One does not have to gorge oneself on meats and fats and sugars if one knows how to make one's body work properly," Chiun said.
"I'm going to be renegotiating some labor contracts pretty soon," Baynes said. "How often does a person have to eat, would you say? I'm really interested."
"Once a week. It depends on how one stores one's food," Chiun said.
"Wonderful. Let me write that down. You're not making this up?" Baynes was scribbling frantically on a white pad with a gold pen.
"He's not talking about the same thing as you," said Remo.
"I don't care," Baynes said. "The concept is perfect. I just have to turn it into more human terms."
"Such as?" Remo asked.
"Once-a-week eating is good for people. For good people. And we want to make everybody into good people."
"It doesn't work for everybody," Remo said, and took the pad from Baynes's hand. Baynes lunged for it but Remo had it in the wastebasket before Baynes could reach it.
"That's an assault," Baynes said. "You, a federal employee. You have assaulted an officer of a corporation."
"That wasn't an assault," Remo said.
"That is a legal assault," said Baynes, sitting down in a formidably dark cherrywood chair from which he could, if he wished, menace his growing empire.
Remo took the arm of the chair and the arm of A. H. Baynes and blended them somewhat. Baynes wanted to scream but the white man's other hand was on his spinal column and all that came out was a barely audible peep from a desperately quivering tonsil.
Baynes could not move his right arm. He did not even dare to look at it. The pain told him it would be an ugly sight.
Tears came to his eyes.
"Now, that," Remo said, "is an assault. Can you see the difference? The other thing with the pad was kind of a getting-something-out-of-the-way, not an assault. If you understand the difference, nod."