"What are you saying, Remo?"
"I'm saying I scared the shit out of them," Remo said.
"What he is saying, O Emperor," Chiun interjected quickly, "is that you have chosen your assassins wisely because your President is safe from these vermin who dare threaten such a glorious life."
"I guess that means he really does have this protection," said Smith, who had been trying very hard to follow this thing.
"Yeah. Right. He's safe. They're not going to go at him anymore."
"If you say so," Smith said.
"He is as safe as you wish him," said Chiun with a tantalizing smile. The invitation was always there. If Smith should want to become President, all he need do was say the word and the present occupant of the White House would just simply cease to exist. Remo knew that Chiun could still not quite believe, even after all these years, that Smith was not plotting the overthrow of the President so he could become President himself. After all, why hire a Master of Sinanju to do something as foolish as protect a nation? In the history of Sinanju, nations were things of little import. It was the emperor who hired and the emperor who mattered.
"I wish him safe," said Smith, thinking he had given an order for the protection of his President.
"As you will it," said Chiun, who had heard a quite different command: "Not yet. I will let you know at the right moment when the President should be removed."
"Well," sighed Remo. "Another assignment with no one understanding anybody."
"We understand ourselves quite well," said Smith, nodding to Chiun. Chiun nodded back. Some of these whites could be quite cagey.
Chiun insisted upon accompanying Remo to New York City because, he said, he had "some business there."
"Inside America, you are supposed to serve no other," said Remo.
"I am not betraying service. There are other projects of intellect in which I am involved."
They were in a New York City hotel room.
Chiun had a wide flat bundle in a manila envelope. It was about a foot long and nine inches wide. He held it close to his kimono.
Remo suspected Chiun wanted him to ask about it. Therefore, he didn't.
"I have treated you better in this than you deserve," said Chiun, holding up the package.
"Is it a book?"
"I should have some affairs that are private," Chiun said.
"Okay," said Remo.
"It's a book," said Chiun.
But Remo didn't ask what kind of book. He had known that Chiun had once attempted to have some Korean poetry published in New York City and had received two rejections. One publisher said they liked the poetry but did not feel it was quite right for their list; the other said that they felt the poetry wasn't quite ready for publication.
Remo never understood how the publishing houses had come to those conclusions since the poetry was in an ancient Korean form used, to Remo's knowledge, only by Chiun himself. Remo might have been the second person in the world to understand it because some of the breathing instructions were in the rhythms of that language. He only found out that the dialect was ancient when a Korean scholar pointed out that it was impossible for anyone to know it because it had been out of use four centuries before Rome was a city.
Chiun was annoyed that Remo did not ask about this new book. He said, "I will never let you read this book because you would not appreciate it. You appreciate so little anyhow."
"I'll read it when we get back," Remo said.
"Never mind," said Chiun.
"I promise. I'll read it."
"I don't want you to," Chiun said. "Your opinion is worthless anyway."
"All right," Remo said.
"I will leave a copy out for you."
Remo left the hotel wanting to take pieces of walls out of buildings. He had gotten himself into having to read one of Chiun's manuscripts. It wasn't so bad that he had promised to read it but he faced little questions for months about what he had read, and a failure to answer any one correctly would be proof to Chiun that Remo did not care.
It hadn't always been like this. There had been times early on when Remo felt free of this feeling, this having to prove that he cared, having to prove that he was good enough, worthy enough to be Chiun's successor. He knew he was worthy enough. He knew he cared. So why did he have to go on proving it all the time?
"Why?" said Remo to a fire hydrant on this chilly day near Times Square, and the fire hydrant, failing to give the correct answer, got a hand down its center splitting it to its base. It gushed up a stream of water between its two iron halves, split like two flower petals.
"My God. That man just split a fire hydrant," said a woman shopper.
"You lie," said Remo.
"Whatever you say," said the woman. This was New York. Who knew? The man might be a member of a new fire-hydrant-splitting cult of killers. Or maybe he was part of a new city task force to determine how well fire hydrants were made by destroying them. "Anything you want," she said.
And Remo, seeing the woman was frightened, said, "I'm sorry."
"You should be," said the woman. He had shown weakness and New Yorkers were trained to attack the weak. "That was a brand-new fire hydrant."
"No, I mean for frightening you."
"It's all right," said the woman. In New York, one did not go around letting people suffocate on their own guilt.
"I don't want to be forgiven," Remo said.
"Go fuck yourself," the woman said, because when all else failed in New York, there was always that.
When he reached the computer center, he was not in the mood for the cheery bright British presence of a woman whose desk plate identified her as Ms. Pamela Thrushwell.
"Are you interested in our new model?" said Pamela. She wore an angora sweater over her ample front and smiled with many long perfect white teeth appearing between very red lips.
"Is it better than the old model?" Remo asked.
"It will satisfy every one of your needs," Pamela said. "Every one." She smiled broadly at that and Remo looked away, bored. He knew he did this to many woman. At first, it was exciting, but now it was just what it really was: an expression that women found him fit and displayed their natural instinct to want to reproduce with the fittest of the species. That was all handsomeness or beauty ever was, an expression of a function as basic as breathing or eating or sleeping. It was how the human race kept going and Remo wasn't interested anymore in keeping the human race going.
"Just sell me a computer. That's all," he said.
"Well, you've got to want it for something," she said.