Smith looked toward the icy waters of Long Island Sound, two hundred yards away, lapping at the rocky shoreline where the manicured lawns of Folcroft fell away before finally surrendering to the salt-laced air.
The remnants of a rickety old dock stuck out into the water, bent at strange angles like an arthritic finger. God, so long ago. It was to that very dock that Smith and another ex-CIA man, now long dead, had tied up their small boat when they came to Folcroft to set up CURE. So many years ago.
And so many disappointments.
They had been filled with high hopes for the secret organization's success and it had failed. It had won some little fights, some small skirmishes, but the big criminals, the overlords and chieftains, all kept getting away with crime because the justice system was weighted in favor of the rich and powerful. A successful prosecution was a chain of many links and it was always possible to corrupt and weaken one of those links and break the chain.
Smith had been prepared to write CURE off, call it a failure, and go back to New Hampshire and life as a college professor. But then he and CURE were given permission to recruit an enforcement arm-- one man-- to mete out the punishment that the legal system couldn't and wouldn't mete out.
Remo Williams had been the man. Smith had framed the orphan policeman for a killing he didn't commit, had seen him sentenced to die in an electric chair that didn't work, and had brought him to Folcroft for training. Ten years ago. And for that decade, it had often been only Remo, trained by Chiun and supported by Smith, to stand up for America against all its enemies.
And it had all started with that small power boat tying up to that rickety old dock.
So many years ago.
So many deaths ago.
Conrad MacCleary, the other CIA agent, was dead many years now, and Smith ruefully reflected that he too was dead in a way. Certainly the Smith who had come to this place to start CURE, filled with optimism and high hopes, no longer existed. That Smith had been replaced by a man who ate tension as his daily diet, who hoped finally not to wipe out crime and criminals, but merely to try to stay even with them. The young Harold Smith was dead, as dead as if he lay in a grave.
And now, it was Remo's turn.
Remo or America. That was the price Abner Buell had set, and Smith knew that it was a price he would pay.
At first, Smith had thought he was talking to a madman, because Buell kept talking about Remo's point value continuing to go up as he got tougher and tougher to destroy.
He was mad, but he was also crafty and intelligent and dangerous. He had told Smith about the aborted U.S. missile firing which was a whistle away from beginning World War III and he told Smith about a similar Russian event, about which Smith was only now starting to get information. Buell stated proudly that he was behind both moves. He had too much solid information for Smith to disbelieve him and Smith's stomach sank when Buell said he could do it all again if he chose.
And he would so choose. Unless Remo was removed from the board.
"Think about it, Dr. Smith," Buell had said. "You get rid of that Remo. Or I'll start a nuclear war."
"Why would you do that?" Smith asked placantly. "You'd probably die too in an all-out nuclear war."
Buell had cackled, a madman's laugh. "Maybe and maybe not. But it'd be my war. I'd be the winner because I started it and that was what I set out to do. Five million extra points for starting a nuclear war. It's this Remo or that. Make up your mind."
"I have to think about it," Smith said, stalling for time as his Folcroft computers raced through switching procedures to try to trace the phone call.
"I'll call you tomorrow then," Buell said. "Oh, by the way. Your computers won't be able to trace this call."
"Why not?" Smith asked.
"They haven't had time yet. All they'll know is I'm someplace west of the Mississippi, and that's right. Good-bye."
That had been an hour ago and still Smith sat looking through the smoky windows at the sound. The United States or Remo. Maybe the world or Remo.
When it was that simple, was there any question what his response would be? Sighing, he picked up the telephone to call Chiun.
Marcia tried to make him eat dinner, but Buell curtly told her he was too busy.
World War Ill-- five million points.
Remo-- a half-million points.
Pamela Thrushwell-- fifty thousand points by now.
And now this Dr. Smith? How many points to give him?
He turned on the television monitor's game board and watched the point totals appear on the screen. Smith was a bureaucrat probably, and probably dumb. Arbitrarily, he decided to give Harold W. Smith a mere ten thousand points.
Until further calculation.
In the middle of the hotel-room floor, surrounded by piles of bond paper, Chiun sat.
Smith waited, silent, until Chiun acknowledged his presence but the old Oriental was preoccupied. As Smith watched, Chiun was busy crossing out typewritten lines and writing in other lines, using a quill pen and an old-fashioned inkwell which he had on the floor before him. His tongue stuck slightly out of one corner of his mouth, showing his concentration. His hands flew so rapidly over the paper that to Smith they seemed almost a blur in the dimly lit room. Finally, Chiun sighed and placed the quill pen down, next to the inkwell. The motion was casual but graceful and when he was done, inkwell and pen looked as if they had been sculpted from one piece of black stone.
Without looking up, Chiun said, "Greetings, O Emperor. Your servant apologizes for his ill manners. Had I but known you were here, all else would have been relegated to unimportance. How may I serve you?"
Smith, who knew Chiun's excuse was nonsense since the Oriental would have recognized him a corridor away by the sound of his feet scuffing on a thick carpet, looked at the stacks of paper on the floor.
"Are you writing something?" he asked.
"A poor thing but an honest effort. One in which you may well take pride, Emperor."
"This isn't one of those petitions you got up to Stop Amateur Assassins, is it?" Smith asked warily.
Chiun shook his head. "No. I have decided that the time is not yet right for a national movement dedicated to obliterating inferior work. Someday but not now." He waved a long-nailed hand over the papers. "This is a novel. I am writing a novel."
"Why?"
"Why? Because the world needs beauty. And it is a good way for a man to spend his days, telling what he has learned so he can lighten the burden of those who are yet to come."
"This isn't about you, is it? About us?"
Chiun chuckled and shook his head. "No, Emperor. I understand full well your lust for secrecy. This has nothing to do with any of us."
"What's it about then?" Smith asked.
"It is about a noble old Oriental assassin, the last of his line, and the white ingrate he tries to teach and the secret agency that employs them. A mere trifle."
Suddenly, Smith remembered the bizarre call he had gotten earlier from some publisher who had thought that Folcroft was a training area for assassins. "I thought you said it wasn't about us," Smith said.
"And it is not," Chiun said innocently.
"But a noble old Oriental assassin. His white student A secret agency. Master of Sinanju, that is us," Smith said.
"No, no. Not even superficial similarities," Chiun said. "For instance, this Oriental assassin about whom I write is honored by the country which he has adopted and for which he works. Totally unlike my situation. And the white trainee, well, in my novel, he is not always ungrateful. And he is capable of learning something. Clearly that has nothing to do with Remo."