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172

  Smith looked at Ruby with narrowed eyes.

  She nodded.

  "I figured you can maybe get to my lawyer or something, maybe make sure that what I tell him don't get out. But the CIA? They gonna have a field day when they find out what you doing when they been getting their ears pinned back for less. They never let up on you. CURE goes right down the drain."

  Smith sighed and Ruby said, "Now look at the good side."

  "There is no good side."

  "Sure, there is. First you think I know a little bit about your organization, enough to be dangerous. And that's only part right. I know a whole lot about your organization."

  "How'd you learn that?"

  She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "I been with them on two separate things now. You have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to find things out. I know who you are and where you operate and what you do and what you do personally and what they do and I have an idea of what you spend and where the President keeps the phone he calls you on and what your telephone codes are. Like that. Ceppin' for you, I guess I know more about your operation than anybody in the world."

  "Just what I needed," Smith said. "A woman who knows too much that I can't get rid of."

  "Want me to tell you what to do ?" asked Ruby.

  "What?"

  "Hire me."

  "Hire you? What for?"

  "Nothing special. Not right now. But I hear

  173

  things. I keep track of things. Sometimes you need special help, you call me. I smart and I don't say nothin' to nobody."

  "Do I have a choice?"

  "No. That's why this is your lucky day," said Ruby.

  "How much do you want?"

  "Make me an offer."

  "Five thousand dollars."

  "You fooling," Ruby said.

  "Why?"

  "I making twenty-five with the CIA before I left."

  "For what?" asked Smith. His first salary with the CIA had been seven thousand dollars a year, but that was long ago.

  "For hanging around. In three years, they call me once. They send me down to that island and I run into those two inside there. I helped you then and when I got back, I didn't go running around, telling everybody I was a big spy, helping a big secret organization."

  "I'll give you twenty-three," said Smith, surrendering.

  "Thirty," said Ruby.

  "Split the difference. Twenty-five," said Smith.

  "Splittin' the difference is twenty-six five."

  "All right," Smith said, swallowing hard. "But it's banditry."

  "Yeah. But now I be your bandit. And I'm gonna earn my money for you in less than five minutes."

  She left Smith with a puzzled look on his face and opened the door to the other room.

  "Why'nt you come in?"

  174

  Chiun smiled at Remo triumphantly. "Two minutes and fifty-five seconds. You owe me."

  "Aaah," said Eemo in disgust. "Don't worry. I'll pay you. As soon as I get my residual check from Vega-Choppa."

  He walked away, but as he moved, Chiun's hands flicked into Remo's pocket and came out with a roll of bills. Chiun extricated the ten dollars Remo owed him, and tossed the rest of the money onto the sofa.

  Inside, Remo told Smith, "Not so easy when you've got to see their eyes, is it?"

  "You're wrong, Remo. It was a simple administrative decision."

  "Here's another simple administrative decision. I quit."

  Smith nodded his head. "I know. What are you going to do?"

  "I told you. I'm going to get a lot of residuals from those commercials for my hands. I'm going to be rich. My hands are going to be famous. Then, who knows? Maybe next my feet. Maybe they'll want somebody to do something with his feet."

  "Like a monkey," said Chiun. "They do things with their feet."

  "What was the name of that gadget you advertised?" asked Smith, reaching for a newspaper from the desk.

  "The Vega-Choppa," said Remo.

  Smith looked at the newspaper. "I don't think you'd better count on them to support you," he said.

  "Why not? Let me see that."

  He glanced at the story that Smith had circled.

  175

  Twenty-seven lawsuits, totaling over forty-five million dollars, had been filed against the Vega-Choppa manufacturer by housewives whose fingers and hands had been mangled using the device. They charged that the television commercials showing the product's ease of operation were misleading and had obviously been filmed at slow speed and then speeded up.

  When the manufacturer denied this, the attorneys representing the injured women amended their complaints to include among the defendants a John Doe, who was the demonstrator of the device. They accused him of using manual dexterity to give housewives "a false sense of security that the utensil was safe for normal human beings to use."

  Remo looked at Smith and, if he had been smiling, Remo might have killed him then and there. But Smith was as somber as usual.

  "Let's see, Remo. Your share of forty-five million dollars in damages should come to twenty-two point five million. You're going to have to sell a lot of carrot cutters to make up for that."

  Remo sighed. "I'll find some other work."

  Ruby tapped him on the shoulder. "Could I talk to you please ?"

  "Talk," said Remo.

  "Inside," Ruby said.

  In the other room, he said "What do you want?"

  "Don't be so grouchy."

  "It's easy for you to say. You never just lost your chance to be a rich television star."

  "You'll get another chance someday."

  176

  "Now what am I gonna do?" Remo asked.

  "I don't care what you do," Ruby said. "I want to talk about what you did."

  "Which was?"

  "Freeing Lucius. Those other men."

  "A favor to you. I owed you one."

  "No, it wasn't. It was a duty to your country," Ruby said. "That was a good thing you did."

  Remo sat heavily on the edge of the bed. He was silent for a moment before looking up.

  "You really think so?"

  Ruby nodded.

  "It was a good thing. Today you made America a better place to live in. We should all have the chance to do that sometimes."

  "You really think that, don't you? Really."

  "I really do. I'm proud to know you."

  Remo stood up. "You know, you're right. Getting rid of that creep today was worth a lot. It takes away a lot of the stench."

  "It was a good thing," Ruby said again.

  Remo took her hands. "You know, maybe Chiun's onto something. About me and you," he said.

  Ruby smiled. "We'll just have to see about that."

  "We will," Remo said. "We will."

  He walked back into the main room of the hotel suite. Ruby followed closely behind him.

  Chiun looked past Remo at her. She held up her fingers to make an okay ring.

  As she passed Chiun, she leaned over and whispered, "You lose. He was easy. Where's my ten dollars?"

  177

  Chiun handed her the ten dollars he had filched from Remo's pocket.

  Ruby tucked it into her dress and she and Chiun watched as Remo approached Smith.

  "Smitty," said Remo. "I've decided to give you another chance."

  Smith almost smiled.

  "But if you blow this one, that's it. Right, Chiun?"

  "For the first time," Chiun said.

  "Right, Ruby?"

  "Anything you say. Dodo."

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