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  "It is work. He wants to know something about technique."

  "Ah, that is why he is coming here this morning."

  "He's coming? Why didn't you tell me?" asked Remo.

  "Because the phone call didn't have a blue tag, heh, heh, heh," said Chiun and cackled intermittently until the projector was set up and running. They watched one man come to the street corner and wait Another approached. Chiun noted the show could use organ music although he didn't particularly want to hear what they were saying. Remo said the man with the little smile seemed to have very, very good control of his breathing. Chiun thought Rad Rex of As the Planet Revolves was more handsome. Remo thought the man had fine balance. Chiun said he couldn't wait for the commercial. Remo pointed out that something small struck the attacker in the forehead and tore at the flesh. Chiun thought that sort of thing was a disgrace to show on movies. Remo noted that the balance of the man was somehow wrong. Chiun thought the whole show lacked the feminine touch: "What is art without woman?" Remo wondered how the man did the dismemberment, feeling a respect for the victim who apparently had attempted to hold on to the objects in his hands with his last bit of life. Chiun thought the show could have used a doctor, or at least an unwanted pregnancy.

  But when the film was over, Chiun was silent, staring at the blank spot on the wall where the pictures had flashed.

  "Well, Little Father?" said Remo.

  "I have never seen his school before. It is none of the newer fashions like Karate or Kung fu or the other game variations of Sinanju."

  "What would you say it is?"

  "I would say we say nothing to Smith," said Chiun. "That man is not a game. That man is real and I have never seen his technique."

  "I got the feeling," said Remo, "that the things he was doing shouldn't have worked. We know how the body moves. What he did was, well, it didn't have the flow of life."

  "You must avoid this man for the time being."

  "Why?" asked Remo, very concerned.

  "Do you know him?"

  "No."

  "Do you know his technique?"

  "No."

  "Then what makes you think he will not prevail over you?"

  "He moves too slow. I can take him. I can take anyone but maybe you, Little Father."

  "Have I taught you nothing? Does the dog attack the lion? Does the snake attack the mongoose? Does the worm attack the bird? How do you know you are not the worm or snake or dog if you do not know for sure who he is or what he is?"

  "He's slow."

  "An avalanche can be slow. A wave can be slow."

  "Ahhhh, crap," said Remo, spinning away in frustration.

  "Once again we hear the wisdom of the West," said Chiun.

  When Smith came that afternoon and explained the danger of perfect counterfeits and the possibility that the entire country could go under with people literally starving to death in the street, Remo was just grateful that Dr. Smith asked only one question about the contact's technique.

  "No," Remo said. "Chiun didn't recognize it."

  "I sat in on a meeting, and the man who had been in charge of the abortive exchange said he thought the contact, this Mr. Gordons, had some sort of sharp instrument," said Smith in the lemony voice that matched his gaunt, parched lemony face on which a smile would appear as a foreign body.

  Remo shrugged.

  "But no matter," said Smith. "There are now four engraving plates. The fifty-dollar bill and this new hundred-dollar bill. I want them, and I want you to find out if there are any more. This may be the most crucial assignment you've ever had."

  "Yeah. It has to do with money," said Remo.

  "I don't understand your negative attitude."

  "That's because you never had one."

  "A negative attitude?" asked Smith.

  "No. Any attitude at all. Those computers at Folcroft are the soul of this organization. We just work for those machines."

  "Those computers are necessary, Remo, so that we don't have to use people. It would be impossible to keep an organization secret if thousands knew of it. With the computers, we have the perfect information coordinators. The information gatherers? Well, they're people who don't really have to know what they are doing. Most people in ordinary life don't know how their jobs fit in anyhow."

  "Do we?"

  Smith cleared his throat and adjusted his briefcase on his lap.

  "We have a contact point for Mr. Gordons. Group Leader Francis Forsythe of the CIA is working with Treasury on this. He is expecting a special agent whose name is Remo Brian and your identity papers and credit cards are here with me now. We don't have time for our usual closed drops on identity papers. Go in and get this thing cleared as quickly as you can. In the past, I have complained occasionally about the excessive violence you have used. This time, things are so dangerous that I don't think there could be such a thing as excessive violence."

  "Sure," said Remo. "We're protecting the almighty dollar. God forbid we should exert ourselves to protect an American life."

  "We are protecting American lives. At every dinner table," said Smith. On his way out he paused to assure Chiun that the annual gold tribute had been transferred to the village of Sinanju in North Korea.

  "The village of Sinanju places its trust in Emperor Smith and the Master of Sinanju shall always assure his glory."

  "By the way, did you happen to see the films?" asked Smith.

  "It is a beautiful day here in your fair New York City, no?" said Chiun and appeared calm as a white cloud as Smith attempted to unravel the answer, shrugged, and gave up, bidding the Master of Sinanju good fortune in his continued training of the American.

  "Why didn't you tell him you had seen the film?" asked Remo when Smith was gone from the suite.

  "For the same reason you are doing Smith's bidding against my wishes."

  "And that reason is?"

  "The less an emperor knows about our business, the better. We go together. I have put too much of value into your life to let you squander it," said Chiun and folded his hands again.

  "You mean you're worried about something?"

  Chiun did not answer.

  "Are you worried about Smith?" asked Remo. "You gave him a dodge-job of an answer. You didn't want to answer him about that film. Is there something on that film that you're worried about?"

  But Chiun, the latest Master of Sinanju, the grand and ancient house of assassins, was silent, and silent he remained for the rest of the day.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Group Leader Francis Forsythe, in khaki bush jacket and pearl gray ascot, rapped the pointer on a three-inch-high airplane hangar, which was part of a mockup of Chicago's O'Hare Airport, put together window by window, swinging door by swinging door, hangar frame by hangar frame, in a sealed Washington basement of the Treasury Building.

  A sharp overhead beam illuminated in yellow artificial sun the runways, terminals, even miniature passenger jets. Round circles, ranging from light pink to dark blood red, covered the airport. Dark red at the passenger terminals and ticket counters, light pink on the runways.

  "We have blood-coded the airport," said Forsythe, "so that should sniper fire go awry in our attempt to get Gordons, we will hurt as few innocent bystanders as possible. Darker red is for heavier people concentration and lighter pink is for less. Now that you see this you will understand our fire patterns for tomorrow's exchange. Our primary, secondary, and tertiary sniper stations will be cross matrixed on an evolving plane on nothing darker than pink. Maximum, pink… if that's all right with Remo Brian."

  "How can it be all right?" asked Remo. "I haven't understood a word you said."

  "I'm talking about fire patterns, Mr. Brian," said Forsythe, with enough bitterness in his voice to pucker the walls. The bitterness had been there since Forsythe had checked with his commander in Langley, Virginia, earlier in the day and discovered that this boor, who walked around in slacks and an open-necked sports shirt and who did not carry a gun, and who seemed more intere
sted in the opinion of a senile, decrepit Oriental than in the most modern technology of counter-espionage, was—for this mission—Forsythe's superior. The order came from so high up even Forsythe's superior wasn't sure where it had originated.

  "Fire patterns, Mr. Brian. I am talking about fire patterns, if you know what they are."

  "That's guns going off, right?" said Remo. Chiun's delicate long fingers glided out to a miniature 747 on the airport mockup. He moved it down a runway to see if the wheels worked. With his hands, he glided it off the runway and then down over the hangar and back into a perfect landing.

  Group Leader Forsythe watched. His neck reddened. He turned back to Remo.

  "Correct. Fire patterns are guns going off. Now you know what a fire pattern is."

  There was a smothered chuckle at the end of the table away from Remo and Chiun.

  "No," said Remo. "No guns going off. None of that dilly ding-dong stuff. I don't like the idea of you people walking around with guns in the streets among citizens."

  "I don't think you realize how dangerous we believe this Gordons may be," said Forsythe. "More importantly, he has access to perfect plates for fifty and hundred dollar bills that could literally destroy our economy. I don't know what your instructions are, sir, but mine are: A, get the source of those plates and destroy it; B, get the plates themselves; and C, get Mr. Gordons."

  "You have new instructions now. Stop using the alphabet," said Remo. "Now I'm supposed to give Gordons something tomorrow in exchange for those plates."

  "It's being pre-processed," said Forsythe.

  "What does that mean?" asked Remo. Chiun glided a Pan Am 747 into a TWA 707. Then he skirted the 707 around a hangar and back into the 747, nose into wing.

  Forsythe cleared his throat and forced himself to look away from the kimono-clad old arms that were now rearranging the model planes in front of a model passenger terminal.

  "What we're using as bait and what Mr. Gordons has asked for is a highly sophisticated piece of software. That's a computer program. It has to be duplicated so it won't be lost."

  "It's pretty valuable, huh?"

  "Not to anyone but NASA. That's the strange thing about it. This Mr. Gordons wants something that's virtually unnecessary within a few hundred thousand miles of earth."

  Forsythe's voice softened. The minor coughing disappeared from the back of the room. Chiun stopped playing with the planes. Forsythe continued.

  "What he wants is a computer program for an unmanned vehicle, a highly sophisticated and recent program. We and the Russians, especially the Russians, who have done more unmanned research, were getting signals back from spacecraft, a day or two days after the craft had ceased to exist. That's how long it takes for some signals to return. Naturally that means that control from NASA Houston or the Russian base is impossible in case of a real unforeseen emergency. The point is that these spacecraft just can't think. You can program them to cope with almost anything, but when something comes up that's not in their program, they can't improvise. They have no creative intelligence. A five-year-old human being would overwhelm them. The ability to see an elephant in a hunk of clay, the ability to do what our ancestors did and stick a rock on a piece of wood and invent an axe, even though they had never seen one before, is beyond them. That's what these space vehicles lacked and that's why they perished. And they couldn't call on our human intelligence back here on earth because by the time the signals got here, the whole thing was academic."

  Remo felt a nudge from Chiun.

  "He thinks human intelligence is all between the ears. What superstitions," said Chiun.

  Forsythe rapped the pointer on a runway.

  "Would your friend care to share that with the rest of us?" he asked.

  "No, he wouldn't," said Remo.

  There was a moment's silence, then Remo said, "So the program Gordons wants is one that is of no value to anyone on earth."

  "Right," said Forsythe.

  "So when you went to make the switch the last time, you gave him a phony program," said Remo.

  "Right," said Forsythe.

  "Why?" said Remo.

  "We don't want just anybody having access to our nation's secrets. It would compromise our national honor."

  The only sound in the room was Chiun snickering as he turned back to the model airplanes.

  His face red under its thin coating of sweat, Forsythe said, "I'd like to suggest again that you employ snipers."

  "No, again," said Remo.

  "Then perhaps one man," said Forsythe and a red leather case came onto the mockup. It opened and a fat barrel with a small bore snapped into a metal lock. A hand underneath the light held forth a long thin bullet.

  "I can hit an eyelash with this at a hundred yards. One hit is a kill. It's poisoned."

  "You hit Mr. Gordons and he still had enough left to tear apart that poor guy you set up," said Remo.

  "That was a Treasury agent and he expected to risk his life," said Forsythe, stiffening in a military manner, the pointer snapping up under his arm like a riding crop. Remo gave him a baleful look. The sniper pushed his special bullet farther down the mock-up toward Remo. Into this came Chiun.

  "Ratatatatatatat," he said, strafing the main passenger terminal with an American Airlines DC-10 in his left hand. With his right, he brought up the Pan Am 747.

  "Zooooom," said Chiun as the 747 climbed like a fighter and chased away the DC-10. "Ratatatatatat," said the Master of Sinanju. "Varooom. Booom. Boooom. Varooooom," and the DC-10 spun crazily over the mockup of O'Hare Airport in the basement of the Treasury Building.

  "Balloooooom," said Chiun when the DC-10's nose hit a hanger. He let the model plane drop to the runway.

  "Are you through playing with toys?" asked Forsythe.

  "In your hands," said Chiun, "and in the hands of your followers, everything is a toy. In my hands, everything is a weapon."

  "Very nice," said Forsythe. "I suppose now you two will take these model planes to the meeting with Mr. Gordons tomorrow at O'Hare."

  "In my hands or in the hands of this man," Chiun said, motioning to Remo, "everything is a weapon, a greater weapon than that gun with your man. That gun is a toy."

  "I've had enough," said Forsythe. "This is ridiculous."

  "You're outa your goddam head, dink," said the sniper and his face appeared out of the darkness under the light—cold watery blue eyes behind rimless spectacles.

  "Load your toy gun," said Chiun.

  "Stop it. This instant," said Forsythe. "This instant. This is an order. Brian, you've got to stop your man from needling my sniper."

  "I don't get involved," said Remo.

  "Load your toy gun," cackled Chiun and the little DC-10 seemed to float into his right hand and come up to his shoulder. Its nose and cockpit pointed at the sniper. The sniper put the bullet into the chamber. Forsythe stepped back from the table. Hands that were resting on the edges of the mockup on all four sides disappeared as people retreated into the dark. Remo stayed at the table edge between Chiun and the sniper, drumming his fingers in boredom. He hummed what Forsythe in his terror judged to be "Young at Heart."

  The sniper loaded the special bullet into the chamber. It clicked with the deep metal sound of fine tooling. He raised the rifle. Remo yawned.

  "Fire," said Chiun.

  "I can't miss from here," said the sniper. "I could split an eyelash from here."

  "Fire," said Chiun.

  "For God's sakes. Not in the basement of the Treasury Building," said Forsythe.

  "Well," said the sniper, "whatever Dinko wants, Dinko gets. I think I'm gonna give you another eye."

  And as his trigger finger squeezed, Chiun's delicate long-fingernailed hand seemed to flutter under the yellow overhead lights and the DC-10 was no longer in his hands. Only Remo saw it move. But everyone saw it land. Its wings were pressed to the sniper's forehead and the nose and cockpit were embedded in his skull. Blood trickled from the back of the fuselage and as the head went forwa
rd, it drowned the tail in the warm red of the sniper's life. The sniper's rifle with the fat barrel clattered onto the mockup, its muzzle resting on the passenger terminal.

  Chiun brushed it aside. "A toy," he said.

  "No," said Forsythe. "You can't kill someone in the basement of the Treasury Building without a written order."

  "Don't let him get away with it," Remo told Forsythe. "Make him clean up the body. He's always leaving bodies around."

  "He started it," said Chiun. "If I had started it, I would have cleaned up the body."

  "You suckered that numby with the bang-bang into this thing because you were getting bored," said Remo.

  "I was merely playing with airplanes," said Chiun. "But everyone knows you whites stick together."

  "We have a dead man here," said Forsythe.

  "Right. And don't let him get away without cleaning up after himself," said Remo.

  "If I were white, you wouldn't say that," said Chiun.

  "What are we going to do about the killing?" asked Forsythe.

  "Mark it to racial bigotry," said Chiun, who had been hearing these words on his daytime television soap operas and now thought it an appropriate time to use them. "You whites not only smell funny and are stupid but you're also bigots. Racists. And you're not even the best race."

  "Don't mind him," said Remo. "He just doesn't want to clean up after himself. Where's the program? And this time, since it's of no value to anyone on earth, it better be the honest one. No fakes."

  On the flight to Chicago, Remo examined the box that had words like miniaturization component and input and wondered who would need the assist of creativity that was barely that of a five-year-old. Forsythe had explained that while they needed computers and top scientific minds to approach a substitute creativity, they still hadn't achieved it. They had only a simulation.

  After the sniper's death at Chiun's hands. Forsythe had not objected too strongly to leaving snipers behind.

  "And your cameramen and sound men and whatever you've got with equipment," Remo had said.

  "But this is the most modern technological equipment in existence," Forsythe had protested.