Warren Murphy: The Final Reel

"You took the only one with you."

"Hmm. No biggee," Remo said. He took out the gallon pot. "You up for supper?"

Chiun wasn't interested in food. He watched Remo fill the large kettle with water. The old Asian tipped his birdlike head to one side as his pupil placed the pot on the stove.

"Would you like to hear what I have written?"

"Maybe after supper," Remo hedged.

"Maybe?" Chiun asked thinly. There was just an early hint of pique in his singsong voice.

"Definitely," Remo sighed, turning to the old Korean. "After supper I'm all ears, okay?" Something across the room suddenly caught his eye. He crossed over to the table.

"You are also all nose and feet," Chiun said, his airy mood returning. "But that is genetics and cannot be helped, even by a Master of Sinanju as gifted as myself. You will love what I have written thus far," he insisted.

"I'm sure," Remo said disinterestedly. "What's this?" From the low taboret he picked through a bundle of shredded brown paper. Strewed across the table's surface, it looked like the remains of an old supermarket shopping bag.

"What is what?" Chiun asked innocently. Remo's eyes narrowed suspiciously as he lifted a particularly large section of paper. It said Safeway on one side. When he flipped it over he saw the name R. Blodnick printed in letters so carefully formed they might have been typed. The last name was one of his many aliases. His address was printed neatly underneath.

"Did I get something from Smitty today?" Remo asked. He glanced around for the package contents. Aside from the paper itself, there was nothing in sight.

"Oh, that," Chiun said, as if suddenly remembering. A bony hand waved dismissal. "Give it no more thought. The contents were unimportant."

"Smitty must have thought it was important enough to shell out the dough for express mail, Little Father," Remo insisted. "What is it and where is it?"

"The what is not important," Chiun sniffed. "As for the where, it is in here somewhere."

"Where?" Remo pressed.

"I do not remember. Nor do I have time to form a search party with you, 0 Dudley Dimwit of the Mounties." He turned abruptly from his pupil. "You have kept me from my work long enough." With that the old Korean bounced cheerfully from the room.

"I hate it when he's happy," Remo grumbled. Feeling his own light mood begin to evaporate, he began methodically searching the room for the mysterious item his employer had mailed to him. It took him five minutes to locate. He finally found it in the wastebasket beneath the rotting carcass of the previous evening's duck dinner.

Remo washed the plastic surface as carefully as he dared with a sponge and warm water, drying it with a half-dozen paper towels. After he was finished, he carried the object into the main living room he and Chiun shared. Along the way he noted that all the lights he'd turned off on his way in had been turned on once more. This time he didn't bother shutting them off.

In the living room Remo raised the small black object accusingly. "It's a videotape," he announced. The Master of Sinanju looked up blandly from the dozens of parchments scattered around the woven tatami mat on which he sat cross-legged. A goose quill quivered in his wrinkled, bony hand.

"Duh," the old Korean said. He bowed his bald head back over his papers and resumed his work.

"Dammit, Chiun, this could be important."

In his hand the tape became a black blur. Wind whistled shrilly through the plastic case. Eventually this noise stopped as the momentum Remo built created a vacuum around the cassette. In this void the water droplets from the interior did not so much roll off the tape as they did evaporate.

"I hope that didn't erase it," Remo said worriedly once he was through. He examined the tape. It seemed fine.

Chiun didn't look up. "It is only a greasy Arab running around amid fat white men," he insisted. "There was no beauty or depth. Nor were there any explosions or dinosaurs. A poor effort all around. I give it a strong thumbs-down."

"Thank you, Roger-freaking-Ebert," Remo griped. Remo brought the bone-dry tape over to the VCR, which sat on a stand beside their big-screen television. For a long, silent moment he studied the videotape machine. Finally he turned to the Master of Sinanju.

"How do you work this thing?" he asked sheepishly.

"Masterfully," Chiun replied, head bowed.

"Har-de-har-har. I'm serious."

"And I am busy," Chiun said, not looking up from his work.

Remo frowned. He turned back to the machine. He had watched Chiun use the device hundreds of times. The Master of Sinanju was one of the first people outside a television studio to own a private recording device. In spite of decades of having one of the machines in the house and the many upgrades Chiun had gotten since the original, Remo was still lost.

He turned on the TV and tried shoving the tape in the VCR. He watched the television expectantly. Nothing happened. Remo frowned.

He tried taking the tape out. It was stuck.

"If you break it, you own it," Chiun said sweetly. Remo shot him a dirty look. The Master of Sinanju's speckled eggshell head was bowed over his parchments. He was writing furiously.

Grumbling, Remo returned to the kitchen. He took the kettle from the stove, dumping the water in the sink. Dinner would have to wait. He returned to the living room carrying a small screwdriver. He dropped the videotape he'd picked up from the Boston Common drug dealer atop the TV.

Twenty minutes of cursing later he had removed the upper assembly of the device. Wiggling the tape from side to side, he managed to remove it from where it had been wedged sideways inside the machine. He had just finished putting the body back on the chassis when the phone rang. By this time his good mood was all but gone.

"You want to get that?" Remo asked as he tightened the last screw.

When he glanced at his teacher, Chiun was still writing placidly on his parchments. He made no move toward the phone.

"Don't get up," Remo snarled to the Master of Sinanju. Leaving the VCR, he crossed over to the telephone.

Remo snatched up the receiver. "What do you want?" he snapped.

The voice of Dr. Harold W. Smith, his employer in the supersecret government organization CURE, was like a lemon squeezed onto a dry rock.

"I see you are your usual jovial self," the CURE director droned. There was an uncharacteristic hint of amusement in Smith's tone.

"Don't you start acting all happy on me, too," Remo warned. "Chiun is bad enough. If you decide to go all giddy, I'm going to sit in a tub of warm water and open my wrists."

"Do not expect me to clean up the mess," Chiun chimed in.

Remo slapped a palm over the mouthpiece. "I'll be sure to bleed all over your screenplay," he sneered.

Chiun stuck his tongue out at Remo. Even so the flicker of a smile didn't leave his face. The old man's continued happiness only irked Remo all the more.

"I took care of Mayor Hophead," Remo muttered to Smith, his voice an annoyed grumble.

"So I assumed by the reports I have read," Smith replied. "The organizers of the Liberty Rally are already complaining of police harassment. There have been more than two hundred arrests for narcotics possession in the last hour alone. Many of the protesters have opted to leave rather than risk arrest."

"So we've loosed a couple of thousand glue sniffers onto the highways and byways of Massachusetts. Job well done."

"I think so," Smith said. "If there is no longer tacit approval from the city of Boston, then a proper message of intolerance will be sent to the nation's youth."

"What have you been smoking, Smitty?" Remo scoffed. "Their parents put Mr. I Didn't Inhale in the White House twice. Hell, mom and dad are probably growing the stuff in organic gardens for their kids these days."