Warren Murphy: An Old Fashioned War

"That's a lot of money," said Remo.

"She earned it," said Chiun. "It was truly a noble performance she did on our steps."

"How sure are you we won't hear from Anna Chutesov?" asked Remo.

"Did the statue fit the room exactly, and was not the likeness perfect?"

"Yes," said Remo.

"Be confident, she will never come here again," said Chiun.

"That's not what I wanted, Little Father."

"You wanted to eat red meat at one time also," said Chiun.

"But Anna's different. She's special."

"You only feel she's special."

"That's the only feel I care about, Chiun," said Remo.

"Right," said Chiun. "You don't care what I think. You don't care what is good for the House of Sinanju, but what does the great Remo Williams feel? The feelings that count here are mine," said Chiun. And walking through the rooms of the house, he kept repeating the word "mine," although each time he said it the word became softer, and happier, as he viewed the returned treasure of Sinanju.

Anna's call came on the seventh day, but there was no rejoicing. Remo was going to have to return to America and stop Harold W. Smith. He had gone insane.

"He's screaming 'Forty-four-forty or fight,' and he's starting a war with Canada."

"Smitty?" asked Remo, unbelieving.

"Right from Folcroft."

"How did you find out about Folcroft?"

"I told you he's gone insane. He's not bothering with precautions anymore. He's gotten himself a banner and he's screaming that he wants recognition and that he deserves a medal for what he's done and he doesn't care who knows about him. The more, the better. You'd better get back here and save your organization, Remo."

"Arieson?" asked Remo.

"Who the hell else?" snapped Anna.

"I'm coming over," said Remo, who even now saw the great bust of Mr. Arieson being carried on a litter down to the pier with Chiun directing everyone. Chiun himself followed with an alabaster jar. "What's that?" asked Remo.

"A little pinch of something," said Chiun.

Folcroft was a mess, but fortunately, since it was a sanitarium for the mentally deranged, few bothered to even notice banners flying from its walls. Since it was close to Long Island Sound, many people thought of them as boat signals.

Some of the doctors were questioning why the normally reserved and almost unreachable Mr. Smith was now saying hello to everyone and trying to enlist them in a fight against Canada. They would have committed him to an institution, except he was in one already and running it, and if the truth be known, what made someone a patient at a mental institution instead of an administrator was purely a matter of chance.

According to Smith, Canada had thumbed its nose at America ever since the American Revolution, and the real honest and sacred boundary between the two countries was latitude forty-four-forty, but the cowardly and probably traitorous people running the country, all Canada-simps as he called them, had settled for this tragic injustice.

All it needed was for a few brave and honest men who could not be bought off or intimidated by the Canada lobby.

Remo gently cornered him with an arm and guided him back to his office, as Smith very intently asked Remo if he was one of those who was willing to forget that during the Vietnam war Canada played host to American draft dodgers.

"They get away with everything and they control everything and when you point out these obvious facts, you're called a bigot. Do you understand?"

"I do, Smitty," said Remo.

"That's why only a purifying war can rid us of this cancer in our midst."

"Right. We'll join your war, Smitty."

Smith's gray hair was disheveled and his eyes were wide with the vision he alone saw. He found Anna in his office. Remo glanced at the drawers to the computer consoles out of instinct. She was not, after all, part of the organization.

Chiun arrived bringing the bust of Mr. Arieson. It looked like a kimono as a stand for a ton-size marble bust. When he put it down on the floor the room trembled a bit.

From under his gray kimono Chiun took the alabaster jar and opened it. He reached into the jar and took out a pinch of brownish powder and lit it. Its purplish fumes tickled the nostrils and made the far reaches of the room smell pleasant even as it burned a bright orange at its core. Incense. He had lit incense before the bust of Mr. Arieson.

"O Aries, God of War, called Mars by the Romans, and other names by other tribes, please do allow mankind to have his own stupid wars instead of arranging them."

With a whoosh like a storm, the incense clouds were sucked up into the stone nostrils, leaving only a great silence in the office of Harold W. Smith.

"What are you doing here?" he asked Anna. "And you, Remo? And Chiun?"

"We have made the proper sacrifice to the god of war the Indians released on the Ojupa reservation. He's returned to his observer status," said Remo.

Smith straightened his tie and made sure all of the drawers were shut. Ms. Chutesov was, after all, a Russian high operative.

"I don't believe it," said Smith.

"That statue must have some historical significance which activated the electronic waves you talked about, when you tried that machine you had your scientists create to counterbalance any wave coming at it," said Anna.

"Sinanju does have access to electronic forces," said Smith. "In its primitive way."

"Historical forces," said Anna, who had been educated in communist schools.

"The white mentality," said Chiun of both Anna and Smith, as he got Remo to carry the property of Sinanju out of Folcroft. After all, he had personally carried it in. But was he complaining?