Warren Murphy: Sue Me

Back at the hotel, Remo waited with Chiun for Smith's call. They had often met in hotel rooms, but one right in Beverly Hills, Smith felt, would attract too much attention.

"Do you think Smith will want screen credit?" Chiun wondered. "He is our legal employer."

"I don't think he'll mind not being mentioned," said Remo.

"Yes. He is crazy, but then again, your entire race is crazy," said Chiun. And now, for the first time in years, Remo chose to answer him back. He did not choose to let it slide.

"No, you're crazy. You worry about the treasure of Sinanju. When it was stolen a few years ago, you dropped everything and went looking for it. But what did it do for thousands of years? It sat there and did nothing."

"It was there," said Chiun.

"So what?" said Remo. "You never spent a penny of it."

"It was there in case."

"In case what?"

"You know how we became assassins. The village starved. Babies had to be put into the waters because there was no food for them. The assassins made sure there was food and have been honored by the village ever since."

"What you earn in tribute in one week could feed them for the next century. And this idea of people respecting Sinanju, what do you care what they think?"

"You don't care?"

"I care what you think, little father. I do not care what some people I never met think. I care what I think about me. That's important."

Chiun thought a moment. He did not understand what Remo meant about thinking about himself. Chiun did not think much about himself. He had understood at a young age, so young he could not even remember, that he was wonderful. And if someone else did not think the same way, a horrible death was too good for him. What was there to think about?

He wondered if this was the madness of the willows spoken about in the Ming Dynasty. Royals would be found staring at willow branches, doing nothing else until servants brought them back to their palaces.

What was this thinking about oneself? Chiun could not fathom it. Did it have to do with judging oneself? Why, that could mean disliking oneself, and that of course was impossible. He smiled briefly and decided to watch Remo closely for the rest of the day.

Smith arrived at two a.m. and set up a meeting just outside the city limits in a car he had rented. Smith insisted Chiun be there. There were communications problems with the Master of Sinanju, and to be sure Smith had never quite understood what Chiun meant in some of his flowery language. But Chiun was a professional. And if there were questions about duties, an added weight of gold could always solve any moral dilemma. In fact, there were no moral dilemmas.

Remo, on the other hand, was a patriot. He had been evaluated carefully through psychological tests before he was even considered. And the truth was, a patriot was a lot more difficult at times to deal with than a cash-and-carry mercenary.

And there were special problems with Palmer, Rizzuto problems Smith wondered if either Remo or Chiun could handle.

When he saw the headlights come up the dirt road he blinked twice. The other car blinked back twice. Then three times. Then the headlights went off. Remo had broken the lights when he got the signals wrong. He drove the last hundred yards on a starless, moonless night as dark as the bottom of a mineshaft, at seventy miles an hour, without so much as grazing the shoulder of the narrow road.

Chiun and Remo got into Smith's rented car. They sat in the back, Chiun protesting that Smith deserved the place of honor and they as his loyal servants should sit up front as drivers.

This was in English. In Korean he noted that this meeting at an ungodly hour on a dirt road was another sign of Smith's mental aberrations and sooner or later "this lunatic will get us killed."

Smith did not understand Korean.

"And greetings to you, Chiun," said Smith. "We have a problem. I had hoped that Remo might get some needed rest. Frankly, and you both know this, I've been most worried about Remo's actions lately."

"Nobody has a gun to your head, Smitty. You don't have to use me," said Remo.

"Please don't be defensive. But as a matter of fact, someone does have a gun to my head. Someone has a gun to the head of all America. And that's why I'm here. "

In Korean, Chiun wondered how someone could hold a gun to the head of a country, since Smith was always claiming America did not have an emperor. Did one put a pistol against the Rocky Mountains? Did one shoot at the Mississippi? Or was that the knee of the country and not the head? But to Smith he commented gravely that a gun to a country's head was a disaster not only for the country but for everyone living there.

He held his chin thoughtfully in his long fingernails and nodded, full of the gravity of the situation. "I don't know if you are aware of it, Remo, but America has became dangerously litigious."

"What is this 'litigious'?" asked Chiun.

"It means suing, Master of Sinanju. Americans are using lawyers for every grievance, real or imagined. The courts are clogged. But that's not the problem."

"Perhaps more assassinations and fewer lawsuits would solve the problem. As you know, Emperor Smith, each injustice dealt with by a head on a wall not only solves the immediate problem but five others as the wrongdoers see justice done swiftly and surely," said Chiun.

"No. No. That's just what we can't have. That's just what America is not about, what we can't be about. That's just why we're here, working secretly, so that we'll have our laws to live by and still get through these times of chaos," said Smith.

"Of course," said Chiun. "Your genius is simplicity itself. "

He glanced at Remo to see if Remo understood what Smith was talking about. Remo was not smirking. He seemed to take it seriously.

"Excuse me, Emperor Smith, but your wisdom has such power it envelops worlds too large for your assassin. I would understand it better in Korean. Would you be so kind as to allow Remo to explain it to me?"

"Certainly," said Smith. "I think it would be helpful. Remo, explain it to him."

"He's not going to understand it. He doesn't want to understand it," said Remo.

"He expressed an interest, and I think the courteous thing to do is to accede to his request. I also think it might clear up some misunderstandings the Master has about this country," said Smith. "And make him even more effective than he is now."

Chiun blinked. He could not believe his ears. He routinely treated Smith as an exalted emperor, referring to himself sometimes as a humble assassin. But this attitude was not intended to be taken seriously. It was only to show that besides Chiun's awesome magnificence, he was also capable of being humble. In fact, because he was so perfect in all manner of things, his humility was to be appreciated as even greater. But Smith had said, in words out of his own mouth, and Chiun had understood every one of them, that Chiun could be more effective.

This meant there was something he did that might need improvement. The insult hit him like a steaming towel across the face. If he did not have perfect control of his breath he would have been aghast. Instead he waited to see if Remo would let that insult pass.

And pain of pains, Chiun witnessed in his own grief that Remo said nothing, except to explain the nonsense of the American Constitution.

"So what we do secretly, and why we do things secretly, is to support the belief that a nation can run by laws. And what we do is make sure it survives in those little extralegal ways it needs in a dangerous world," said Remo in Korean, knowing Chiun could never grasp the idea of a constitution because he believed that all governments were run by power and threat, and therefore needed assassins. If America were different, why then did it need the services of the grandest line of assassins of all time, the House of Sinanju?