Warren Murphy - The Last Alchemist

"I told him we didn't need radiation badges."

"We need brains is what we need. I have trained you as an assassin and now you wander around looking for thieves. We do not look for thieves. Policemen look for thieves. Your problem is you have never worked for a real emperor."

"Our country has a problem. This stuff can be used to make bombs that can destroy cities. Can you imagine entire cities being incinerated?"

"Today. Of course. Everything loses its grandeur. They destroy cities without even sack or pillage. And who recognizes the assassin today? A good, not even great assassin would save millions of lives."

"Do you know how many people were killed at Hiroshima?"

"Not as many as the Japanese killed by hand in the rape of Nanking. The weapons are not the problems. Armies are the problems, armies not even made of soldiers anymore, but citizens. Everyone is his own assassin. What a shame this age has become. And you have taken the training I have given you and joined the general degradation of your kind," said Chiun, and began the litany of how he should have known when first he tried to teach a white that the white would revert to white ways. This he said following Remo throughout the nuclear plant, in the cadence of the Korean spoken most heavily in the northwest of that peninsula called by the Masters of Sinanju "the glory cove." For his big finish he stressed again that they would not be so degraded if Remo worked for a real emperor, not Smith the lunatic.

As they toured the plant, the director of security, a woman in a smart suit with smart eyeglasses and a very smart manner about her walk, watched the two. Remo ignored her.

"Oh, gracious lady, I see that you, too, suffer."

"My name is Consuelo Bonner," said the woman. "I am director of security, and I am not a lady, I am a woman. And what are you two doing here?"

"Shh," said Remo. "I'm thinking."

"He does not realize your beauty, madam," said Chiun.

"Would you shush a man?" said Consuelo Bonner. She was twenty-eight years old, and could have been a model with her flashing blue eyes and glorious pale skin with raven hair, but chose instead to be in a business where men would not order her around.

"No. I wouldn't shush a man in your job. I would put him through a wall," said Remo.

"You don't sound like a nuclear engineer," said Consuelo Bonner. "What is the fission rate of a neutron imbalance subjected to hyperbombardment of laser-intensified electron streams?"

"A good question," said Remo.

"Answer it or you're under arrest."

"Seven," said Remo.

"What?" said Consuelo Bonner. The answer was a formula.

"Twelve," said Remo.

"Ridiculous," said Consuelo Bonner.

"A hundred and twelve," said Remo. He turned away from the woman and continued on down the corridors of the plant, putting the problem into perspective. If the nuclear waste were stolen, he reasoned, the thefts could not have been committed by people without protection from radiation. It really couldn't even have been heisted by people who didn't know how to move the uranium; not that much uranium, and not that consistently. Therefore it probably was someone working within the system itself, someone who normally would have access to the fuel.

The woman was still following him. She had a walkie-talkie and was calling for assistance. Chiun smiled at the woman, telling Remo he had to learn how to handle women. One did not bruise them; one showered them with petals of distraction. He turned toward the woman, intent upon providing a gracious example.

"The delicacy of your hands on that instrument belies its purpose," said Chiun. "You are a thousand mornings of joy and delight."

"I am every bit as good as a man. I can do anything you can do, let me tell you that. Especially you, buddy, who won't even listen to me," she said.

"What?" said Remo.

"I said I am going to arrest you. I can do anything a man can do."

"Piss out a window," said Remo, still looking for the storage room. He could recognize lavatories now. They had the big atomic-looking pipes going to them. The reactor had the small-bathroom kind of piping. He would have this facility down pat in minutes.

Consuelo Bonner shrewdly waited until she had overwhelming force Bight guards. Four for each. "This is your last chance. This is a federally protected area. You are here under suspicious circumstances, and I must ask you to come with me. If you refuse, I must place you under arrest."

"Piss out a window," said Remo.

"How crude to such an elegant lady," said Chiun.

"Arrest them," said Consuelo.

The guards split into two teams of four, and as they were trained, each closed in a perfect diamond pattern designed to make the perpetrator helpless. Except that they closed in on themselves. Consuelo Bonner blinked. She had these men trained at the best police schools. She had seen them work out herself. She had seen one break a board with his head. They all had martial-arts experience and now they were bumping heads like babies in a playpen.

"Move it," she snapped. "Use clubs. Anything. Guns. They are just walking away from you."

The guards abandoned their patterns and with a yell all eight, like a vengeful herd, fell on the two walking down the hall as casually as though strolling through a meadow.

Two of the eight were able to stand at the end of the skirmish and a third said he felt nothing. The invading pair kept on walking. Consuelo Bonner took off her eyeglasses. She would approach the elder of the pair. He, at least, was a gentleman.

"I guess I didn't understand you. I just want to keep my plant safe."

"From uranium being stolen," said Remo.

"You can't prove that. This plant is as safe as if a man ran it," said Consuelo.

"That's what I'm saying. It's a mess."

"You don't think men are better?" said Consuelo.

"We think we are forever denied having children," said Chiun. "So we make do with our meager awesome powers."

Consuelo Bonner followed them down the hall. "If you are not engineers, who are you?"

"People who may have the same interest as you," said Remo.

"To exalt your beauty," said Chiun.

In Korean, Remo told Chiun that this woman didn't seem receptive to that sort of flattery. Chiun answered, also in Korean, that Remo was acting too white. What would it hurt to make a poor life a little less dreary with a kind word? Chiun knew how to live without gratitude. He had learned that teaching Remo. But why should an innocent woman suffer?

"For the last time, I'm not going to write that I am not white. I'm not going to imply that I lied to you, or that something in your teaching made me Korean. I am white. I have always been white. I will always be white. And when I write the history of Sinanju . . ."

Chiun raised a hand. "You will write that we are nothing but hired guards and the great House of Sinanju, assassins to the world, have been reduced to servants."

"We're saving a country."

"What has the country ever done for you? What has the country ever taught you? What is your country? There are thousands of countries and there will be thousands more. But Sinanju is here tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow ... if you don't fail us."

"I am not marrying some fat ugly girl from Sinanju, either," said Remo.

Now all of this was said in Korean, like machine-gun fire. Consuelo Bonner did not understand a word. But she knew it was an argument. She also judged without any difficulty that these two had as much to do with nuclear science as a pinball machine. She also knew that eight guards were useless against them, and that they were probably able to take on many more than that.

But Consuelo Bonner had not gotten to be chief of security at a nuclear plant by taking leaps at suspicions. Women, she knew, were judged more harshly than men. She was all but certain these two men might be just what she needed to get back her fuel, to get her the credit for getting back the fuel, and for taking one more small step for her gender. To say nothing of the large one for her pocketbook.