Warren Murphy - The End of the Game

Quietly, to himself, he wondered what Smith was upset about now. His face was so long, his chin seemed to be searching for his shoes. What was it about white men, Americans particularly, that they always thought everything was the end of the world? When the world had gone on and would go on for ages beyond counting? He told himself to humor Smith, as usual, and get rid of him as soon as he could so he could get back to his rewriting.

"What weighs so heavily on your spirit?" Chiun asked.

"You remember when you first came to provide services to us?" Smith asked.

"Indeed I do," Chiun said. "You have never missed a payment, small though they may be."

"Your primary mission was to train Remo as our enforcement arm."

"Assassin. I was to make him your assassin," Chiun corrected.

"Yes," Smith said.

"You should not give a wonderful thing an awful name. Enforcement arm is a terrible name," Chiun said. He realized he was being very helpful to Smith, much more so than the man deserved. When he tried to advertise in the future for someone to replace Remo, what kind of people would he be likely to get if he advertised for "an enforcement arm"? But advertising for an assassin would bring the best minds, the highest and most noble thinkers of the world to Smith's court. So Chiun felt good about offering Smith this advice without any charge. Occasionally, it was good policy to do a favor for your emperor, just to remind him how much he truly relied on your wisdom and judgment.

"You have lived up to your end of the contract nobly," Smith said. "Your training of Remo has exceeded even what we hoped for from you."

"He is white. I have done the best I could, to overcome that handicap," Chiun said graciously.

"There was another part to the contract," Smith said in a low flat voice.

"Yes?"

"It was your promise that should the day ever come when Remo could not be used anymore by us, that you would-- you would remove him for us."

Chiun sat silently. Smith saw consternation on the old man's face.

Finally, Chiun said, "Go on."

"The time has come. Remo must be removed."

"What is your reason for this, Emperor?" Chiun asked slowly.

"It is complicated," Smith said. "But if Remo is allowed to live, the world may face a nuclear war."

"Oh, that," said Chiun, dismissing it with the raising of his eyebrows.

"Hundreds of millions will die," Smith intoned solemnly.

"Don't worry, Emperor. Remo and I will let nothing happen to you."

"Chiun, it's not me. It's the whole world. The whole world may explode. Remo must die."

"And I? I am supposed to kill him?" Chiun asked.

"Yes. It is your obligation under your contract."

"And this is so that we can save the lives of some millions of people?" Chiun said.

"Yes."

"Do you know anything about these millions of people?" Chiun asked.

"I--"

"No, you do not," Chiun said. "Well, I will tell you about them. Many of them are old and ready to die anyway. Most of them are ugly. Especially if they are white. Even more of them are stupid. Why sacrifice Remo for all these people we do not know? He is not much, but he is something. All those others, they are nothing."

"Chiun, I know how you feel, but--"

"You know nothing of how I feel," Chiun said. "I took Remo from nothing and now I have made of him something. In only ten more years of training, we could both be very proud of him. And now you are saying, Chiun, all the time you have spent on him is wasted and to be thrown away because somebody is going to blow up a lot of fat people. I understand the ways of emperors but this is rudeness beyond measure."

"We are talking about the end of the world," Smith huffed.

"It seems as if we are always talking about the end of the world," Chiun said. "Who is this person who threatens this? Is it one person? Remo and I will go to dispatch this person. He will never be seen again. He will have no descendants and those that now live will die. Friends too shall perish. All in the greater glory of the Emperor Smith and the Constitution."

"Master of Sinanju, I call upon you to honor your contract."

There was a long silence, broken only by Smith's breathing. Finally, Chiun asked, "There is no other way?"

"If there were, I would take it," Smith said. "But there is none. I know that contracts are sacred to Masters of Sinanju and those were the terms of our contract. Upon request from me, you would remove Remo. I now make that request."

"You will leave me," Chiun said in a cold low voice that seemed to chill the skin on Smith's face.

At the doorway, the CURE director paused.

"What is your decision?"

"What you think important is my mission," Chiun said. "Contracts are made to be honored. It has been the way of my people for scores of centuries."

"You will do your duty," Smith said.

Chiun nodded once, slowly, then let his head sink to his chest. Smith left, quietly closing the door behind him.

And Chiun thought: White fool. Do you think that Remo is some piece of machinery to be discarded upon a whim?

He had trained Remo to be an assassin but Remo had become more than that. His body and his mind had accepted the trainings of Sinanju more thoroughly than anyone since Chiun. Remo now was a Master of Sinanju himself, and one day, upon Chiun's death, Remo would be reigning Master.

And by attaining that rank, Remo would fulfill a prophecy that had existed for ages in the House of Sinanju. That someday there would be as Master a white man who was dead but had come back to life and he would be the greatest Master of all, and of him it would be said that he was the avatar of the great god Shiva. Shiva the Destroyer. Remo.

And now Smith wanted him to throw all that away because some fools planned to blow up some other fools.

But yet, the contract was sacred. It was the cornerstone upon which the House of Sinanju had been built. Its word-- once given by the Master in contract-- was inviolate. No Master had ever failed to carry out the terms of a contract and Chiun, through thousands of years of tradition, could not allow himself to be the first.

He sat on the floor and slowly touched his fingertips to the temples of his bowed head.

The room grew dark with night and yet he did not move, but the air in the room vibrated with the long keening sounds of anguish that came from his lips.

sChapter Thirteen

"Why are we getting a motel room?" Pamela asked.

"Because I have to wait for a telephone call," Remo said. "You don't want to stay with me? Catch the next flight back and join the rest of the Lilliputians."

"Lilliputians?"

"From Liverpool. That's what people in Liverpool are called. Lilliputians," Remo patiently explained.

"No, they're not."

"Are too. I read it. The Beatles were Lilliputians."

"That's Liverpudlians," Pamela Thrushwell said.

"Is not."

"Is too," she said.

"I'm not going to stay here and try to educate you in speaking English correctly," Remo said. "Go home. Who needs you?"

That more than anything else convinced her to stay even though she looked with undisguised disgust at the dismal room, just like so many others in which Remo had spent so many nights. The furniture might have been called Utilitarian if it had not had a greater claim on being called Ugly. The walls, once white, were yellowed with the exhalations of countless smokers. The carpeting was indoor-outdoor rug, but looked as if it had not only been used outdoors but on the roadbed of the Lincoln Tunnel for the last twenty years. Threads showed through, masked only by dirt and embedded grime.

The toilet bowl had a dark ring around it at water level, the hot-water faucet in the sink didn't work, and the room's only luxury, an electric coffeepot in the bathroom, didn't work either. The place reeked with a faint smell of ammonia, as if from a cleaning solution, but the room resolutely refused to give up any clue as to where cleaning solution had ever been used in it.