Warren Murphy: Profit Motive

"Remo, this is the most desperate situation we have ever encountered. We must make contact."

"I don't know your damned codes. You give me a code to meet you in Washington and I wind up in Texas. I can't put up with this crap anymore," Remo said.

"Just give me your hotel. Fast. And we'll get off the line."

"Skyview Hilton, room 105."

The line went dead, and Remo walked the Denver streets to the hotel and room 105.

It was a suite, and from one of the rooms came the voice of an announcer promising a rebate if you bought his gasoline, followed by a news break about how Arab armies were massing on the borders of Israel and Ga-mal Abdel Nasser promising screaming mobs that they were about to push Israel into the sea.

This was followed by another commercial for a $2,-500 car. Remo could almost recite the commercials and the programs they went with by heart. He must have heard each of them fifty times in the past ten years.

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It would only be five more minutes anyhow. When he heard the show end, Remo opened the door slowly. A frail figure in a yellow kimono sat before the flickering television; a video recorder was next to the TV.

He turned. The face was parchment-frail, the beard and hah* wispy around the yellow face. There were tears in the hazel Oriental eyes.

"That was entertainment," said Chiun. "That dealt in beauty."

"You've heard about Dr. Lawrence Walters not telling Cathy Dunstable about her real father two dozen times at least. How can you be moved by it?" Remo asked.

"Beauty is beauty. And you people must destroy everything that is fine and decent."

"Me? I haven't touched your soap operas." "Whites did it," said Chiun. "Yes," Remo said agreeably. "You're white." "All day," said Remo.

"Violence. Nothing but violence," said Chiun, Master of Sinanju, and the mentor who had given Remo the genius of Sinanju, not as a pupil but as a son, not because he liked Remo but because Remo was the vessel who could hold the river of the teachings of Sinanju. It had been both a joy and a surprise to Chiun, Remo realized, to find that a white man could absorb Sinanju, which was the sun source of all the martial arts, the center, of which karate, tae kwan do, ninja, and all the others were just weak shadows.

"If you don't like the sex and violence hi the new soap operas, don't watch them. Just don't go blaming them on me."

"I do not watch them," Chiun said. "So what have I done, then? Why are you on the snot?"

"You never watched the great dramas when they were good. And why? Because I can try to teach you some things but beauty you will never know." "Smitty is coming here," said Remo.

28 _. '

"Never know," said Chiun. "Because you are white. 1 knew this when I assumed the burden of your teaching through the generousness that was in me."

"You started teaching me because upstairs filled a submarine with gold and sent it to your village. You didn't expect to do anything but teach a couple of blows and then leave with the gold."

"Through the generousness that was in me. Yes. I knew you were white, Remo, but what I did not understand, could not understand, was how white."

"I didn't have anything to do with making your damned soap operas sexy or violent," Remo said.

"And yet, seeing how helpless you were, I gave years, when days would have been enough."

"Nobody hi Sinanju, Little Father. No Korean could take Sinanju. You stayed because I could do it. A white man did it. Me. White," said Remo.

"The best years of my life."

"White," said Remo.

"Very white," said Chiun.

"Smith is coming today, maybe tonight. He says something is urgent."

"A white of whites," said Chiun. "You're all white. White in your souls."

"All right, all right, all right," said Remo. "That's a bit much for just one rerun of a show that has gone off the air. What's biting you?"

"Wrong? Nothing is wrong with me. It is what is wrong with your country and your race," said Chiun, and withdrew a letter from his kimono.

"Should I read it?" asked Remo.

"If the pain is not too much."

The letter was from one of the television producers. It was addressed to a Mr. Chiun at a post office box he had set up in New Jersey. Chiun was always getting mail at the box, and Remo never quite understood who would be writing to him. He had assumed it was Chiun's way of collecting junk mail, which the master assassin liked to read because it always had so many pretty photographs, as opposed to personal letters,

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which were just composed of groups of Western alphabet letters.

Remo read the letter.

"Dear Mr. Chiun! Thank you very much for considering Vermiform Studios for your daytime drama, 'Woes of the Master of Sinanju.' We feel, however, at this time, the television market is not suitable for a romantic drama about a wise, noble, decent, handsome, and forgiving Korean assassin who is not appreciated by his white pupil. While we agree that much on television today suffers from too much violence, we do not see how taking a man's head off with a single hand blow is a form of decency and righteousness. Also, the American audience for dramas broadcast in Korean is just not that large. Yours truly, Avery Schwartz."

"You were going to show Sinanju on television?" asked Remo.

"No. I was going to show what truly professional assassins could do so that when people understood what a professional assassin could do, they would not use amateurs, who go running around the world creating chaos. That is real violence."

"Nobody would understand Sinanju. They just wouldn't, Little Father."

"What is so hard to understand? It is simply the essence that turns on itself. I simplified it in my script. For the white mind," Chiun said proudly.

"They still wouldn't understand it," Remo said.

"We will try it on Smith tonight." Chiun turned toward the window. "Remo, we have to leave this city. I hate this place."

"Why?"

"Because Cheeta Ching is not on television delivering the latest stupid happenings in your country."

"They call it the news," Remo said.

"Yes. And Cheeta Ching is not to be seen here. Instead, they have fat white men. Some of them have pimples. They read the news."

"Cheeta Ching is on television in New York. And 30

she's got a face like a barracuda and a voice like ice cracking. How can you stand her?"

"Silence. She is not to be seen in this awful city. And they have the same disgusting daytime dramas that you see everywhere else in this white country. If it weren't for my tapes, I would perish from lack of beauty. Do you think Smith knows someone in a television studio who will buy my script for a drama?"

"No," said Remo.

"We will ask him anyway."

But that night, Smith arrived gaunt and worried. Remo had never seen the cold and precise automaton looking so haggard.

"This must be stopped," he said.

"Yes, O Emperor. Your enemies are our enemies," said Chiun, whose ancestors for thousands of years had worked for emperors and who refused to believe that Smith was not planning to become emperor of America himself.

At one time, Remo had tried to argue with Chiun that there were now laws and governments and one person no longer controlled everything through birth and intrigue, but Chiun had said, "There is only one form of government. There are just many different names. You wait. The day will come when Smith asks us to remove anybody who stands above him in the government of your country."

Now Chiun was asking Smith which enemy could be removed.

"I don't know. For the love of Maude, I don't know. It just makes no sense. It is the most destructive and purposeless act I can imagine. There is no reason for it."

"Your enemies are madmen. We will eliminate the dogs," said Chiun and then, in a somber tone, recited something to Remo, which, if one did not know Korean, would sound as if the Master were energizing his pupil to the importance of the moment.