Warren Murphy - Bottom Line

"I do not believe I am hearing this," Chiun said.

"Just what I said," Remo said. "Not a word. You can't write movies and you can't write books and you can't write stories and now, even when you conned some magazine guy into publishing it, you can't even write that icky-poo Ung poetry of yours. And God knows anybody can write that."

"Easily said," said Chiun. "How empty are children's boasts."

"Ung Poem Number One Thousand Three Hundred and Six," said Remo. "Oh, flower. Oh, flower with petals. Oh, flower with pretty petals. Here comes a bee. It is a big bee. Oh, bee, see the flower. Oh, flower, see the bee. Open, flower. Accept the bee. Fly fast, bee, and greet the flower."

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"Enough," screamed Chiun. "Enough." He rose to his feet in a flash like steam suddenly released from a kettle. He was a small man, barely five feet tall, and his yellow skin was wrinkled with the age of eighty years. His yellow brocaded robe swirled about his body, and his hazel eyes glared at Remo.

"More than enough," Remo said. "It's crap. Anybody can do it. Want to hear another one?"

"No one can write with these distractions," Chiun said.

"Anybody can write Ung poetry. Anytime," Remo said. "The only thing that's kept it from being the laughing stock of the world for two thousand years is that it's written in Korean and nobody can understand how bad it is."

"I do not understand how someone can start a conversation so agreeably and turn so perverse so quickly," Chiun said. "All you white people are crazy but you are an exceptional specimen."

"That's right," Remo said. "I forgot. I was going to let you blame it all on me how you couldn't write. Go ahead. What was it, Little Father? My breathing. I was breathing too loud."

"No," said Chiun. "Your breathing was no noisier than it always is. The snorting of a warthog."

"What then? My muscles. You heard them rippling and the rhythm was wrong, right?"

"Wrong. Not your muscles," said Chiun.

"What then?" demanded Remo.

"Where were you tonight?" asked Chiun. His voice was soft and Remo was immediately wary.

"You know where I was. I had to go up the mountain and take care of those bomb-throwers."

"And where was I?" asked Chiun.

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Remo shrugged. "I don't know. Here, I guess." "That's just it," Chiun said. "You go out all the

time, and I stay here. All by myself."

Remo sat up. "Wait a minute, Chiun. Let me get

this straight. You want to go out on jobs with me?" "Maybe," said Chiun. "I'd like to be asked." "I thought you liked to be alone," Remo said. "Sometimes I do." "I got this place just so that you could be alone

and write," Remo said.

"Snow is depressing. I can't write when it snows." "We'll go someplace warm. Florida. Miami's

warm."

"The old women in Miami talk too much about their sons, the doctors. All I can talk about is you."

"Chiun, what do you want?"

"That is what I want," Chiun said.

"What is?"

"I want you to ask me once in a while what I want. Maybe some times I would like to go out on assignment. I would like to be considered as a person with feelings, not a piece of furniture that one leaves when one goes out, knowing that it will be there when he returns."

"All right, Chiun. From now on, I'll ask."

"Good," said Chiun. He began to pick up his parchment, pens, and ink from the floor. "I'll put this away."

He stashed all the equipment in a large orange lacquered trunk, one of fourteen placed against the walls of the houseboat.

"Remo," he said as he leaned over the trunk.

"What, Little Father?"

"Dr. Smith hired me to train you, correct?"

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"Correct."

"Nothing was said about my going out on missions, correct?" "Correct."

"Therefore if I go out on missions, it would seem the tribute should be renegotiated."

"Not a chance," Remo said. "Smitty'd go through the roof. He already delivers enough gold to that village of yours to run a South American country." "A small country," Chiun said. "No raise. He'll never go for it." "Suppose you ask him," suggested Chiun. Remo shook his head. "He thinks I spend too much as it is."

"Suppose I offer to stay within the President's guidelines for noninflationary wage increases," Chiun said.

"Try it. What've you got to lose?" "You think he will increase the tribute?" "No," said Remo.

"I will try anyway," Chiun said. He closed the trunk lid and stood looking out across the dark waters of the lake. Both men were silent and then Remo began to laugh.

"What do you find humorous?" Chiun asked. "We forgot something," Remo said. "What did we forget?" Chiun said. "Smitty doesn't negotiate contracts any more." "No? Who does?" "Ruby Gonzalez," said Remo. Chiun wheeled about and looked at Remo, searching his face for truth. Remo nodded. Chiun groaned. "Oh, woe is me," he said.

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CHAPTER THREE

The fourteen Japanese businessmen were ready. Each of them had admired the suits of the other thirteen. Each of them had passed out thirteen of his own business cards and received back thirteen from the other men, all of whom knew each other well. Each of them paused to admire either the printing or the card stock of each business card, and sometimes

both.

Nine of them had carried cameras and had insisted upon taking pictures of all the others, arranged in as many combinations and permutations as was possible. Three of them had shown off their new tape recorders installed in their attache cases, along with their cordless telephones, their new micro-chip printed circuit information processors, and their print-out calculators.

Finally they were seated, waiting. They talked politely among themselves, even as they glanced at their gold LCD watches, wondering why Elmer Lippincott Jr. was late for the meeting, particularly since he had asked them to the secret meeting and particularly since all the men at the table knew its purpose was to use Japanese intermediaries to open up vast new trade contacts between the United States and Red

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China, in order to shore up the American dollar, which had been taking an international pasting for two years.

All the businessmen had been advised by the Japanese Trade Council that Lena Lippincott had met only two weeks earlier with the President of the United States, and so all knew what the meeting was about, and they were surprised he was late.

Around the table, the times on the LCD watches ranged from five minutes and twenty seconds after eleven to five minutes and twenty-seven seconds after eleven.

Mariko Kakirano said mildly in Japanese: "I wish he would hurry. I have other pressing business."

There were thirteen nods of agreement, and all looked toward the door of the oak-panelled board room of the Ginza Bank, Tokyo's largest.

"I'm sure he will be here shortly," said another businessman. Thirteen faces turned to him as he spoke and nodded agreement when he was finished. In a small conference room twenty feet away from where the Japanese businessmen sat, Lern Lippincott was having a different thought.

"I don't want to go," he told his secretary. Lippincott rubbed his fingertips up and down along his smoothly shaven pink cheek.

"I don't understand, sir," said his secretary, a young man who wore a black suit, white shirt and black tie so naturally that it looked as if he had been born in a morgue.

"Nothing to understand^' said Lippincott. "I just don't want to go. I don't feel like it. Something doesn't feel right." He stood up. He was a tall man, the only one of

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the three Lippincott sons to be tall like their father, but unlike his father, whose rail-lean figure still looked like the body of an oilfield roustabout, Lem Lippincott had a big soft belly and a wide behind.

He walked to the window and looked down on the teeming street, then turned away quickly as if he had seen something he didn't like.