"The union. I don't paint doors."
"Those instructions are no longer operative," Chiun had said. "You are now in charge of painting doors for me. Starting with this one."
"Who says? Who the hell are you anyway?"
"I am Chiun."
"I am leaving," the division head said. "The union's going to hear about this."
From his spot outside, Mangan heard a muffled sound. He craned his neck and peered through the door. The old Oriental had the division chief by the earlobe.
"I would like gold paint," he had said.
"Yes, sir. Yes, sir," the man had said. "I'll be right back with the paint."
"Five minutes," Chiun had said. "If you do not return in five minutes, I will come looking for you. You will not like that."
The division head had scurried from the office. When the elevator did not answer immediately to the button, he went running down the stairs.
Drake Mangan was impressed. Twisting ears. He had never tried that in dealing with the auto union. It was never too late to learn new things in the complicated field of labor relations.
Now the door to the office that Chiun had commandeered was closed. The division head knelt on the floor in front of it, painting the last few letters of the legend Chiun had given him.
It read: "HIS AWESOME MAGNIFICENCE."
Mangan guessed Chiun would not come out until the painting was done, so he ran over and pressed the elevator button.
"Leaving, Mr. Mangan? I'll tell Master Chiun."
"No. Don't do that."
"But he's your bodyguard."
"Not tonight. I have a very important appointment tonight. Tell him I'll see him first thing in the morning."
The elevator door opened and as soon as Mangan stepped inside, his secretary hit the intercom button.
"Master Chiun, Mr. Mangan has just left. I thought you should know."
Chiun opened the door. He paused to read the almostfinished sign on the door, then patted the painter on the head.
"You do reasonably good work," he said. "For a white. I will keep you in mind if I have other tasks to perform. "
"Okay, okay. Just no more ear-twisting, all right?"
"As long as you behave," Chiun said. "Don't forget to put stars under the words. I like stars."
"You've got stars. Count on it. You've got stars." Drake Mangan parked in front of the high-rise apartment building near St. Clair Shores, as he had almost every Thursday night since he had been married.
He rode the elevator up to the penthouse apartment he rented for his mistress. Over the years, the mistresses had changed but Mangan had kept the same apartment. He chalked it up to tradition. In his heart, he told himself, he was just a traditional sort of man.
He shut the apartment door behind him with the heel of his shoe and called out, "Agatha?" The penthouse was decorated in the worst possible taste, down to zebra-striped furniture and black velvet paintings of clowns on the wall, but the softly lit atmosphere was redolent of Agatha's favorite perfume, a musky scent that even smelled lewd. Just sniffing it made the cares of the day fall away like dead skin and Mangan could feel the juices stirring deep inside his body.
"Agatha. Daddy's home." There was no answer. "Where are you, baby?"
He shucked off his topcoat and draped it over one of the offending black-and-white sofas. The door to the bedroom was open a crack and a warm light, softer than candlelight, seeped out.
She was in the bedroom. Great. No sense wasting half the evening in small talk. He could get small talk at home. It was the only thing he ever did get at home.
"Warming up the bed for me, Agatha?" He pushed the door open.
"There you are. Come to Papa."
But Agatha did not rise from the bed. She lay on her back, dressed in red silk pajamas, staring at the ceiling. One arm was casually tucked under her wealth of blond hair. A leg hung off over the edge of the bed.
She looked like she was watching the fly that buzzed her generous chest.
But she wasn't. Mangan knew that when he saw the fly alight on the tip of her long nose. She didn't twitch. She didn't even blink.
He stepped forward and said, softly, "Agatha?"
The door slammed shut behind him. Before he turned, Mangan finally saw the hole in the red silk of Agatha's pajama top. It looked like a cigarette burn hole but the center was the livid color of raw meat and he saw a deeper red splotch surrounding it, deeper even than the red of the silk.
The man who had slammed shut the door behind him was tall and lean, with a long scar down the right side of his jaw. In one of his gloved hands he carried a black pistol, its long barrel pointing directly at Mangan's chest. The automaker's heart started beating high in his throat, and he felt as if it were going to choke him.
"Who the hell are you? What's going on here?" Mangan snapped.
The man with the scar smiled a cruel smile.
"You can call me Remo. Sorry I had to ditch the girlfriend but she wouldn't cooperate. Kept trying to call the police."
"I don't even know you. Why are you . . . why did...?"
The gunman shrugged. "It's nothing personal, Mangan. You're just a name on a list."
Slowly his finger tightened on the trigger. Mangan could not stop staring at the barrel. His mouth worked, but no sound came out.
There was a sudden screech, loud, unearthly, like a high-speed diamond drill scoring glass. It was followed by a shattering of glass that turned both the gunman's and Mangan's heads as if they were attached to a single yanking string.
Entering through a perfectly circular hole cut in the window with a long fingernail came Chiun, Master of Sinanju, a cold light in his eyes.
"It's him, Chiun," cried Drake Mangan. "The assassin. Remo Williams."
"Wrong both times," said Chiun. He looked at the gunman and said, "Lay down your weapon and you may win a painless death."
The gunman laughed, turned his pistol on the frail Oriental, and fired twice.
The bullets shattered what was left of the window behind Chiun. He had not seemed to move, yet the bullets missed him, somehow striking points that were on a direct line behind him.
The gunman took his pistol in both hands and dropped into a marksman's crouch. He sighted carefully. The little man did not even flinch. The gunman fired.
A section of the wall cracked and still the Oriental stood immobile.
Another shot and the same result. But this time, the gunman thought he saw a faint afterimage of the old Oriental, as if he had moved to one side and returned to his place in the quicksilver interval between the time the bullet left the gun barrel and the moment it buried itself in the wall.
"This is crazy," the gunman said. And then the Oriental was coming at him. It was the Big Nose Senaro hit all over again.
Drake Mangan had fallen back onto the bed to watch but now as Chiun advanced across the room, he saw his chance to make headlines: "AUTO MOGUL CAPTURES CRAZED GUNMAN; DRAKE MANGAN DISARMS ASSASSIN."
It would be great new material for the paperback edition of his autobiography when it came out.
He saw the gunman's eyes were fixed on Chiun. He got to his feet, then lunged across the floor at the man with the pistol.
"No!" Chiun shouted, but it was too late. Mangan was already in motion. The gunman wheeled toward him and squeezed the trigger, even as Chiun was trying to move between gunman and target.
The president of National Autos was hit and knocked back onto the bed by the impact. But there was no hole in his chest and Mangan groaned.
Another bulletproof vest, the gunman thought, and swiveled his pistol back on the advancing Oriental. But the old man was not advancing anymore. He was lying facedown on the floor.
The gunman saw the gleam of blood in the fringe of hair over the Oriental's ear. A ricochet. A one-in-a-million shot. The bullet had bounced off Mangan and struck the old man in the head.