"Why?" the CURE director asked. Some of his fear was instantly replaced by suspicion. "What have you done?"
"Not me," Remo said. "Chiun. Something strange happened when we were in Europe a couple days back. I didn't tell you because I figured it was gonna cause me enough grief in the future without getting an earful from you right now. Remember that fat Swiss assassin we went after?"
Smith remembered all too well. The killer in question had dogged Remo and Chiun from Europe to South America, setting several elaborate booby traps in the path of the two men. They had traced him back to his hideaway in the Alps.
"Olivier Hahn," Smith said. "What of him?"
"It's not him, exactly," Remo said. "See, Chiun's been mailing out some kind of top-secret letters for the past few months. He's been real mysterious about them. Every time I ask, he tells me to take a flying leap. When we went to punch that Swiss guy's ticket, the guy had one of those letters in his house. I recognized the envelope. Chiun grabbed it up before I could take a look at it. I think it has something to do with me becoming Reigning Master of Sinanju. So maybe this picture of me on TV is connected to the same thing."
Smith was trying to digest Remo's words.
"Could Chiun be so careless?" the older man breathed. He knew the truth even as he posed the question. If history was an indication, the answer was a resounding, unequivocal yes.
"Not Chiun exactly," Remo replied. "But I don't know what those letters said or who got them. This stuff in Harlem could be connected to Sinanju and not CURE at all."
"Ask Chiun," Smith demanded tartly.
"I could, but I doubt he'd give me a straight answer. He wouldn't before and he's kind of ticked at me right now."
"Put him on the phone."
"I can't," Remo said. "He stormed out of here. I'm standing in an empty Harlem police station. Which, by the way, I should get out of before the cops come home."
Smith sat behind his big desk, quietly fuming. The Master of Sinanju had been unconcerned about security in the past. It was entirely possible that they had been brought to the brink of ruin because of the old Korean's carelessness.
Smith allowed his grip on the phone to loosen. "Those weren't typical rioters," he mused. "They had the opportunity to attack the former president at any time in the hours they had his building surrounded but they did not. It's possible that whoever gave them their orders was merely trying to draw you in."
"Shittman said he was watching 'Winner' when he zonked out," Remo explained. "You know, that show where they strand a bunch of people I wouldn't trust to lick the sticky side of a stamp out in the middle of nowhere."
Smith frowned. The name triggered something in his recent memory. He couldn't place it.
"I am not familiar with the program," he said.
"No surprise there," Remo said. "Do you even own a TV?" He forged ahead. "It's on BCN. Shittman said the BCN guy who's been passing out free palm TVs has set up shop in the cellar of his church. I'll go check him out."
"Please do," Smith said. "And find out if Master Chiun is involved in this. If his irresponsible behavior is to blame, at least he can tell us exactly what we're dealing with. In the meantime I will check into the BCN angle. Call back as soon as you know anything more."
Smith hung up the phone. His hand pained him from gripping the receiver too tightly.
This was a catastrophe in the making. Events in Harlem might have been engineered to draw Remo out, but it was just as likely it had been done to draw CURE into the light. There was no way of knowing right now, no way to stop an unknown foe with unknowable intentions.
One thing was certain. Whoever it was, CURE's faceless enemy was possessed with incredibly dangerous technology. What Remo had described was clearly dissociative behavior. The separation of an idea of activity from mainstream conscious thought. They had discovered a way to make people do things divorced from the societal or personal boundaries of morals and ethics.
The name of the program that had triggered the dissociative response in Minister Shittman and the others still seemed familiar to Smith. He assumed he had come across it as part of his daily work as CURE director.
Right now that didn't matter. He had more pressing things to deal with.
He turned his attention to his computer.
As the clock ticked down to zero on what might very well be the last minutes of both his life and the life of the agency he led, Dr. Harold W. Smith began to steer a steady course through the troubled rapids of cyberspace.
Chapter 10
Remo swiped an abandoned cop car from the street in front of the station house. There was a hat on the front seat. He put it on and pulled it low over his eyes.
The hat fit. For an instant it gave him an odd, old feeling. In the rearview mirror he saw that the face looking back at him could have been that of the same Remo Williams who had been a Newark beat patrolman a million years before.
But he wasn't the same. The world was different and they were all going to have to come to grips with it.
He started the engine.
Remo found the Master of Sinanju marching down the sidewalk halfway back to their car.
"Want a lift?" he called, slowing next to the elderly Korean.
Chiun gave him the briefest of hateful looks before sliding in the passenger seat beside his pupil.
"I suppose you are worried now to let me walk the streets for fear I might be mugged," the Master of Sinanju sniffed.
"Little Father, I'd be worried for Harlem if it tried to mug you," Remo replied honestly. "And I didn't mean to insult you back there. The place was going nuts, and I did have a reason to be concerned about you. It happened to you once before. Remember that head case Abraxas who wanted to take over the world years ago? You didn't realize back then you were seeing his subliminal signals."
"How fortunate for me that in my dotage I have you to remember the most embarrassing moments of my life," Chiun said, his tone enough to chill the already cold winter air.
"I'm not trying to embarrass. I'm just saying you-we-need to watch out. This stuff they're using is sophisticated as all hell. It's not just a name flashing on a screen like it was back then. Whoever's doing this is using the signals to make people do things that go against their nature."
"Perhaps I have already fallen victim to these signals, Remo," the Master of Sinanju said. "For it is against my nature to train an ingrate fat white with oatmeal for brains in the art of Sinanju. Yet there sits bloated, oatmeal-brained you. Yes, Remo, you are right. Clearly, I am old and senile and in need of special attention."
"Sue me for being concerned," Remo grumbled. "And as long as I already pulled the pin out of the grenade, Smitty wanted me to ask you if this was connected to those letters you've been mailing out."
So slowly did the old Korean's head turn, not a single hair stirred around his parchment face. His hazel eyes burned laser holes in Remo's skull.
"You told Smith?" he asked, voice low with accusation.
"Not really," Remo said. "I can't very well give him specifics about something I don't know about. I told him there were envelopes and how one already showed up out of the blue in the house of someone who was trying to kill us. I thought maybe my picture on TV was connected somehow."
"It is not," Chiun said firmly.
"It'd help Smitty to make sure about that if you told me just what the hell they were for," Remo said. But the Master of Sinanju became uncommunicative. Turning from his pupil, he stared out at the potholed street.
"Why me, Lord?" Remo muttered.
He found his leased car where he'd left it.
The kids who had been stripping it had made a valiant effort to put it back together. It seemed, however, that they were more adept at destruction than construction.