"I would prefer a more Caucasian look. For operational reasons, of course," Smith added quickly.
Chiun snatched up the parchment drawings.
"Racist!" he spat.
"I do want you to monitor the operation, Master Chiun," said Harold Smith hastily, adjusting the knot in his tie. "To ensure that all goes smoothly."
"Perhaps the surgeon of plastic will see the wisdom of my selections."
"I somehow doubt it," said Smith, clearing his throat.
"It is possible."
"He will be under strict instructions to resculpture Remo's features, not change them utterly. But I am concerned with the lump on Remo's forehead."
Chiun's eyes narrowed. "It is the eye of Shiva. Now closed. Remo does not suspect it for what it is."
"Does Remo have any idea of his recent personality . . . uh . . . change?"
"None. His mind is a blank. It is always a blank, of course, but this time the blankness is total. He remembers his days of slavery to the goddess Kali, but prefers not to speak of this."
Harold Smith regarded the wispy figure of the Master of Sinanju. He hesitated to probe further. When he had taken on the awesome responsibility of CURE, he took on with it the operational obligation to obliterate the organization and all traces of it-including all personnel-should CURE ever be compromised.
When, years ago, he had framed Remo Williams for a murder he had not committed, it had been to create an untraceable and expendable enforcement arm. Remo had been placed in Chiun's hands to be taught the rudiments of Sinanju, to create the perfect assassin. A man who no longer existed.
It was a perfect plan. As conceived. Chiun would return to his village after training Remo-a critical link in the CURE chain forever severed. Chiun had been eighty then, twenty years ago. With his eventual death, there would be one fewer brain housing the knowledge of CURE, which was limited to Smith, Remo, and the incumbent President.
But an unexpected thing had happened. Chiun had grown to care for Remo. The teacher had become a part of CURE. Not because Smith had wanted it that way, but because there was no way to prevent it. Chiun had insisted that training a white man in the fundamentals of Sinanju was a fifteen-year commitment. Minimum.
Thus Smith had acquired two enforcement arms, paid for by an annual shipment of gold to the desolate village of Sinanju, on the coast of forbidding North Korea.
The bond between Remo and Chiun had been something Smith had not always understood. There had been a prophecy in the annals of the House of Sinanju, a legend that foretold of a Master who would one day train a white man, the dead night tiger, who would be the avatar to Shiva, known to the followers of Hinduism as the God of Destruction.
Chiun believed Remo was this foretold Sinanju Destroyer. Smith had never accepted any of it.
But recent events had proved to Smith that Remo was more than Remo now. More, perhaps, than even Sinanju. It was clear that he was subject to personality shifts. Shifts he never seemed to remember.
Smith no more believed in Shiva the Destroyer than he did in the jolly Green Giant, but something was bubbling deep within Remo's psyche. Something that threatened to one day break free and overwhelm him.
Such a prospect threatened not only CURE but also the world. Smith had seen the awesome power of the unleashed Remo for himself. There would be no controlling him should the Remo aspect of his personality ever be totally submerged.
Smith had to know. Even if the truth meant shutting down CURE, terminating Remo. And incidentally swallowing a cyanide pill that would also extinguish his own life.
"Do you foresee this event recurring?" Smith asked the Master of Sinanju carefully.
"Before the Great Lord Shiva surrendered Remo's body, he told me..."
Smith's gray eyes made circles of surprise. "He spoke to you?"
"Yes. And he said that the hour would one day come that he would claim Remo as his throne. But that hour was far off; he also said."
"Er, how far?"
"Shiva did not say."
Smith's prim mouth tightened. The Master of Sinanju caught the thinning reflex.
"I know what you are thinking, Emperor," said Chiun.
"You do?"
Chiun nodded. "You are thinking that this spirit which Remo harbors may threaten your realm."
"In a manner of speaking," Smith admitted. He was not comfortable with Chiun's repeated references to his emperorship, but Masters of Sinanju had served as royal assassins going back to the days of the pharaohs. Since Chiun served America through Smith, Smith must therefore be addressed as an emperor.
"And you wonder if you should not extinguish Remo in order to prevent this calamity from coming to pass," Chiun continued.
"My responsibilities-" Smith began.
Chiun raised a wise finger. "Then know this. Shiva grows within Remo. In the past, he has been roused only when Remo's existence was threatened. Should you attempt to harm my son, Shiva will return to protect his own. It is better that you stay your hand, otherwise you will precipitate the very calamity you seek to avoid."
"I see," Smith said slowly. "But what about you, Master Chiun? Remo is as much as a son to you. He is the heir to the House of Sinanju. Does Shiva not threaten the line?"
Chiun bowed his head in the dimness of Smith's Spartan office.
"He does. But I am an old man who has been blessed with the greatest pupil any Master of Sinanju ever had. Yet I am also cursed to know that in my accomplishment I have sown the seeds that doom all I hold dear. But what can I do? I am an old man. You are my emperor. And Remo is Remo. But Lord Shiva is more powerful than us all."
And Harold Smith, who had personally seen the Master of Sinanju tear through a small army like a buzz saw, felt a thrill of supernatural fear course down his spine.
Chapter 10
Remo Williams sent his rented car into a copse of poplars several hundred yards short of the gates of Folcroft Sanitarium. He made his way to the closed gate on foot.
There were two stone lions atop the gate. They seemed to stare down at him like sentinels excavated from some half-forgotten civilization.
Grinning, Remo simply leapt sixteen feet into the air and landed atop the right-hand lion.
He paused and seemed to float to the ground on the other side.
There was a security guard at a lobby desk, his face buried in a newspaper. Remo slipped in and, staying out of the guard's peripheral range, his movements contained so that he made no attention-getting motions, made his way to the elevator and the second floor.
Remo walked into Harold Smith's office unannounced.
Harold W. Smith looked up from his computer, a startled expression on his face. Reflexively he stabbed a stud hidden under the oak rim. The desktop terminal retreated into his desk well like a shy plastic skull.
"Remo, you startled me," Smith said, flustered.
"Sorry," Remo said, looking around. He sensed another presence.
He pulled the door back and peered behind it. He saw only a blot of shadow. Empty.
"Is Chiun here?" Remo asked suspiciously.
"He is in the building," Smith said evasively. "He expressed an interest in monitoring the operation."
"Okay," Remo said, stepping in. "But before we get to it, let's establish some ground rules."
"I am listening."
"I'm going under the knife. But only to get rid of this freaking lump, whatever it is."
"That is the purpose of the procedure," Smith said.
"Not to have my face lifted."
Smith said nothing.
"You're a man of your word, Smith. So before we get to it, I need you to raise your right hand and swear on a stack of computer printouts that the doctor isn't going to get fancy with my face."
Smith swallowed.
"Is that a guilty look I see?" Remo asked suddenly.