Remo called Dr. Harold W. Smith. He called collect. "Remo? What have you to report?"
"Nothing," said Remo. "I don't work for you, remember?"
"Yes, of course. But from what Chiun has been saying, I thought you were more or less unofficially back on the team."
"Forget what Chiun said. You should see him now. He's tricked out like some freaking Pee Wee Herman clone. Look, Smitty, I'm trying to get back to Sinanju, but I'm stuck in Baltimore. No flights are going out until morning, if ever. Can you swing something? Say, a helicopter?"
"No helicopter would carry you across the Pacific."
"I know that, Smitty. I just want to get out of Baltimore, okay?"
"Not okay. As you know, I'm responsible for allocating millions in taxpayers' dollars. I would be remiss in my responsibility if I used even a cent of it for nonoperational expenses. You are no longer a member of the organization. You admitted it. I'm sorry, I can't justify the cost of returning you to Korea."
"That's your answer?"
"Well, you could reconsider your decision to go. I have that matter we discussed. Someone is trying to kill me."
"I know how he feels," Remo said through clenched teeth.
"I'm sorry, Remo," Smith said formally. "I just can't see it your way."
"Thanks a lot," Remo said, hanging up. Behind him, a long snaky line of waiting customers groaned with one voice.
"What's eating you?" Remo asked them.
"You broke the phone," said a bony woman.
Remo looked back. The receiver was a mush of plastic attached to the dial pad. "Oh, sorry," he said sheepishly.
"That's easy for you to say. You already made your call. "
"I said I was sorry."
At the other side of the terminal, Remo tried to rent a car. He was told in no uncertain terms that he could not have one.
"Give me two reasons," Remo said.
"One, they've all been rented. Two, we don't accept payment in alleged gold ingots. Please take this thing off my counter."
Remo pocketed the bar of metal.
"Do you have a credit card and identification?" the clerk asked.
"No. What if I did? You already told me you don't have any cars."
"True, but if you had a credit card we could fit you in in the rnorning."
"I can get a flight in the morning," Remo said. "I won't need a car then."
"The customer is always right," the clerk told Remo.
Remo decided to sit out the night in the airport cafeteria. It was mobbed. The fast-food restaurants were jammed too. Not that Remo would have eaten in one. His highly attuned nervous system would have shortcircuited with the ingestion of the smallest particle of hamburger or french fry.
"Ah, the hell with it," Remo muttered to himself, looking for a cab to take him back into Baltimore. "Even dealing with Chiun is better than this crap."
But there were no cabs to be had, either, and Remo had to walk all the way back to the city.
The Master of Sinanju did not sleep that night. He could not, try as he might. The pain was too great. Even now, his pupil was many thousands of miles away, flying back to Korea. In his heart of hearts, Chiun wished he, too, could fly back to Korea, back to the land of his childhood. True, there were many painful memories back in Sinanju, of his stern father, who trained him in the art of Sinanju, of his cruel wife and her unworthy relatives, and of the shame of having been left, at an old age, without a proper pupil to carry on the Sinanju traditions.
Remo had wiped away that shame. Remo had become the son Chiun had been cheated of having. In the early days Chiun had not expended any great effort on making Remo a fit assassin for CURE. Remo was white, and therefore inept. His unworthiness would cause him to reject the better portions of Sinanju training. And even when Chiun grew to respect Remo, he avoided getting to know the man. He was white and therefore doomed to eventual failure. There was no sense in getting friendly. Remo would only die.
And it had happened. Remo had died during a mission. But Chiun, sensing a change in Remo revived him. Remo had come back from the dead less white than he had been when he had lived. He had come back Sinanju.
It was then that Chiun knew destiny had delivered into his aged hands a greater future for the House of Sinanju than he had ever dreamed there would be. Delivered to Chiun the Disgraced, the old Master who should have retired but was stuck in a barbarian land so backward even the Great Wang had never known of it. Chiun understood he had the greatest Master, the avatar of Shiva, in his care.
Chiun had poured his heart and his love into the training of Remo Williams after that, and Remo had grown through the stages of Sinanju. Now he was a Master himself, tied to the village by bonds of tradition and honor.
Chiun would never have believed that when Remo finally agreed to settle in Sinanju, it would be the beginning of the greatest pain he would ever know: ignored by his ungrateful villagers, cast aside by Remo for a mere girl. All that he had worked for had turned to smoke.
And so, because he dared not admit his unhappiness, he had fled to America and tricked Harold Smith into another year's service, confident that Remo would follow him. And he had.
Yet now Remo was leaving again. He was actually returning to Sinanju, alone. Chiun would not see him again for a year, or longer.
The Master of Sinanju walked to a window. A clear full moon hung in the sky. Chiun wondered if that same moon shone down on the aircraft now carrying Remo back to Sinanju. Just the thought made him feel somehow closer to his pupil.
Chiun had gambled that Remo's love for him would be stronger than his love for Mah-Li. He had been wrong, and now he was prepared to pay the price-a year of separation.
Out in the hallway, the elevator door opened. Chiun cocked his head in the direction of the door.
A soft padding sounded on the carpet. It was not the heavy tread of American-shod feet, or the crush of bare feet. It was an eflortless gliding that only one pair of feet other than Chiun's could make.
The Master of Sinanju burst into the hallway in his sleeping kimono.
"Remo, my son! I knew you would return. You cannot live without me."
"My flight was canceled," Remo said sourly.
The Master of Sinanju looked stricken. Then he slammed the door in Remo's face like an offended spinster.
"I didn't mean it like that," Remo said exasperatedly. There was no answer from the other side.
"Look, I'll make you a deal," Remo called through the panel. "I'll stick around until this Ferris thing is over, then we'll talk to Smith and get this straightened out. Okay?"
The door opened slowly. Chiun stood framed in it, moonlight silvering his aged head. His face was impassive, and his hands folded into the sleeves of his sleeping kimono.
"Deal," he said, his face lighting up.
Chapter 21
Ilsa Gans sent the specially equipped van circling the block for the last time.
"It looks clear," she called back over her shoulder. Peering through the privacy glass, seeing but unseen, Konrad Blutsturz searched with avid eyes. There were no signs of guards in the lobby of the Lafavette Building, no obvious FBI agents posted an foot or in cars. No danger.
It was night, the perfect time. konrad Blutsturz decided everything was perfect.
"On the next pass," he told Ilsa, reaching down to unbolt his wheelchair restraints, "park."
Coming around the block, Ilsa looked for the open space she had picked out in the parailel-parking zone, the one with the spray-painted stick-figure-seated-on-a-half-circle-wheelchair-symbol-the universal sign of handicapped-only parking.
A blue Mercedes suddenly pulled ahead and cut her off.
"He took it!" Ilsa said suddenly.
"Who took what?"
"The space," Ilsa answered. "The handicapped space. That guy in the Mercedes just scooted right in. He knew I was going for that space."