"You have been worried about me?" he said.
"Yes, I have, little father," Remo said. There was no point in lying. Chiun would always know. "You have seemed to be… to be losing your zest for life."
"And you worried?"
"I worried. Yes."
"For causing you that worry, I apologize," Chiun said. "Remo. I have been the Master of Sinanju for fifty years."
"None could have been finer."
"That is true," Chiun said, nodding, placing his fingertips together. "Still, it is many years."
"It is many years," Remo agreed.
"I have thought in these past few weeks that perhaps it is time for the Master of Sinanju to retire his sword. To let a younger, better man take his place."
Remo started to speak, but Chiun silenced him with a pointed finger.
"I have thought of who would replace me. Who would labour so that my village would be supported? So that the poor of Sinanju would be fed and clothed and housed? I could think of no Korean who could do it, who would do it. I could think only of you."
"It is a great honour you pay me," Remo said, "just in speaking the words."
"Silence," Chiun commanded. "You are, after all, almost a Korean. If you could learn to control your appetite and your mouth, you would be a fine master."
"My pride knows no bounds," Remo said.
"So I have thought of this for many weeks. And I have told myself: Chiun, you are getting too old. There have been too many years and too many battles. Already, Remo is your equal. Silence! I have said, already Remo is your equal. And I have felt my strength waning as I thought these things, and I have said, no one needs Chiun any longer, no one needs him to be the Master of Sinanju, he is old and his meagre talents have vanished, and whatever he can do, Remo can do better. I have told myself all these things." His voice was sonorous and deep, now, as if delivering a sermon he had spent years mastering. What was he leading up to? Remo wondered.
"Yes," Chiun said, "I have thought all these things." Remo saw his eyes twinkle. He was enjoying it, the whole speech. The old fraud.
"And now I have reached my decision."
"I am sure it is wise and just," Remo said, cautiously, not trusting the old fox.
"The decision was forced upon me when you dispatched that baboon with your elbow."
"Yes?" Remo said, slowly.
"Do you realize your fist was a full eight inches away from your chest when you struck?"
"I did not know that, little father."
"No, of course, you did not. And in that instant, wisdom came to me."
"Yes?"
"Wisdom came to me," Chiun said, "and it said, how can you turn the welfare of Sinanju over to a man who does not even know to keep his fist against his chest when performing the back elbow thrust? I ask your answer to that question, Remo."
"In conscience, you could not entrust Sinanju to such a worthless one as me."
"That is true," Chiun said. "Watching your inept performance, suddenly I realized that Chiun was not so old and worthless after all. That it would be many years before you are ready to replace him."
"You speak only truth," Remo said.
"So we must resume our training to prepare you for that day. When it comes. Five or six years from now."
Chiun swirled onto his feet. "We must practice the back elbow thrust. You perform it as a child. You disgrace my training and my name. Your lack of talent is an insult to my ancestors. Your clumsiness is an insult to me."
Chiun was working himself up into a lather. Remo, who an hour before had despaired over Chiun's will to live, now realized how insufferable and overbearing he would be. An hour ago, he would have been overjoyed if Chiun would accompany him on his next job; now, he would make sure not to invite him.
Remo stood. "You are right, Chiun, that I need the training. But it must wait. I have an assignment."
"You will need my assistance. One who cannot even keep his fist next to his chest cannot be expected to perform creditably."
"No, Chiun," Remo said. "This is a very easy assignment. I will be done with it and returned before you even have time to pack. Then we will go on vacation."
"And then we will practice the back elbow thrust," Chiun corrected.
"That too," Remo said.
Chiun said nothing. But he looked pleased.
CHAPTER FIVE
Baron Isaac Nemeroff had rented the entire penthouse floor of the Stonewall Hotel in Algiers.
He had done it in a manner unusual for the man who owned the corporation that owned the corporation that owned the hotel. He had sent a telegram to the hotel management asking to lease the floor for six months.
He had sent telegrams to decorators and builders advising them that he wanted special remodelling work done on the penthouse floor.
He had sent a telegram to the telephone company requesting that a company representative discuss with one of his aides the phone service required to be installed, including special conference lines and scrambler devices.
By telegram, he had hired sound experts from Rome to make sure that the central section of the penthouse, which had been remodelled into a conference room, was absolutely un-bugged.
It had taken him three weeks to do all these things and at the end of the third week, a small news item appeared in the Algiers English-language paper:
What's on tap for the fabulously wealthy Baron Isaac Nemeroff? He's taken over the entire penthouse floor of the Stonewall Hotel, remodelled it and installed security devices that would do credit to the American Secret Service. Must be something big in the wind for the Baron. Hmmmm?
Baron Nemeroff saw the news item while eating his daily breakfast, which unfailingly consisted of orange juice, grape juice, four eggs, one chocolate eclair, and coffee with milk and four spoonfuls of sugar.
He sat on one of the patios of his gargantuan estate, high on a hill overlooking the interior city of Algiers, nodding his head in approval of the story. He folded the paper and placed it carefully on the table next to his empty juice glasses. He wiped his mouth and swallowed the last few flakes of éclair which he scooped up off the cake plate with his fingertips.
Only then did he laugh.
The baron's laugh was not a pleasant event. It sounded like a bray, and looked as if it should have been a bray, because it came from a face that was mule-like. Nemeroff's head was long and rectangular, with a jutting jaw and a sloped forehead. A thick shock of red hair flew backwards from the top of his skull. His eyes were big and seemed to be vertical ovals. The long, broad triangle of his nose was pasted grossly on a face whose skin was pale, freckled and testified to the anguish of sunburn.
Nemeroff was six-feet-eight niches tall, weighed 156 pounds, and he required six meals a day to keep his weight that high. A metabolic imbalance burned up energy as fast as he could take it in. His body was always moving; a foot shook as it dangled over his other leg, his hands drummed on the table, he waved as if to shoo off imaginary insects. His sleep was restless, troubled and twitchy, and could cost him five pounds of his weight.
Missing a meal or two could drop his weight ten pounds. He would starve to death within seventy-two hours.
So he stuffed himself like a caged goose being readied for liver pate.
And now he laughed; it was an evil, hectic laugh that shook his body and seemed visibly to burn up some of his store of energy.
He looked from his balcony toward the central city of Algiers, lying low before him, crowned by its tallest building, the Stonewall Hotel, and he laughed some more.
It had gone exactly as he had planned. The intelligence experts of nations around the world would spend their time breaking into, bugging, de-bugging, bugging each other's bugs, tripping over each other, trying to find out what was happening on the 35th floor of the Stonewall Hotel.