Scooping the last chopstickfuls of rice into his mouth, Remo muttered, "This, I have to see."
TEN MINUTES LATER, Remo stood alongside the Master of Sinanju outside the Watergate Hotel while the doorman signaled a cab. One pulled up instantly.
Remo opened the door and allowed the Master of Sinanju to enter. By the time he got around to the other side and got in himself, Chiun had instructed the cabbie where to go.
"Don't I get let in on the secret?" Remo asked Chiun as the cab sped off in the late-afternoon twilight.
"If you had a logical mind such as mine, you would not need to be told."
"I have a logical mind," Remo insisted.
"No, you have an obvious mind. It is drawn to the obvious, never the logical."
"Blow it out your kazoo," said Remo, momentarily distracted by a passing set of D-cups bouncing before a leggy brunette.
Chiun rearranged his kimono skirts in a more artful manner and said nothing. Some truths were so obvious they required no repeating.
When the cab drew up to an imposing stone castle on the National Mall in the heart of Washington, Remo got out and asked, "Where are we?"
"The logical place," said the Master of Sinanju, drifting toward the great entrance.
Remo followed. His eyes went to the name carved deep into the facade over the massive entry.
It said Smithsonian Institution.
"Oh," said Remo.
"Is it not both logical and obvious?" asked Chiun.
"I guess," Remo said doubtfully. "It would have been a lot more logical to just tell me where to meet. It's not as if this isn't a public place."
"That would have been too obvious," said Chiun, walking with his hands firmly tucked into his kimono sleeves.
"You know," said Remo, as they walked into the vast vault of the Smithsonian Museum, "I thought I'd broken Smitty of all this supersecrecy bullcrap years ago."
"A good emperor keeps his secrets. As does a good assassin."
"You should talk, the way you spilled your guts to Pepsie Dobbins."
"I merely spoke the truth. If more rabble knew that we stood beside Smith and Smith stood behind the puppet President, no rival assassin would dare to threaten either."
"Not in this country. We grow more nuts than Lebanon and Iran combined, and every one of them wants to take a whack at the President."
The Master of Sinanju looked both ways. "Which way do we go?"
"The logical way."
Chiun made a wrinkled face. "There is no logical way."
"Maybe there's an obvious way," said Remo, happy to have the upper hand for a change.
In the end they split up, Remo going one way and Chiun the other.
Remo found himself in the section devoted to TV show memorabilia, and it made him wonder what future generations would make of the latter years of the twentieth century when a black leather jacket worn by a comic actor occupied the same weight as the Spirit of St. Louis or the Gettysburg Address.
After making a circuit of one wing and finding no trace of Harold Smith, Remo started wondering if Chiun had been mistaken. The thought gave him a moment of quiet joy, until he realized that if it were true, finding Smith would be impossible.
Remo found Chiun pestering a woman at an information booth.
"I seek the emperor," Chiun was whispering.
Before Remo could intervene, the woman looked blank a moment and said, "You're in the wrong building. Try the Museum of American History across the mall."
"Thank you," said Chiun, who joined Remo, saying, "We are in the wrong place."
"I think that woman misunderstood you," Remo started to say.
"She understood me perfectly. I asked for the emperor, and she has directed me to another building, also called Smithsonian."
Remo bit his tongue and followed the Master of Sinanju out of the building. Time enough to straighten this out once Chiun found out the truth for himself.
They went to a modern white building that resembled a Kleenex box across the mall. The sign on the front read National Museum of American History. A pylon out front explained that it was part of the Smithsonian family of museums.
They entered and at once were confronted by a two-story pendulum methodically knocking over a series of red pegs that were arrayed in a wide circle at the outer edges of the pendulum's scope of movement. Most of the pegs were down.
Remo joined the crowd at the glass barrier, followed by Chiun, and read a sign that called it the Foucault pendulum.
"Says here the pendulum's changing swing proves the earth rotates," Remo explained.
"It proves that the white mind is obsessed with toys, having been poisoned by pagan feasts," sniffed Chiun. Turning to a guard standing nearby, he said, "We seek the emperor. Direct us, guardian of the castle of Smith."
The guard had only to think a moment. "West wing near the escalator," he said, pointing down a corridor.
Puzzled, Remo followed Chiun down the corridor.
They came to a huge marble statue of a seated man wearing a toga that had fallen to his waist. He carried one hand high, and a sheathed sword was clasped in the other.
"What emperor is this, Remo?" asked Chiun.
Remo looked up at the statue's face. He wore his hair long and curled, and not shorn short, as would a Greek or Roman ruler of old, which he otherwise greatly resembled.
"Search me. Ancient history isn't my strong suit."
"This is no emperor of old," spat Chiun. "Obviously it is one of the very early rulers of this land."
"We have only Presidents here," Remo said distantly, searching the passing faces for Smith's lemony visage.
"Did not a British king rule this land at one time?"
"I guess so," said Remo vaguely. "I only care about Presidents. Sometimes not even them."
"I have always suspected that other emperors lurked in the shadows of this nation's halls," said Chiun. "Now I am sure of it."
"Not a chance."
Chiun stepped back, the better to search the statue's cold stone face with his birdlike eyes. It was strong, with a heavy nose and high forehead. Chiun canted his head this way and that. Then his eyes fell to the broad base of the throne on which the statue sat.
"Hah! Look, Remo, here is proof of what I have been saying for years."
Remo turned and saw the pointing finger of Chiun. He tracked it with his eyes.
There at the base of the statue was a single name: Washington.
"It is now clear to me," cried Chiun. "The Emperor Washington founded this land."
"He was President."
"Another sham concocted to deceive a gullible populace."
"Who would go to all the trouble of carving a twenty-ton statue of George Washington and dress him like Caligula sitting in a steam bath?" Remo wondered aloud.
A lemony voice behind them said, "His name was Horatio Greenough, and this statue is a famous white elephant that was ejected from the Capitol Building in 1908."
They turned to see Harold Smith standing there in his familiar gray suit that he wore like a personal uniform.
"Pretend to be admiring the statue," Smith undertoned.
"I'm not that good an actor," muttered Remo.
Chiun bowed low. "Hail Smith, blood descendant of Washington the First."
Smith paled and said nothing. He carried a well-worn leather briefcase. "I saw you exit the Smithsonian castle as my cab pulled up. Why did you come here?"
Remo pointed to the statue of Washington. "Chiun got his emperors mixed up."
"Were you followed?" asked Smith.
"Yes," said Chiun. "Remo followed me."
"I meant by strangers."
"No one could follow me."
"No," agreed Remo. "Chiun just told Pepsie Dobbins all about the organization."
Smith's eyes grew large behind his rimless glasses. He wavered on his feet.
"I merely enlightened an ignorant woman," said Chiun.
"Don't sweat it, Smitty. Word is she was canned for reporting the President's death prematurely."