from their interiors when Lothar Holz leaned forward. His voice was low, so that Mrs. Smith would be unable to hear. The words he spoke sent a chill up Smith's spine.
'I know of Sinanju,' he said softly.
The floor suddenly fell out from beneath Smith.
He felt his empty stomach knot up like a rigor-mortis-clenched fist. His head swam with hundreds of amorphous, inchoate thoughts.
Only a few became fully formed.
CURE was doomed. America's most carefully
guarded secret was an open book. And it was all his fault.
Maude Smith returned bearing a pair of steaming coffee mugs. Smith took his dully, automatically.
Like a man who had just entered his last hour on death row.
Mrs. Smith and Holz chatted amicably. She told of her coming trip, of their daughter. Of her excitement at seeing Harold on television. Every now and again, Holz would glance knowingly at Smith. Smith merely sat there, his hands cupped around the steaming mug.
And though the heat from the scalding liquid burned his palms, Harold W. Smith didn't notice.
8
On the sixty-third ring, Remo picked up the phone.
'Joe's Taxidermy. You snuff 'em, we stuff 'em,'
he said in a bored tone.
There was a slight moment of hesitation from the other end of the line. Then Smith spoke, his voice tighter than usual. 'Remo, report back to headquarters immediately.'
Remo was mildly surprised that he wasn't chastised for making the CURE director wait. 'Aw, Smitty, can't you just overnight-express the autograph?'
'Never mind that,' snapped Smith. 'Something important has come up.'
'It's always important,' Remo complained. 'I was in the middle of something pretty important myself.' In truth, Remo had been out in the large parking area beside the condominium complex that was his home watching some of the neighborhood children skateboarding. One of the kids had pretty good balance.
'Remo, please, just get down here as quickly as possible.'
There was something odd about this call. Something much different than usual. Remo pressed on.
'What's all that noise in the background?'
'I am, er—' there was a pause on the line '—not at the office.'
'Well, where, er, are you?' Remo asked.
'At a nearby fast-food establishment.'
'Outside?'
'There is an amusement area of some sort here.'
There were children's voices shouting raucously in the background. Remo tried to picture Smith in his gray suit, rimless glasses, seated on a painted tin mushroom with his battered briefcase on his lap while dozens of children ran screaming around him.
Try as he might, he couldn't summon up an image that could possibly do justice to the reality.
Remo sighed. 'You could have told me about this earlier.' Remo's internal clock—more accurate than any government-built atomic clock—told him it was only eighty-seven minutes and twelve seconds since he had gotten off the phone with Smith.
'This problem has just come up. Remo, please.'
There was a strange desperation in his voice.
'Okay,' Remo said resignedly. 'I'll be there as quick as I can.'
He hung up the phone and went to inform the Master of Sinanju that he was leaving. He found the tiny Asian seated in the center of the glass-enclosed upper room of the building. Chiun's wizened face was pointed east and slightly upturned. The warming rays of the midmorning sun suffused his parchment skin and reflected brilliantly off the hand-embroidered gold piping of his fire-engine red kimono.
'That was Smith on the phone,' Remo said upon entering the room. 'He needs me back at Folcroft.'
He took a deep breath and stared out at the traffic on the street below. 'He sounded strange.'
Chiun didn't open his eyes. 'And this struck you as odd?'
Remo shrugged. 'No.' His brow furrowed, un-convinced. 'I don't know. He just didn't sound like himself.'
Chiun's eyes instantly shot open. Hazel irises quickly flashed to shards of flinty concern.
'He did not hack?' the Master of Sinanju demanded.
Remo shook his head patiently. 'It was nothing like that, Little Father,' he insisted.
Only a few short weeks before, Remo had un-knowingly charged headlong into an ancient Sinanju prophecy. An unholy band of false prophets had re-established the two-thousand-year-old Delphic Oracle in America's West. Those who breathed the smoke of the Pythia, as it was called, were possessed by the demon force. Remo had been unlucky enough to become the vessel of the Pythia for a time. His coughing spasms had been an early sign of posses-sion to the Master of Sinanju.
'You are certain Smith has not been infected by Apollo's minion?' the old Korean pressed.
'Of course not,' Remo said. 'We blew Ranch Ragnarok to Kingdom Come, and the Pythia's urn along with it.'
Chiun studied Remo's hard features. They had not discussed those events much. Something had happened to Remo while he was entrapped by the oracle.
The old man suspected that it had something to do with yet another Sinanju legend—the one in which Remo was said to be the avatar of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.
Finally Chiun closed his eyes. 'Do not be confident that we have seen the last of the Pythia,' he said ominously.
'We smoked him once, we can do it again,'
Remo said, spinning to the window. His sure tone belied an inner concern. 'And I was talking about Smith.'
'Did he mention the autograph?'
Remo rolled his eyes heavenward. He turned back to the master of Sinanju. 'Chiun, I told you. Smith's autograph is worth diddly.'
'Now,' Chiun said. 'But it might not always be so.'
'I guarantee you, a hundred years from now, Smith's autograph will still be worth diddly.'
'But if it increases in value, I will be in a position to make a tidy sum. This with no personal investment, Remo.'
'You plan to be around in a hundred years to sell it?' Chiun opened his eyes. The ancient eyelids, as thin as rice paper and seemingly as delicate as a cluster of cobwebs, revealed a pair of surprisingly young-appearing hazel eyes. The Master of Sinanju regarded his pupil levelly. 'I am not quite ready to climb into my grave.' The eyes were cold.
'I didn't mean anything by it,' Remo said. 'It's just that one appearance on the evening news isn't going to make Smith a star.'
''Robert Dedero had to start somewhere.'
'De Niro,' Remo corrected.
'A worthless currency,' Chiun said. 'Almost as worthless as the ruble. I will only sell Smith's signature for gold. But I will only sell it if you collect it, so make haste.' Chiun closed his eyes once more.
And rather than attempt to explain to the Master of Sinanju that it was unlikely that Robert De Niro got his first big break on the evening news, Remo left.
Remo took an afternoon flight and arrived by taxi at Folcroft by three that afternoon.
The security guard didn't even lift his eyes from his tiny portable television set as Remo strolled through the
