“Who was the boss of the operation?” Remo asked.

  “Pell, of course.”

  “How was he getting the locations of the victims?”

  Sashur shrugged. “I don’t know. He handled all that. He just gave me the names to pass onto the kids…Look,” she said suddenly. “It’s over now. Pell is dead. Maybe I did wrong, but I did some right too, in finishing him off. Now can’t you just let me be? You won’t gain anything by turning me in.”

  Remo shook his head and noticed Sashur look at her watch, which she wore on her left wrist in a heavy leather band that would have been at home on a longshoreman.

  “But you won’t gain anything by putting me away,” said Sashur. “I’ll give you anything. Anything I have.”

  Chiun turned from the wall and smiled at Remo.

  “How like the Western mind to think that all things and all people are for sale,” he said.

  “My paintings,” Sashur said. She looked toward Chiun. “My collection of gold coins.”

  Remo shook his head.

  “Just a minute, my son,” said Chiun. “Somethings certainly deserve consideration. The gold coins are a pleasant offering to our house.”

  “No,” said Remo to Chiun. “We’re not dealing.”

  “These are good coins,” said Chiun. “Of course they are behind glass and I cannot examine them closely but they are worth much if they are authentic.”

  “No deals.”

  “But surely nothing is served by turning in this gracious young lady. Is that helping the Constitution to survive?”

  Sashur looked at her watch again.

  “I’ve got to talk to Smitty,” said Remo. “From you,” he told Sashur, “I want a list of the names of all Pell’s kids.”

  “I’ll get it, I’ll get it.” Sashur stood up. “It’s in the bedroom.”

  “Just a minute,” Remo said. He walked to the door of the bedroom and looked in. The only doors belonged to closets. The only windows opened up onto thirteen stories of empty space.

  “Okay, get it for me.”

  He left her in the bedroom and went back to the living room, where Chiun was fingering the frame of the coin collection.

  “I believe there is real gold leaf used on this frame,” Chiun said.

  “Now listen, Chiun. We can’t go around letting everybody go who offers a bribe to Sinanju.”

  Chiun recoiled from the frame as if it were electrically charged. “A bribe? Is that what you call an offering? A bribe?” He clapped his hand to his forehead. “My own son. Adopted, of course. A bribe.”

  “A bribe,” said Remo. “Now no more of it. We’re going to get the list and then talk to Smitty before we decide what to do. He might want to handle this himself.” He looked toward the bedroom. “She’s taking long enough to get a list.”

  He approached the door just as Sashur emerged. “Here it is.” She handed Remo a piece of paper with a dozen names on it. As she handed over the paper, she glanced again at her gold watch.

  “These are all of them?” Remo asked.

  “All I know about.”

  “How did they get moved around the country? Your husband was hit in North Carolina.”

  “Warner Pell called them class trips. Special rewards for outstanding students. He took the kids out of town himself.”

  “They must have been gone for days at a time. Didn’t their parents ever complain?”

  “Complain? Why should they complain? First of all, they are not the best of people. Second, they knew what their kids were doing, and they were getting well paid for it.”

  “How much?”

  “Warner never told me.”

  “Make a guess,” Remo said.

  “I think the kids were getting fifty thousand dollars for each job.”

  “The Mafia only pays five,” Remo said.

  “Yeah, but Warner worked for the school system. He thought big.”

  “Hear that, Little Father. Fifty thousand dollars for a kid. And think of the work we do.”

  Chiun refused to turn away from the coin collection. “Money is paper,” he said. “It is not value, just a promise of value. Gold is real.”

  “Don’t mind him,” Remo told Sashur. “He’s pouting.”

  “Are you going to turn me in?”

  “Not just yet,” Remo said. “Come here, I want to show you something.”

  He walked toward the bedroom. As Sashur followed, she said with a smile, “I’d like to show you something too.”

  But before she could show Remo her something, he showed her his something, which was the inside of a closet which he locked with the key.

  “Why are you doing this?” she yelled through the wood-painted steel door.

  “I just want you to stay put while I check this all out.”

  “You’re a prick,” she said.

  “The worst,” Remo agreed.

  “A no-good, rotten, reneging bastard prick.”

  “I’d recognize myself anywhere.” Remo jammed the lock of the closet door for good measure.

  In the living room, Chiun said, “That woman is a liar.”

  “Why? What did she say to us?”

  “She said these were very valuable coins. But there are many that are more valuable. Doubloons, pieces of eight, they are all worth more than these. Still, these are not bad.”

  “Chiun, stop that, will you please?”

  In the hallway outside Sashur’s apartment, Remo and Chiun were met by two overweight middle-aged men puffing down the hall from the elevator.

  “Kaufperson,” one panted. “Do you know where her apartment is?”

  “Sure. Why?” said Remo.

  “Police business, buddy,” said the other man, his chest heaving from the strain of the twenty-foot run from the elevator.

  Remo pointed to the door. “That’s her apartment.”

  The two men ran past him.

  “But you won’t find her there,” Remo said.

  They stopped at the door.

  “Why not?”

  “I saw her leaving five minutes ago. She bad a suitcase with her.”

  “Did she say where she was going?”

  “She did as a matter of fact,” Remo said. “I live just down the hall there. She came into to borrow some shoe polish. She’s got this thing about shiny shoes. Uses only Kiwi and she was—”

  “Get to it, man. Where was she going?”

  “She said she was flying to Spokane, Washington. To see her folks. Old Mother and Father Kaufperson and all the little Kaufpeople.”

  “We better call the captain,” one detective said. The heaving of his chest was beginning to subside.

  “C’mon, fellas, why don’t you tell me what this is all about. Maybe I can help,” Remo said.

  “Did you see the news tonight?”

  “No,” said Remo.

  “No,” said Chiun. “But I saw As the Planet Revolves. It was very good today. Rad Rex is getting better and better since I have taught him how to move.”

  The two detectives glanced at each other. “Anyway on the news there was this story about this general who said there were two assassins around from the CIA. A white guy and an Oriental. And Kaufperson called and said they were coming after her. We’re here to protect her.”

  “I guess she decided to run away,” Remo said. “A white man and an Oriental, you say?”

  “Right.”

  “We haven’t seen anybody like that around here, have we?”

  “No,” said Chiun. “I have seen no Oriental and you have seen no white man.”

  “Let’s go, Fred. We better call the captain.”

  “Yeah.”

  The two detectives ran back toward the elevator, while Remo and Chiun went to the exit door leading to the stairwell.

  As he went into the doorway, Remo leaned back into the hall. “A white man and an Oriental, you say?”

  “Yeah,” said the one called Fred, impatiently jabbing the elevator button again.

  “You heard about them on the news?” said Remo.

  “Right, right.”

  “If we see them, we’ll be sure to call you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Remo and Chiun went up to the roof, then to an adjoining building and down the stairs.

  They met a second pair from the world of officialdom outside that building.

  “Watch this, Chiun,” said Remo with a smile.

  Remo approached the two men, who wore trench coats and snap-brim hats.

  “If you’re looking for Sashur Kaufperson, she’s gone to Spokane, Washington,” Remo said.

  The older of the two men turned toward Remo. “Strange you should ask, mister,” he said. His partner backed away from him, moving off to Remo’s right side.

  “Why strange?” said Remo, looking over his shoulder and winking at Chiun, who shook his head sadly.

  “Because we’re not looking for her. We’re looking for you.”

  The agent pulled his hand from his trench coat pocket. In it was an automatic pistol. He pointed it at Remo at exactly the same instant that his partner’s gun was pointed at Chiun.

  “What happened, Remo?” asked Chiun.

  “I don’t know. I thought I was doing good.”

  “That’ll be enough talk,” said the agent covering Remo. “You two are under arrest. You’re coming with us.”

  “A little problem there,” Remo said.

  “Yes. What’s that?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You don’t have much choice,” the agent said. He nodded toward his gun.

  “True,” said Remo. “Have I ever shown you the golden triangle?”

  “Don’t try bribing us.”

  His partner added angrily, “Don’t you know that in fifty years no FBI man has ever been bribed?”

  “I didn’t know that. Fifty years?”

  “Yes. Fifty years.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t try to bribe you. I just want you to watch. You see, it’s all in the feet.” Remo looked down at his feet and crossed his right foot over his left foot at the ankles. “That’s the starting position,” he said.

  “Come on, pal. You’re going with us.”

  “Wait. I’m not done. How am I doing, Little Father?”

  “For a fool playing foolish games, you are doing very well.”

  “Now from this point of the crossed feet, the spin is next,” Remo said.

  He spun on his feet, turning his body in a wide semi-circle. The agent with his gun on Remo followed the lower half of Remo’s body, gun aimed at Remo’s midsection. Then Remo moved at the waist. As the lower half of his body finished the semi-circular movement, the top half of his body kept twisting around, then moved forward toward the agent.

  One moment, the agent had the gun; the next he had an empty hand, and Remo had recrossed his feet, spun again and was gone.

  “Where…?”

  “Behind you, Harry,” called his partner.

  “It’s a mistake,” said Remo, “to do it fast. Slow is the key. Slow, sure, precision.” As Harry turned toward Remo behind him, Remo went a third time into the spin. The legs rotated, the upper body moved even farther through the turn, dipped low, moved forward and Harry’s partner felt, rather than saw, the pistol disappear from his hand, and then Remo was walking off toward Chiun, both guns in his hands.

  “Ridiculous,” said Chiun. “You take a great secret from the ages of Sinanju and play with it on a street corner like a toy.”

  “Yeah, but it was good practice,” said Remo. “In case I ever come up against anybody good.”

  “Hey you two,” the two FBI agents called. “Come back here and give us our guns.”

  “Give them back their guns, Remo. They probably have to pay for them themselves.”

  “Good thinking, Chiun. Here.” Remo pulled the clips from the automatics and dropped the weapons into a waist-high litter basket on a utility pole and the clips through a sewer grating.

  Behind them, they heard the agents running. But by the time the FBI men had retrieved their weapons, Remo and Chiun were gone, down into a subway entrance, where Remo stopped to buy the bulldog edition of a morning paper at the newsstand.

  He opened it to page three and was confronted with pen and ink sketches of Two Secret Agents Hunted as Assassins.

  “Next you will tell me that is supposed to be me?” said Chiun.

  “None other.”

  “Hah. Where is the joy? The love? The wisdom? The true inner beauty?”

  “Shhhh, I’m reading. This general says we’re probably assassins for some secret organization. The paper says it’s the CIA.”

  “Well, see, there is some good to be found in everything. Even though that picture looks nothing like me, it is good that Sinanju is at last getting some recognition.”

  “That ninny general held a press conference to talk about this.”

  “A press conference.” Chiun mused a moment. “It is a good idea. Think of the work we could get, Remo, if others knew more of us and our availability.”

  “Yeah, but this general blamed Kaufmann’s death on us.”

  “Who?” said Chiun.

  “Kaufmann. The guy at the Army post.”

  “But he was killed by gun shots.”

  “Right,” said Remo.

  “Don’t they know that we would not use bullets?” Chiun’s voice explored the depths of outrage.

  “Guess not.”

  “That is a terrible thing that general did,” said Chiun. “Some may see this and believe it.”

  Remo and Chiun walked up the steps leading to the street on the other side of the subway platform.

  “This makes things tough,” Remo said.

  “When things get tough, the tough get things.”

  “What?” said Remo, folding up the paper.

  “It is something like that. I heard your president say it. ‘When things get tough, the tough get things.’”

  “Yeah. Well, we’ve got a problem. Those pictures in the paper. Exposure by that nit general. We’re going to have a goddamn posse of bounty hunters after us next.”

  “Do not worry. No one will recognize me. Not from that drawing, which is not at all like me.”

  “And me?” asked Remo.

  “You have no problem either,” said Chiun.

  “No? Why not?”

  “All you whites look alike. Who can tell you from anybody else?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “YOU’RE DOING WONDERFULLY, SMITTY. Have you ever thought of taking an early retirement?”

  “Now, Remo…”

  “‘Now, Remo,’ my ass. Yesterday, the Justice Department sent out a bulletin on us. Now, the general. All night we’ve been on television and in the papers. When do you have us booked for ‘The David Susskind Show’? Why are you telling me not to worry? What the hell’s gotten into you?”

  “The pictures don’t look anything like you,” said Smith. “And frankly, I misjudged. I didn’t think that General Haupt would fight back.”

  “Well, I’ve got news for you. General Haupt has brought great unhappiness into my life. I’m going to bring some unhappiness into his. First chance I get.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Smith said blandly. “The first thing is the kids. Have you found out anything?”

  “Warner Pell. It was his plan.”

  “Then why did one of his own children kill him?” Smith asked.

  “Well, Pell had this woman in it with him. Sashur Kaufperson. When the heat got put on, he was going to hand her up, and she convinced one of the kids to splat him.”

  “What kind of name is Kaufperson?”

  “It’s got one N. It’s German. Two N’s are Jewish.”

  “That’s not what I mean. I never heard a name like Kaufperson.”

  “It used to be Kaufmann. Her husband was one of the witnesses that got zapped.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I’ve got her under lock and key. Don’t worry about it.”

  “All right,” Smith said. “Stay where you are. I’ll get back to you.”

  “You might just sky-write the message,” said Remo. “Now that everybody knows about us, secrecy isn’t important anymore.”

  “I will call you,” Smith said coldly and hung up.

  Remo dropped the phone into a waste basket and turned toward Chiun, who was unrolling his sleeping mat in the center of the floor.

  “Remo, please move that couch away.”

  “It’s not in your way. You’ve got enough room to lay down a field of corn.”

  “Its presence intrudes upon my thoughts,” said Chiun. “Please move it.”

  “Move it yourself. That’s laborers’ work.”

  “Hold. Hold. Are we not co-equal partners by order of Emperor Smith?”

  “Chiun, he’s not an emperor. For the thousandth time.”

  “The House of Sinanju has worked for emperors for centuries. He contracts with us; he is an emperor.” Satisfied with the logic of this, Chiun demanded again: “Answer. We are co-equal partners?”

  “Why does our being co-equal partners wind up with my having to move the furniture?”

  “It is share and share alike,” Chiun said. “I am preparing my bed. That is my share. You move the furniture. That is your share.”

  “Right,” said Remo. “Share and share alike. You go to sleep, and I move furniture. Okay. Got any pianos you want carried downstairs?” He bent over the edge of the couch and put his hands on the top of the arm. He slid the sofa back and forth to get a sense of its mass and its balance. “Move furniture,” he mumbled. “Find out who’s doing the killing. Find out who’s behind the kids. Get my picture on television. Take out the garbage. Get rid of the bodies. I don’t mind telling you that I’m getting tired of all this.”

  He pressed down on the arm of the couch with both hands, applying slightly more pressure with his right palm. The end of the couch tilted up into the air and Remo gave it a push. On its two closest legs, the couch skidded across the floor, like the prow of a speedboat cutting through waves. It skidded past a chair, then the parting extra pressure of Remo’s right hand caused the couch to veer around the chair. It moved onward toward the wall. It slowed. Its front end lowered. It dropped and stopped an inch from the wall, its left arm exactly parallel to the wall.

 

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