Remo The Adventure Begins (17 page)

“If I may be permitted to ask Mr. Grove a question,” Major Fleming asked.

“Yes, yes. Go ahead,” said the chairman. He was down to a single cocktail that night, he knew.

“Mr. Grove, can you tell us what the delay is in making HARP I operational?”

Grove exuded competence and just a little bit of annoyance in his answer.

“Of course, I can tell you,” he said, looking at the congressmen and not at the major. “It’s committees like this that take a sound design, chew it up and spit it back with a lot of new specs attached.”

George Grove looked directly at one of his good friends when he said this, and his good friend did not let him down.

“George has a point,” said the congressman, now bouncing the ball into the Air Force court. “You generals can’t blink without coming up with a hundred new design demands.”

“Which naturally adds to cost overruns. But my question is even more troubling. It is vital and basic. When can we see anything of the HARP I we have paid so much for?”

George Grove slammed down a file.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said with properly controlled rage. “My company has one of the finest track records in this town . . . What about the CD-18, Major? Three months ahead of schedule. And under budget. We don’t hear about underbudgets, do we? We don’t hear of bettering a deadline, either. That CD-18 will be ready for testing next week. Next week. Not next month. Next week.”

“Yes, at Mount Promise, I am aware of that. That is one of General Watson’s programs. I will be there too. If you do know him personally, as I suspect, please do tell him I will be there.”

Trapped, George Grove fell back on his patriotism. He questioned Major Fleming’s questioning it. He questioned Congress’s questioning it. He questioned anyone questioning it. Finally, the chairman had to say no one was questioning it.

“I think the question was about HARP I. And it was a good one,” said the chairman of the congressional subcommittee.

“Damn good,” said another congressman. He was not one of George Grove’s friends.

Outside the hearing room, Wilson was waiting.

“How did it go?”

“Do you remember the major at the party?”

“Yes. Watson got rid of her.”

“Yes, out of his stinking little command right to the Joint Chiefs and HARP.”

“Oh, no,” said Wilson.

“She is out. Out. Out. Out.”

“I understand.”

“I am not talking about a head cold or a transfer.”

“I understand.”

“Use the best. I don’t want to see that face again on this earth.”

“Not a problem, George,” said Wilson.

“I knew she would be trouble.”

“No problem,” said Wilson.

“She was supposed to be no problem, before. And now I see her looking across from me at what was supposed to be an open-and-shut hearing, that now has stayed open.”

“No problem. I smell the handiwork of our enemies behind the wall I noticed. If you know me, you know I am going to get them,” said Wilson. “So what is the problem?”

Grove thought a moment, letting the steam subside.

“I am going to use Stone on her,” said Wilson.

“Okay. Good then. All right,” said George Grove. He ignored the major as she walked out of the hearing room deep in conversation with one of the congressmen. He would rather see her talking to that one than someone who wasn’t bought.

11

H
arold W. Smith could not get the answer from even his organization’s computers. No numbers, nor any logic system could answer his question that day. The answer was not there and never had been. He left the office, quite safely since only he had the codes to access anything in it, and went for a walk on the streets of New York shortly before lunch. He went to the Battery and looked out over the waters wondering, on this cold winter day, whether it would all work or not.

They were so few. The enemy was so many. What could he tell the President? He had already been given a killer arm.

“Give me another, sir, this one won’t be ready for a decade and if we use him we will lose him.”

The purpose of having one was to use him. McCleary was limited. True, underneath the casual beer-drinking wisecracker was a patriot who had taken the same vow Smith had taken, one never before asked of any American servicemen or agents. It was an oath Remo did not know about yet, and with luck Smith would never have to tell him.

Smith looked out at the Statue of Liberty under repair. The salt water did not clear his head or make his decision any easier. Was it because of the garbage washing up against the city shore, or was it the fact that he really didn’t have an answer yet about Remo?

McCleary had already seen the young man dodge a bullet. He already could trail McCleary, an experienced agent, without McCleary knowing he was behind him.

So why was Smith so troubled about using Remo?

He breathed deeply, and smelled the coffee grounds and rotting orange skins. He turned away from America’s major eastern harbor. The answer was not out in the water. It was in him.

He and McCleary had volunteered. He and McCleary had taken the terrible vow because of their love of country.

Remo had been given a psychological test and then kidnapped.

Harold W. Smith did not trust Remo. It was that simple.

He walked back to his office on nearby Wall Street. He had faced what was bothering him, and the rest was easy. He had been delaying Remo’s use because he felt Remo, when put to the ultimate challenge of laying his life on the line, might not come through.

Harold W. Smith, the very dry man of numbers, did not trust psychological tests. He trusted men. He trusted McCleary. He trusted himself. Remo so far was just a probability, a probability who was going to have to be trusted sometime. If he should fly the coop, back off, or fail in some other way, better that it happened now than two years from now. Better have Chiun finish the contract and go home to North Korea where no one in America would hear from him again.

The way he told it to McCleary later that day was:

“Well, let’s see what we have.”

McCleary would never know the struggle that had gone on within Smith before he was able to say those words.

“I was wondering what was holding you up,” said McCleary. “I would like to see that myself—see what he does when the feces hit the air conditioning. I feel like he’s mine, you know. I named him. Mine.”

“That’s what we are going to find out tomorrow,” said Smith. “Just who our Remo does belong to.”

Chiun had brought Remo back to the Coney Island beach. The running was correct now. Westerners might call it perfect, but that perfection was a strange western concept. It was a way of judging.

Chiun was not here to judge. He was here to give Remo correctness. Perhaps that was the key to those lingering problems in Remo. He thought in wrong ways. How Chiun wished at that moment that he could have gotten to Remo before the rest of his race did. Then Remo might not be turning around after each exercise to ask how he did.

It was such a strange thing, thought Chiun.

Remo would do something and then ask how he did. When told there was one thing or another that was wrong, he would answer:

“Yeah, but it’s still pretty good. I don’t know of anyone else but you or me who could do that.”

And that response was a puzzlement. He wanted approval for performing incorrectly. Granted, there were many things he did just as instructed. But when you started complimenting, where would it end?

Such as not allowing the gun to be successful against you. Remo was happy now that he could dodge three bullets in a row. But he should have six at least, which he did not.

The delay in his progress began as soon as Remo had succeeded with two or three bullets. His mind started judging then, saying he was good. He needed not to think. He needed not to judge. What a bad influence that McCleary had been, telling him how amazed he was at Remo’s feat.

McCleary could well get him killed with talk like that.

Chiun watched Remo move across the slick wet sand.

Correct. Not the slightest indentation of a toeprint.

“All right, do it with the water,” said Chiun, and Remo was laughing.

“You want me to walk on water? I knew you would ask that someday,” said Remo.

He was laughing. The laughter was infectious. His growing skill was infectious. The light of the star Chiun had seen months before, when first he examined the first clumsy movements, shone brightly now.

Yet, Chiun was Master of Sinanju, and his first loyalty was to the village of Sinanju. He could not let himself feel too deeply for this one. The devious Emperor Smith had provided the gold. Remo belonged to Smith, not to Chiun. On the other hand, what had Smith taught Remo?

Remo was still laughing at his own jest, referring to a miracle performed by a god in a western religion. Knowing whites so well, Chiun could appreciate these little asides.

“Sand,” said Chiun, and nodded to the next exercise.

“I don’t know if I am ready,” said Remo.

“Then you are not ready.”

“Well, why don’t you say that about heights when I think I am not ready?”

“Because your fear of heights you had naturally as a child. It will always be there. It has to be overcome. The exercise through the sand is something else. It is next in a natural progression of skills.”

“I think I’m ready,” said Remo.

He wore shorts and a light T-shirt and no shoes. His breath made clouds in the air. Chiun wore a light gray morning kimono. Remo understood now how Chiun could not be cold on a cold winter day. The human body could warm itself. It was just that most people had to run around to raise their temperature to counteract the loss of heat through the skin on cold days. But when one became one with himself, and gained control of the mind and the will through breathing, one merely raised one’s temperature as needed. That was Sinanju and it seemed so easy that Remo wondered how there could have been a time he could not do this.

The white sand was cold under his feet but not a penetrating cold. Sea gulls cawed and perched on nearby wharves. The sky was winter gray,, and no one strolled the boardwalk. Remo tasted his own breath which was clean and pure. Better than that. It was correct. He was correct.

He knew the sand and he knew himself, and his body moved on the first toe of the first foot, leaving the sand slightly. Then, above the sand, he moved, quite cleanly, seeing a place ahead where the grains of sand formed a goodly mass, and then down, down with more force than any kick would allow, head first into the grains of sand, cutting deep into the place where the sand was dark and still warm from yesterday’s sun. Then, with one jackknife of his midsection, Remo turned upward toward the air, up out of the sand, bursting free like a dolphin through the water and running.

If there had been an observer on the boardwalk he would have blinked several times and wondered whether to tell anyone what he saw. A man had moved along the sand faster than any sprinter, and then as though it were water, dove into the sand, and come up out of it without missing a beat.

Chiun saw Remo stop and turn around.

“Too much leg,” said Chiun.

Remo stuck his tongue between his lips and made a derogatory noise.

“You help. You give, and this is what you get for it. Thank you, Remo.”

“I thought I did pretty well,” said Remo.

“What is pretty well? What is this white talk? Pretty well? Are you fairly alive? Is someone mostly dead? What is this?”

“Well I thought it was good. I did well.”

“I am insulted for helping,” said Chiun, “and then the help is refused. Why ask me? What do you want from me?”

“I’d like approval,” said Remo.

“All right. Your legs did not do too much of the work. It was correct.”

“No. I don’t mean that,” said Remo. “I’d like to hear a nice word now and then.”

“Nice word,” said Chiun, chuckling, even though Remo didn’t seem to appreciate a good joke.

“You know, people improve when they get encouragement,” said Remo.

“I thought you said you were doing pretty well. Why, that is better than almost well, and it is close to fairly wonderful,” said Chiun. Chiun had made another joke. Remo was unable to appreciate that, too.

They returned home for dinner, and Remo was waiting for the rice, though not because he wanted to eat it. Eating had lost its pleasure. He only hoped the same thing would not happen to his sex drive. But when the rice was put before him, he took one mouthful and spit it out.

“Awful. You make lousy rice. You are the worst cook I ever tasted. I know oriental dishes and you are totally inferior, Master of Sinanju.”

“Why do you say that?” said Chiun.

“Because it is not correct,” said Remo. “Don’t expect compliments for almosts and partiallys. You served not correct rice.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Chiun again.

“Because it tastes like cement and cow dung,” said Remo.

“Then your taste is wrong,” said Chiun. “Another failing of yours that I must work on.” Remo walked away from his rice.

“You really know how to be insulting, don’t you,” said Chiun. He proceeded to eat his rice in dignified silence. Remo asked if Chiun were truly insulted. Chiun allowed as how he most certainly was, when Remo walked away from his rice.

Chiun did not understand why this made Remo happy, happy enough to eat his rice, but then all whites were strange.

“Sometimes, people who do not appreciate good rice like it cooked with vinegar. The Japanese eat it with vinegar,” said Chiun.

That evening Con McCleary came to the training house and told Remo the first assignment would be the next day. He asked Chiun what he thought.

“Taste this rice,” said Chiun.

“I’ve eaten, Master of Sinanju. I just came for Remo. We are going to use him tomorrow. Nothing I think too dangerous.”

“Try the rice,” said Chiun.

The lacquered bowl was before McCleary’s face and he couldn’t refuse.

“Okay,” he said, and with the chopsticks Chiun provided pressed a small ball of white sticky rice together and ate it.

“What do you think?” asked Chiun.