No Contest

There was a potent silence in the old office at Folcroft Sanitarium.

“Answer me this,” Smith said. “You have all this, and still you wanted the contract renegotiated? What more do you want?”

Remo rolled his eyes to the water-stained ceiling tiles. “Christ Almighty, Smitty, you were at the meetings. Some authority to do what’s right when I know I’m right and you’re wrong. Remember Humbert Coleslaw? What a pickle you would have saved the government if you’d listened to me and focused CURE on getting rid of that bad apple early on. Plus, a life. Accumulated vacation time. This stuff is not in the contract, my version or yours. Some, I don’t know, independence?”

“Self-determination,” Mark Howard said.

Remo smiled. “Exactly.”

Chapter 45

Smith went for his afternoon walk, despite the chill. He was tired, but needed the exercise. At his age, deterioration could set in fast when you became sedentary.

“Hiya, Smitty,” Remo said from a bush where a man could not possibly have been standing, but Remo was suddenly there.

Smith raised his eyebrows. “Hello, Remo.”

“Didn’t mean to startle you. Chiun and Sarah are doing an all-day blog-huddle and I got sick of their gossip. They’re like, so junior high school.”

Smith smiled slightly. “Sarah is very young,” he said.

“Sarah’s not as bad as you-know-who.” Remo fell in step beside Smith, more relaxed than Smith had seen him in—he couldn’t remember when.

“Decided what to do about her yet?” Remo asked.

“There’s nothing I can do.”

“Guess not.”

Smith still carried his tension with him like a backpack full of bricks. “There’s too much history behind this organization, Remo,” Smith said. “In the early days, it was simpler. There was just the three of us, Chiun, yourself and me. It was easier for me to control CURE’S security.”

Remo looked at the old man and smiled easily—a genuine look without the smart-ass edge that Smith was used to now. “Smitty,” Remo said, “don’t you get it?”

“No,” Smith said. “Honestly, I don’t.”

Remo nodded thoughtfully, then said, “There has always been too much history behind the organization because there’s too much history behind Sinanju. Too much for you to know, too much for me or even Chiun to know. I don’t understand what brought CURE and Sinanju together in the first place, but as soon as that happened, bam, you’ve got five thousand years of history. You think CURE’S been manipulated and used by some unknown force, you should try making sense of the lineage of Sinanju Masters. First, they all came from the same gene pool that spawned Chiun and they have the dispositions to prove it. Second, they’ve all got Korean names. Third, they’ve been tossing around in the winds of fate since forever, even if they won’t admit it.”

Smith scowled. “Are you saying that, whatever it is that pulled CURE’S strings is the same thing steering the course of the Sinanju Masters all this time?”

“That’s right.”

“So CURE was incidental in the grand scheme?”

“Exactly. Make you feel better?”

“No,” Smith said, his old head shaking. “It doesn’t make me feel better, Remo. Still, I suppose it makes it clear that I’m not going to find out who or what this guiding force is. As far as the history goes, I suppose you are correct. I’ve never truly admitted to myself how widespread was the knowledge of Sinanju. Sarah is evidence of that, and she was an individual that we just happened to associate with in the course of events…”

Remo smiled. Smith was sour.

“Or maybe we didn’t just happen to,” Smith said. “Maybe she is here for a reason. To save your life.”

“Or to become manager of vermin control at Folcroft.” Remo shrugged. “Or something else. Who knows?”

“What else?” Smith said sharply.

“I don’t know,” Remo said, suddenly on the defensive. Why was he suddenly on the defensive? “I said I don’t know. How should I know?”

“I thought maybe you knew something I didn’t.”

“About Sarah? Honest Injun, Smitty, I don’t have a clue about the fortune in her cookie. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking protégée.”

“Oy. No, thanks. She’s too smart. It’d be like hanging out with Lisa Simpson for twenty years. Besides, Chiun would want to retire if I got a trainee. I think I’m going to stick with old Moses for a while.”

“How long is a while?” Smith probed.

“Chiun was in his eighties when I started on the long, annoying road to Reigning Master,” Remo said, smiling. “Eighty sounds like a good age to take on a lackey.”

Smith nodded, hearing the ringing bell of irony in Remo’s words. Indeed, eighty wasn’t old, not to a Master of Sinanju. To any other man, to Smith, eighty was the twilight of life.

Harold W. Smith abruptly laughed. Out loud. “Huh huh huh!”

“What? What?” Remo demanded.

“I don’t think I’ll be around when you’re eighty years old, Remo,” Smith said, with a rare glitter in his eyes. “That means your protégé is one problem I won’t have to deal with.”

“Who says my protégé would give you problems?” Remo asked indignantly.

“Huh huh.” Smith stopped walking and wiped his eyes with a starched handkerchief.