“I’m supposed to call Smitty when I’m on my way back,” Remo remarked as they were heading back to the park for the rendezvous with the Marine helicopter. “I’m not going to Folcroft. I’m going to Hong Kong.”
“I see.”
Remo’s mind was far away. All the way back to the Sierra Leone base he was distracted and distant. Only when his chartered jet was reaching cruising altitude did he look over at the seat across the aisle.
“I guess you decided to come with me,” he observed.
Chiun nodded without taking his eyes away from the window. “I have been at your side all along. Should I be flattered when you become aware of this?”
“I’ve been thinking about Luzuland, Little Father.” Remo said it as if he were asking for forgiveness, which he was.
“Ah.”
The Masters of Sinanju had been in the East African nation of Luzuland when it became a gathering place for the world’s organized-crime figures. The plan was to create a criminal-friendly government, sort of a safe haven for every organized-crime element on earth. CURE went in to put a stop to it.
While in Luzuland, Remo learned of weapons that were planted under the city with the intention of wiping out most of the world’s top criminals in a single moment of havoc. A different set of criminals planned to take over the crime outfits that would be left leaderless.
Remo decided to let the bombs do their work. Even if innocent people in Luzuland were annihilated, too, the price in lives would more than balance out. After all, killing those criminals would prevent countless future murders….
And then Remo changed his mind. He and Chiun raced to find and disable those weapons before the horrible deed could be done.
“There I almost did it myself. Wiped out the whole city. On purpose,” Remo recalled. “But in Ayounde, I couldn’t stop it from happening.”
Chiun nodded again. His eyes were locked on the wing of the private jet. Chiun knew the little wing was brittle as kindling and likely to crumble like shattered wood planks at any moment.
Chiun said, “There is more. The fire in Turkey. Children were killed. You did not save them.”
“Not the same thing.”
“Why not?”
“Because I wasn’t in Turkey. I wasn’t involved in anyway.”
“Because you are involved means you are responsible for any catastrophe, foreseen or unforeseen, preventable or not?” Chiun turned to him. “I think perhaps you are not suited for the role, Remo Williams.”
“You’ve told me a million times you should have picked somebody else to be the next Sinanju superassassin.”
“You are suited to be an assassin and a Master of Sinanju. That is not what I speak of.”
Remo’s patience ran out. “Okay, fine—what am I not suited to be?”
“A good-doer.”
“A do-gooder?”
“Exactly.”
“Someone who does good?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you care? You don’t want me doing good things unless there’s a profit in it.”
“It is you who care, and it is you who are unsuited for it.”
“Oh, criminy, Chiun, you’re the only person I know who could give me a headache, even after you trained me not to get headaches.”
Chiun said nothing.
“Fine, so tell me, why am I unsuited to be a do-gooder? Because I always screw it up?”
“Screwing it up is something you perform with equal frequency, whether while doing good-doer deeds or while doing the deeds assigned to you by Emperor Smith. I speak of temperament. You have the temperament to be an assassin, and yet you cannot handle the burden of doing good deeds.”
“You’ve totally lost me.”
“Regard yourself in the mirror of your response and tell me what you see. What happens to Williams when he is sent to be a Sinanju Master—to assassinate a cartel cretin who desires to franchise his narcotics in American cities? The one, Burgos, in the jungles in Brazil, for example.”
Remo thought about it. “I did the deed on him and his whole entourage. What’s the problem?”
“None. Then you helped to rebuild the village of the People, but you left feeling poorly for doing it.”
Remo shook his head. “I was ticked off because that villager started saying I was some other demigod or demonoid that I didn’t want to be.”
“You were angered by something,” Chiun said. “You were angered in Ayounde the time before.”
“Because I wasn’t allowed to do my job.”
“You were angered in Jamaica, where you
“Because I should have been doing my job in New Jersey.”
“You were angered because Smith advised that you not return to the Castle on the Loch, although you were alternatively sent to deal with the threat of Sa Mangsang, which would have had graver consequences if ignored.”
“I can’t tell which of us sounds more like a broken record,” Remo said. “What’s your point?”
“Thank you for recognizing that I do have one. The point is, you have a choice. Your decision is your own. The direction you go from here is also your own.”
“I see.”
“You don’t.”
“You’re right.”
