Remo The Adventure Begins by Warren Murphy Page B

teach and I teach. I give the best days of my life to you, and what do I get? Flying elbows. Now again.”
    Remo went back to the other roof, keeping the elbows in.
    “All right?” said Remo.
    “Of course, all right. I told you how to do it,” said Chiun.
    Remo was not certain when it happened, but he was sure one night when he woke up in a sweat.
    “What is the matter?” said Chiun. Chiun was in the blue velvet sleeping kimono. He had tried to get Remo to wear a kimono but the young man didn’t seem to be able to adjust to it, and besides, a kimono on a white might attract attention and that would violate the peculiar wishes of the black Con McCleary and his superior, Harold W. Smith, equally if not more insane.
    “I couldn’t remember my real name,” said Remo. “I couldn’t remember it. All I could hear about my name was that it was Remo because you were saying it was Remo.”
    “No,” said Chiun. “You were saying it was Remo. Besides, who gave you your other name?”
    “I think my parents. I never knew them. I was left at an orphanage. The nuns who raised me told me the name was pinned to my diaper.”
    “Ah,” said Chiun in the darkness. “Discovery. I will tell you who your mother and father are, but you must be quiet within yourself to understand.”
    When Chiun could hear the silence of the large room, and knew there was silence within the young Remo, he spoke.
    “Some say a mother and a father are those who give knowledge and love. Others say they are those who pass on life through their bodies to you. But I will tell you who must be your mother and father. For you as for all of us, it can only be one person.”
    “Me?” said Remo.
    “Yes,” said Chiun.
    His name was Remo.

5
    H arold W. Smith moved efficiently. He had always moved efficiently. In fact, he had been so excruciatingly reliable ever since childhood that one of his teachers once turned to him and asked if he could possibly act like a child for a day.
    “In what way, ma’am?” asked the young Smith.
    “Harold. Do I have to instruct you on how to be a child? Break a rule or something. At least mess your shirt like the other boys.”
    “Where do you want me to mess it?” asked Harold.
    “I give up,” said the teacher. “If you do it on my instructions, you are not being a boy. Do you understand, Harold?”
    Harold Smith understood. Even in a New England town hardly noted for free expression, Harold was considered rigid. But he was not a fool. He would not drink until he was two years into the army because the law said he could not drink until age twenty-one. He honored stoplights at three A.M. at lonely intersections. How Harold Smith joined American intelligence services early in his life was somewhat of a mystery. Perhaps, as rarely happens, someone knew what they were doing, because Harold W. Smith had the sort of mind that could organize an avalanche. He saw order in all sorts of chaos. His rock-solid New England honesty enabled him to see things clearly. No reports were ever fudged for his advancement. This honesty would not let him, as happened to so many intelligence operatives, deceive himself. Thus when a now-dead President knew America needed an organization dangerously free of almost all controls, one man in the entire intelligence establishment stood out. Harold W. Smith.
    The only one fit to run an organization outside the law was the one who had the most respect for the law.
    As a result, admitting that the organization needed a killer arm was perhaps the most painful decision in Smith’s career. And he was still not sure that reliable Con McCleary had not hung them all out on a limb. Smith had seen too many men killed at a mile’s distance . . . blown up, shot, bombarded . . . to have faith in hand-to-hand combat, no matter what McCleary said. Yet they had to have it.
    Smith glanced at the computer. There were still some problems with access to defense expenditures. Then he spotted the problem source. A