"Destroyer - 027 - The Last Temple" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

"Who will help a poor old man get some much-needed peace? When will these injustices end?"

Remo turned on both faucets. He could still hear Chiun. So he turned on the shower.

"I do not like this new work," came Chiun's voice as if he were standing inside Remo's head and talking out. Remo flushed the toilet.

The world had changed since Chiun had originally trained Remo. CURE had seen to that. You could not keep arranging astronomical amounts of corruption convictions, keep thinning out the roles of organized crime, and keep solving the everyday crises of a country with the military strength to wipe out the world one hundred times over without attracting attention.

So now, all over the world, hands were being tentatively reached out to clasp those of the United States. Some were barbed, some were weak, some were strong.

The Constitution became more than a pact with America's people, it had become a promise to other countries. Remo's job now was to protect that promise-a job that had formerly been done by other agencies. CURE was taking care of the whole earth now.

Naturally, Congress disemboweling the CIA had nothing to do with CURE's new assignments. They would be the first to tell you that.

"I miss my daytime dramas," finished Chiun's voice, as if he had been shouting into an empty auditorium.

Remo knew he could never win, so he turned off the shower, washed his hands in the sink, turned off the faucets, and came back into the living room.

"What do you mean?" he asked, drying his hands on a towel emblazoned with the huge green letters, PARIS HILTON. "Never mind, I know. Smith stopped sending you your video tapes."

Chiun remained sitting in the lotus position, his head turned slightly to the side, his eyes cocked and ready to fire.

"I could understand dishonesty. It is a characteristic of you whites. But deceit? What is the use of a lifetime of dedication?"

Remo moved over to Chiun's personal video playback machine, which was lying on its side on the other side of the room.

"Get with it, Chiun. What's the matter?" Remo asked, picking up the machine and bringing it over.

"Observe," said Chiun, as he snapped a videotape cassette up and into the playback slot.

Remo watched as 525 gray vertical lines spread across the screen, coming together into a color moving picture of a housewife in a childish mini-dress carrying a large bowl into a living room.

The housewife wore her long brown hair in two fat braids with bangs above her wide oval eyes and overbite below.

"I brought some chicken soup for him," the housewife said to another housewife actress who looked like a chicken in slacks. "I heard he was sick."

The chicken housewife took the bowl and gave it to her bundled-up, drunk husband, then the two women sat on a couch, to talk.

Remo was about to ask what was wrong with this, since it looked as slow and dull as any other soap opera Chiun felt the need to watch, when the TV husband fell forward in a drunken stupor and drowned in the bowl of chicken soup.

Remo stared as Chiun sputtered: "Emperor Smith promised to send me my daytime dramas. The glorious 'As the Planet Revolves.' The golden 'All My Offspring.' Instead I receiveЕ"

Chiun raised his already high voice to a squeal, " 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman!' "

Remo smirked as the ladies discovered the smothered man on the screen. "I don't see what is so awful, Little Father."

"Of course, you wouldn't, pale piece of pig's ear. Any garbage would look good to a man who turns on all the water outlets to drown out his mentor's proclamations."

Remo turned to the Korean. "What's wrong with it?" he asked, motioning to the set.