"We provide what people need or ask for," Brewster told him later.

"No skiing?"

"The weather's not right here. We send our people who want to learn to the Big Boulder Ski School at Lake Harmony. They teach natural techniques, the best method of learning. You learn parallel right away."

"That's nice," Remo would say, wondering for just a moment if Nils Brewster had not devised the most beautiful hustle of the Twentieth Century.

But that afternoon, it was chess. A pudgy man with bulging brown eyes and flicking wrists was in an endgame with a hulk of a white-haired man who hovered over the board like a weightlifter preparing himself for a record hoist. The pudge was Dr. James Ratchett, the homosexual in the cape, versus the Jesuit of the missionary position.

Ratchett spied Remo and pointed a delicate finger. "Who is that?" he asked. It was an obvious ploy to divert Father Boyle's attention away from the board because, on the two buttoned clock, it was Father Boyle's time running out.

"The new security director," whispered Brewster.

"Our new flatfoot," taunted Ratchett.

"Shhhhh," said Brewster to Remo before Remo said anything.

"Are you Irish like our deceased Mister McCarthy?"

Remo said nothing. He just stared at the board.

Remo had been taught chess and did not like it. He had been taught chess, not for the intricacy of the moves nor for the concentration it required. He was taught chess simply to realize that each move changed the board. It was something people tended to forget in life; that every move altered things in some way and that preconceived operations needed flexibility to be worthwhile. Basically, chess taught Remo how to look. He looked now around the room and saw the karate lover, in clothes this time, watching closely. Another interested observer was a man in a dark suit and dark tie, who Remo found out later was the chess instructor.