"I thought CURE wasn't supposed to be political."

Smith allowed himself the briefest moment to think about something which was not on his day's agenda. It was a vision of the basement of Folcroft sanitarium. "We can get back to the dock now," he snapped. "This should be an easy assignment."

"Why?"

"Barney Daniels is a dinosaur at the CIA, an old-fashioned agent. He didn't use weapons, even at the peak of his career. You won't have any kind of interference. And he's an alcoholic. He'll be defenseless."

"That's a terrific incentive, Smitty. You really know how to make your employees enthusiastic about their work."

Smith shrugged. "Somebody's got to do it."

That was the reason Remo usually got when he

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was sent out to kill. Somebody had to do it. Somebody had to look into a dying man's eyes and think: "That's the biz, sweetheart."

And Smith wasn't often wrong in picking Remo's targets. Usually they were vermin that Remo was glad to get rid of. On several occasions, those vermin had been deadly enough to obliterate the country, if they had been allowed to live, and on those occasions, Remo felt that he was somebody after all, that he had some purpose in life besides eliminating strangers who were someone else's enemy.

But sometimes it hurt to kill. And that was why Remo was not yet the perfect assassin, although he was the best white man there was, and why he still had 80-year-old Chiun as his teacher, and why he would kill Bernard C. Daniels very quickly and with no pain, but would think about it later.

"What happens when I get too old to work for CURE, Smitty?" Remo asked as he eased the little rowboat next to the docking platform.

"I don't know," Smith answered honestly.

"Don't plan on being a gardener if you can't even remember to bring home dirt," Chiun said.