"Bardwell, Bardwell. I don't know any Bardwell," said Wetherby.
Remo covered his surprise, while deciding that Lieutenant Fred Wetherby was a liar. Lynette Bardwell had name, rank, and serial number. She couldn't have been mistaken about Wetherby.
He said nothing and allowed himself to be shown around the now empty gymnasium. He had started his new life in a gymnasium much like this one. A gym at Folcroft Sanitarium. He had just recovered from an electrocution that wasn't on the level, and someone had put a gun in his hand and promised to let him go if he could shoot an aged Oriental skittering across the gym floor. And because Remo was cocky and young and sure of himself, he accepted the offer and wound up eating splinters from the gym floor.
Wetherby was showing Remo training posts, padded two-by-fours' used to teach hand blows, when Remo asked, "Do you find your trainees ever use this knowledge?"
"Sure," said Wetherby. "Think how many times a policeman has to throw a punch to defend himself. How much better is he if he uses something better than a punch?"
"But don't you feel upset about turning men out into the streets who have this terrible weapon in their hands?"
Wetherby smiled at the faggy liberal bleeding heart reporter, and wondered how this Remo Slote had managed to get so much on the bad side of Mr. Winch. He locked the inside gym door as he strolled past the practice posts.
He showed Remo toward the practice mats. "We train recruits for forty full hours in hand to hand combat."
"Forty hours," said Remo. "Wow, that's a lot."
"Not nearly enough to get good," said Wetherby.
"By the way," said Remo, touching the mat with his right toe, "you didn't tell me where you had trained with Bardwell."
Wetherby stood on the mat facing Remo. They were five feet apart. "I told you, I don't know any Bardwell. Probably just another amateur."
"And you're a professional?" asked Remo.
"Right. Here's why."
One moment, Wetherby was standing, talking. The next moment, he was in the air, heading toward Remo. His right leg was cocked underneath his flying body. Remo recognized the move. The right leg would come into the top part of his body. As Remo fell backward Wetherby would land, and the next step would be a killing hand-blow to Remo's temple.
That was if it was done right.
To be done right, it could not be done to Remo.
Wetherby's leg lashed out. The foot took Remo heavily in the right shoulder.
But there was something wrong with the technique Wetherby had been taught. He could only land the next blow, the killer to the temple, if his opponent went down and didn't strike back.
Remo did not go down. He struck back. He stepped backward one step, saw Wetherby's midsection as open as a church collection basket, and put his own foot into the policeman's solar plexus.
It was over that fast. Wetherby's blow. Pop. Remo's response. Splat.
The look of killing hatred on Wetherby's face changed immediately to a look of puzzled query. His eyes opened wide as if in surprise. He dropped onto his back on the mat. His eyes stayed open.
"Crap," said Remo. "Crap and double crap." Another suicide pilot dead in an attack and Remo still had no information.
And now he had another worry. The fire in his right shoulder, where Wetherby's foot had landed, was spreading through the upper part of his body. He tried to lift his arm. It raised slowly with almost no power. But at least he could still move it. By the next day, he feared he would not even be able to do that. But as long as it worked, he had to use it. He couldn't just waltz out of police headquarters, leaving the dead body of the training officer in the middle of the gym floor.
Slowly, with his right arm held stiffly, he dragged the burly man's body to a supply room at the end of the gym. With every step he took, the pain throbbed more in his shoulder. He felt like screaming now. Another suicide attack. And why?
It was while he was stuffing Lieutenant Wetherby's body into the bottom of a barrel filled with basketballs that he finally understood what it all meant.
He left the gym, disgusted. He had found out nothing, and yet he had found out everything. He was being subject to the traditional Sinanju attack of disrespect.
Two more blows were yet to come.
But he knew no friends of Bardwell, no friends of Wetherby's, and he did not know when or where the third attack might come.
He would have to back go to Lynette Bardwell and try again, look for another name.
But he knew now whose name was already signed to the fourth blow that awaited Remo.
The name was Nuihc. Chiun's nephew, who had vowed death to both Remo and his Korean master.
CHAPTER EIGHT
In Pyongyang, the loss of a people's tank was put before Kim Il Sung, premier of the People's Democratic Republic.
Sung was not from Sinanju, nor was he a believer in the old ways. He was a leader of the new way and he was called comrade by peasant and warrior alike, for he said they were all equal. Still, Sung always wore his warrior uniform with general's boards on his shoulders and a stiff black leather belt.
Sung nodded when he first heard the story. He had heard of the Master of Sinanju, he said. A fairy tale designed to cover the activities of a horde of bandits and cutthroats, he said, and sent a follower named Pak Myoch'ong to go look into the story, for it had been believed that the Masters of Sinanju were of the past, and not a thing for a People's Democratic Republic to worry about.
The first person Pak Myoch'ong took himself to was the governor of the province in which Sinanju was located. The governor had anticipated and dreaded the query because it was he who had instructed the soldiers to confiscate the tribute sent every year by the Master of Sinanju to his own village.
"Why do you question me such?" asked the governor. "Do you doubt that I can rule this province?"
"If the premier doubted you could rule, you would not be governor," Myoch'ong said. "No, I merely ask who are these men who destroy a people's tank with their bare hands."
"It is not I who say so," said the governor. To Myoch'ong it was a denial that any Master of Sinanju existed, so he asked "If not the Master of Sinanju, who?"
"The Americans," said the governor. He pointed out the ship that had been sighted near Sinanju just the week before. And were they not capitalists? And did they not hate the People's Democratic Republic of Korea, and were they not schemers and doers of all manner of evil things?
Myoch'ong said nothing, for he was a wise man and he knew that while it was good for the people that their hatred should be aroused and directed toward someone outside of Pyongyang, nevertheless everytime he heard the word "American" he suspected it was a way of claiming innocence for failing to do one's duty.
So he took himself to Sinanju where there was rejoicing and he said to a child:
"Who is this man called the Master of Sinanju? I would meet with him."
The child took him to a large house at the end of the village's main street. The house was old but made of wood and ivory and stones from other lands, not the weak wood of the Korean countryside.
"How long has this house been here?" he asked the child.
"Forever," said the child, which to Myoch'ong meant only a long time because he knew children. But such was the look of the house, the mix of styles from many lands and cultures, that he said to himself, yes, this house is very old. It is the history of many races; it is the history of man.
Even though Myoch'ong was a server of the new way from his youngest days, when he entered the house he bowed and took off his shoes in the old way, which his people had taken from the Japanese. He bowed to an old man with white beard whose hands had fingernails grown long in the manner of the ancients, and the old man said:
"Who are you that I have not seen you in the village?"