MacCleary-a bluff, hard-drinking Irishman-had entered the Folcroft gym and engaged Remo in a seemingly pointless conversation. Remo was anxious to get out into the field. He had been well-trained in weapons handling, codes, disguise, poisons, infiltration-all things that soon became irrelevant. MacCleary had told him he wasn't yet ready, making his point with hand gestures that set his stainlesssteel hook flashing under the shaky fluorescent lights.
The big double doors opened. Conn MacCleary turned.
"Ah, here he comes now," MacCleary had said.
Remo's suspicious face went to the door. They separated as if actuated by a photoelectric beam. And framed in the open door, his hands tucked into the wide sleeves of a white kimono so that Remo had wondered who had opened the heavy doors for him, stood a tiny, pathetic figure.
He was approximately five feet tall from his whispering black sandals to the crown of his bald yellow head. Straggly wisps of pale hair floated over each ear. Like a bleached tendril of seaweed clinging to a rock, more ancient hair clung to his chin: His face was a calm mask of papier-mache wrinkles.
As he padded toward him, Remo saw that the slanted eyes were an unexpected clear hazel color. They were the only thing about him that did not look old, frail, and weak.
MacCleary had explained to Remo that the old Korean was called Chiun and he was going to be Remo's teacher.
Chiun had bowed formally.
Remo had stared blankly, saying, "What's he going to teach me?"
"To kill," MacCleary had replied twenty long years ago. "To be an indestructible, unstoppable, nearly invincible killing machine."
Remo had laughed, causing a dark shadow of anger to cross Chiun's eyes like stop-motion storm clouds scudding by.
Suppressing his amusement, MacCleary had offered Remo a night away from Folcroft if he could tag the Korean called Chiun. MacCleary then handed him a hair-trigger .38.
Sighting coolly, Remo lifted the sights to the Korean's sunken chest. It was easy. All he had to do was pretend the old gook was a Vietcong. Inwardly he decided that this was a test of his ability to kill on command.
Remo fired. Twice. A faint smile seemed to gild the old Korean's face. It was still there when the reverberations of the shots ceased echoing. Holes popped into the padded tumble mats.
But the frail little man flashed, unscathed, through the gym. He slid sideways with nervous, geometrically angular motions. He faded here. He danced there. Annoyed, Remo continued trying to nail him as the sweat came to his forehead.
And when the last chamber contained only a spent, smoking cartridge, Remo angrily threw the weapon at the older man's head. Missing completely.
The Oriental came up on Remo so cleverly that he never saw him. Remo was thrown to the hard floor with such force it blew all pain and air from his surprised lungs.
Impassively the old Oriental had stared down into Remo's face. Remo glared up at him.
"I like him," Chiun had said in a high, squeaky voice. "He does not kill for immature or foolish reasons."
Remo later learned he was the Master of Sinanju, a martial-arts form old when Egypt's sands were new.
And on that day Remo started down the difficult path to becoming a Master of Sinanju himself, Chiun's heir, and now, Reigning Master. The first white man in a five-thousand-year chain of consummate assassins.
Long ago.
The last time Remo had seen the Master of Sinanju alive, Chiun had been arguing with him in the California desert near Palm Springs. They had located the stolen neutron bomb. It had been armed, with no way to disarm it. The digital timer was counting off the final minutes of life for the only person Remo had ever thought of as family.
With the real-estate crazy named Connors Swindell and the bomb's inventor, they had barreled out into the desert, racing against that silently screaming timer display, trying to put Palm Springs behind them and out of the kill zone-even as they carried the kill zone along with them.
It was a doomed effort. Chiun had pointed this out, with his usual uncompromising wisdom. One of them would have to bear the bomb out into the desert alone. Or all would perish.
"I'll do it," Remo had volunteered.
"No. You are the future of Sinanju, Remo," Chiun had said stiffly. "I am only its past. The line must continue. So I must do this."
They had been feuding in the days before the end came. Remo didn't even know the reason, until Chiun had reluctantly explained that he was approaching his one hundredth birthday-something Remo had no inkling of. Tired of arguing, concerned for Chiun's advancing years, Remo had cut short the argument to get possession of the bomb in a cruel way. He had ridiculed the Master of Sinanju.
"Cut the martyr act, Chiun," Remo had said. "It's old. You're good, sure, but you're not as fast as me. I'm younger, stronger, and I can get further faster. So stuff your silly Korean pride and face reality. I'm the only one for this job, and we both know it."
The memory of Chiun's stung face was one that seemed to burn behind the stars above.
His soft, "So, that is how you feel about me," still echoed in Remo's ears.
Remo remembered reaching for the neutron bomb. Then the world went black. Chiun. Getting in the last word.
He woke up in the speeding car. It was careening back toward Palm Springs, away from the kill zone. He realized what must have happened. He had only time to look back.
The neutron bomb ignited with a heart-stopping vomiting-up of boiling black smoke and hellish red fire.
Remo had raced back into the rising hell. But the spreading zone of deadly radiation forced him back.
Months later, when it was safe, he had returned to the desert, finding only a capped-off underground condo site and a fused glass crater. Not even the Master of Sinanju's body had survived the blast.
But out there in the remorseless desert, the spirit of the Master of Sinanju had appeared to Remo. Wordlessly it had attempted to indicate what could not be communicated otherwise. By pointing at Remo's feet. Then it simply vanished.
Remo's existence had become an aimless one since then. What Chiun had commanded him to do was to confront the choice he knew he would one day face. He was now the inheritor of the line. It was as Chiun had said. The line had to continue. The House of Sinanju had to go on. The village had to be fed. And the village had always been fed by the work of the Masters of Sinanju.
Now Remo wasn't so sure. Could he continue the tradition? He was an American. The people of Sinanju were a bunch of ungrateful parasites. They knew nothing of the hardships Chiun had endured to feed them. They would care nothing if they had known.
Remo had put off returning to Sinanju to break the terrible news. It was not long after that that Chiun had reappeared to him, spectrally pointing a ghostly finger, commanding him to obey.
"I'll get to it," Remo had said that second time.
But weeks later, when Chiun reappeared, Remo had reverted to the old days of their bickering relationship.
"Get off my back, will you?" he had said heatedly. "I said I'd get around to it!"
Chiun had raised his drawn, stricken face to the ceiling and faded like so much unscented smoke, leaving Remo feeling bitter and ashamed.
After that, he had closed up the house and hit the road. He felt torn between two worlds. He had outgrown America. Yet he was not of the blood of Sinanju. The line that stretched back five thousand years had nothing to do with him. He was a latecomer, a mere pale piece of pig's ear, as Chiun had so often said.
That left only CURE. But to Harold Smith, Remo was a tool. If compromised, he would be abandoned, disavowed-even terminated. Chiun had loved Remo, and Remo had grown to love the Master of Sinanju as a son loves his father. But between Remo and Harold Smith there was only a cool working relationship. Grudging respect. Sometimes, annoyance. Often anger. Who knew, but with Chiun out of the way, Smith might have some prearranged plan to reclaim Remo for the organization. Smith was no fool. He had long ago come to understand that Remo belonged equally to the village of Sinanju.