It all seemed to culminate at the time of the Rite of Succession, when Remo's ritual assumption of the title of Reigning Master of Sinanju was interrupted by the resurrection of old and powerful enemies. Chiun himself was wounded emotionally and almost broken. He still carried in his mind the image of a decimated village of Sinanju. The image was false, a mirage, but for a short time he had believed it, and the distress he felt had left a scar.
When the danger was over, and Remo was Reigning Master, his strange behavior began. Despite his new burden of responsibility, despite new dangers foretold, Remo seemed at ease. Why?
Even for a man of far-reaching wisdom such as himself, Chiun found answers elusive. Could Remo be bluffing through the burden of being the Reigning Master? Could it be that he was in truth straining under the weight of this awesome responsibility? What if, unknown to Chiun, Remo was in distress and approaching an emotional breakdown?
Chiun had thought Remo was sleeping, but then the young Reigning Master sat up straight in his aircraft seat and spoke aloud.
"Pork tamales."
Remo sounded quite pleased with himself.
Then Chiun knew the truth. As good as his body was at making the motions of the martial arts Sun source that was Sinanju, his feeble white brain had simply been unable to keep pace and it had finally folded in upon itself.
Ah, well. Folcroft Sanitarium was a pleasant enough place for an imbecile. Chiun would make sure that Smith gave Remo the nicest room in which to spend his remaining years doodling, sloppily, on the walls.
Chapter 14
It was well past regular hours and the outer office was empty. Folcroft Sanitarium felt abandoned in the depth of the night, and they met no one on their way up to the office of Director Harold W Smith. As they reached the outer office, domicile of Smith's longtime secretary Eileen Mikulka, Chiun turned to Remo.
"Wait here."
"What for?"
But Chiun was already gliding inside Smith's office and closing the door behind him.
"Hey, Chiun, what's the deal?" Remo asked, following him inside and finding the old Korean leaning close to the gray, patrician features of the CURE director, whispering fiercely.
Chiun wheeled on him. "I told you to remain outside!"
"Yeah, but I didn't. You planning a surprise parry for me or something?"
Chiun sniffed disdainfully, but there was a look of worry on his brow. "Yes, something."
Remo tried to read the old man's expression, but it was an inscrutable combination of distrust and-what, concern? Smith revealed nothing. Mark Howard sat in the couch looking like a man who had no clue what was going on around him.
"So let me in on it," Remo demanded.
"Later perhaps," Chiun said, and gave Smith a prompting glare.
"Uh, yes. Tell me about Nashville."
"Southern inhospitality, too much money, too little taste. What else you want to know?"
Smith's gray face puckered sourly. "Anything. A clue. A hint."
"Nope. None of that. Lots of crazy dead dancers, and later lots of crazy bikers. That's about it."
"We're still getting reports on the murders at the Rock Hard Cafe," Smith said. "All the police are releasing is that the biker gang called themselves the Nashville Road Sharks. The gang stormed the Rock Hard seemingly without provocation."
"That's about the size of it," Remo agreed.
"'That's nuts," Mark Howard objected. "There has to be motivation for it."
"You'd think," Remo admitted, relaxing in one of the chairs before Smith's desk. Chiun chose to stand, unusually guarded, Remo noticed. Guarded against what? "We asked the bikers. Politely at first, and then we got persuasive and they wouldn't tell us why. Said they were just really angry."
"Were they hiding their motive?" Howard asked. "They could not hide their intentions from a Master of Sinanju," explained Chiun. "They claimed they were simply filled with rage."
"Here's what we found out," Remo said. "They were at their usual hangout, you know, just having a few beers like every night, and they were talking about overpaid monkey suits at the yuppie bar down the street," Remo explained. "Only this time they decided it was time they stop talking about bashing heads and actually go bash some heads."
"Skilled killers they were not," Chiun sniffed. Remo explained how they stopped in for a visit at the biker bar that had been the Nashville Road Sharks hangout. After delivering the sad news of the demise of Bork, Virgil, Maurice and the rest, they questioned the tearful, mourning patrons about anything unusual that happened in the bar that evening.
"Only one thing out of the ordinary," Remo said. "That night the Road Sharks came in with a friend. A new guy the locals had never seen before. Claimed to be a TV commercial producer looking for a real, honest-to-goodness biker gang for a new ad campaign for beer-flavored vodka."
"You think he was just trying to get close to the gang?" Smith asked.
"Looks like it." Remo shrugged. "He bought them a few rounds and said he would be in touch, then left. Half an hour later the Road Sharks had transformed from peace-loving Harley huggers into homicidal maniacs with a taste for yuppie blood. That's when they headed for the Rock Hard."
"And nobody got a good look at the man who claimed to be a TV commercial producer, I suppose."
"The clientele of the tavern were inebriated, Emperor," Chiun explained. "They remembered a man in his twenties with ridiculous face whiskers. Not another pertinent detail could any of them provide."
Smith sighed. Mark Howard put his hands behind his head and stretched back in the couch, staring at the ancient ceiling tiles, so yellowed with age their original color was impossible to discern.
"Well?"
Remo looked at Chiun. Howard and Smith looked at Chiun.
"Well what?" Remo asked.
"Do you not have more you would like to say?" Chiun said.
"Like what?"
"Do you have something more to report, Remo?" Smith asked sternly.
"Uh-uh. What about you?" Remo looked sharply at the old Korean.
"I have said all I know of the matter," Chiun replied leadingly.
Remo asked, "You think I know something about this that you don't?"
"Naturally not. I have been with you over the past twelve hours. All you have learned, so I have learned."
"So what are you fishing around for, Chiun?"
"I am not fishing:" The bony hands appeared from within the kimono sleeves and waved airily. "I was merely guessing you had some sort of pronouncement to make to the Emperor."
"I don't think I've ever made a pronouncement in my life."
"Fine," Smith said with weary impatience. "What about the bikers' behavior?"
"It was atrocious," Remo stated.
"Compared to the addicts you encountered in the condemned building," Smith added.
"Well, they did a lot less screaming and they weren't as jittery," Remo recalled. "They were more clearheaded than the crack heads, but that's not saying much. What about the drugs I took from the crack house?"
"The analysis shows nothing out of the ordinary," Mark reported.
"I think it is still reasonable to assume that these killers were drugged," Smith added. "The man in Bunsen, Mississippi, Arby Maple, was reported to have shared a drink with a stranger just prior to embarking on his murder spree. That's the same as with the Nashville bikers and the crowd at the Big Stomp. I think it's safe to say it was probably something similar with the addicts."
"What's the difference between the screamers and the nonscreamers?" Remo asked. "Think it was the drugs?"
Smith nodded. "Makes sense. Whatever was used to bring about these fits of violence could have reacted with the crack cocaine the addicts ingested."
"That does not account for the aftereffects, though," Mark said. "The killers in each case seem to have different long-term reactions to the drug," he explained to Remo and Chiun. "Arby Maple claims to remember nothing-otherwise he seems healthy. The addicts who were taken into custody by the police after the killings have gone from paranoid and uncooperative to uncontrollably demented and violent. Some of them are starting to drop into semiconsciousness. None of them seem to have the power of speech any longer. The customers at the Big Stomp have also started experiencing decreased metabolism and slowing brain function. A few have slipped into comas. The medical teams are trying to come up with a treatment to keep them alive."