Even the Master who had trained Chiun to be Master had been flawed.
The thought came sadly to Chiun that there was only one person in the world whose intelligence, wisdom, and force he could admire.
And how could that person tell his pupil, Remo, that Remo might be defenseless ?
CHAPTER FIVE
The bullet itself had done only minor tissue damage. In a small motel room outside Chicago, Chiun removed it with Remo's assistance. The long fingernails probed into the back. Remo eased and contracted the muscles. His face lay on a fresh white towel and he could smell the residue of detergent. The rug had been washed with an overpowering soap. His breathing was slow and meticulous and steady, to raise his pain threshhold. In this soft semi-sleep of breathing, Remo remembered the earliest training and his first life of hamburgers and sugar cola drinks and a pistol at his side when he was a patrolman in that New Jersey city before Dr. Smith's frameup had brought him to his new life.
He remembered the cool beers and the dates and the suggestions that he marry Kathy Gilhooly, whose father was a deputy inspector and who would be a perfect match for him. And how one night in the hallway of her father's house, she reached down and aroused him by hand, and told him, "When we marry, you get the real thing. I'm saving it for you, Remo."
Save it? She could keep it forever. After he was charged with killing that pusher, Inspector Gilhooly tried to get the evidence thrown out, make some deal with the prosecutor, but Smith's organization was already at work, and Gilhooly had to back off and tell his daughter to find someone else. Remo had often wondered what had happened to her, if she had gotten that two-family house with a husband, the half-carat ring with four children, and the new color television set every five years. A bar in the basement was her big ambition, and maybe if Remo had become a chief, then a summer home in Spring Lake, New Jersey, with the politicians. The Shore.
Remo felt the bullet go. Oh, what great hand and what great eye can frame thy fearful symmetry? He had lost that life and been granted in return more than two thousand years of human genius, one with a tradition of self-power so old it undoubtedly preceded the written word.
Chiun told tales of the first master who plied his fearsome art. How the flaming circle had come down from the heavens and told the first Master of Sinanju that there were better ways to use his body and his mind. Before the written word. What great hand and what great eye can frame thy fearful symmetry? Chiun's hands massaged the wound, and Remo brought himself down farther into his mind where he could feel the blood move in every vein and artery. Yogas did this, but Sinanju was older than yoga, old as the first bands that plucked the wild rice from the marshy swamp where lumbering dinosaurs plodded their last days as crawly little men prepared to take over the world. Was it that old? No, not that old. The inked printed words in all the books Remo could find told him 2,800 b.c.
Old. Old as his heart, which now rested on that single beat, his body not needing blood; Hold. In the dark white light, hold. Still. One with all being.
And beat. Once. Slowly again and up, up from the mind. Up from Kathy Gilhooly, whose white gloves covered the hands that did the job in lieu of the marriage contract and the real thing. "Remo, I promise. I can't wait for your body."
Old. Older than the waking sun. The sun source of all. Sinanju and the rug smelled again of violent soap and the towel of its detergent and he was in a motel room and Chiun clinked a small metal object into a glass ashtray. Remo looked up. It was the bullet.
"Your body did not even catch it as it should have. It tore right through tissue," said Chiun.
"I wasn't expecting it."
"That you do not need to tell me. I saw," said Chiun. The long white fingernails were clean. "I hate bullets. With guns, as we feared, every man becomes his own assassin."
"You know, Little Father, sometimes when I go deep into mind, I wonder whether we should bother with being assassins."
"That, of course, is the danger of the deep mind, but do not worry. It passes."
Remo stretched and breathed and finally drank a glass of water. Someone was training those kids to be killers. He had thought it was Pell but now Pell was dead. There was someone. Find the someone, take apart his organization and call it a day. The big thing had been solved. The how. It had been kids.
Funny, none of them had talked by now. The training must have included that. Well, Remo had one lead. The boy who had taken a shot at him. The boy with Ms. Kaufperson. Funny name, Kaufperson.
"Beware," said Chiun as Remo reached the door. "Beware of children."
"Kids?"
"Have you ever fought a child?"
"Not since the fifth grade," Remo said.
"Then how can you assume you can match a child? These things should not be assumed."
"I haven't come up against anything I couldn't handle, and kids are weaker than everything I have handled. Therefore, Little Father, with great courage I go risking the playpen."
"Fool," said Chiun.
"I don't understand."
"Just do not go squandering this precious gift given you, lo, these many years. Do not assume."
"All right, Little Father. If it will make you happier, I will not assume."
There was only one Kaufperson in the Chicago directory. Remo assumed it was the person he wanted. The listing followed a multitude of Kaufmans and Kaufmanns. Two N's meant German descent and one N Jewish, usually. If that was so, were there German Kaufpersonns?
Roberta Kaufperson lived in a modern highrise with new carpeting, fresh-painted walls, and two patrolmen guarding her apartment. He moved back behind a corner as soon as he saw the uniforms. He entered a doorway marked Exit which led to a stairwell. He climbed twelve more flights of stairs until he was on the roof, then figuring just about which area would be directly above Ms. Kaufperson's apartment, he slipped over the small metal guardrail, caught an edge with one hand, popped out free, caught a window ledge again, popped out, one catch, one pop, twelve times going down and there was the back of the brunette Afro pointed at a television set showing "Sesame Street," up and lift the window, into the apartment, catch the vocal cords in the left hand and:
"Don't be afraid, Ms. Kaufperson, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm here to help you. But you've got to tell the policemen at the door to go away. Nod if you will do this."
Terror in the gray blue eyes. But the Afro trembled in a nod. Remo released the pressure from the vocal cords. Trembling, Ms. Kaufperson stood up, a full-bodied woman with a good even walk. Remo stayed close to her as she went to the door.
She pressed a speaker button.
"Thank you for waiting," she said. "I'll be all right now."
"You made enough stink to get us here. You sure you don't want us to stay?"
"Positive."
"Okay. But would you call the captain back at the station? He's got to approve it."
"Certainly."
As if moving with computer rhythms, she walked to the telephone, dialed the emergency number of the police department, briefly argued with someone on the other end as to whether she would dial another number for the captain, waited, told someone to remove the two patrolmen, hung up, and shouted:
"It's all right. Get out of here."
"Yes, Ma'am."
Remo heard the officers trudge away down the hall. Ms. Kaufperson removed her blouse with a wild uplift over her head. Her breasts strutted forth erect, with nipples hardened to attention.
"What's that about?" asked Remo.
"Aren't you going to rape me?"
"No."
"You didn't swing down some rope and risk your life just to say hello."