Even as he spoke, Chiun was setting inch-thick pine blocks into the Y-shaped posts.
"Dharma told his people they must defend themselves. He said, 'We have lost our knives, so turn every finger into a knife'..." And with the points of his fingers, Chiun snaked out at one pine board. Its two halves dropped with a clunk on the floor.
"And Dharma said, 'We no longer have maces, so every fist must be a mace'..." and with his fist clenched, Chiun thumped out, splitting the board in the second Y-post.
Chiun stood before the third post. "Without spears, every arm must be a spear," he quoted, and he punched out stiff-armed, jolting the third block into two pieces. He stood there momentarily looking at the solid two-by-four Y-post from which the two halves of the board had fallen.
He inhaled deeply. "And Dharma said: 'Make every open hand into a sword!'..." The last words were almost shouted in a violent expulsion of air. And Chiun's open hand splashed forward, its side smacking against the two-by-four with a report like a rifle shot. And then the post wasn't there. It tumbled and fell, severed cleanly three feet from its base.
Chiun turned to Remo. "This is the art of the open hand, which we know as karate and carry on today. You will learn it."
Remo picked up the broken top section of two-by-four and looked at its splintered edge. He had to admit it. Chiun was impressive. What could stop this little man if he took a notion to kill? Who could fail to fall in front of those terrifying hands?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
During the aiki training, Remo had been taught the body's main pressure points. There were hundreds of them, Chiun had told him, but only about sixty were of any practical value and only eight were reliable killers.
"These are the eight you will concentrate on," Chiun said.
After lunch, Remo found two life-size dummies mounted on spring bases in the gym. They wore the white gym uniforms, but had red spots painted at both temples, the adam's apple, the solar plexus, both kidneys, the base of the skull and a spot that he learned later was the seventh major vertebra.
"There is one karate hand formation. It is the basis of all others," Chiun began as they sat on the mats facing the dummies. He opened his hand, palm up, and extended all the fingers. "The thumb must be cocked," he said, "much as the hammer on a pistol. There should be a pulling motion extending back into your forearm. This, in turn," he continued, "results in an extension-a pushing forward-of your little finger. The three center fingers are slightly bent at the ends and the entire hand is slightly bowed."
He brought his hand into position. "Feel my forearm," he told Remo. Remo did. It was like braided rope.
"It is not exertion, but tension, that creates this toughness," Chiun said. "And it is not strength, but this tension, which makes the hand such a weapon."
He brought Remo to the dummies and began instructing him in dealing volleys of hand-chops... right, left; low, high; over and over.
Although the dummies were packed hard with rope fibers, Remo's hands were virtually immune from the impact, he found.
Once Chiun stopped him. "You are attempting to follow through with your blows. There is no follow-through in karate. Instead, a snapping motion is used." He took a pack of paper matches from his pocket. "Light one, Mr. Remo," he said.
Remo lit it and held it at arm's length. Chiun faced it, lifted his hand up to shoulder level, then lashed downward with a strong exhaling. Just before his hand reached the flame, it reversed itself and snapped back up. The flame seemed to jump up after it, in the vacuum caused by Chiun's lightning move, and the match was out.
"That is the motion and action one must strive for," Chiun said.
"I don't want to put out fires. I want to break boards," Remo said. "When will I be able to do that?"
"You already can," Chiun said. "But first, the practice."
He kept Remo working on the dummies for hours. Toward evening, he showed him the other karate hand formations. The hand sword Remo had first been shown, he learned, was called shuto. It could be held all day without tiring.
Let the hand bend back slightly at the wrist. This is the hand piston-shotei-and is used for striking the chin or throat. The hiraken is made the same way, but the middle fingers bend more. It is a paddle... "very good for boxing ears and breaking eardrums," Chiun explained.
The mace, formed by rolling the hand sword into a fist, is called tetsui. "There are others, but these are the ones you will need to know," Chiun said.
"When you learn the art of extending your power through your hands and through your feet, you will learn, too, to extend it through inanimate objects. In the hands of an expert, all things are deadly weapons." He showed Remo how to make knives of paper and deadly darts of paper clips. How much more he could have shown Remo went unanswered. A guard entered Chiun's quarters at three o'clock one morning. He spoke softly to Chiun for a few moments.
The old man bowed his head, then nodded to Remo who was awake but motionless.
"Follow him," he told his pupil.
Remo rose from the straw-thin sleeping mat and slipped into a pair of sandals. The guard seemed nervous. He apparently knew he was in one of the rooms of the special unit.
As Remo approached him he backed away toward the door. Remo nodded for him to lead the way.
The wind from the Sound ripped through Remo's thin white tunic as he walked behind the guard down one of the stone paths. The November moon cast an eerie light over the darkened buildings. Remo contained his breathing to limit the effect of the chill. But by the time he and the guard reached the main administrative hall, he was slapping his arms to keep warm.
The guard wore a thick wool jacket which he kept buttoned even as they entered the building and rode up two flights in the self-service elevator. They were stopped by two guards and Remo's man had to show his passes twice before they reached an oak door with a brass handle. Funny how Remo noticed the off-balance postures of the guards now. They held their hands almost inviting to be thrown.
Unconsciously, Remo had recorded that they would be easy to penetrate.
Lettering on the door read: "Private."
The guard stopped. "I can't enter here, sir."
Remo grunted acknowledgment and turned the brass handle. The door swung outward instead of into the room. By its inertia, Remo judged it couldn't be penetrated by a pistol shot, except perhaps from a .357 Magnum.
A thin man in a blue bathrobe leaned against a mahogany desk sipping from a white steaming cup. He was staring out at the darkness and the moon-splashed Sound.
Remo pulled the door shut behind him. A .357 wouldn't penetrate.
"I'm Smith," the man said without turning around. "I'm your superior. Would you like some tea?" Remo grunted a no.
Smith continued to gaze into the darkness. "You should know most of your business by now. You have access to the weapons. You'll pick up drop points and communication lines from a clerk in 307 of this building. Of course you'll destroy written matter. Clothing with California labels will be in 102. You'll have money. Identification is for Remo Cabell. Of course, you know the first-name necessity in case of a sudden call."
Smith spoke as though he were reading a list of names.
"We have you as a free-lance writer from Los Angeles. That's optional. You can change that. Method, of course, is your own. You've been trained. We'd like to give you more time, but..."
Remo waited by the desk. He didn't expect his first assignment to be like this. But then what did he expect? The man droned on. "Your assignment calls for a kill. The victim is in East Hudson Hospital in Jersey. He fell from a building today. Probably pushed. You will interrogate and then eliminate him. You won't need drugs for questioning. If he's still alive, he'll talk to you."