"He is a monk," Chiun explained.
Warily, Remo glanced at the man on the floor. The man who, by all rights, should have been dead was slowly pushing himself up to a sitting position. So silent was he it was as if he existed in a soundless vacuum. This coupled with his near-nonexistent life signs accounted for why Remo hadn't heard him to begin with.
Remo appraised the cowl and the robe. The man did indeed look something like a monk.
"Monks are supposed to be nice. They aren't supposed to try to kill you."
"I did not say he was a very good monk."
"And maybe I'm a little rusty on my Baltimore Catechism, but aren't they supposed to die when you kill them?"
Chiun rolled his eyes. "Not this one," he said. "Believe me, we have tried. My father did, some Russian royals tried. I believe my grandfather might have killed him a few times. He has been poisoned, stabbed, shot and drowned. Yet he keeps coming back again."
Something about his teacher's words tickled a memory far back in Remo's brain.
The monk was standing again. He offered Remo a smile that was little more than bared teeth and bugging eyes. The dagger was up and out again, ready to slash.
"What do I do to kill him?" Remo asked, anxious for any tip, any weakness, any pointers that could help him stop this wild-eyed, unstoppable, knife-wielding Russian.
Chiun's hands were tucked deep in his kimono sleeves. "You already killed him twice," the old man said with a shrug. "You have bested Russia's champion in mortal combat. If he's still pestering you, take his knife away."
Surging forward, the monk swung the knife at Remo's throat, a mad glint in his wide eyes.
Remo wasn't sure what else to do. As the knife whizzed by, he plucked the dagger from the Russian's filthy hand.
The monk stopped dead.
Remo moved the knife left and right. The monk's unblinking eyes followed the silver blade. Remo tossed the knife into the dark recesses of the nearest junk-packed room. It landed with a distant, muted clatter.
As soon as the knife was gone, the monk faded back into the shadows beside the door. The darkness swallowed cloak and cowl until all that remained was a Cheshire cat vision, with naked eyeballs instead of smiling teeth.
Remo raised a suspicious brow. "That's it?" he asked.
Chiun nodded. "This is an unusual exception in the Time of Succession," the Master of Sinanju explained. "The monk was charged with protecting the life of the czarevitch by the boy's mother many years ago. For nearly a century, by spells and magic, he has kept them both safe for the time when he can return the child to the Russian throne."
Remo glanced skeptically at the eyeballs in the shadows. His own eyes were generally able to draw in ambient light, illuminating darkness. But light formed differently around the monk. It was difficult to make out the dark robes among the deep shadows.
"So he's just going to stand there until, what, my pupil and I come here in another forty years?"
"I think he is also paid to do the cleaning up," Chiun said, uninterested. "Not that he has touched a dust rag in eighty years. Typical Russian. And the Romanovs paid him in advance. Czar Nicholas must be spinning in his grave." He touched Remo's arm. "Come. We have dawdled long enough."
"Wait a sec." Remo was peering at the monk. The monk peered back. "What's up with his eyes?"
"He does that for the tourists," Chiun explained, clicking his tongue impatiently. "He is a hypnotist."
Remo jumped back. "Whoa," he said, slapping one hand like a blinder beside his eyes.
"We met a Russian hypnotist years ago. He anything like that?"
"This one is nothing to worry about," Chiun assured him. "That other one we met had full and terrible control of his dread powers. Whatever this one had he has squandered on dissolute living. He cannot affect the minds of those from Sinanju, for we are not weak-willed dullards." Squinting, he looked Remo up and down. "Maybe you should keep your eyes covered just in case," he suggested. He spun to go.
"Cram it," Remo suggested, lowering his hand cautiously. "There was a monk that hung out with the Russian royal family, wasn't there? I seem to remember hearing he was unkillable. Raspberry, Rasmussen, something like that?"
It was not Chiun, but a voice from the shadows that answered.
"Rasputin," growled the monk. It was the same funereal voice that had come from the downstairs speaker.
"Yeah, that's it. You him?" The eyes bespoke the truth.
The monk didn't respond to Remo. His words were directed at Chiun's retreating back.
"The night," Rasputin called to the Master of Sinanju. "Beware the night. Beware the false day. Beware the hand that reaches from the grave. Beware, Masters of Sinanju."
Chiun had been headed for the hall. When he heard the monk's words, he froze in his tracks.
"He ain't exactly Little Mary Sunshine, is he?" Remo asked, glancing over his shoulder.
He was surprised to see that a strange look had descended on his teacher's face. It was a look he had seen only rarely in all the many years they had been together.
It was a look of fear.
"Chiun?" Remo asked, suddenly worried.
But the Master of Sinanju wasn't listening to his pupil. He took a few cautious steps back across the room.
"Speak, monk," the old Korean demanded.
"What is it?" Remo questioned. "What's wrong?"
"Hush," Chiun commanded.
The monk's disembodied eyes floated in the black shadows. "The night draws near for you both," Rasputin warned. "Darkness comes from the cold sea."
"And the splendor falls on castle walls," Remo said, beginning to lose patience. "Can I kill him again, please?"
But Chiun was peering intently at the shabby Russian.
"What do you see, monk?" he demanded.
"What do you mean what does he see?"
"He is a healer, a hypnotist and a mystic," Chiun hissed impatiently. "The monk sees more than other mortals. He predicted the murders of the Romanov family."
"Fat lot of good it did them. Don't let him spook you, Little Father."
But Chiun would not budge. "Tell me more, monk."
The wide eyes remained fixed within the shadows. "You are stalked by death," Rasputin warned, his voice a croaking dirge. "Two from your order. Two will die. One will take your place. Another is dead already. Another lives who was dead. When comes the end, two Masters of Sinanju will die. Master and student, father and son."
Remo felt his own blood run cold. He shot a glance at his teacher. Chiun's eyes were as unblinking as the monk's. He stared in rapt attention at the man in the shadows.
Rasputin's voice was growing fainter.
"Two will die.... Two will die.... Two will die...."
The eyes faded. Flickering candles. "Two will die...."
The oversized orbs winked out.
Remo felt an emptiness swell in the darkness. He passed his hand through the shadow. There was no substance to it. Rasputin was gone.
"What the hell was that all about?" he asked. But when Remo turned a questioning eye to the Master of Sinanju, he found that he was alone. Chiun was gone.
Far off the apartment door clicked quietly shut.
Chapter 14
"Merci," Benson Dilkes said into the telephone. The word was a grunt in the dark of his Florida apartment. His own voice sounded odd to his ears. The foreign words sat heavy and out-of-place on his fat Virginian tongue. Nothing was right any longer. The entire world was out of alignment. Spinning out of control. Dilkes replaced the phone. Carefully.
With equal care he picked another red tack from the plastic case. The lid was open now. The way things were already going, he saw no reason to close it.
He stepped over to the corkboard map of Europe. The new thumbtack went in, this time in Paris. Jean-Pierre Sevigne.
The assassin had been good. A freelancer who split his time between government and the private sector. Sevigne didn't discriminate. He went wherever the money was.