"It does not necessarily mean direct involvement by someone either of us has dispatched," Chiun said, stroking his thread of a beard with slender fingers. "Maybe it means a trap an enemy set before we delivered them to the Void."
"Like what?" Remo asked.
Chiun's wrinkled forehead creased. "I do not know," he admitted. "But he said that we are already stalked by death. Whatever it is may already be out there."
"Could be he's just talking about the Time of Succession," Remo suggested, hating the fact that he was being drawn into the demented monk's predictions. "We've got hit men already hiding behind every mailbox."
"Perhaps," Chiun said. He did not sound convinced.
Remo could see that his teacher was deeply disturbed. He touched the old man's shoulder.
"Hey, don't worry, Little Father," he said, his tone reassuring. "I don't put as much faith in Raspoopin as you do, but we've gone up against worse prophecies before and we're both still here to tell the tale. Let the world throw whatever it's got at us. We'll come out fine. I promise."
Chiun looked deep in his pupil's open, confident face.
Still so much a child. The boy had come to the edge, yet still had so much to learn.
Chiun knew. His father had told him. The monk was gifted. The monk was never wrong. And according to his words, two Masters of Sinanju were destined to die. Master and student, father and son.
Remo and Chiun.
Sitting in the back of the Parisian taxi, the old Korean studied the innocent, smiling face of the man he had trained. The man who was going to die. His son.
Grief overtook him. As Remo smiled, Chiun gave a brief nod, quickly turning away.
As Remo settled in for the cab ride, the old Korean stared out the window at the passing Paris lights.
Chapter 16
Benson Dilkes was certain he was a dead man.
He had been driven from comfortable retirement in Africa, hired to kill the next Sinanju Master by a man he had met only once and came back to the world he had fled for a contest that was as unwinnable as it was unavoidable. As far as he was concerned, his fate was already sealed.
But when the small Korean standing in the bedroom of his Boca Raton apartment did not make a move toward him, Dilkes began to get a new sense. It was the name that finally did it. When the man mentioned his name, Benson Dilkes dropped his handgun to the carpet.
"Did you say Nuihc?" Dilkes breathed.
"There is nothing wrong with your hearing, Benson Dilkes," replied the Korean in the black business suit.
Dilkes's palms were sweating. He could feel the prickly sensation. Dilkes rarely perspired. Most days it took him an hour of kneeling out under the blazing hot sun in his rose garden back in Zimbabwe to even break a sweat.
Dilkes swallowed. "Forgive me, but the Master of Sinanju once had a pupil named Nuihc. I heard of him because, unworthy as I am, I traveled in some of the same circles as he did. Not that I was ever deserving to do so." He paused, heart racing. "Are you him?"
"Why do you ask questions when the answers are known to you already?" the Korean replied.
It was him. Dilkes could scarcely believe it. He felt his heartbeat quicken even more. He tried to will it to slow.
"I beg indulgence for my persistent impudence, O unequaled one," he said, bowing, "but it was my understanding that you had disappeared many years ago. It was assumed by many in my profession-I do not call it 'our' profession, for it sullies your great and hallowed reputation to be likened to worthless bunglers such as myself-that you had died."
The Korean's hooded eyes were flat. "Spare me that flowery foolishness," he droned. "You are not good at it, and I do not require songs of flattery to stroke my ego. I am not my uncle, decrepit and needy of validation. As for that other, I was asleep. That is all you need know."
Dilkes could see he had given offense.
"I beg forgiveness," he said. "It's just that you caught me by surprise."
The Korean nodded quiet understanding. "That is a rare thing for you, Benson Dilkes. I have heard of you. You are too cautious to be surprised. That is a good thing. The price of failure is high, given the work you do, yet you have survived longer than most. I am impressed."
"You honor me, sir."
"The proper term is 'Master.'"
"Forgive me, Master," Dilkes said.
The American assassin's eyes strayed to door and window. The window was sealed and wired. The same for the door. They would take precious seconds to disarm. Not that it mattered. Even if he made a dash for it, he was certain there was no way he could hope to make it past the Korean.
But even as the wild thoughts flew through the brain of Benson Dilkes, the Asian was shaking his head. It was as if the man in the business suit had read his mind.
"Do not make me question my faith in you," the Korean said. "You know full well that if I wished it you would be dead already. Therefore, I must not want you dead."
"But the contest..." Dilkes began, confused. His voice trailed off.
He was suddenly distracted, a worried look on his tan face. Dilkes had finally noticed the other person who had somehow stolen into his bedroom unannounced.
The other stranger had likely been standing near the Korean the whole time. It was easy enough to miss him, the way he loitered in the dark corner near the door. As it was, Dilkes had to squint to make him out.
The man was obviously not Asian.
He was white. Thin and pale. A mane of flowing blond hair like tousled corn husks hung down to narrow shoulders. His face was so sunken he looked like the hollow projection of a human. Even though he was younger than the Korean, he somehow looked older than his years. He didn't speak or move. Just clung to the dark. A subservient ghost.
"Who is that?" Dilkes breathed.
The man in the suit didn't turn. Didn't acknowledge the presence of the other man.
"No one. A failure. A tool that broke. A shadow of what he was supposed to be. Pay him no mind."
"As you wish, Master," Dilkes said.
The word fit comfortably on his tongue.
Many men, alive and dead, would have been surprised at the ease with which the great Benson Dilkes had accepted so subordinate a term. Even among those in his profession who knew of Sinanju, few fully understood what it was. Dilkes knew. For this reason the word Master came easily to him.
The man who called himself Nuihc padded across the room. Dilkes backed against the bureau, allowing a wide path for the small man to pass. The Korean stopped before the line of corkboard maps. Face upturned, he studied the many red pins.
The blond-haired man stayed back near the door. As still as death, the blond man studied the small Asian. For the first time Dilkes saw the Caucasian's eyes.
If a Caribbean sea could catch fire, that was the color of the younger man's eyes. They were blue. Brilliantly so. As the young man studied his Master, his electric-blue eyes sparkled with a vitality far greater than the pale, emaciated face in which they were sunk.
Dilkes found himself so entranced by the younger man's eyes that he missed something the Asian said. "Excuse me?" he asked.
"I said this is not accurate," the Korean repeated. He waved a hand across the big maps, pointing, one, two, three. "There, you missed some in India and China. Several in Lobinia. Here, in San Francisco and New York."
The reality hit Benson Dilkes. This was a Master of Sinanju. Of course he would know all the little pin marks in Dilkes's absurd maps. He had doubtless made many of them.