"What the hell," said Remo. "You want to run the show, be my guest. Lord knows I've done a craptacular job at it. Wake me when you've lined up someone for me to kill."
Closing his eyes, he leaned back in his seat. He was asleep in a matter of seconds.
Rebecca Dalton watched him sleep. She watched - as the flight attendant brought her a good oldfashioned American steak-and-potato dinner. Rebecca ate every last morsel, just as her mother had taught her. When she was done eating, she dropped her napkin on her plate and got up from her seat.
Remo was still sound asleep.
Rebecca went down the aisle and locked herself in the small bathroom. She pulled a cell phone from her pocket and dialed the special number that only a handful of people in all the world knew. She knew she had reached the right party when she heard that familiar Virginia twang.
"Hello," said Benson Dilkes.
The older man's voice was gruff. She could hear wind blowing over the line. Wherever he was, Dilkes was outside.
"I have him," Rebecca Dalton whispered.
"Good," Dilkes said. "Double-check the arrangements in the Middle East. I've been out of the game for a while. I want to make certain everything is perfect."
"Now, now, Benson," Rebecca chided. "You didn't teach me to trust someone else's work. Even yours. I already checked. It looks fine now, but I'll double-check along the way just to make sure. You know how cautious I like to be." She thought of Remo, slumbering gently in his seat. He was kind of cute. Still, a job was a job. "When this is over, someone will be dead," she said, "and I can dang well assure you it won't be me."
With soft hands she clicked her phone shut. Before leaving the bathroom, she checked her makeup in the mirror. Perfect. She wouldn't have it any other way.
With a satisfied little smile, Rebecca Dalton left the bathroom. There was still plenty of time to catch a quick nap before all the big crazy ol' excitement began.
Chapter 28
At first there was an argument among the North Korean soldiers about who would be best able to fix a broken telephone line. No one wanted to be trapped in a truck with the terrifying old man who had appeared out of nowhere like a raging typhoon and taken over their isolated little garrison.
The whispered arguing ended when the captain in command ordered a group of soldiers to accompany the old man. The rest remained behind to help the captain locate his missing teeth, which were scattered around the frozen compound.
The men were surprised as they sped down the highway in the middle of nowhere. Most hadn't known it even existed.
A few miles from. Finally Chiun ordered the truck to stop.
A row of telephone poles trudged alongside the highway-along with the road, the only signs of the civilization of the past thousand years. The telephone cable had been cut.
Chiun pointed to the wire. "Fix it," he commanded.
As the men went to work, Chiun headed down the road on foot. There was great conflict on his leathery face.
He had to protect Remo, to warn him of the danger. Two Masters of Sinanju will die.
The Russian monk's words echoed in his brain. Rasputin had warned them to beware the hand that reached from the grave. "Darkness comes from the cold sea," the monk had said. Chiun had seen the blood at the shore. An evil had been reborn from the cold waters of the West Korean Bay.
Another is dead already.
Chiun knew now that this was Pullyang. The condition of the body was a sign, delivered in death. Another lives who was dead.
Chiun had recognized the blow used to kill Pullyang. It was a variation of old Sinanju, before the time of the Great Wang. The tearing of the flesh near the point of exit was like something Chiun had seen before.
Chiun's own pupil used to make that mistake. Not Remo. The young man's movements had been perfection from the start. Oh, they were raw. And he had the habit of not keeping his elbow straight some of the time. But the poetry of movement was there even in those first days.
Nor was it Chiun's first pupil. That child had been even more gifted than Remo. Sadly, Chiun's son, Song, had died before he had a chance to fulfill his early promise.
Not Remo. Not Song. There had been another. Nuihc. Chiun's nephew. The Great Betrayer, who had taken the gifts bestowed on him and used them for selfish means. The wicked child who had turned his back on the village and gone out into the world to seek power and wealth. The Unmentionable One who had squandered years with his selfish wandering, finally returning to the village to fulfill his evil destiny by murdering Remo and Chiun and claiming the title of Reigning Master as his own.
In Sinanju he had met his end.
Nuihc was dead. Although it had betrayed one of the most sacred edicts of the Masters of Sinanju, the traitor had died by Chiun's own hand. Afterward the body was cast into the bay to feed the crabs.
Long vanished. Long dead. Years of silence. And then the cries in the night.
The blood on the shore.
The blow used to murder Pullyang.
Impossible as it might seem, Chiun was forced to accept what had happened. Somehow Nuihc lived. It was that accursed family. Although Nuihc's father was brother to Chiun, the boy's mother was from a less than worthy family. Their line could be traced back to before the time of the Great Wang. They were mystics and shamans. In past ages, when there was not one Master of Sinanju but many, members of this family coveted the title of Reigning Master. It was thought that their seething envy had died centuries before. It had not.
The seeds of ancient hate had taken root in Nuihc. When Nuihc's aunt, the old crone Sonmi, disappeared months before, Pullyang wrote to inform the Master. At the time Chiun tore up the letter and spit on the ground, satisfied that the evil spawned by that wicked family was finally no more. But the hatred in that family now seemed stronger even than the pull of the grave.
It was she. The last of her line, Sonmi had used the final magic of her wicked clan and somehow revived the most dangerous foe Remo and Chiun had ever encountered.
Chiun needed to protect Remo. Had to warn him of the danger. But he was torn. As Reigning Master he had an obligation to the village. Yet he couldn't explain to Smith, an outsider, what had happened. Couldn't tell him why Remo needed to be warned away. Chiun's American employer understood little beyond the so-called facts presented to him in Western books and on his computing devices.
Two Masters of Sinanju will die. Master and student.
He had trained both men. Did it mean Chiun and Remo or Chiun and Nuihc?
And there was another. Jeremiah Purcell was at large in the world. If Nuihc had returned, so, too, might have his wicked protege.
Two will die. But which two?
He would sort it out in Sinanju. There he could protect the village. With his telephone restored, he would speak to Remo. They would devise a strategy.
Remo was protected. The young man was a full Master in his own right. Prepared to take the final step to Reigning Masterhood. Chiun had given him the skills he needed to keep himself safe. Remo would survive. He had to.
Two miles from the village, Chiun caught the scent of the early-morning stove fires. Night had long since fed the dawn. The village of Sinanju was stirring awake.
As he came closer, Chiun expected to see threads of black smoke rising into the pale sky.
The smoke grew thicker. Clogging daylight.
Feeling a sudden strain of fresh worry in his narrow chest, Chiun began to run.
A mile from the village, the daylight vanished. The black smoke swallowed the sky, turning day to night. Chiun raced from the highway. The weeds along the path to his ancestral village whipped his kimono hems.
He crested the hill. Sinanju spread out below.
The buildings had been burned to the ground. The air was thick with smoke. It swirled around the old man.