He heard an extended adenoidal goose honking that was unmistakable proof that the Master of Sinanju has fallen asleep.
Annoyed, Remo returned to the village, wondering in Korean, "Anybody have a clue what bit Chiun?"
The villagers, who had been so friendly before-many of them had looked to Remo for protection against the barbarian Mongols-turned away.
"Ah, screw it," Remo muttered, seeking a place to sleep for the night. There was no sense pressing the villagers. Every one of them had seen Chiun's public rebuff. And they blindly followed the lead of their Master, not caring about his reasons.
"You ingrates just wait until I'm head of the village," he warned aloud.
The expressions that comment created ranged from startled to panic-stricken. Remo was suddenly surrounded by offers, ranging from a place to sleep for the night, to the best leftovers from the feast, and more than one Korean maiden offered him her maidenhead-but only on the condition that this was not revealed to the Master of Sinanju, who, everyone knew, abhorred whites.
Remo accepted a place to sleep from the aged Korean named Pullyang, who acted as village caretaker when Chiun was away. He wasn't in the mood for leftovers or maidenhead. He had eaten too much fish at the feast.
Led by Pullyang, he walked to the modest hut, his thick-wristed hands stuffed in the pockets of his gray chinos. In his black T-shirt he looked nothing like a man who was the sole heir to the House of Sinanju, a line of assassins that had shaped the fortunes of the ancient world. Although he weighed less than 160 pounds, his scuffed Italian loafers barely left a mark in the eternal mud of Sinanju.
"Sometimes I don't know why I put up with his crap," Remo told Pullyang. His face wore a grim expression like a skull. Dark eyes gleamed in their hollows above prominent cheekbones. His mouth was an angry slash.
"You do not appreciate his awesome magnificence," Pullyang said sagely.
"Well, take it from me, he's a lot less magnificent when you have to deal with him every dingdong day."
Pullyang left Remo in a room furnished with only a tatami mat, murmuring, "You will miss him when he has journeyed into the Great Void."
"Who are you kidding?" Remo snorted. "That old reprobate will probably outlive me. Good night, Pullyang."
Pullyang padded off in ghostly silence.
Remo had trouble sleeping. Chiun's snit was not the cause. Chiun had had inexplicable snits like this one since the day, almost twenty years before, when Remo Williams-then a young Newark excop-had been introduced to the frail Korean.
Remo had just come off death row. The hard way. He had been strapped sweating to the electric chair and shocked into oblivion.
Folcroft Sanitarium had been the name of the hell he later regained consciousness in. He was not dead. He had not died. He had been erased. All his identity records had been expunged. A fresh headstone bore his name. An orphan, he had no relatives, so the memory of Remo Williams, a good, if dumb, cop who had been framed for killing a pusher, existed only in the fading memories of a small circle of friends and coworkers.
All this was explained to Remo Williams as he got used to the too-tight skin of his new plasticsurgery-created face by Dr. Harold W. Smith, the head of Folcroft and director of CURE, a secret government agency that had been set up to salvage America, which was then falling into anarchy.
Remo had been selected to be its savior. He would become the instrument of righteousness in a corrupt world. And Chiun, disciple of the Sinanju martial-arts tradition, would be the one to transform him into that instrument.
Remo expressed his profound gratitude at the second chance at life by attempting to shoot the Master of Sinanju with a .38 revolver.
Chiun had not been young then. He looked as if he would topple in a brisk wind. Yet he had sidestepped, dodged, and eluded the attack in ways Remo had never imagined.
All five bullets missed. And unlike the average foot patrolman, Remo had been a pretty good shot.
That was the first icy breath of the power of Sinanju that blew through Remo Williams' soul.
Reluctantly he submitted himself to the training. He learned first to breathe, then to kill, and most important, not to be killed. In those early days, he thought he was being turned into a kind of government enforcer, but as the years passed and he learned not only to duplicate Chiun's bullet-dodging but also to climb sheer walls with the silent ease of a spider and run faster than a car, Remo realized he was becoming something more. He was becoming part of the House of Sinanju, the greatest assassins in human history.
That had been long ago. Their relationship had been through many rocky periods since.
The smell of pine needles wafting through the cool air brought Remo back to other days, previous trips to Sinanju, the center of the universe to the Masters of Sinanju, of which Remo was the first white man to qualify.
He remembered the first time he had come here, wounded and afraid, to battle his rival, the renegade Master Nuihc. Years later, Remo returned for the Master's Trial, in which he fought warriors from other lands, including the Scandinavian warriorwoman, Jilda, who later bore him a daughter. More recently he and Chiun had returned because he thought the Master of Sinanju was dying. Chiun had not been dying, but during those dangerous, uncertain days Remo had met and fallen in love with a tender maid of Sinanju named Mah-Li. Although circumstances tore him from her, he had returned to marry Mah-Li. With tragic consequences.
The thought of Mah-Li brought Remo to his feet. He drew on his chinos and slipped barefoot out into the night. Like a pale ghost, he floated to the burial yard of Sinanju.
He stood over the grave of Mah-Li the Beast-so called by the villagers because of her Western-style beauty-killed by an old enemy, the pupil of long-dead Nuihc. Had it really been four years ago? Remo wondered. Time was flying. Remo's new life was flying. His other life seemed like a half-remembered dream now.
Remo reached up into a towering fir tree and plucked several needles. As he sprinkled them onto Mah-Li's grave, he found it hard to remember her face with clarity. They had known each other less than a year. He wondered how his life would have gone had they wedded. He wondered how his life was going. How much longer could he work for America? Could Chiun?
He stood there turning vague unsettling thoughts over in his mind. No answers came. Slipping back to Pullyang's hut, he tried to find sleep.
Remo slept fitfully, as if plagued by nightmares. But when he awoke with the dawn, he could not remember any of them. But a cold unease sat in his belly like dry ice.
Pullyang padded up, carrying an awkwardly long reed pipe in one gnarled claw, as Remo stepped out into the light.
"What's up, Pullyang?" Remo asked.
"The Master bids me to inform you that he travels to America this day," Pullyang said in his thin cracked voice.
"Already? Where is he?"
"Packing. And he requires that you do the same if you intend to accompany him to America."
Remo lifted an eyebrow. "Intend?"
"Those were his exact words," Pullyang said solemnly.
"Tell him I'm packed," Remo growled.
Remo pulled on a white T-shirt, and slipping his bare feet into his loafers, he checked his rear pocket for his toothbrush. This constituted his packing.
Remo found the Master of Sinanju sitting in the saddle of a fine Mongolian pony, wearing a dull gray traveling robe. His face was sere.
"We going now?" Remo asked, approaching.
Chiun patted his pony in studied silence.
"Be that way, then," Remo muttered. He mounted his own pony, which Pullyang had saddled for him.
The Master of Sinanju forked his pony around and started up a dirt road. "Farewell, Pullyang," he intoned. "Keep my village safe in my absence."