Vassilivich avered that no good drama should have a bad doctor.
"Correct," said Chiun. "If one wishes to see doctors mangle people, one should go to a hospital, not a television set. If I wanted to see stupid and careless and incompetent doctors, I have only to drop in on a local practitioner, and my chances are very good. Especially in your country, you should know that."
Vassilivich gulped but agreed. What, he wanted to know, did Chiun teach this ungrateful Remo?
"Decency," Chiun said. "Love, decency, and beauty."
Meanwhile, across town in a luxurious villa overlooking the Bay of Naples, blue in the midday sun of the Italian coast, Remo was putting his love, decency, and beauty to work.
He had gotten the number and the location of the other operatives from the explosives man in the street, whom he decently dumped afterwards into a big vat of garbage in an alley where no one would notice him until the body started to stink.
He made his way to the beautiful villa. It was noon and everyone appeared groggy from the night's revelry. One man, his belly already going to paunch, looked up from his morning vodka and orange juice. He pointed a short British sten gun at Remo while he nibbled on a grape.
"Buon giorno," he said sleepily.
"Good morning," said Remo.
"What brings you here?" asked the Russian. The others still did not go for their guns but continued on into their boozy morning. One unarmed man was not enough to cause excitement.
"Work," said Remo.
"What is your work?"
"I'm an assassin. Right now, I'm working on the Treska. Is that how you pronounce it? Treska?" Remo glanced outside at the glistening bay and felt the cool spring breeze come through the green trees and the open windows bright with sun. It was a good land. He smelled the salt water.
"How do you know about Treska?" said the man.
"Oh, yeah," said Remo as an afterthought. "It's complicated, you know, government politics and everything, but basically I'm replacing the Daisy or is it the Sunflower, I forget these stupid names. In any case, I'm here to kill you if you're Treska. You're Alpha Team, right?"
"We happen to be Alpha Team, yes, but aren't you overlooking this?" said the man and jiggled the short British gun.
"Nah," said Remo. "By the way, what does this rent for a month?"
"I don't know. It's in lire. You keep filling baskets to the top and when the landlord starts to smile you stop filling. Lire. A virtually worthless currency."
"Anybody outside from Alpha?"
"We're all here except Fyodor."
"Well built guy, blondish, with a funny smile?" asked Remo.
"That's him. But he doesn't have a funny smile."
"He does now," Remo said. By the time the man fired the Sten gun, his arm was broken. He did not feel the pain of the broken arm because one needs a spinal column to transmit pain impulses. The man had lost a piece of his about the same time the pain would have reached his brain.
The Alpha Team, sluggish with days of drinking, moved with surprising speed to their weapons. Training overcame the boozy blood of their systems and adrenalin ignited their bodies. But they fought as though they had a target who moved no faster than an athlete, an ordinary athlete who did not know the rhythms of his body, whose hands were the same as a skillful soldiers' hands.
By the time their eyes adjusted to Remo's movements, his hands were snapping through bone, making quick, silent kills. He worked the chests that noon in the villa off the Italian coast. It took him longer to collect the passports. Back at the car in Naples proper, he asked Vassilivich to write down the correct names and ranks on each of the passports Alpha Team had used as covers.
"They are all dead?" asked Vassilivich, believing because he had seen what this man had done to the gigantic Ivan, but still horrified at the thought that one man could do so much.
"Sure," said Remo, as if someone had asked if he had put a candy wrapper in a trash can.
Beta Team was on a full alert, as it had been trained to be if contact was severed. The team had a small house in Farfa, a town overlooking the murky Tiber River, an Italian sewer since the days of the Etruscan kings.
"They really let the place go to rot," Chiun confided. "The history of Sinanju tells of lovely temples of Apollo and Venus near here."
"The House of Sinanju is an old institution then?" asked Vassilivich.
"Modestly so," said Chiun. "Aged with reason and tempered with love."
Remo at the wheel turned around sharply. He would have sworn that Chiun had been talking about Sinanju.
The American, Vassilivich realized, had spotted the first Beta outpost before he had. And he knew what to look for.
When the American left the car, Vassilivich asked how Remo had known that the man who appeared to be casually sunning himself on a small cement bench was really a lookout?
"That's where the outlook should be," said Chiun. "But these are matters of work. Would you like to hear a poem I have written?"
Vassilivich said, "By all means." He watched the American sit down next to the lookout who appeared to be sunning himself. The American spoke a few words.
Vassilivich looked on with dread fascination. The lookout was knife-skilled at the highest levels. He saw his man slip a blade from a sleeve on the far side, hidden from the American. Good, he thought. We have a chance. Good for you, soldier of the Treska, sword and shield of the party. The Korean, Chiun, was squeaking away in a language Vassilivich did not recognize. Chiun brought his attention to the back seat of the car with a gentle touch of a long fingernail to his throat.
"Perhaps you do not recognize classic Ung poetry?"
"Sir?" said Vassilivich. He saw his man smile politely. The knife was going to come soon. They were going to get back on the scoreboard against this killer team.
"In Ung poetry, the classic form is to omit every third consonant and every second vowel. That is the English translation of the formula. You know English."
"Yes," said Vassilivich. Any moment now the knife would fly into the American's throat.
"Then you would understand that the great Ung poetry disappeared about 800 b.c. I am not talking about common Ung poetry used until the seventh century. What so fascinates you out there?"
"I was just watching the American."
"Doing what?"
"Talking to that man."
"He is not talking," said Chiun. "He is going to do work. It is mundane. Now there is an especially beautiful passage I am working on… what so fascinates you?"
The knife flashed in the bright Italian sun and the man smiled foolishly as if he had swallowed a balloon and should have known better. Vassilivich could not see the man's knife. The American appeared to be shaking that hand as if saying goodbye. The lookout nodded off to sleep. With a lapful of blood.
"The greatness of this poem is that it bares the essence of the flower petal and the sounds themselves become the petal," said Chiun.
Vassilivich's body was moist with prickly sweat. He smiled as he heard the Korean's high pitched voice go higher as though scratching a blackboard on the ceiling.
He remembered vaguely hearing of this arcane poetry. A British explorer had said it sounded like a hysterectomy performed with blunt spoons.
Ancient Persian emperors were especially fond of it. Vassilivich did not know it had survived past the third century a.d. In some way, this aged Oriental had a close relationship with this amazing American killer.
Vassilivich had to figure out what. Was the old Korean a poetry teacher? A friend? He certainly wasn't a servant, even though he complained he was being treated as one. Sinanju. He had heard that name before. The old man had said assassins came from there, but certainly this frail, parched being could not be a killer. Yet, there was a link here. And one that could be exploited. Must be exploited.