"Chiun, I'm not in love with Sinanju. I'm in love with a woman."
Chiun looked shocked. He said nothing. Then he spat on the floor.
"All Frenchwomen are diseased," he said.
"She's not French."
"And American women are venial and stupid."
"She's not American."
Chiun tried a slight tentative smile. "A Korean girl? Remo, you are bringing home a…"
"A Russian," Remo said quickly.
"Aaaaagh," Chiun said. "Battalions of women with faces like gun butts and bodies like garages. A fine choice, meat-eater."
"She is a beauty," Remo said. "You shouldn't judge until you see. That's what you're always telling me."
"There are things you can judge without seeing, if you have any sense at all left in your head. You do not have to see every sunrise to know what the next one will look like. You do not have to spy on the moon every minute to make sure that it does not take the form of a square. Some things one knows. I know about Russian women."
"Not this one," Remo insisted.
"Where did you meet this creature?" Chiun asked.
"Woman, Chiun, not creature."
"Yes. Where did you met this meet this… one?"
"Woman, Chiun. I met her when she was trying to kill me."
"Very good," said Chiun. "And that of course told you it was love at first sight."
"Not really. For her, it had to grow."
"Good," Chiun said. "Now she is in love with you and will not try to kill you any more."
"Right."
Chiun shook his head. "Some day when all this world is ended and all the Masters of Sinanju who have ever lived gather with their ancestors to review the past, surely I will have the most elevated station of all. Because I have suffered the most. I have had to deal with you."
"Maybe not much longer," said Remo.
"I would meet this Russian barracks beauty with the face of a shovel and the form of a tractor."
"Good," said Remo. "I'd like you to meet her. I've told her a great deal about you."
"Will she try to kill me too?"
Remo shook his head. "I didn't tell her that much about you."
Remo and Chiun paused inside the door of the restaurant where they were to meet Ludmilla.
"There she is," Remo said. He pointed to the young Russian woman. No one in the restaurant saw him point because they were all already staring at Ludmilla, the men with lust, the women with envy.
"She is ugly," Chiun said.
"She has skin like cream," Remo said.
"Yes. That is one of the reasons she is ugly. The beautiful people have a different color skin."
"Look at her eyes."
"Yes, poor thing. Hers are straight. And violet. Violet eyes give very little protection against the sun. Marry that woman and you will have a blind crone on your hands before you get through your first thirty summers together."
"Have you ever seen hands like that?" Remo said. Ludmilla rose as she saw Remo. "A body like that?"
"No, thank the eternal powers that protect old men from shock. What an ugly creature."
"I love her," Remo said.
"I hate her," Chiun said. "I'm going home." He spun and brushed past Remo and walked back to their hotel, thinking deeply.
CHAPTER NINE
Walking to her hotel from the restaurant, Remo finally broke down. He had held strong through the salad, the soup, the main course, the coffee, and the dessert none of which he had eaten but Ludmilla finally got to him, and he told her the secret of his power.
It was candles. He had to sleep with candles lit in the room. If the candles weren't there or if they burned out, his strength vanished.
"Why did you not lose your power last night?" Ludmilla asked.
"Because I didn't sleep," Remo said. To prove his point, he stopped at a store and bought three thick red candles, the size of large instant coffee jars.
That night, as Remo slept in her playground sized bed, Ludmilla went into the drawing room of her suite, made a telephone call, then extinguished the candles and lay down beside Remo.
Remo slept through her getting up and slept through her extinguishing of the candles and slept through her phone call and her return to bed.
He woke only long enough to take care of the man who sneaked into the room, wrapped powerful fingers around Remo's throat and began to squeeze. Remo impaled him on the bed post.
"You lied to me," Ludmilla screamed.
"Tell me about it in the morning."
"You said candles were the secret of your strength," she bawled. "You lied."
Remo shrugged and rolled over.
"I want you out of here. Now. And take your body with you."
"It's hard for me to go anywhere without it," Remo said.
"I don't mean your body, I mean that body on the end of my bed."
"Oh, no," Remo said, rolling over to look at Ludmilla. "Call the Russian embassy. They sent him; let them get him. I don't clean up any more bodies. That's all. Forget it. I won't."
Ludmilla reached out a long index finger and trailed it gently down Remo's chest from his throat to his navel. She smiled at him.
After Remo had disposed of the body under a pile of trash behind the hotel, he went back to Ludmilla's bed.
He did not sleep.
"Smitty, I need some cash." Remo drummed his fingers on the coffee table in the living room of his own hotel suite while the transatlantic phone call clicked and sputtered.
It took him a few seconds to realize the clicking and sputtering wasn't the phone system. It was Smith.
"Cash?" Smith was saying. "I just got a bill of yours for a thousand dollars."
"So? Is that so much?"
"From a shoe store?" Smith asked.
"Come on, Smitty, you know how it is when you find a pair of shoes you like. You buy a couple of pairs."
"One thousand dollars?"
"Well, I bought twenty-two pairs. It was important that my feet be clad just so."
"I see," Smith said drily. "And you have these twenty-two pairs of shoes with you, I presume."
"Of course not. Could I travel overseas with twenty-two pairs of shoes?"
"What'd you do with them?"
Remo sighed. "I gave them away. Smitty, don't you ever do anything but bicker, bicker, bicker about money? Here I've just saved the free world from disaster and you're complaining about my buying a measly couple of shoes. I need some cash."
"How much?"
"Fifty thousand dollars."
"You can't have it. That's too much for shoes."
"I'm not buying any more shoes. I need it for something else. Something real important."
"What?"
"I'm not telling."
"You can't have it."
"Okay. I'll raise it. I'll hire myself out to the highest bidder."
From the corner of the room, Chiun squeaked, "I bid twenty cents." Remo fixed him with an evil stare.
"All right," Smith said after a pause. "It'll be at the American Express office. Your passport in the name of Lindsay?"
"Wait a minute. Let me look." Remo looked through the top drawer of the chest and found the passport under a thing in waxed paper that seemed suspiciously like a dead fish.
"Yeah. Remo Lindsay."
"The money will be there in an hour."
"Good going, Smitty. You'll never regret this."
"Fine. What are you going to buy with it?"
"I can't tell you. But we'll name our first child after you."
"Oh?" said Smith, with more than his usual show of interest.
"Yes. Skinflint Tightwad Williams. That's if it's a boy."
"Goodbye, Remo."
Remo hung up and saw Chiun staring at him.
"It is about time that you and I had a talk," Chiun said.
"About what?"
"It is customary for a father to tell his son of certain things when the son is old enough to under stand them. In your case, I'll do it now rather than wait another ten years."