The rug seller was snarling and growling like the jaguar on his rug, and he danced and dodged around all the activity, and he still couldn’t seem to get his hands on the whistling smart-ass. The smart-ass ignored him, and the rug seller kept seeing his blows and lunges just miss the guy. All at once his snarls became mewling and whimpering, much as he used to imagine the Swedish babe on the other rug mewled and whimpered.
He found himself rolled inside one of his own rugs, but it wasn’t the one with the Swedish girl. He found his face pressed into the face of the Dragon himself, Bruce Lee.
“Consider yourself lucky,” the smart-ass said. “You try that sales pitch on some Koreans I know, and you’d be dead already.”
The rug seller felt the wind pushed out of his lungs when he was draped over the rug rack. He couldn’t see the gagging, limp mechanic flopped over the bar next to him, followed by the unconscious flower seller.
“I thought you had a phone call to make?” Remo said to the astonished proprietor of Happy Go Gas. The fat man struggled to his feet and headed inside, craning his head over his shoulder. He pushed himself into a jog for the first time in years as Remo wheeled the rug rack and lined it up on the proprietor.
The proprietor knew what was going to happen. It was impossible to get the rug rack moving that fast, especially top-heavy with all those bodies, but none of what happened in the past minute was possible.
The fat proprietor yanked open the door and thudded inside and thought he might be safe. Outside, Remo shoved the rug rack.
The rack wobbled but somehow stayed upright. The casters sheered off and the underside sent up a shower of sparks, but the rack never veered off course. It hit the glass minimart doors and plowed through them with a noisy explosion of glass, then slammed into the fat man and kept right on going. The rack didn’t stop until the fat man was shoved through the cooler doors and pinned among racks of soda. The rug rack was still upright. It hadn’t lost even one passenger.
An assistant manager was screaming. The fat proprietor was wriggling the body parts that still worked, pudgy fingers and bulging eyes, when Remo came through the gaping hole.
“This is really going to make you laugh. I just remembered that I do need something.” Remo snatched a small magazine from a rack and slapped a dollar on the counter. Then he left.
Chapter 4
In the passenger seat of the rig Remo was driving was a small man so ancient he should have been in the record books. So aged he shouldn’t have been alive. But he was alive, and kicking.
“You spared them all?” the old man demanded in a squeaky voice.
“Start,” Remo said to the dashboard. “Stut. Stert. Stort. Stump.” He frowned. “Trump?”
The vehicle came to life with a clattering of the massive diesel engine. A bewildering array of lights and displays flashed to life on the dashboard. They reminded Remo of the exterior of a cheesy casino. “They’re just jerks,” Remo said. “You can’t go killing every jerk you run into.”
“I heard what the filthy one said about me,” the ancient man added.
“He was talking about Koreans in general.”
“When one insults one’s heritage, he deserves to be silenced, especially when he insults the superior heritage of the Korean peoples.”
The old man was Korean, and perhaps the Asiatic features helped him appear less old than he was—but there were other factors at work, too.
“It is your heritage, too,” the old Korean said. “You are Korean. You allow yourself to be insulted without reprisal?”
Remo thought the dumb jerks at the gas station had been subjected to plenty of reprisal, but before the old man decided to jog back and murder them himself, Remo handed over the magazine. “Got you something.”
The old man sneered. “TV Guide? Why do you think I should want this?” He flipped it out the open window.
Remo reached for it. Even as he was steering his steamship-size vehicle onto the street he stretched across the old man and caught the flying magazine, which he tucked into a storage console between the front seats.
The old man squinted. Not that he had trouble seeing. It was his suspicious look. “Why do you want this TV Guide, Remo Williams?”
“Eh. You know. Just interested in seeing what kind of programming is being offered these days. Reading about it is less frightening than actually turning on the TV.”
“Hmph.”
The old man lapsed into silence, and being obstinately silent was just one of his many talents.
His name was Chiun; his title was Master of Sinanju Emeritus. There was just one other living Master of Sinanju—the man who was driving the oversize, super-customized travel trailer and trying to figure out the meaning of the electronic displays on the dashboard.
Chiun had trained Remo Williams in the art of Sinanju during their many years together. Even for Remo, who possessed an uncanny talent, Sinanju was not easy to learn.
There were those who looked at Sinanju as a martial art; indeed, almost every martial art had its origin in Sinanju. Scraps of wayward Sinanju knowledge, stolen splinters of Sinanju technique, overheard whispers of Sinanju wisdom, these were the basis for all the great fighting arts. Ninja, karate, kung fu and even modern judo had all descended directly or indirectly from the ancient practice of Sinanju.
The House of Sinanju had trained assassins for five thousand years. They left the tiny Korean fishing village of Sinanju and traveled the world, taking employment with emperors and kings. During five thousand years of world travel, a few secrets were bound to leak out.
But none of the derivative arts came close to the magnificence of the true Sinanju assassin. The Sinanju used their breath and their bodies to expand the use of their minds. With this great well of instinct guiding them, the Sinanju masters could perform physical feats that defied the understanding of the average human being.
This instinct and understanding didn’t always translate to twenty-first-century electronics, or even of post-World War II mechanics. This Remo proved, for the umpteenth time, as the rear wheels dragged over the curb with an unpleasant scraping sound. It wasn’t as unpleasant as the look in Chiun’s eyes.
“For the record, I was against getting a travel trailer from the beginning,” Remo stated. “I was especially against me driving a travel trailer.”
“This gives you license to destroy my home?” Chiun demanded.
“Course not. Another thing I don’t have a license for—this Lusitania-on-wheels.”
“It is the home of the Master of Sinanju and should be treated with respect.”
Remo’s eyebrows weighed down as he maneuvered the school-bus-style steering wheel to swing the vehicle onto the interstate ramp. “Masters of Sinanju, plural, don’t you mean? Or is this not my home, too?”
“That remains to be seen,” Chiun sniffed.
“Really? So what am I doing driving this thing around if I don’t even get to live in it? Not that I want to live in it. I don’t even know what it is. What is this thing, anyway? Wait. I don’t need to know. I’ll just shut up and drive.”
“Is this a promise?”
Except for the clattering of the diesel power plant, the cab of the travel trailer was darkly silent as it rolled out of Albuquerque and headed west.
“All those nice castles,” Remo muttered.
“You are breaking your promise,” Chiun retorted. “What castles?”
“In Boston.”
Chiun stiffened. He and Remo had once dwelled in a Boston castle. It had been their home for years, until an arsonist destroyed it “Explain yourself.”
“I begged you. The Boston Catholics have lawsuits up the yin yang. The archdiocese is selling off real estate at prices so low, they’re insane. We can get a nice old church, rip the guts out and remodel it into a new Castle Sinanju, better than the last one.”