Remo had always thought the first Castle Sinanju, which was itself a converted church, was as ugly as sin. Still, it had been home for longer than any other place since he and Chiun began working together, and he missed it.
“I have no wish to live again in the city of beans and bad drivers,” Chiun said. “Besides, there were Vietnamese in the neighborhood. And Japanese.”
“You drove them all out eventually,” Remo added.
“In this mobile castle we may set up house in any place, then depart again if we sense unsavory neighbors.”
“Where you gonna park this in L.A.?”
“You shall park it,” Chiun said dismissively.
Remo was going to decline the offer, then considered the alternative. Briefly his mind’s eye saw the old Korean behind the wheel of the travel trailer on the streets of Los Angeles. “For the good of Southern California, I’ll park it.” He sighed. “Now, where did this light come from? It wasn’t there a second ago.”
Chiun ignored Remo and the new dashboard blinker.
“Now it’s beeping,” Remo said. “Why’s it beeping?”
“Chiun snapped the blinking, beeping device off the dashboard and jettisoned it into the desert.
“Hey, what if that was the oil gauge or something?” Remo demanded.
“It was a radar detector,” Chiun explained wearily.
“Huh?”
“You are driving at more than 100 miles per hour.” As if to bear him out a pair of flashing emergency lights blossomed a mile behind them.
“How’m I supposed to know that?” Remo demanded. “Is there even a speedometer on this thing?”
Chiun tapped the dashboard LCD that read 167.
“Your swollen white digits reset the display to kilometers per hour when you started the vehicle.” Chiun touched the glass, where Remo was certain there wasn’t even a button, and the 167 transformed to a 101 miles per hour and dropping.
“Criminy. Think I can lose the trooper?”
“Please do not try to lose him in my new home. What if you killed the last great Master of Sinanju and were forced to live out your existence with this enduring shame?”
Remo pulled over and the trooper parked behind him, emerged and strode up alongside the travel trailer with deliberately heavy steps. Remo grinned, trying to look friendly.
“Evening, Trooper. I deserve a ticket. Please give it to me.”
The trooper’s suspicions notched up. “What are you driving here, son?”
Remo had enough of people calling him son, but he ignored it. “I have no idea. All I know is she’s as big as a house and she steers like an overloaded river barge.”
“Okay, then, I will tell you what you’re driving there, son. What it is, is a circa-1954 thirty-foot Airstream Sovereign of the Road. That’s what she started out as, anyway. Somebody made her all pretty and new again, added a whole new heavy-duty suspension by the looks of it. Then I guess whoever it was sawed off her front end and stuck on that there flexible hallway thingy to attach it on the back of this-here SUV. Then it looks like the somebody nickel-plated the SUV and polished it all up to match the Airstream. An amazing piece of work. One of a kind. Worth a couple hundred grand easy. Even more amazing that you don’t seem to know jack about it”
Remo shrugged. “Not mine.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“It’s his.”
The trooper rose up on his toes, giving him a view of the passenger, who stared straight ahead. “That a real man or’s he taxidermied?”
“My father. He’s antisocial. This camper, whatever it is, belongs to him. He commissioned it from a dealer who restores vintage RVs. We just took delivery.”
“But, son, this ain’t restored. It’s mutated.”
“I had no say in the matter. Please give me the ticket so I can get back on the road.”
Chiun sighed heavily and slipped out the passenger door, unnoticed by the trooper.
“I don’t like folks telling me how to do my job, son.”
“Fine, Dad. Give me a ticket or not. You decide.”
“What if I decide to haul you in, smart boy?”
Remo knew there were good, honest cops out there. There were also some belligerent cops who liked the power that came with the badge more than they liked serving and protecting the citizens. This one was strictly in the second category.
Remo smiled.
‘What’s so funny, son?”
“My lips are sealed.”
“You’re acting mighty suspicious, son.”
“He is always this way,” called Chiun, now back in the passenger seat. “All of life is just one entertainment after another to him. My son, he is a jokester.”
“A joker?” the trooper asked.
“He laughs at other people’s mistakes.”
“So why is he so damn overjoyed now, old man? You trying to say I made some sort of mistake?”
Remo flicked his eyes to the rear. The trooper glanced back just in time to witness his car roll backward off the road and into a ravine with a crunch. All that was left to see were the headlight beams aiming up into the stars.
“See? You would have let the obstinate constable fine you,” Chiun chided as they pulled away from the trooper, who shouted for them to come back or be arrested. “You need me to save you from yourself.”
“I get along without you for days at a time, Chiun.”
“Still.”
“What are you talking about, anyway? Are you threatening to leave me because I’m on strike?”
“Masters of Sinanju do not go on strike.”
“I do.”
“Masters of Sinanju honor their contracts.”
“We’ve been over this so many times I’m sick of it. I’m on strike, or I quit, whatever you want to call it Until I get my contract renegotiated, I’m out of the picture. CURE can get along without me.”
After many miles they heard cars coming toward them fast, and Remo pulled into the desert to avoid being spotted. The convoy of troopers, without their emergency lights, tore down the highway. A few stragglers were probing off the road for hiding vehicles. They were too far off to be spotted. Chiun said, “Will you tell me yet why we’re going to California?”
“Job interview.”
“You seek employment with the terminating iron pumper? Working for governors is beneath the dignity of a Master of Sinanju. Another bad choice, Remo Williams.”
“Maybe not. I read somewhere that California had a bigger economy than most of the nations on Earth. And Ahnuhld’s never going to sit still for just being governor. He’s going to want to be President Anyway, it’s not him I’m trying to get a job with and it’s not assassin work I’m applying for.”
“What then?” Chiun demanded. “All other occupations are beneath you.”
Remo refused to say. He enjoyed putting Chiun in the position of not knowing what they were up to. Chiun did it to Remo constantly. The problem was that Chiun, while he could dish out the silent treatment, couldn’t take it. Remo knew that the old Master would lose patience and demand to know what Remo was keeping from him. Remo couldn’t withstand an assault from Chiun.
No human could.
“I will tell you about Master Yeou Gang,” Chiun said after much time had passed. “He is known as Yeou Gang the Fool.”
“No, he’s not. He’s known as Yeou Gang. There’s no ‘Fool’ after his name.”
“You pretend to know the history of all the Masters?”
“Of course not, but I’ve done my homework. I know a lot of names, even if there’s nothing particular worth knowing about some of the Masters,” Remo said. “There’s about a thousand of them, and most of them were just your average, run-of-the-mill Master of Sinanju. That’s the point.”