Remo slept too.
He slept until eight a.m., when the telephone next to the bed rang softly.
Who the hell would that be? He picked up the phone and growled, "Yeah?"
"This is the bell captain." a heavily accented voice said. "I was told to tell you when someone arrived."
"Who?" Remo asked.
"An old Chinaman. Named Chiun. He registered last night. His room is on your floor. Room 2527."
"Anybody register with him?"
"No. He was alone."
"Anybody register named Williams?"
There was a pause, then: "No. And there are no reservations in that name."
"Room 2527, you say?"
"Yes."
"Thanks."
Remo hung up. So that's what being a professional killer was like. Getting awakened at all hours of the morning. Next to him, Maggie slept on, and as he watched her, he felt lustful again. He reached a hand out and placed it on her left breast, slowly trailing his fingers over the pink-tipped mound, softly and delicately so as not to wake her.
She smiled in her sleep, and her lips opened, then her teeth came down on her lower lip, sparkling white teeth. There was a sudden intake of breath and her body shook, then she sighed and her limbs relaxed, her teeth slid off her lower lip and she smiled again. Remo smiled to himself. Post-hypnotic orgasm. Maybe he could bottle it. The women of the world would find it irresistible. He'd liberate them all from the evil necessity of needing men's bodies. What the battery-operated vibrator had started, PJ Kenny could finish. Onward and upward. Liberation. Freedom now.
He would have to look into it.
But first, this Chiun.
He slipped out of bed, showered and dressed in slacks, tennis shoes and a blue short-sleeved shirt. He looked at Maggie, still smiling, sleeping in the bed, and then slipped out the door. He got his bearings and headed for Room 2527.
This Chiun was probably a Sumo wrestler. Well, that didn't phase him. After Namu, nothing would.
He stopped outside Room 2527, listening. Inside there was a faint buzzing sound. He listened again. It was someone humming. He reached out and touched the doorknob and slowly turned it. It was unlocked, and he turned the knob all the way, then pushed the door open slowly.
He stood in the doorway, looked into the room and smiled.
Kneeling on the carpet, next to the bed, his back to Remo, was a tiny wisp of an Oriental. Even from the back, the man who thought he was PJ Kenny could see he was aged and delicate. He could not have weighed a hundred pounds, and more likely, his weight matched his age which Remo would put at eighty.
The old man knelt there, his head lifted, eyes apparently fixed on a window of the room, his hands folded in his lap, and Remo stepped inside the room and softly closed the door. The chink probably hadn't heard him enter. He slammed the door shut. But there was still no movement from the chink, no sign that he had heard. If it were not for the humming, a tuneless chanting sound, Remo would have thought he was dead. But he wasn't dead. Deaf. That was it. The old man was deaf.
Remo spoke.
"Chiun," he said.
The old man rose to his feet, in one smooth motion, and turned to face the man at the door. The parchment face creased into a small smile.
And the man at the door said: "Where's Remo Williams?"
The room must be electrified for sound so he cannot speak, Chiun thought. He shrugged.
"Don't give me that, chink. Where's Williams?"
Remo did not speak that way to Chiun even in jest, and
Chiun said: "You speak that way to the Master of Sinanju?"
"Sinanju? What is that? A suburb of Hong Kong?"
Chiun looked hard at the man who had Shiva's face and Shiva's vibrations but was strangely unlike Shiva, and he thought to speak in anger, then he thought to remain silent. He would wait.
The man at the door took another step into the room. He was balanced on the balls of his feet and his hands had risen slightly toward his hips. It was the prelude to attack, and Chiun did not want him to attack.
He had come to love the destroyer he had created; he had come to a grudging respect for the country which paid his wages.
But he was the Master of Sinanju, and a village depended upon his life. He loved Remo, but if Remo attacked, Remo would die. And in that secret part of his heart, where he kept a love he never spoke, Chiun would die too. And he knew that never again would he create a destroyer.
The man who thought he was PJ Kenny sized up the old man. His brain told him to move in, to throw one blow, and it would all be over. He was too big, too young, too strong. His brain told him that.
But his instinct told him something else. It called something from deep inside his memory and he remembered a voice once telling him that "one should consider the bamboo. It is neither thick nor sturdy. Yet, when come the winds that fell the trees, the bamboo laughs and survives."
This old man in front of him was the bamboo. He could feel the vibrations; they were strong and strange, and he knew the old man felt them too, that those vibrations would add up to a fight that PJ Kenny would never forget. If he survived it.
He rocked up onto his toes. Then he heard a sound behind him, and he wheeled and faced the door, somehow totally unconcerned about any need to protect his back against the old man. The door pushed open and Maggie stepped in.
She was wearing a light blue dress with nothing under it, and Remo took her by the shoulder.
"I thought I told you to wait."
"I was worried," she said.
"There's nothing to worry about. Now go back to the room." He moved to usher her out and he felt her small shoulder bag slap against her leg. There was more weight in it than there should be; he gauged the weight as just about the right amount for a .32 calibre automatic.
He marched her out into the hall and called over his shoulder, "You wait here, mister." Remo walked Maggie back to the room and pushed her inside roughly. "Now you wait here, this time," he said, and his voice allowed no appeal.
He slammed the door angrily behind him and started back down the hall to Room 2527. He wondered if the chink would still be there, and somehow he knew the chink would be there.
He was there, standing still as a statue, waiting, the wisp of smile playing around his mouth. Remo closed the door behind him and suddenly was moved by pity for the old man. He was so old.
"All right, old man, you're coming with me," Remo said.
"And where are we going?"
"That's none of your business. But when your friend Williams finds out, he'll come after you. And then I've got you both."
"You have always been a master of logic," the old man said. He smiled, remembering that beautiful passage in the Western Bible where God orders Abraham to kill his son.
Chiun was not Abraham; he would not have refused. He was glad that the Gods had heard his prayers and that he would not have to kill Remo.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In the lobby, Remo steered Chiun through the phalanxes of gunmen and bodyguards, who looked at the unlikely pair with curious eyes.
Since last night, some of them had obviously gotten word that PJ Kenny was in the hotel and some surmised that this dude in the tennis shoes might be him, because they took great pains to avert their eyes and look elsewhere when Remo and Chiun passed.
The old man allowed himself to be led quietly outside, which was good for him, Remo told himself. Remo got behind the wheel of the Porsche and began driving off toward the edge of the city and the road that twisted up to Nemeroff's castle.
Next to him, Chiun chuckled.
"What's so funny, old man?"
"It is a lovely day for a drive. I thought we might go to the zoo."
"If you think this is a pleasure trip, you're in for a surprise," Remo said. "As soon as Williams comes for you, zzzzt. The two of you get it."