"Who?" asked Remo.
"The assassin. There's nothing more cowardly than an assassin. What would make a person do such a cold-blooded thing?"
"Search me," said Remo uncomfortably. "Maybe he was a professional."
"As if that were an excuse," she sniffed. "Scum is Scum."
"Look," Remo said angrily, "I don't feel like talking to a total stranger just now, okay?"
The woman reached out and patted Remo's hand sympathetically, cooing, "I understand. You're upset. We're all upset."
Remo stood up and changed seats. Another total stranger sat beside him and asked the latest news. Without replying, Remo changed seats again.
Everywhere he sat, the word "assassin" was hissed in bitter tones.
They called the flight, and after the plane was airborne, Remo left his seat over the wing and took an empty one in the rear of the cabin where he could get away from the incessant talk of assassination.
In more than twenty years working for CURE, Remo had had his problems with working for CURE. Sometimes America didn't seem salvageable. Sometimes the man in the White House wasn't worth fighting for, either.
Many times before, Remo had gotten disgusted with everything and quit. He had always come back. Now he was convinced he had come to the end of the line.
He had given CURE too many years of his life. It was time to move on.
But to what? He hadn't given it much thought, but as he looked out at the unrolling Florida landscape, he wondered what place he would have in the world.
His only trade-if that was what one could call it-was in being an assassin. Remo could never go back to being a cop. He still liked the idea of going after the bad guys, but there was too much red tape now. He could never play by the rules again.
Being an assassin was something Remo had grown comfortable with. Strictly speaking, he never thought of himself as an assassin the way Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan were assassins. They were nut loners. Remo was a consummate professional.
The first time the Master of Sinanju had told Remo that he was being trained in the ultimate assassin's arts, Remo hadn't thought of Sirhan Sirhan. He had thought of James Bond. A cool, capable guy who slides in and out of dangerous situations dealing with the bad guys no one else could touch.
That was certainly what they seemed to be training him for.
When it finally sank in that the Master of Sinanju was an assassin in the traditional sense of the word, Remo had been troubled. Growing up, he had learned to despise the word. Kennedy. Then King. Then another Kennedy.
"I don't want to be an assassin," he had told Chiun so very long ago.
"I am offering you the universe, and you decline?"
"I'm definitely declining."
"No white has ever before been offered Sinanju."
"Sinanju, I'll take. The assassin's belt I pass on."
"Belt! Sinanju does not wear belts. And you cannot separate the art from the result. You are Sinanju. Therefore, you are an assassin. It is a proud tradition."
"Not in this country. Here 'assassin' is a dirty word."
"When the songs detailing your glorious exploits reach the far corners of this benighted land, the word will be exalted."
"You're not listening. Assassins are murderers."
"No. Murderers are murderers. Assassins are artists. We are physicians of death. If there is a problem vexing a nation, we remove it like a cancer. If a ruler is surrounded by intrigues and pretenders, we cleanse his castle."
"You sound like a roach exterminator."
"Upright roaches only," Chiun had said. "There are standards."
"What if he's being stalked by an assassin?" Remo had challenged.
"Doesn't matter who."
"It matters very much who. If someone is being stalked by a rival house of assassins, the clumsy ninja for example, or a low poisoner, we will eradicate this vermin."
"What if he's being stalked by a Master of Sinanju?"
Chiun had beamed at that question. "Then he deserves to die."
"Why?"
"Because he hired cheap help to guard his throne while his enemies hired the best. Us."
"In other words, we work for the highest bidder."
"No, we work for the richest thrones. They deserve the best. All others deserve scorn for not hiring us, and death if their enemies do."
"Sounds like blackmail!"
Chiun had shrugged. "You will come to see it differently when you learn to breathe with your entire body."
Remo had learned to breathe with his entire body, thus liberating the unused portions of his mind. He had become a Master of Sinanju capable of feats of skill, strength and speed ordinary humans only read about in comic books.
In time he came to understand Chiun, last Master of Sinanju, and the five-thousand-year tradition of the House of Sinanju, which had hired out its best to the thrones of the Old World so that the village, on the rock-bound coast of the West Korea Bay, could eat. Especially the children.
But nowhere over the decades did Remo ever think of himself as an assassin the way the screwballs who murdered Presidents did.
But as the 727 winged north to the District of Columbia, he began to wonder. If he left the service of America, would Chiun leave, too? And if Chiun left, would he install Remo as sole heir to the village, and go to work for some foreign nation?
Would Remo go? And if that nation gave the order to snuff the US. President, what would Remo do?
It all came down to one simple question. Deep down, who was Remo Williams?
It was a question that had been bothering him more and more these days.
It had all started with a mission to Tibet, where he had had the worst case of deja vu on record. And he'd never been to Tibet before. Chiun, who had for years been convinced that Remo was the reincarnation of a Hindu god called Shiva the Destroyer, claimed that Remo was merely remembering his ancient home.
After that he had gone to visit the grave with his name on it. A ghostly woman had appeared to him and told him to seek out her own grave. She had given Remo a few cryptic clues and promised that finding her grave would reveal his father.
Remo, whose first view of his mother had been as a phantom at his own grave site, had never known neither his father nor mother. That quest was all that kept him with CURE for now. Smith had promised to help in the search. But with the CURE computers crippled, it looked to be a long process.
Remo was determined to see it to the end, wherever it led.
After that he would sort out his future. If he had one.
As the plane circled Washington National, Remo's sharp eyes made out a big blue-and-white 747 on approach to Andrews Air Force Base, the great seal of the President on its flank. Air Force One, bearing the honored fallen.
He thought back to that bleak November day in 1963-the last time a dead President had been brought home for burial-and he didn't feel good about himself at all.
Then the airline captain's voice came over the PA system.
"The White House has just announced that the President of the United States is about to land at Andrews Air Force Base, and that he is in good health. I don't know what it's all about, folks, but considering the alternative, I think I'll take the good news at face value."
Spontaneous applause rippled through the passenger cabin.
In the rear Remo wondered what the hell was going on. He'd seen the President gunned down just like the rest of America.
Chapter 9
Not until Air Force One lumbered off Runway 22 Left on spooling engines and banked south over the Atlantic did the head of the White House Secret Service detail allow himself the luxury of tears.
He was a big man, with the wide shoulders of a linebacker and a face composed of smooth ledges and ridges that looked strong without the aviator-style sunglasses and indomitable with them clapped over his eyes. He had served through three administrations and had not lost a man. Until now.