Remo sat up in bed. "They trained somewhere else and spent one day here, right?"
Joan Hacker shook her head and reached up for Remo to return his body to hers.
"Answer my question first," said Remo.
"No. They teamed in the afternoon, after lunch, and they left that night. Me and a bunch of other students who are liberated served the food and sort of stood guard. We didn't hear what was going on but it was very exciting. And then we heard what they had done."
"Where did you stand guard?"
"By the barge canal. None of us even saw the instructor. We didn't know what they were going to do. But yesterday when all those people came asking questions, we knew it had been traced back here. What's the matter? I felt your shoulders tighten."
"Nothing," said Remo. "Nothing. I'm just overcome by the revolutionary ardor you show."
Remo was overcome all right. By a gnawing suspicion about Smith.
"These people asking questions. Were they police? FBI?"
Joan Hacker shook her head. "Funny kind of people. None of them said they were police. Are you all right?"
"Sure, sure," said Remo. Well, they were CURE people, elements from the vast network who didn't know who they really worked for. Smith hadn't been able to wait. He couldn't wait for the two days it would take Remo to drive cross country. Remo remembered China's admonition, not to worry about Smith, but to continue plying him trade. He also remembered that Chiun had answers to things that stumped western minds. He would ask the Master of Sinanju how a person could be trained in just one afternoon. He would take him to the spot near the river that Joan Hacker had described, and ask Chiun, what had gone on here? And Remo would be shocked by the answer.
"You sure you're all right?" Joan asked again. "Maybe you'd like a little snort?" She pointed to a little metal canister on her end table.
"No," Remo said. "But don't let me stop you. Go ahead and enjoy yourself."
"Thanks," she said. "I will. After all this, I think a little coke would be groovy."
CHAPTER SIX
Chiun did not wish to leave the hotel at night. The northern cold of the Finger Lakes district of New York was too much for a Korean. Thus he stated.
"Sinanju goes to twenty below zero during the winter. You told me that yourself," Remo complained. "And this is spring."
"Ah, but in Sinanju, it is a clean cold."
"I don't understand," said Remo, understanding all too well. The payments for not visiting the birthplace of Barbra Streisand were coming due.
"Your ignorance is not my burden," said Chiun and would say no more. A typical response, thought Remo.
At dawn, Remo asked Chiun if he had anything against dirty mornings. Or did the Master of Sinanju need a clean morning to go with him clean cold before he would leave the hotel?
Chiun refused to descend to pretty bickering and tendentiousness. It was enough that he was going to examine the spot along the canal.
The morning sun over dew-fresh grass was refreshing, so they walked.
"Little Father," said Remo as they crossed an iron bridge over the canal, "I am confused."
"The beginning of knowledge."
"Everything I know about our skills tells me it takes time."
"Much time," said Chiun.
"Is it possible to achieve minimum skills in a day?"
Chiun shook his head. A gentle breeze caught his wispy beard.
"No," he said. "It is not possible."
The bridge blended into a sidewalk, and they moved underneath a row of green budding trees with small houses set on oversized lots on both sides of the street. The fragments of front lawns were muddy. It had rained during the night
"Then how could inexperienced people smuggle a field weapon through a detection device, and learn the use of firearms in a day?" asked Remo. "How could they do such a thing?"
Chiun smiled. "There seems to be a contradiction there, does there not?" he said.
"There does," Remo said.
"There is none," said Chiun, and he explained.
"Once, a long time ago, the House of Sinanju was summoned by an emperor of China, a cunning man, a wealthy man, a man of great perception but no wisdom, of great military victories but no courage. He was, in brief, not Korean in his virtues.
"The emperor requested the services of the House of Sinanju. This was not the emperor who failed to pay for services, but the great, great grandfather of that emperor who one day would commission a Master of Sinanju and not pay, thus depriving the babies of the village of Sinanju of food,"
"Yes, yes, get on with it. I know the story about the emperor who didn't pay for the hit," said Remo.
"It is an important part of any story dealing with China," Chiun said.
"Little Father, I know that the village of Sinanju is very poor, and that it has no crops, and in order to get food for the children and the aged, you hired yourselves out as assassins, and anyone who doesn't pay is really murdering your babies."
"It is a little thing to you. They are not your children."
"That was over six hundred years ago."
"A crime, unlike pain, does not diminish with tune."
"Right," Remo said. "It was a horrible, undiminished crime, and no emperor of China should ever be trusted."
"Correct. But this was his great, great grandfather," Chiun continued. "The emperor had a problem. He wished to wage a very special assault against a king beyond his borders. The palace of the king was on a high mountain. It could not be assaulted by soldiers without great loss. The emperor did not wish to lose many of his fine troops. But he had peasants, more than enough peasants, who in that year of crop failure would starve to death anyway. Could the world's most illustrious and magnificent assassins, the perfection of mankind, the ultimate of what mere mortals might possibly achieve, in brief, could the Master of Sinanju train peasants to assault this castle so that prime troops would not have to be lost?"
"The Chinese emperor called your ancestors the perfection of mankind?" asked Remo incredulously.
"That is the way the story was told to me," said Chiun.
"But you said Chinese emperor is another word for liar."
"Even a liar must tell the truth sometimes.
"The emperor said the special assault must be conducted within the month as the king had planned to move a great treasure out of the palace on the mountain. The ancestor of Chiun thought hard and long. What makes a warrior and what makes a peasant? Is it the eyes? No. All men have eyes. Is it the muscles? No. All men have muscles that can be trained briefly. Then why should it take years to train a good soldier? The Master of Sinanju thought and thought.
"Why was the House of Sinanju superior to all other assassins? What made Sinanju perfection among flaws? What made the House of Sinanju respected and revered throughout the world?"
"The House of Sinanju is known by maybe ten people today, Little Father," Remo said.
"This is the way the story was told to me," said Chiun.
"Then one day, the Master saw a soldier push a peasant off a road. The soldier was slight of build. The peasant was large and strong. Yet the peasant did not strike back. And then the Master knew what he could do, in a very short time. What was different between the peasant and the soldier was the mind. That was the difference. Only the mind. The peasant surely could have slain the soldier but he could not see himself doing it. His mind did not have it.
"So the Master had artists draw pictures of the palace and the mountain. And he gathered the peasants before him and he spoke to them as they looked at the pictures. And as they looked, he had artists draw in their likenesses scaling the mountain, one on another. And he had artists draw in their likenesses killing the king's soldiers. And he talked to them until he had them seeing in their mind that they could do this thing. And at the end they believed that not only could they do this thing, but already had done this thing. And he had them chant together the signals they would hear.