"Stuff it. I'm through with CURE. I don't want to be an assassin or a counterassassin."
"Do not speak that horrid white word in my presence."
"I'm finding myself. After that, I'll take what comes."
Chiun fixed Remo with one steely eye. "You have been taking what came to you all your life. Why show initiative now?"
Remo said nothing.
"You will come with me to the Province of Virgins?"
"Virginia," corrected Remo.
"Good. It is settled."
"Wait a minute! I didn't promise anything. I'm on strike. Besides, it's Memorial Day. A national holiday."
This time Remo actually saw the Master of Sinanju's fingernail arrow toward his forehead. He stepped forward as if to offer himself to the paralyzing nail, then slipped down and out of the way so elegantly the Master of Sinanju had to catch himself before he impaled the white-painted wall of Remo's bedroom.
Recovering, Chiun took his wrists in his hands and let the wide sleeves of his kimono close over them. A tinge of pride suffused his aged mummy face.
"Perhaps not all of my training has been a waste after all," he murmured with a hint of fatherly pride.
ON THE FLIGHT, Chiun was saying, "Listen well. We go to put down a rebellion. It is a difficult thing, being different than a war between nations."
"I don't think a new civil war is breaking out."
The plane sat at the gate at Boston's Logan Airport. Passengers were still coming on board. A potbellied man wearing the full sideburns and blue uniform of the Union Army was boarding.
A stewardess stopped him. "Sir, you'll have to check that pistol." She pointed to his gun-belt holster.
"It is only a replica Dragoon," said the man in an exaggerated New England twang that Remo had never heard spoken on the street-only by comedians playing broad-dialect New Englanders. "It's a blackpowder weapon. Perfectly legal."
"Nevertheless, it constitutes a firearm, and I'll have ask you to check it."
Reluctantly the faux Union soldier surrendered his pistol, gun belt and all. Glum-faced, he made his way down the narrow aisle to take a seat across from Remo and Chiun, gold buttons straining to contain his paunch.
"Looks like another would-be combatant," Remo undertoned.
"Why does he wear the uniform of Napoleon III?" asked Chiun.
"Huh?"
"That uniform. French soldiers who followed Napoleon III wore such uniforms, according to the scrolls of my ancestors."
"Little Father, that's a Union Civil War uniform."
"It is French."
"Maybe it looks French. But I know an authentic Union uniform when I see it. See the blue piping? That means he's infantry."
"If that man is flying to Virginland to fight a war that his people long ago won, he is infantile, not infantry."
"Whatever," said Remo.
The cabin door was secured and turbines began to spool up. Conversation became difficult. They sat in silence as the plane lumbered to the runway, picked up speed and vaulted into the sky over Boston.
When the 727 had leveled out and was hurtling southward, Chiun resumed his lecture. "A war between nations is always about treasure."
"Treasure?"
"Yes. Sometimes it is a treasure one emperor wishes to wrest from the other. Now, this treasure need not be in gold or jewels or wealth. Helen of Troy was a treasure, even if she was but a white Greekling with a crooked nose."
"Helen of Troy had a crooked nose?"
Chiun nodded. "Today it is called a deviated septum. Paris did not know. He would have spent the rest of his days enduring her insufferable snoring."
"You should talk," said Remo.
Chiun snorted and went on. "Even when wars between emperors are not over treasure, but something insignificant, treasure is still at the heart of all such conflicts. For each emperor requires treasure to sustain war. Soldiers must be fed and weapons secured. No one works for free. Even in a war."
"Gotcha. "
"But a civil war is another matter."
"I don't think this is a civil war, Little Father. It's probably just a Memorial Day misunderstanding gone ballistic."
"We will see. For if treasure lurks behind these events, this war will not be what it appears to be."
Remo was looking at the potbellied Union soldier across the aisle. His squashed-down blue service cap grazed the overhead air-conditioning blower. "That uniform doesn't look French to me."
"It is French. I will prove it." Chiun lifted his voice. "Kind sir, what is the name of your cap?"
"It's a keppie."
Chiun allowed himself a self-satisfied smile. "See, Reno? Kepi is a French word. It means cap. You white Americans have created nothing new, but have stolen your ideas from all other lands. Your way of government comes from the Greeks, your dream of empire is very Roman. There is hardly a nation on earth you have not looted of ideas, only to call them American."
"What did we take from the Koreans?" asked Remo, genuinely curious.
"The best years of my life," said the Master of Sinanju, lapsing into injured silence while he monitored the wing on his side of the plane for signs that it was about to tear loose.
Except for the stewardess bringing refreshments and an offer to carry Remo's child, the rest of the flight was peaceful.
Chapter 3
By all rights the Second Civil War should have been snuffed out on the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike before the embers of misunderstanding could ignite a national conflagration.
The governor of Virginia had ordered in the National Guard. The unit that had responded rolled out of Fort Lee, whose grounds abutted Petersburg National Battlefield. They had been on Memorial Weekend maneuvers. No precious response time would have been lost. Their orders were to quell a disturbance the local police could not handle. Armed with modern M-16 rifles, tanks and other implements of twentieth-century warfare, they were easily equal to the task of suppressing a group of weekend warriors equipped with muzzle-loading black-powder muskets.
Except for the unfortunate fact that the National Guard unit mobilized was descended from the legendary Stonewall Brigade. When Captain Royal Wooten Page called his unit to halt, he was prepared for a scene of civil disobedience, if not riot.
Instead, he came upon a scene that stirred his deep pride in his home state and Dixie.
For there by the side of the road stood encamped a regiment of Confederate infantry, standing guard over a field of captured and bedraggled bluecoats. Their motorcycle steeds lay stacked in a sorry pile.
"Well, Ah swan," he said, thinking of great-great-grand-uncle Beauregard E. Page, who had fought at both the First and Second Manassas. "Rest a spell, men," he said in his native drawl, "whilst Ah investigate further."
Approaching the encampment, Captain Page dropped his gun belt and came forward with upraised hands.
A voice called, "Halt! Friend or foe?"
"Ah am and always will be a friend of the uniform you wear, suh, seeing as how Ah am proud to carry forward into the coming century the proud banner of the Stonewall Brigade; What unit do Ah have the honor of approaching?"
"We be the Sixth Virginia Foot. Recreational."
"Then you would know Colonel Rip Hazard"
"Ah would. Ah had the sad duty of burying his noble husk this very morning."
"Colonel Hazard is dead?"
"Gunned down by treacherous blueclads."
"Ah served alongside Colonel Hazard in this very unit."
"And Ah served under him in this proud regiment."
Captain Page was allowed to approach. He shook hands with a rangy individual who wore Confederate gray and muttonchop whiskers.