Holy Terror td-19 Read online

  "Joleen," he shouted.

  She looked up. "Daddy," she yelled with happiness.

  Snowy came running toward her, and she threw her arms around him. He tried to hug her back, but the bag of bombed chicken was in the way.

  "Here, pal, take this," he said to Remo, thrusting the bag to him.

  Remo shrugged, took the bag, then opened Larribee's briefcase and stuck the bag inside. He snapped the briefcase shut again.

  "I missed you so much," Snowy said.

  "Me, too, Daddy." She stepped back. "Daddy, I want you to meet the man I love."

  Snowy looked over her shoulder at Remo. Remo shrugged, a who-me shrug. Joleen turned around and waved her hand toward Chiun. "He is my real master," she said, "And I love him."

  "Joleen, honey," said her father. "I love you. You know that."

  She nodded.

  He brought a right hand up and punched her crisp on the chin. The girl collapsed in his arms. "But you ain't marrying no dink." He lifted the girl in his arms and began to walk toward one of the stadium exits.

  "What did that mean?" Chiun asked Remo.

  "That's racism, Chiun," Remo answered.

  "Racism? I thought racism was something to do with baseball."

  "No. He just doesn't want his daughter to marry a Korean."

  "But how will you white people ever improve yourselves if you don't marry up to yellow?" asked Chiun.

  "Damned if I know," said Remo. He and Chiun turned, walking in the direction that Maharaji Dor had stomped out in. But when they reached the ramp, Remo saw Larribee still standing behind the bandstand, looking lost and frightened.

  "I'll catch up to you," said Remo, and he went back to Larribee.

  "Good show," said Remo.

  Frightened, Larribee could only nod.

  "Here's your briefcase. I think you ought to go home," said Remo.

  Larribee nodded again, but did not move. He seemed paralyzed, rooted to the spot.

  "Oh, hell," said Remo. "Come on." He took Larribee's arm and pulled him. toward one of the stadium exits, moving him quickly through the swirls of confused, angry people now anting their way across the stadium playing surface.

  After Larribee was safely in a cab on his way to the airport, Remo slid back through the flow of people to the ramp leading to the maharaji's office.

  Except for the bodies of Dalton and Harrow, the first office was empty. The door to the inner office was closed, but as Remo approached it, the door was flung open. Chiun stood there.

  "Remo," he said. "I am going to Sinanju."

  "I told you, as soon as we're done, I'll try to get it arranged again."

  He moved into the room as Chiun said, "No. I mean I am going now."

  Remo looked at him, then at Maharaji Dor seated behind the desk, then back at Chiun, who said, "I am joining his employ."

  Stunned, Remo was silent a second, then said: "Just like that?"

  "Just like that," said Chiun. "I will have my daytime dramas beamed in by satellite. He has promised. And I can visit Sinanju frequently. He has promised. Remo, you didn't get a chance to really know the beautiful people of India, or to see the loveliness of the Indian countryside." He looked at Remo expectantly.

  Remo looked back, then said coldly: "If you go, you go alone."

  "So be it," said Chiun.

  Remo turned and walked away.

  "Where are you going?" asked Chiun.

  "To get drunk."

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Remo was no longer really a drinker.

  Six bartenders in San Francisco could swear to that.

  In the first bar, he had ordered a shot of Seagram's, and when the bartender brought it, he had raised it to his mouth to slug it down, but the smell had wafted into his nostrils and he could not make himself drink the liquor. He had paid the bartender and left, and next door in another tavern, ordered a beer, and when it came, he had raised it to his lips, but its smell gagged him, and again he paid and left, leaving the drink untouched.

  Four more times he tried, but the Sinanju disciplines were too strong to be broken that easily, that recklessly, and besides over each glass, he beard's Chiun's lecturing voice:

  "Alcohol is for pickling things that are dead. Or people who wish to be."

  Or: "Beer is made from a grain that only cows can consume, and even they need two stomachs to manage the task."

  So instead, Remo walked the night, angry and sad, hoping that someone would try to mug him, preferably an army company, so that he would have a way to work off his fury.

  But no one did, and Remo walked the entire night before returning to his suite, overlooking a golf course near Golden Gate Park.

  He looked around, hoping to see Chiun putter out from the bedroom, but the apartment was empty and echo-still.

  Then the phone rang.

  Remo had it to his ear before the first ring stopped.

  "Good work, Remo," Smith said.

  "Oh, it's you."

  "Yes. Everything seems to be under control."

  "Well, I'm glad. I'm really glad for you," Remo said. "You don't know how glad."

  "Except there's one thing. Larribee was blown up this morning in his car, driving to his home in Washington."

  "Good for him. At least he found a way out of this mess."

  "You had nothing to do with it?" Smith asked suspiciously.

  "No. I just wish I had."

  "All right. By the way, you'll be interested in knowing. That security leak that I thought we had in Folcroft? Well, it turned out to be just an underpaid little computer clerk. Seems he followed the maharaji, and one day just couldn't restrain himself and pumped a message into the computer. Very amusing, but really nothing…"

  "Smitty," Remo interrupted.

  "What?"

  "Go piss up a rope."

  Remo slammed down the telephone. He looked around the apartment again, as if Chiun might have sneaked in while he was on the phone, but the silence was total, overpowering, so strong it rang in his ears, and Remo went over to break the silence, and flipped on Chiun's portable color television set.

  The transistorized set broke instantly into picture and sound. It was the morning news, and an announcer with a smile said:

  "Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor held a press conference this morning in the Holiday Inn in San Francisco and announced that he will never again set foot in America.

  "This came on the heels of last night's highly publicized Blissathon in Kezar Stadium, which turned into a noisy, violent fiasco in which at least three persons died, victims of mob violence."

  The announcer's voice faded and then came film of Dor's press conference, and when Remo saw Dor's fat face with the incipient mustache, he growled, deep in his throat, drew back his right fist, and…

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Remo stopped. There was a tapping on the door. The sound was familiar, as if it were made by long fingernails.

  Remo's face brightened, and he brought his right arm to his face to brush away moisture that he had not realized was there.

  He opened the door. Chiun stood there.

  "Chiun. How are you?"

  "How should I be? I have come for my television set. I didn't want to leave that." He brushed by Remo and entered the room. "See, already you are using it, wearing it out while my back is turned."

  "Take it and get the fuck out," Remo said.

  "I will. I will. But first I had better check it. Not that I think you would steal anything, but, well, one never knows with Americans."

  As Remo watched, Chiun stood alongside the set, laboriously counting the knobs, and then counting them again, and then leaning over the vented back of the set and peering inside to examine machinery that Remo knew he did not understand. Occasionally he went "hmmmm."

  "I should have killed that fat-faced creep," said Remo.

  Chiun snorted and continued his inspection.

  "You know why I let him live?" Remo asked. "Because I knew this time you were serious, and he
was your new employer. And I wouldn't make a hit on your employer."

  Chiun looked up, shaking his head sadly. "You are crazy," he said. "Like all white men. I am sick of whites. That girl was in love with me, and that lunatic with the bag of chicken punched her. And here I thought, it was only baseball that was racist. And Smith. And…"

  "Screw it. I should have finished that frog. If I ever see him again, I will."

  "Typical white thinking. Doing something in such a manner as to cause more harm than good. Do you know that Indians get very upset when Indians die in foreign lands? Particularly rich Indians. And yet you would go ahead, just like that, poof, and kill him. Well, fortunately you will not commit that folly. I have killed him, and in such a way that sloppiness will never be attached to the name of Sinanju."

  Chiun folded his arms and stared challengingly at Remo.

  "But I just saw him alive. On the television set."

  "Nothing ever sinks into the white racist mind. When a hand strikes the right point in the neck, is the person dead?"

  "Yes," said Remo.

  "No," said Chiun. "It means that the person is going to die. He is not dead yet. It takes time for the brain to be disconnected from the rest of the body. Some blows are fast. Some blows are slower, and death takes longer. Like long enough for him to return home to India, before he dies of bad kidneys."

  "I don't believe it," Remo said. "You would have had to make that kind of stroke without his knowing about it."

  "And you are a fool. Have you learned nothing? If a man gets a bump, and then nothing happens immediately that day, he assumes it is healed and was nothing to worry about. You can bump into someone openly and inflict that kind of wound. And in two days there will be no pain, and in two months he will be dead. Any fool could learn that. Any fool but you, that is. Remo, you are a disgrace. A pathetic incompetent desecration of the name Sinanju. I saw you last night using a stone on that Frenchman whose family was trained by my family. A disgrace. A fiasco. Rubbish."

  "But…"

  "That settles it. I cannot leave you at this level of stupidity. More work is needed to bring you to even the lowest level of accomplishment. Much more work. And I am afraid I must be here to supervise it. Such is the burden of the dedicated teacher, who dares to try to train fools to come in out of the rain."

  "Chiun," Remo said, a smile beginning to crease his face. "I can't say… I can't…"

  But Chiun had changed the channel from the news broadcast of Maharaji Dor to an early morning soap opera, and he raised a hand for silence as he stared at the set.

  And Remo was silent, because no one disturbs the Master of Sinanju during his momentary respite of beauty.

  "Practice your breathing," Chiun said. "I will get to you later. And then we can discuss our trip to Sinanju. That is, if you and the other racists have not already forgotten your promise."

  Remo turned to the door.

  "Where are you going?" Chiun asked.

  "To rent a submarine," said Remo.

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