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  "Good," said Remo.

  "Not so good," said Rutherford. "The desilting of the bottom near the sluices is due this month. The whole area is so heavy with silt from the bottom of the lake that our diving gear keeps getting fouled. If only this had happened a month from now we would be okay. Divers are just having no luck in the goo, and if we don't fix those sluice entrances pretty soon, the divers, the diving barge, and everything is going to go along with the dam."

  Remo saw the giant turbines set with metal bolts twice the size of a man.

  "Pretty soon," said Rutherford, "you're going to be able to feel the vibrations. Then they'll continue to build on themselves until . . . boom!"

  "How much time do we have?"

  "A half hour till I clear everyone out of here."

  On top of the dam Remo saw a large sign calling the Grand Booree "America's Pride." It was built during the Depression when a president had to give hope to a nation. It was a symbol as much as it was a stunning technical achievement to keep a river in check and provide electricity.

  Men on the barge were signaling Rutherford with their hands. He had a walkie-talkie on his hip. He pulled out its antennas.

  Remo heard the voice crackle across the airwaves. "Too much silt. Can't work in that much silt. That's what's fouling the diving gear," came the voice.

  "I can work in silt," said Remo.

  "You a diver?"

  "Sure," said Remo.

  "I thought you were an investigator for the government. "

  "Used to be a frogman," Remo lied.

  He wasn't going to let America's Pride go under and he was grateful that Chiun wasn't there to see him do it.

  "Explain to me again what has to be done," said Remo, taking over a diving suit on the barge. The other divers were warning against trying.

  "You'll be buried alive. You can't get down there. It's like a big blanket clinging to your gear: There's nothing but death down there."

  "Shh," said Remo. "I'm trying to understand how that sluice works."

  "It's not the sluice that's a problem. It's the silt," said Rutherford. "If you really want to see something that'll make it simple for you, read this."

  He took a flier out of his rear pocket. It had been folded several times. Over a pale gray sketch of the Grand Booree was a message to concerned citizens. It came from the law firm of Palmer, Rizzuto It decried an age when the lives of people were of little concern to a government bent on aggrandizing its image. It did not matter that the aggrandizing had been done a half-century before. The problem was coming to a crisis point now.

  Because the government had rushed ahead without testing the massive structure, it was vulnerable to vibrations. Just when the vibrations would come, the law firm did not know. Hopefully, the flier stated, this would never happen. But should the vibrations occur, and if the vibrations should be caused by a buildup of silt at the sluices, the only way to stop them was to reach the sluices from the lake side of the dam. And that meant diving. But because of an engineering oversight, the flier continued, the sluice entrances were below, not above, the sluices. And this underwater area was now almost completely obstructed by silt.

  "Absolutely simple," said Rutherford. "If we had put the openings above instead of below, we could get in."

  "Why didn't you?"

  "Why didn't I? Hell. I wasn't born then, and whoever thought there would be a problem today back then?"

  "So I have to get in from below. Okay," said Remo. He stepped into the diving suit, feeling the rubber wet and cold against his skin. He let his mouth breathe for him and then put on the diving mask and tanks.

  He ignored the offer of fins and jumped overboard. On deck the crew noticed something peculiar.

  "Hey, there's no bubbles coming from him."

  "I didn't think he looked like he knew what he was doing," said one diver.

  They waited five minutes, and when they didn't see a bubble they declared him dead. Atop the dam, the sign declaring the Grand Booree to be America's Pride quivered and fell.

  "Vibrations are reaching maximum. It's gonna go. No point waiting for that guy. He's dead. Let's get out of here," said Rutherford.

  "Maybe he's not dead," said one of the divers.

  "And maybe he don't have to breathe either. Let's get out of here. You can even see the vibrations now. "

  Not only had the sign fallen, but across the vast dark lake little waves appeared like the ridges of a giant washboard. Along the shore the trees quivered and dropped their leaves, and down in the darkness of the silt Remo Williams searched for the opening.

  As soon as he was out of sight, Remo took off the mask and rubber suit, allowing his skin to acquaint itself with the cool water. It was not that he stopped breathing. He would never completely stop breathing. Instead he used the technique borrowed from the Indian fakirs, who buried themselves alive for hours at a time. By slowing the rhythms of his body he required less oxygen than an unconscious person. Yet his nervous system functioned at peak efficiency. He knew that his muscles suffered from the reduced oxygen absorption, but it wasn't muscles that made Remo a Master of Sinanju.

  The problem was finding the opening in the silt. At the top, it felt like some strange oil on his body, but farther down it became densely packed like unset concrete. Even farther down it was like moving through settled clay: hard, dense, packed clay. Remo kept his eyes shut and moved along the cement base, pausing every few moments to let his palms press open-fingered against the coarse concrete, trying to distinguish the normal vibrations of the water going through the sluice from those which seized the concrete mass and were obviously growing.

  The plan was to create an opening through an entranceway beneath the sluice. Remo got there and found the metal plate Rutherford had predicted would be there. It had to be moved in one direction or another, and Remo couldn't figure out which. As the vibrations forced him back, Remo cut through the silt once again to reach the plate. Something had to be done with the plate. He sensed the dam might go at any second. Taking the plate in his hands, Remo did what he did to old television sets, whose workings he also didn't understand. He gave it a kick. The only difference was that nowadays he kicked televisions very, very gently.

  The kick was backed up by the weight of all the damned-up water guided by the rhythms of Remo's body. His foot went through the metal like a torpedo. With a muffled sucking sound, the silt was pulled through the hole, creating a rhythm of its own. The turbines stopped, clogged by mud. The dam quivered and the vibrations ceased. But Remo saw too late that it was a trap. Someone had expected him.

  The only thing in the narrow sluiceway between the open air above and the lake itself was Remo Williams-and a small, carefully placed explosive device. When the explosive charge detonated, he was propelled by the force of tons of lake water, shooting out through the sluice like a pea through a straw, the mud behind him and the rocky riverbed below.

  Blinded momentarily by the mud, he almost did the one thing that could get him killed: he started to tighten his muscles against the impact. But his muscles knew better. They had been trained too well by Chiun, and so instead he stretched out like a long strand of silk. As he let the mud and water wash over him, becoming one with the lake and the riverbed, he let the mud behind him absorb the impact of the explosion.

  He moved down the shallow river for about a quarter of a mile and then climbed up the bank. Behind him the dam disgorged mud and water, but not so much as to cause flooding. The dam had stopped vibrating. America's pride had held.

  Along the lakeshore, Calvin Rutherford and the other engineers were reading their meters and cheering. The sluice could be closed and the smashed turbine would be replaced. As a side benefit the powerful current was even desilting the lake, carrying tons downriver. At this rate, they would probably not have to dredge.

  When Chiun saw Remo walk up the road covered with mud, he felt joy that Remo was alive. In an instant he knew his joy was to be fleeting.

  Remo walked in
to the motel room with a big grin. "Well, here I am, little father. Alive."

  "So far," said Chiun. "But I have come to the conclusion we have only one chance."

  "What's the one chance?" asked Remo as he headed for the shower to wash off the mud. Even his pores had breathed it in under the pressure of the water, and his body had to breathe it out again.

  "We must join this Palmer, Rizzuto, and Schwartz, who we are not allowed to kill, and eliminate Smith for them. That is our only way. And it is righteous."

  "How is betrayal righteous?" said Remo, stepping into the shower. He didn't use soap, because soap, which actually burned off dirt with lye, left its fatty residue still burning his skin.

  "It is not we who are betraying, the mad emperor Smith, but he who is betraying us."

  "I thought we worked for him."

  "Assassins are not used as targets. in decent civilized lands, like India, people appreciate a great assassin for what he is. In America he is turned into a palace guard, some local official who investigates things. A catcher of thieves."

  "Detective," said Remo.

  "That," said Chiun.

  "I used to be a cop," said Remo.

  "All this training, the awesomeness of Sinanju, and you are still a cop."

  Remo paused before turning on the water. "Little father. I have not dishonored Sinanju. I have not learned nothing. But you did teach it to an American. So I am an American and I am Sinanju."

  "One cannot be both Sinanju and American, two things at the same time. This is impossible."

  "But I am."

  "Then get rid of the lesser one, or die."

  "Okay," said Remo. "I'll get rid of Sinanju."

  "You can't," said Chiun. "I have trained you. You are Sinanju. You can no more rid yourself of Sinanju than a cloud can forfeit its air, or the sun its light, or the river its water."

  "So I'll stay stuck."

  "You could try ridding yourself of being American. There are two hundred million of those. The world will not mourn the loss of one."

  "You know that's not possible either."

  "Then, my son, you are dead, unless we kill Smith. There is precedence for it. Good precedence."

  "You mean a tale of Sinanju? Which one was it? The Great Wang, and the Ming emperor? Let's see, he pointed out that an assassin never lost a king, so that certainly wouldn't be the Great Wang, or even the Lesser Wang, who did only one assignment, which wasn't all that important anyway. Then we have the middle period when the House of Sinanju worked Asia heavily. Could it have been the gateway to the West, when we served Rome and the caesars who never took our advice? No, I think we worked for Livia, except she was a chronic do-it-yourselfer, if I remember correctly, poisoning people. Then there was the later Western period of Ivan the Righteous, whom the rest of the world called the Terrible but whom we knew as a man of honor who paid on time. "

  "Do not mock the glory of Sinanju? You know perfectly well it was Sayak, during the middle period, a time of prosperity and peace and honor."

  "Wasn't that something to do with a love affair? Some tawdry thing a private detective in America might handle? An unfaithful spouse?"

  "Like a typical American, you remembered the dirt and missed the point. If you remembered the point we would happily join with this firm of lawyers right now and kill Smith. This already has good, solid precedent in the lesson of Master Sayak, who, when faced with death, when faced with a bitter, bitter choice, made the right choice and continued the line of Masters of Sinanju. For there is one thing a Master must know before all else: to continue the line he must not allow himself to be killed. There is nothing any more noble in death than there is something noble about rotting fruit. One does whatever possible to delay that inevitability. Fruit and life." Chiun folded his hands in his kimono and shut his eyes. Remo had learned well the tale of Master Sayak from the histories of Sinanju. As he though about it, he returned to his shower, turning on both the hot and cold water slowly, until a warm, comfort able mixture streamed over his body. Strategically Chiun was not all that wrong. The tale of Master Sayak applied all too well to this situation.

  The more Remo thought about it, the more troubled he became. It appeared Chiun might be right. Killing Smith might be the only way to survive. But did Remo want to survive at that price? What was life worth?

  He wasn't born in Sinanju, where life was a struggle, where pushing it on to old age was a major triumph, especially for an assassin.

  And he was not just a killer. He was Sinanju just as much as he was American, but not more. He let the warm water splash against his face and received the water now as a gentle stream, just as he had received it as an immense force shooting him through the sluice.

  He had been given Sinanju, and it was a trust for the future as much as it was a tool for the present. He let the water touch his body. become one with his body. and tried to forget the tale of Master Sayak.

  Chapter 10

  From the histories of Sinanju: "The Tale of Master Sayak and the Emperor's Concubine":

  And it came to pass, during the masterhood of Sayak, that an emperor of a kingdom west of the middle kingdom of China, on his throne in Rhatpur north of the populated city of Delhi, suffered an affront to his life of such skill and daring that he realized no guards would keep him alive, no soldiers could stay the dagger now aimed at his imperial heart.

  And beseeching Sinanju he sent a courier with a message. "O Master, my empire is held in the grip of a murderer's blade. None of my ministers or captains know how to help. No shield will prove sufficient. Only Sinanju and its glory can sustain my kingdom. Ask but the price and it will be delivered unto you."

  Now, Sayak knew Emperor Mujjipur was the grandson of Emperor Shivrat, who paid well and promptly to the House of Sinanju when seizing the throne from his brother, and Sayak knew that blood often ran true. And the honor of a grandfather was often passed through the blood to the grandson.

  But Sayak had made one mistake. Being Sinanju, he assumed that the problems of a soldier or a minister would not be problems for a Master of Sinanju. So he did not ask about the problems. But when there is a thunderstorm, the wagons of Master and soldier, Master and peasant, Master and courtesan, are all stuck in the same mud.

  And when Sayak presented himself to Emperor Mujjipur in the summer palace of Rhatpur, the emperor gave to him a freedom few emperors would have allowed.

  "To protect my royal life you are given fiat to kill whoever in my kingdom threatens that royal life," said Emperor Mujjipur. "Only one person may you never kill. Only one person's life must at all cost be spared, no matter what the provocation, and that is my beloved concubine, Hareen. No harm may come to her under any circumstance."

  Now, Emperor Mujjipur was an old man, in his middle fifties, and his girth was wide, his breathing heavy, and his life hanging by a thread. And yet in that age men often delude themselves about love, and like boys again believe that whoever they happen to love at the moment is a gem beyond compare. So Sayak did not think this announced protection as anything unusual.

  Besides, in these situations, such announcements are irrelevant. If Emperor Mujjipur had placed such a prohibition on a son or a cousin, then that might have posed a problem, because in these matters, the one who benefits from the removal of the emperor, the one likely to inherit the throne, is usually the one who seeks the ruler's death.

  More significantly, though he had granted his concubine her protection, he had failed to put the empress under that protection. For if he loved this concubine Hareen so much, the queen, out of anger, might possibly have sought Mujjipur's death. Sayak understood the purpose of royal marriages is not sexual but political. Yet he was aware that some empresses felt themselves lovers as well as consorts of their mates. As a Sinanju saying went, all the best planning in the world could get out of hand in a lover's bed.

  Yet this was not the case with the empress, who only laughed when Master Sayak respectfully asked her of her life at court, hoping to find the so
urce of her troubles.

  "We are all doomed because of the emperor's foolishness-me second, assassin, and you first," she said, and would explain no more.

  Sayak knew there was only one way to avert danger and that was, of course, to stop it at the source, which was most simply done at the moment the danger struck. For the most deadly point is also the most vulnerable point.

  And it came to pass that the assassin who had attempted twice before to steal the life of Mujjipur sent another deadly hand against the emperor.

  He was a common strangler of some skills and some strength, but one of insufficient power. Sayak easily took the strangler's rope and put it about the strangler's neck, turning it slowly so that the face purpled and the teeth bared as the strangler struggled for breath, a move designed to injure the mind more than the body. The strangler would know for the first time, firsthand, the suffering he wrought and fear it.

  Naturally it worked, and the strangler said he had been hired by a young captain in the palace quarters of the concubine Hareen. And keeping his promise, Sayak did not put the strangler to death with the rope, but dispatched him with a certain speed that would be welcomed by any of the dying. For it is not the purpose of Sinanju to cause pain. Pain for pain's sake alone is a waste and the mark of a sloppy assassin, and Sinanju would never allow that.

  Knowing the injunction, Sayak formally asked the emperor for permission merely to enter Hareen's quarters.

  "I honor this beauty so much that I allowed as how her quarters were like her kingdom. You must ask her permission," said the emperor.

  But Sayak saw a danger. "Oh gracious Emperor, ruler from the throne at Rhatpur, light unto your subjects, the land you do not control in your own kingdom is land set against you. And land set against you is a danger."

  "Sayak, from Sinanju in the Koreas, you have not seen her soft skin, or her eyes as bright as all the mornings of all the suns of all the universes. You have not seen her smile, or receive your body with her gentle love. You cannot know the rapture of this heavenly creature."