By Eminent Domain td-124 Read online

  Remo scowled at her. "No one's killing anyone, okay?" he snapped. He had reached a decision. Anna shook her head. "There is no other way, Remo," she insisted logically.

  Remo reached for her. With the edge of his thumb he brushed away a single tear.

  "That's the problem with people in your business, Anna," he replied. His voice was soft in a way she had not heard in years. "All logic, no imagination."

  The thrill of his touch and the warmth in his tone lasted only as long as it took Remo to stab his finger into a knot of nerves at her jawline just behind her ear. But for Anna Chutesov, it was enough to feed an eternity of longing for something neither of them could ever have.

  And then the lights went out, and she collapsed into the arms of the only man she'd ever loved.

  Chapter 38

  The president of the Commonwealth of Independent States felt the wet spot on his pillow when he rolled over in his sleep. When he opened his tired eyes, he found that he was face-to-face with one of his Institute bodyguards.

  Although the man's head shared the Russian president's pillow, the rest of his body was nowhere to be seen.

  Screaming, the president threw himself out of bed. The jostled head of the Institute man rolled out behind him, thudding to the bare wood floor.

  "Murderers!" the Russian president yelled. "Pavel, I need help! Anyone!"

  "You are beyond help," said a squeaky singsong voice.

  Still seated on the floor, the president wheeled around.

  A tiny figure in a brocade kimono stood near the door of the small Kremlin apartment.

  "Russia has been beyond help ever since it abandoned its czar and entrusted its future to a gaggle of troublemakers with pitchforks," the old Korean concluded.

  The two previous presidents of Russia stood with Chiun, one on either side. The more recent one seemed oblivious to what was going on. Dazed from drink, he stood reeling in his nightshirt. The other former president no longer wore his hat. For the first time, the present president of Russia saw the hateful expression that had been tattooed over the bald man's birthmark and around his head.

  In the Master of Sinanju's slender fingers were five lumpy bundles.

  Somehow in death the eyes of his Institute protectors seemed to stare disapprovingly at the president of Russia. Their condemnation was reflected in the hazel eyes of the wizened Asian.

  Chiun dropped the heads.

  "How fitting that you should hide here," the Master of Sinanju sniffed as he looked unhappily around the drab room. "The cheapskate who once lived here tried to hire my father. It does not look like they have painted it since then."

  "These are Lenin's quarters," the president insisted, still trying to come to grips with what was happening.

  "That was his name," Chiun nodded. "Another Russian who didn't want to pay the House."

  The old man took a step toward the president. Pushing up, the president fell back from the terrible apparition. His hand dropped into the blood puddle on his pillow.

  "What do you want?" he asked, his voice quavering.

  Chiun's eyes became penetrating hazel lasers.

  "I am going to make you an offer you cannot refuse," the Master of Sinanju said coldly.

  Chapter 39

  Remo caught up to Chiun at the boarding gate of the Moscow airport.

  "If this is the last time I have to smell Russia for ten years, I'll die a happy man," Remo said, falling in beside the wizened Asian. "So how'd it go with their president?"

  "He has listened to reason," Chiun said simply.

  "How costly is reason, dead-body-wise these days?"

  "The last six Sinanju thieves are no more," Chiun replied. "There were also a few Kremlin guards along the way. Not very many-I know you and Smith do not like that. Oh, and one of their presidents. Retribution demanded it."

  "Current one or stain-head?"

  "Neither. It was the rum-soaked one in between." Remo tipped his head, considering.

  "That's probably okay," he said. "Smitty wouldn't want us to ice the one they've got now, and I invested too much time in tattooing chrome dome's head."

  Chiun fussed with the hem of his sleeve. "Not that I will receive any credit," he sniffed. "Knowing the Russians, they will say he died of a cold or heart failure. I suppose I will have to take comfort in the tribute they agreed to pay for their stolen lessons."

  Remo was hardly listening. "What are they paying you in, rubles or turnips? 'Cause if it was up to me, I'd take the turnips."

  The old Korean noted his pupil's distracted tone. He raised a thin eyebrow as he looked up at Remo. "What about the woman?" he asked. There was a hint of paternal concern in his hazel eyes.

  Even though Remo knew the question would come, he still dreaded having to answer.

  "I didn't kill her, Little Father," he admitted. "By the sounds of it, Anna was bamboozled into all this by the pinheads who run this dump of a country. And, I don't know, this could have been partly my fault for the way I left it with her at the end years ago. So I just gave her the Sinanju amnesia thing. I ditched the bodies of the guys I killed at the place she works, and I trashed the tapes of us and threw them in the river. When she wakes up, she goes back to being an adviser to the president with no memory of us. And who knows, maybe someday she'll come in handy for us in a pinch.

  "And before you carp at me for defying a billion years of Sinanju tradition, don't forget I'm gonna be Master someday, and I've got this big prophesied future as the herald of some new golden age for the House, so maybe this is part of it. Maybe I'm supposed to be the guy who starts a kinder, gentler House of Sinanju. So there, that's it. You can start yelling at me now."

  Chiun remained silent, allowing Remo to blurt out everything he needed to say. When his pupil finally stopped talking, the old man frowned skeptically.

  "A kinder, gentler Sinanju?" he asked blandly.

  "Yeah," Remo replied. "Well, maybe not. Guess we'll just have to wait and see."

  "I pray I have passed into the Void long before I have to witness such a time," Chiun said. Hands sought opposing wrists within his kimono sleeves.

  Remo was glad when he didn't press the point further. He stuffed his hands deep in his pockets. The line began moving toward the gate.

  "None of this is easy like it used to be, Little Father," he said. "Everything's complicated these days."

  "Your life is changing," Chiun said. "Perhaps what you need now is an island of stability in the storm of your life." His hands reappeared from his sleeves. The old man began reading one of his real-estate pamphlets.

  Remo shook his head firmly. "No house in Maine," he insisted.

  Chiun shrugged. "In that case you figure out where to put the treasure I extorted from these godless, thieving Russians. We are running out of room back home."

  Nose deep in his brochure, he passed through the gate.

  Standing in line behind the old Korean, Remo didn't know whether he should laugh or cry.

  Epilogue

  She was called Sonmi.

  No one in the village knew much about her. She was from one of the older families. But since none had moved into the village in many generations, they were all members of the older families by now.

  Her mother had died giving birth to her more than seventy years ago. Her father had died only recently. Some said the old man was a powerful shaman. All in the village stayed away from him and his daughter. When he died, only Sonmi wept.

  On this day, as the cold sun peeked above the eastern horizon, old Sonmi picked her careful way down the rocky shore. A small fishing boat of fine Egyptian cedar was tied to a wood post. Sonmi unhooked the rope and climbed aboard.

  It took a long time to row. Her withered arms were sore by the time she made it far enough out into the bay.

  From a pouch on the belt of her coarse dress she produced some blessed herbs. She scattered them upon the black water, reciting the mystical chants passed down to her from her father and his father before him.
/>   Once she was done, she stood at the edge of the wobbling boat and jumped overboard. The cold waters of the West Korean Bay accepted her body with barely a splash.

  Beyond the empty boat, across the bay and up the rocky shore, the village of Sinanju where the dead woman Sonmi had lived all her life, stirred awake.

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