Father to Son td-129 Read online

  Dilkes stopped before a big cave mouth. "In there," he said, pointing.

  "Wait here," Remo ordered.

  He turned for the caves, but Dilkes stopped him. "Master of Sinanju, I beg for mercy," Benson Dilkes said. "I was retired. I wouldn't even be involved in this if I hadn't been invited to try to kill you." As he spoke, his eyes strayed to Harold W. Smith.

  "Let me guess," Remo said to Smith and Chiun. "America had to field a contestant, as well."

  Chiun remained impassive. Smith fidgeted uncomfortably.

  "It was against my better judgment," Smith offered.

  Remo turned to Dilkes. "You already cash the check?" Dilkes nodded. "Good." Remo planted his fist so deep in Benson Dilkes's head the others caught a glimpse of daylight before the assassin dropped to the ground. "Try to get the money back now," he said to Smith.

  Alone, Remo ducked inside the cave.

  For the next several minutes there issued terrible breaking sounds from inside. When Remo finally emerged back in sunlight, he was surrounded by Korean faces.

  There were men and women, old and young. For the first time in days, the entire population of Sinanju stumbled out into daylight. They blinked against the glare as they began trudging back to Sinanju.

  The last one out was an old woman.

  Hyunsil, daughter of Pullyang, fell to her knees at Chiun's feet, kissing his kimono hems and giving thanks to the Master for liberating the villagers. None of the other villagers offered so much as a word of thanks, which wasn't a surprise to Remo. With their legendary ingratitude, he would have been disappointed in them if they had.

  "The praise is not mine to accept, child," Chiun said, gathering the old woman up from the ground. "For it is not I, but my son who deserves our gratitude. Furthermore, the Master's House needs a new caretaker for when we are away. You would honor us to assume the duties of your father."

  "The honor is mine, O Master," Hyunsil said. And bowing with great reverence, she headed back to the village.

  "Okay, just FYI here," Remo announced once the villagers were gone. "The Time of Succession is officially over for me. I smelled a hundred different stinks from a hundred different nationalities in that cave. I'm gonna have Kim's tin soldiers bag them up and ship them back to wherever they came from. If this doesn't impress the leaders of the world, I don't know what will."

  He didn't give time for argument. Turning on his heel, he headed for the village. Smith and Howard followed.

  Only Chiun lingered. Eyes trained on a distant hilltop, he padded in thoughtful silence after the others.

  Chapter 35

  The investiture of a new Master of Sinanju was by tradition a quiet affair. The retiring Master and Master-to-be stood on the steps of the House of Many Woods to face the gathered villagers and pledge support in life and death. Remo and Chiun recited the memorized speeches that had been passed down from generations of Masters of Sinanju.

  Harold Smith and Mark Howard had been permitted to witness the occasion. It was the first time since Kublai Khan that a foreigner was allowed to observe the ancient rite.

  Children threw cloth flower petals at the feet of the Masters. An ancient song extolling all the dead Masters was sung. After, Chiun beat a gong three times, completing the symbolic transfer of authority to the new Master.

  Afterward it was the people who celebrated. The Master and his teacher didn't join in the raucous festivities. This was as it always was, for the lives of the Masters of Sinanju were spent apart from the villagers.

  Throughout the ceremony, Mark Howard and Harold Smith maintained a respectful silence, sensing the weight of tradition hanging heavy in the air. When it was all over, Smith shook Remo's hand.

  Though unseen, the North Korean army was still nearby. At Remo's order they were up the shore carrying the bodies of the dead assassins from the caves. Despite CURE security concerns, it seemed right that Smith be present for this. They had all been through so much together over the years.

  "Congratulations, Remo," the CURE director said, a thin smile on his lemony face. "And to you, Master Chiun."

  He offered a bow. With his assistant Smith went to await the submarine that would take them both home. From the front of the Master's House, Remo and Chiun watched the activity in the village.

  "I take back what I said about that smelly Russian swami, Little Father," Remo said once they were alone. "He was right after all. The Dutchman was so nuts he thought he was two people. As far as he was concerned, two Masters of Sinanju did die. I guess that's what Assmuffin meant."

  "Yes," Chiun said vaguely. "Go inside, Remo. Your skin must be taken care of. I have a poultice that should help. Lie down while I go collect some seawater to mix with it."

  Remo didn't argue. The truth was, he was exhausted. He could use some shut-eye.

  As Remo went inside, Chiun headed down the front path.

  The old Korean's gaze was trained once more on the rocky hill that sat in the shadow of the Horns of Welcome above Sinanju. And on the small man who sat cross-legged watching the activity from his lonely perch.

  FROM HIS MOUNTAIN vantage point he watched the celebrations through bitter, hate-filled eyes.

  This was supposed to have been the end. The destruction of the village, the murder of the last two Masters of this false New Age.

  He had come back from death to witness the destruction. To watch the House fall and the village burn.

  But the last hope had failed. When the people returned to the village, he watched them stomp the body of the dead white Master to a flat sack of broken bones before throwing the trampled remains into the cold water of the bay.

  There was dark power in that boy. But it wasn't enough. Nor were the summoned Armies of Death. He could see what was left of them even from this distance. They were being carted away by the men who had arrived in the wheeled metal beasts.

  Sinanju lived. In the people, in the village, in the five-thousand-year-old tradition. In its newest Master. Atop his mountain, the Lost Master, who had been reborn only to fail, hung his head in disgrace. He sat with his shame for a long time before a voice broke his solitude.

  "I will tell you a tale." The Lost Master looked up.

  Chiun stood with him on the flat mountaintop, a figure of ancient wisdom. He padded silently over, sitting down before the Forgotten One.

  "It is a tale of the earliest days of the New Age," Chiun continued. "It happened after Master Hung of the Old Order had died, leaving no heir. The Great Wang went out into the wilderness, only to return with a vision for a new future for this village." He held a hand out to Sinanju.

  The celebrations below continued.

  "When Wang returned and found the other night tigers fighting among themselves to see who would succeed Hung, Wang did proclaim that he had discovered the Sun Source. As proof he did use his newfound skill to slay the quarreling night tigers, establishing that from that day forward there would only be one Master and pupil per generation.

  "And the bodies of the dead Wang did order brought to the bay, where they were sent home to the sea.

  "But when the time came to collect the last body, the villagers were shocked to find that breath still clung to it.

  "Wang knew well this last night tiger. Knew him as a creature of jealousy and hate. From a lesser family was this still-breathing night tiger-a family to whom magic and black arts were well-known.

  "And this lesser Master and dying night tiger did spit at Wang from where he lay on the damp shore. Though the fire in his eyes was slowly winking out, it burned still, and in his dying moments he did find strength to speak, and he did say, 'You are undeserving of the title Master of Sinanju, Wang the Impostor. You build this new era on a foundation of fraud and so, like you, all who follow you will be illegitimate. Although I will be sent to the sea this day, I will not accept my place in the Void.' And turning to the villagers he did cry, 'Listen to me, people of Sinanju! You have joined with Wang and will therefore suffer with him. I place on the heads o
f you and your descendants a curse. The Curse of true Sinanju. When comes the end of my bloodline, will also come the day of judgment for this New Age of Wang. Hatred fuels vengeance. I will have my day.'

  "With that, he died."

  On the mountain, Chiun grew silent.

  The Lost Master tried to speak. It had been a long time. The voice was a pained rasp.

  "My family plotted vengeance for uncounted years," said the Forgotten One. "This was to be the age. Your nephew, his protege, the death of my last living ancestor. The curse was now. Everything was right for success."

  And Chiun did shake his head sadly. Great sympathy did he feel for this pathetic soul who had wasted eternity on a plot that was doomed to fail from the very start.

  "If you had only clung to life a little more, your dead ears would have heard the rest, Forgotten One," Chiun replied. He resumed the tale.

  "And Wang did accept the curse of the Lost Master. And he did offer a prediction. 'One day there will be a Master of Sinanju who will find among the barbarians in the West one who was once dead. This Master will teach the secrets of Sinanju to this pale one of the dead eyes. He will make of him a night tiger, but the most awesome of night tigers. He will make him kin to the gods of India and he will be Shiva, the Destroyer. And this dead night tiger whom the Master of Sinanju will one day make whole will himself become the Master of Sinanju, and a new era will dawn, greater than that which I am about to create.'"

  Chiun raised his head proudly. "That age is here." The Lost Master hung his head, allowing the words to penetrate deep. When he at last looked up, there was tired acceptance in his weary, bloodshot eyes. "I allow death to claim me, son of Wang," he said. And with a whoosh that stirred the soft hair over Chiun's ears, the spirit of evil that had afflicted an entire family for generations slipped from the frail old body.

  With the Forgotten One no longer animating it, the corpse fell to one side. It was cold to the touch. As if it had been dead for many months.

  In death the body looked once more like Sonmi, aunt of Nuihc, last of the bloodline of the Lost Master, whose drowning death had given the Forgotten One life.

  Chiun took the old woman's body down the hill. He brought her to the abandoned house of her ancestors.

  And when he had lain her inside the hut, he attacked the building at its four corners. The structure shivered, then collapsed, burying forever the woman Sonmi, the evil magic, the plot for vengeance and the jealous Master of Sinanju from the old ways whose name history would not remember.

  Chapter 36

  The Darter broke the surface at the prearranged time. Remo had gone to the shore to say his goodbyes. "Her name is Rebecca Dalton," Remo said. "At least that's what she told me it was."

  "I will look her up when we get back," Smith promised.

  "Good. 'Cause I think I should thank her. Maybe kill her. Either way I probably should touch base with her."

  Smith and Mark Howard got into their rubber raft. As Smith sat, Howard paddled out to the waiting sub. Remo watched the two of them go, CURE director and assistant, tossed together in a crummy little life raft in a treacherous sea. He was sure there was some grand poetic metaphor there. Remo wasn't a poet.

  He turned from the shore and headed back through the village. On the bluff behind the House of Many Woods he found the Master of Sinanju looking out across the bay.

  Smith and Howard had reached the sub by this point. Helpful sailors were pulling them aboard. Remo watched his teacher watch the bay. There was a vigor to the old man he hadn't seen in years. The hazel eyes were sharp and piercing. Chiun had indicated that something had happened to him during their time apart. The old Korean had yet to say what that something was.

  "Whatever happened, it suits you," Remo commented.

  "I have a future," Chiun announced simply as he watched Smith disappear down the submarine's hatch.

  The words were filled with such pride, such hope. For a long time those had been absent in the old Korean. They had dripped away so gradually that Remo had hardly noticed. But, standing proud on the bluff above his ancestral home, the wizened figure seemed fully himself once more.

  Remo felt his heart swell. "I never doubted it for a minute, Little Father."

  Chiun looked up into his pupil's smiling face. Remo's smile reflected in the Korean's leathery visage.

  The whole world had changed. And yet it seemed more the same than it had in a long, long time.

  The eyes of hundreds of past Masters smiled warmly on the only two living Masters of Sinanju. Chiun's face became sly. "You are destined for a great honor, too," Chiun confided, leaning in close.

  "Care to enlighten me?"

  "When those who come after us write the book of me, you, Remo Williams, above all others will be the greatest of all the footnotes. Isn't that wonderful?"

  "I'm overwhelmed."

  The old man looked back out at the sea. "Possibly not the greatest," warned Chiun. "I will have to mention Smith, I suppose. And Prince Howard if he stays around much longer. Oh, and there is my cousin Lai. Did I ever mention him? On my mother's side? He would be upset if he did not get a mention. Anyway, you will certainly be, at the very least, a lesser footnote."

  "My cup runneth over," droned Remo Williams, the new Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju.

  "Perhaps a footnote to a footnote," said Chiun the Great Teacher, former Reigning Master of Sinanju. After all, he didn't want this new white Master of Sinanju to get a swelled head.

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