Bidding War td-101 Read online

  It wasn't Chiun. The mummy turned out to be Ko Jong Oh, but when Remo told the Master of Sinanju what he had seen, Chiun had dragged him from one end of the earth to the other in the Rite of Attainment until Remo found himself in the Sonoran Desert outside Yuma, Arizona.

  There Remo had found his father, a stuntman turned actor, and learned that Chiun had known the identity of Remo's father for years. Remo and Chiun had encountered him during an assignment years before. Chiun had recognized who he was. Remo hadn't.

  Of all the cons Chiun had perpetrated, this was the most selfish, yet Remo had understood why. And it had all worked out.

  That was the funny part of their relationship. Remo always forgave Chiun. No matter what. Chiun, on the other hand, piled the slightest injury or imagined slight on his shoulders, complaining all the while.

  In this dream Remo's mother was standing on a high dune, silhouetted against the desert moon.

  He knew her by name now. Dawn Starr Roam. But he couldn't bring himself to call her by that name.

  In his dream his mouth was open as he struggled with the right word. Mother sounded too formal. Ma was no good. Mom sounded like a character out of a fifties sitcom.

  In his dream Remo didn't know what to call her. And as he wrestled with the dilemma, she lifted her perfect profile to the night stars and faded from sight as if she had been made of coalesced moonbeams.

  Remo was running for the dune, calling "Wait!" when the gunshots shattered the night.

  They came in a string of three pops followed by two more.

  He was out of bed and at the door of his igloolike sheepskin hogan before he was really awake. His Sinanju-trained reflexes had carried him from sleep and into action.

  Out in the night someone was trying to bring down the moon with a Winchester.

  "Wa-hooo, I'm a Sun On Jo brave and I got everything money can buy except a future!"

  And he squeezed off another shot at the low-hanging moon.

  "Hey!" Remo called.

  The Indian took notice of him. "Hey yourself, white eyes."

  Lowering the rifle, he swung it around. Jacking another round into place, he drew a cool bead on Remo.

  "I hear you got yourself some magical powers, white eyes. Let's see you percolate down into the sand ahead of hot, angry lead."

  The trigger clicked back. And the rifle spit a tongue of yellow-red flame.

  Remo slid from the path of the bullet before the lever could eject the smoking shell from the breech. When the bullet kicked up distant sand, Remo was already coming in from the darkness off to the rifleman's left.

  The brave surrendered the rifle to an irresistible force that snatched it from his hands.

  "Yep," he said, stumbling back. "You are a true Sunny Joe, 'cept there ain't gonna be a tribe for you to protect, Sunny Joe. What do you say about that?"

  He reached down to the sand at his feet and hoisted a bottle of tequila to his lips.

  Remo took it away from him, chipping a front tooth with the bottle mouth.

  "Hey! You got no call—"

  Remo gave the bottle a casual flip, and it climbed thirty feet into the clear air, spun in place like a pin-wheel and dropped down.

  The Indian had a good eye. He snagged it before it could crash against a rock. But when he felt its heft, he knew it was empty. He held it up to his eye to be sure, and nothing came spilling out. Not one solitary drop.

  "Hey! How'd you do that?"

  "You saw every move I made," Remo said coolly.

  "Sure. But tequila don't evaporate into thin air. It's not in its nature."

  "Is that you making that goldurn racket, Gus Jong?" rumbled Sunny Joe Roam from the surrounding darkness.

  He was coming down the trail like an angry soft-footed bear.

  Gus Jong cracked a crooked grin. "Hey, Sunny Joe. Your little apple slice here has got himself some slick ways."

  "Don't you call my son no apple, you drunken redskin."

  "I ain't drunk. Hell, I hardly got started."

  "You're flat done drinking for the night. Now, mosey on your way."

  Gus Jong stumbled back to his hogan under the watchful eyes of Remo and Sunny Joe Roam.

  "You gotta excuse ol' Gus," Sunny Joe rumbled. "Ain't really his fault."

  "Not how I see it," said Remo.

  "That's fine for you. But my braves look down the trail and all they see is their graves and no one to mourn them or carry on their ways. It takes them by the throat sometimes."

  "I know the story. No girl babies have been born in years. But who's stopping them from finding wives in the city?"

  "Lot of things. Pride. Stubbornness. Knowing they don't fit in white society. And the Navajo and Hopi won't accept them into their tribes. They're plumb at a dead end and they hardly got started on life yet."

  "Nobody ever found their future at the bottom of a bottle."

  Just then a sprinkling of what felt like cool rain pattered down to pock the dust at their feet.

  "Funny. That don't feel like rain," Sunny Joe grunted.

  "It's tequila."

  Sunny Joe looked dubious.

  "It's not as heavy as glass," said Remo, starting for his hogan.

  Sunny Joe loped after him. "Why the long face?" he asked.

  "Had a dream about my mother."

  "Your mother was a good woman. Gone over thirty years now, and I still miss her something powerful."

  "I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her."

  "That could be taken in two ways, you know."

  "I mean if she hadn't come to me, I wouldn't have found you."

  "In these parts we call that a vision quest. You had a vision quest, Remo."

  Remo stopped. "Does that mean I really didn't meet her?"

  "Damned if I know what it means. I spent a lot of time in cities. Don't much hold with ghosts or spooks. But you showed me a drawing that was your mother's face down to the last eyelash and that sad kinda droop of her eyes. Whatever you saw, it wore your mother's face."

  "I wish I had known her."

  "Well, there's nothing lost by wishing. Not much gained either."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "The old chief's been gone most of a day now."

  "I know where to find Chiun."

  "Maybe. But he's the other reason you're standing here right now, Remo."

  "Maybe."

  "Were I you, I wouldn't have let him go off like that."

  "You don't know Chiun. Sometimes we have to go our separate ways for a while. It'll work out."

  "You ask me, he seemed powerful sad to leave you behind."

  Remo slanted him a glance. "Chiun said that?"

  "No, but it was written all over the map of his face. You didn't notice?"

  "No."

  "Not much of a face-reader are you, son?"

  "Chiun's always saying I have bad nunchi for his kibun. That means I'm a lousy reader of his moods."

  "He's damn perceptive."

  "You saying I should go?"

  "I'm not saying and I'm not not saying. I'm happy to have you here for as long as you like, Remo. But a man's gotta have more than a place he feels comfortable if he's to flourish. You have only to look at my braves to understand that."

  "You don't want me to stay?"

  "I don't want you losing your way in life just because you found your origins. Knowing who you are and where you come from, these are things a man has to know. But a man's future is not where he is, but where he's going."

  "I don't know where I'm going," Remo admitted.

  "You take a step, and then two. Pretty soon you're either making a path or following one. Doesn't matter much which. Just so long as you don't vegetate."

  "What's the rush?"

  "The rush is we soon enough lay our bones down to die. Time is forever. We aren't. A man has only so many opportunities. The more he lets slip by, the fewer branching paths he's got."

  Remo was looking east. "Out there I don't even exist."
r />   "You're standing in your own meat and bones. You exist, all right."

  "They robbed me of my life and my last name and what little I had."

  "They introduce you to the old chief?" Sunny Joe asked.

  "Yeah."

  "Then they gave you more than they took away. And that's a fact."

  "I don't think I can go back to working for America."

  "Then don't. But don't hide from the world, either. Take another path. Life is full of them."

  Remo said nothing for a long, long time.

  Sunny Joe Roam chuckled.

  Remo looked at him curiously.

  "I was just thinking of a story the old chief told me about you," Sunny Joe said.

  "What's that?"

  "Back when you two first met, he tried to teach you some Korean words. Remember?"

  "No."

  "Hen. Seems he hankered to be properly addressed. Tried to get you to call him Sonsaeng."

  Remo smiled. "I remember now. It means 'teacher.' But I kept screwing it up. It came out as 'Saengson,' which means 'fish.' Saengson Chiun. I was calling him Fish Chiun. He turned red every time and accused me of doing it on purpose. Finally he just gave up."

  "He about cackled his old head clean off telling me that yarn."

  "Yeah?"

  "It's a fact. We had a great big laugh over it."

  "Chiun's all right. He just thinks there's one way to do everything," Remo said.

  "You think about what he means to you, Remo. You don't find that kind of friendship even among your closest kin."

  "Well, I'm going to try and catch up on my sleep."

  "You remember one other thing while you're about it."

  "What's that?" asked Remo.

  "The old chief, he saved my life. Took a big risk doing it, too. He knew a man has room in his heart for only one father. He was fit to lose big."

  "Yeah. I know."

  "You go your own way and he might forgive you, but he'll go to his maker cursing his own poor judgment. Don't you do that to him, Remo Williams. Whatever you do. Don't do that to him. Because the hurt will surely attach itself to you, and you'll go to your own grave cursing your pigheaded stubbornness."

  "Chiun wants me to take over as head of the House. I don't know if I can do that."

  "You should consider it," said Sunny Joe pointedly. "You're welcome to stay here a spell longer, but there's not much future in it."

  Remo frowned. "Let me sleep on it."

  "You do that," said Sunny Joe.

  And when Remo turned to bid him good-night, there was no sign of the big Sun On Jo.

  His eyes gathering visual purple to sharpen his night vision, Remo finally spotted him loping along like a long-legged totem. There was nothing graceful about Sunny Joe's progress, yet the wind carried no sound to Remo's ears. After the moon went behind a low-scudding desert cloud, it was as if he had evaporated.

  Remo returned to his hogan. When he fell asleep again, he didn't dream at all.

  Chapter Eight

  Harold Smith was still sunk in his floral armchair when the sun peeped over the Atlantic.

  He had made no progress. And it was time to go to work.

  Logging off, he closed his briefcase, took a quick cold shower because it cost less and, after toweling his tight blue-gray skin dry, he passed into the bedroom to select a fresh suit.

  His wife slept peacefully, her heavy breathing like a muted bellows in the room.

  There were six identical gray three-piece suits hanging in the closet, the oldest one dating back to the late 1940s.

  When Harold Smith had come of age, his father had taken him to a Boston tailor for his first suit fitting. When the price came up, Harold had been horrified. First at the exorbitant price tag and second because his father had insisted Harold pay for it himself.

  "It is much too expensive, Pater," Harold had said flatly.

  "Properly taken care of," his father had said, "a suit made by this concern will last half a lifetime. You may find less-expensive tailors, who use cheaper goods and inferior stitching. But I guarantee that the best three suits you can find elsewhere will all wear out before this one suit has fulfilled its duty."

  Harold had frowned. He was going to Dartmouth College in the fall. There were textbooks to purchase and other incidentals.

  But he had swallowed his horror and bought the suit. The concern was still in business, and approximately every decade he went back for alterations or a new suit. His father was correct. If that first suit he bought ever came back into style, Harold could wear it again without fear for the stitching.

  When he was dressed and knotting his hunter green Darmouth tie, Harold Smith retrieved his suitcase, kissed his oblivious wife on the forehead and drove his habitual route to Folcroft Sanitarium.

  It was an ordinary late-October day. It wouldn't remain ordinary very long.

  All hope of ordinariness was shattered once Smith had booted up the desktop computer. The overnight trolling programs began announcing themselves.

  Smith saved certain files as nonurgent. The strife in Mexico, Macedonia and the former Yugoslavia hadn't developed overnight complications. They could keep.

  Smith let out an audible gasp when the screen announced it had been tracking the Master of Sinanju.

  Smith called up the file. It showed a string of credit-card charges. The expenses would normally have made Smith pale. But the mere fact that Chiun had resurfaced after all these weeks overcame Smith's natural revulsion at wasting taxpayers' money.

  The first charge concerned a flight from Yuma, Arizona, to Phoenix. From Phoenix the Master of Sinanju had flown to New York City.

  Oddly enough he hadn't remained there very long. Arrival at LaGuardia was at one in the afternoon, and the next travel charge showed a New York City-to-Boston flight at 3:09.

  There the trail ended.

  Smith frowned. The last charge he had tracked back in July showed Remo and Chiun flying to Yuma, and after that it was as if they had fallen off the planet. No Yuma-based charges had surfaced.

  In fact, no charges at all.

  Now Chiun had returned to Boston, where he and Remo lived.

  Smith accessed Remo's credit-card account but found it still inactive.

  "Odd," he mused. "They go to Yuma then disappear. Now the Master of Sinanju has returned but without Remo."

  What could have happened?

  A chill washed over Harold Smith as he exited the credit-card files. Had Remo died? Was it possible?

  Smith brought up Chiun's credit-card records again. There were incidental charges. Chiun had eaten at a Korean restaurant in midtown Manhattan whose name seemed to be the Soot Bull, but otherwise he hadn't remained in New York long. About three hours.

  What business had Chiun in Manhattan? Smith wondered.

  He was still wondering about that—and trying to remain awake by drinking successive cups of black coffee heavily sugared for the energy he knew he would need to get through a full workday on no sleep—when his secretary brought a Federal Express package to him.

  "This just came, Dr. Smith."

  "Thank you," Smith said, accepting the package.

  It was a standard cardboard mailer the Federal Express people insisted upon calling letter size. Smith saw that the return address was in Quincy, Massachusetts, and the name of the sender was written in a familiar slashing approximation of English that suggested a Far Eastern calligrapher.

  Chiun.

  Zipping open the cardboard zipper seal, Smith extracted a single sheet of parchment. The note was written in the stylized English calligraphy the Master of Sinanju used.

  Gracious Emperor,

  Long, O long has the House served the Rome of the far west today. Long might it continue to serve. But the gods have decreed otherwise. We must submit to the will of the gods, even if we do not believe in the same gods. For if one sees sufficient summers, one will learn the bitter lesson that I have come to accept. It is too painful to speak of here, and s
o I will not spoil the acute ceremony of our parting. Farewell, O Smith. May your days be without number.

  P.S. The enclosed tablet is yours. If the pain of loss proves unendurable, perhaps you will find comfort in its solace.

  Harold Smith looked at the black ink letters as they swam before his bleary eyes.

  The Master of Sinanju was abandoning America. There was no other interpretation possible.

  But what was meant by the enclosed tablet? Smith looked into the cardboard mailer and found wrapped in pearly silk the coffin-shaped poison pill that Remo had taken from him months before, vowing not to return it until Smith had located Remo's parents, living or dead.

  Smith returned it to the watch pocket of his gray vest and leaned back in his cracked leather chair, his face drained of all color and expression. He sat that way for a very long time.

  It struck Harold Smith as he sipped his sixth cup of hot coffee for the morning. The coffee cup dropped from his shocked fingers to spill its scalding contents all over his gray lap. His gray eyes went round and grim behind the glass shields of his rimless glasses. His gray skin paled to a color that could only be called scraped bone.

  Harold Smith knew the answer to the question in his mind even as he called up the AP news briefs.

  The uproar in the General Assembly of the United Nations had occurred at approximately 1:30 in the afternoon. Less than an hour after Chiun had landed in LaGuardia. He had eaten at the Soot Bull about an hour later. Then he had departed for Boston.

  Smith knew with absolute certainty who had addressed the General Assembly in that time frame. He also had an excellent idea of what had thrown the body into chaos. Why the delegates had rushed to their home capitals. Smith also had a distinct suspicion about what these delegates were discussing at this very minute with their leaders.

  Harold Smith knew all this because there was only one possible thing the Master of Sinanju could have told the General Assembly that accounted for everything that had followed.

  No one had declared war.

  Instead, the House of Sinanju had offered its services to the highest bidder in the swiftest, most breathtakingly dramatic fashion possible. And in capitals the world over, treasures were being audited, offers calculated and the greatest bidding war in human history was about to begin.