Remo The Adventure Begins Page 9

  “Which means?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the training was too hard. This isn’t karate Remo is getting. It’s not a martial art. It’s Sinanju. These bastards run across thirty-story buildings. These assassins have survived three thousand years because they are not too tolerant of mistakes.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that if a Master of Sinanju ever failed, he felt his entire village would starve. So the training is not designed to give someone a colored belt. If it succeeds, the man knows Sinanju. But if it fails, well, another failure and you go on to the next candidate. It’s life and death from the very beginning.”

  “You think Remo may be dead.”

  “I haven’t heard a complaint from Chiun for the last two days.”

  “Well, maybe you ought to find out.”

  “Yeah,” said McCleary. “Except you don’t just call up a Master of Sinanju and ask if he’s killed the pupil you stood on your head to get for him.”

  “What do you do?”

  “You wait until he phones with another complaint.”

  “Call him,” said Smith.

  The Master of Sinanju was approached in an extraordinary manner at a most unfortunate time. The Lawsons’ son, Jim, had survived the operation, only to find out that while he couldn’t play football anymore as an all-American, he did have a fantastic talent as an interior designer. Yet to become an interior designer meant endangering his love affair with Jill Anderson, who had escaped Mafia threats to become the only addict of a special drug meant originally to cure her grandfather’s rare case of leukemia.

  It was, of course, the grandest art form of the west, a surprising respite from the drone of this civilization. It was the one meager pleasure Chiun allowed himself.

  And the phone call came before the advertisements for the washing products.

  Chiun, of course, did not answer it, and made sure its ringing would stop. He wondered why the Americans did not stop all telephones while this art was in progress. Of course great art, like great assassins, was not always appreciated.

  On the other end Con McCleary heard the phone go dead.

  He cursed under his breath. He wondered whether he should take a gun. He probably wouldn’t be much better than Remo with a gun. Therefore, a gun would be useless.

  Throughout the far reaches of Asia, legends of the Sinanju assassins maintained that the Masters never failed. To McCleary’s mind, this meant that no one lived to tell of their failures. Maybe they protected the reputation of Sinanju by burying their mistakes, six feet under. Maybe an emperor they failed never woke up some morning.

  Would it be important enough for them to kill a client? McCleary thought about that. Of course it would. What else did a centuries-old house of assassins have but its reputation? How did he hear of them? The legends of perfection.

  Remo was a bit of a wise-ass. Maybe he made one wise-guy remark too many.

  Con McCleary thought about these things as he drove to the training house on the West Side, the large barn of an industrial building with a brownstone facade. He found a parking spot immediately, and he was disappointed. He would happily have driven around another hour looking for a spot. It would have meant another hour of breathing.

  “Time to find out what’s what, laddie,” McCleary told himself in a voice so clear it might have been to another passenger. But the words he did not mouth were, “Time to die.”

  At least it would be quick if it happened. The Masters of Sinanju did not waste time with cruelty. They were too perfect for that. They might lead people to believe they were cruel, but only to reinforce the legend in people’s minds.

  That was the most important lesson one Master had taught to Ivan the Terrible, the especially brutal Russian czar. And that was one of the references that had convinced Smitty to try Sinanju.

  In the early years of Czar Ivan’s reign, a French noble recorded in his diary that the czar told him of a magnificent house of assassins that could do anything. By the time the name reached the French language it was Seinajuif. But the location was clear. This was the village on the West Korea Bay, and what the noble recorded in French was that Czar Ivan had said:

  “These Masters understand things we will never know. Things we blunder through, they dance through. They even understand the wildest acts and what they mean. For example, they say that the place for cruelty is not on the victim, because the victim will ultimately be dead. In that case it serves no purpose at all. Where it matters is in the minds of others. It matters that the living think you will be cruel. But cruelty, they say, is a wasted stroke, an imperfect move. An unnecessary thing.”

  Thus the quote secondhand that McCleary reminded himself of as he entered the training house. The simple translation was that he was going to die quick if he were going to die.

  He entered the brownstone and climbed up a flight of steps.

  The door opened as though it had never been on a hinge. Chiun stood there, the bright day from the skylight filling the whole room. He wore a green kimono with flowers.

  “Hello,” said McCleary.

  Chiun did not answer.

  “I called before.”

  Chiun still did not answer.

  “I bring greetings from Smith . . . Emperor Smith . . . He sends you greetings.”

  Chiun nodded.

  “May I come in?”

  “There is more you have to say?”

  “Yes. More.”

  “And it was so important that you carelessly sent messages to me at the most inopportune time?” Chiun’s squeaky voice quivered with rage.

  McCleary looked for Remo. There was no sign of him. Was that blood at the far end of the room? Or was it an old stain? McCleary couldn’t tell.

  Chiun stepped back, beckoning McCleary to enter. McCleary stepped into the room leaving the door open behind him. Chiun pointed an imperious long fingernail at the rubble of what once had been a telephone.

  “Fix that,” said Chiun.

  “We’ll get you another,” said McCleary. Where was Remo? The door shut. He looked behind him. No one was there. Could Chiun will a door shut? McCleary glanced up to the high rafters near the skylights. Where was Remo? He focused on the smells of the training room. Dust. No lingering odor of a death. Even more strange, where was the smell of sweat? Didn’t these people sweat? If there was no sweat, there was no exercise.

  McCleary noticed Chiun was just staring at him. Saying nothing.

  “We will get you another,” said McCleary.

  “I don’t want another,” said Chiun. “I want it fixed. Another will be broken. Fix it so that it does not ring during your daytime dramas.”

  “He means soap operas,” boomed Remo’s voice. It came from a place behind McCleary.

  McCleary turned around. Remo wasn’t there.

  “Remo?”

  McCleary heard Remo’s chuckle.

  “Did you teach him to disappear?” McCleary asked Chiun.

  “Can you do that with the phones?” asked Chiun.

  “Yeah. Sure sure. We’ll get a television schedule and we’ll do it. Glad to do it. Done. We’ll do it. Where’s Remo?”

  “Playing,” said Chiun.

  McCleary felt a slap at the back of his head. He turned, swinging a fist. There was nothing there. Another slap. Another swing, and on the last swing he saw, in the farthest peripheral vision of his leading eye, gray slacks.

  “Eeeah, failure,” said Chiun. “You move like a pregnant yak. Your pig feet stumble across the floor. He saw you. You lost concentration.”

  “He didn’t see me,” said Remo, now standing quite casually within McCleary’s vision.

  “You were inside the room right behind me all the time and you moved with me,” said McCleary.

  “Nah,” said Remo. “I was outside and saw you park the car, and followed you up the steps. You walked like you were afraid. Were you afraid? Sometimes I can’t tell. I try to tell. Chiun says you can tell. I don’t know.”
/>   “A little,” said McCleary. “So everything is going all right.”

  “All right?” asked Chiun. He gave a little sarcastic laugh. Chiun turned from both of them. Sadly, he walked into the other room, and McCleary could see him opening one of the many steamer trunks.

  “You were great, Remo. I didn’t know you were there at all. I didn’t suspect it,” said McCleary.

  “Not that good. Not that good a test.”

  “What do you mean? I’m an old CIA hand from Southeast Asia. I am one of the best tests in the world. You were just a cop.”

  Remo shook his head. “You were afraid. If you’re afraid, you don’t see as well, or hear as well. Fear fills your senses. Like ask someone to walk across a two-inch line on the floor. No problem. Put it fifty stories up and they can hardly move their feet. They could never stay up there. Fear. You don’t hear as well, sense as well.”

  “Fear gets you going, adrenaline,” said McCleary.

  “Maybe for running or swinging a rock, but anything else, forget it. I know. Me it will kill,” said Remo.

  “What are you talking about?” asked McCleary.

  “I can’t explain it. The way I am learning, and what I am learning, it’s not muscles. It’s breathing. It’s the mind.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Wait a second,” said Remo. Chiun was coming back into the room.

  He carried a pistol. He took the pistol and brought it up no more than five feet from Remo’s chest, aimed it at Remo and fired twice. The barrel flashed an ugly blue-yellow.

  Two cracking reports rattled McCleary’s eardrums. He blinked and shook his head. There was Remo. No wounds, nothing.

  “Shit,” said Remo.

  “Yes, excrement,” said Chiun.

  “Blanks,” said McCleary.

  Remo shook his head. “Blanks won’t do. Blanks are training. Blanks are training for blanks. Look at the wall.”

  Behind Remo white plaster dust was still misting from the wall. They were real bullets and at five feet away, they couldn’t have been misaimed. Remo had dodged them. He could dodge bullets.

  “Sweet Jeeee . . . That’s awesome,” said McCleary.

  “The two, yeah. I have two. Two I have,” said Remo. There was consternation in his voice.

  “Yes,” said Chiun. “Two he has. Two he has and with two he remains,” said Chiun. All Remo could ever get to was two bullets in a row. Chiun never fired the third because it would kill him. And the why was obvious to any thinking person. “Remo prefers to chew the dead flesh of animals than to allow himself to be what he should be. What he knows he should be. What I have told him he should be . . . Me. Not that he will ever be me. But he should at least try, after all.”

  “I had a hamburger,” Remo explained.

  “Sinanju lays before him golden pearls of the wisdom of the grandest house of assassins in all history, and he must feed on the dead. Animal. Are you a wolf? Are you a dog? A cat? A rodent?”

  “A big-deal hamburger,” said Remo.

  “I think Chiun is saying that perhaps the methods he teaches you are so refined,” said McCleary, “that even a hamburger can harm your performance.”

  “You don’t know what I say,” said Chiun. “Ask him why he ate the hamburger; then you will find the infamy behind it all. Ask him. Go ahead.”

  “Not again,” said Remo.

  “Ask him,” said Chiun.

  “Here we go,” said Remo. He turned away from Chiun, his shoulders slumping. For McCleary it was like looking at a teenager.

  “Go ahead. He’ll tell you,” said Chiun. He folded his arms, in the true indignation of one whose sufferings were now going to receive their righteous airing. Perfidy now readied itself for its ugly exposure. “Go ahead. Ask.”

  McCleary shifted his weight. He felt uncomfortable. More important, he was sure that either man could kill him now. He didn’t want to get in between these two.

  He cleared his throat. “Say, Remo. I am doing this because I am asked, and I feel I have to. Why, if I may ask, did you eat the hamburger?”

  Chiun nodded in delicious satisfaction.

  “Because,” said Remo, “I was hungry and it tasted good.”

  “Ahah,” said Chiun. “You see. Out of his mouth. His own words. There we have it. Do we ever have it. Have it right there. This, McCleary, is what you bring me to train. This is what I am supposed to work with.”

  “Excuse me, Master of Sinanju, but I am a bit perplexed. Aren’t those the reasons people eat?”

  “There is a whole race of them here,” said Chiun. “You too.”

  “Don’t push this one,” said Remo to McCleary.

  “Of course, don’t push it,” said Chiun. “Then we will have answers. Then we will have truth. As for hunger, that is your stomach talking. It does not know your body as well as I do. Your body, Remo, is the product of some sexual accident followed by almost thirty years of abuse. It is hardly the wisdom of Sinanju.”

  “I have not taken to living off my fat,” said Remo.

  “It will be gone soon if you do not interrupt the process again. You are not so skilled in movement that you must handicap yourself with extra weight.”

  McCleary said nothing. Remo looked in rock-hard shape to him.

  “But even worse, he eats because something tastes good. Does he ask himself, ‘Will this food assist my nervous system in responding to the magnificent teachings of the Master of Sinanju?’ No. What does he ask himself? ‘How will my tongue react?’ His tongue. He has me here to guide him and he listens to his tongue and his stomach. I would hate to hear how he chooses a woman. I venture it is not for the quality of the offspring you might produce.”

  “You venture your ass right,” said Remo.

  “He is even proud of it,” said Chiun.

  “It looks pretty good to me,” said McCleary. “He dodged, actually dodged two bullets.”

  “That’s right. That is wonderful,” said Remo. “That’s great. That is effing great. Great. I am wonderful. Hey. I’m wonderful.”

  McCleary did not see the blow but he knew Chiun had delivered one because as the smooth ruffle of the green kimono passed Remo, Remo fell as though collapsed by a wall coming down on him. He did not move. Even his muscles did not twitch. He was deathly still.

  “Is he . . . ?”

  “Dead? No,” said Chiun. “He is asleep. Come to the far side of the room where the animal fat clogging his ears will prevent his unconscious mind from hearing us.”

  McCleary followed the shuffling figure. Chiun paused a moment, and McCleary could tell he was waiting for attention.

  “You want him as your assassin for whatever your reasons.”

  “Yes,” said McCleary.

  “You see things that look wondrous to you.”

  “They are amazing. You have far exceeded our greatest expectations.”

  Chiun shook his head. “You see things you cannot do, and you believe they are wonderful. In a small way, yes. They are wonderful to you. But these things you see are not Sinanju. They are not Remo’s.”

  “I don’t understand,” said McCleary.

  “When you hear about something, does that mean you can do it?”

  “Of course not,” said McCleary.

  “If you can describe something, does it mean you own it?”

  “No.”

  “If you hear of something or describe something, still you have nothing. Yet these are the first steps toward having something. What you see are the tender shoots of bamboo, not yet a tree. It may look to you like a tree but you cannot build with it. Remo knows enough to do things when I am with him, near him, providing the power for him. But without me near him, his mind may wander and the tricks you see will no longer be his. They are not part of him yet.”

  “What you’re telling me is that we should extend your contract so you will be with him. Is that right?” said McCleary, recognizing an old Asian bargaining ploy when he saw one.

  “No,” said Chiun.
“I am telling you that if you use him now, use him too soon, as I most certainly sense you wish to do because you rush everything . . . you will have nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You will kill him,” said Chiun, and turned his back on Remo’s countryman.

  8

  George Grove had an interesting way of making sure people felt as deeply about things as he did—he yelled at them. He also fired them, promised big bonuses, and paid well, but from threats to promotions, all personnel matters were settled at ninety decibels or above.

  Every management consultant who ever worked for Grove Industries, however briefly, reported that this was “an archaic and counterproductive personnel policy.” And Grove fired them on the spot. Often when he yelled he would spit. His secretary, an elderly woman named Mrs. Marker, was amazed at how many personnel consultants could pretend there was no spittle on their faces and walk out smiling. The consultants called what happened in Mr. Grove’s office “divergent policies.”

  Grove called it spitting in their faces. Sometimes Mr. Grove slapped. But he never slapped Mrs. Marker. She was sixty years old, one of the last remaining examples of old-time efficiency, and she was married. She would walk out if he raised his voice to her. For her Grove made an exception—he needed her.

  Mr. Grove did not slap people to hurt them, she knew. That was not his pleasure. His pleasure was seeing how much he could humiliate them and still keep them. He had once told her it was like fishing with a light line. You tried to land the heaviest fish with the lightest line possible. His goal was to be able to slap any worker in the face, then let him apologize for it. Only then was George Grove sure he had someone. He called those incidents “trophies.”

  Mrs. Marker called “trophies” revolting.

  “I never want to be in the same room when you do that to someone,” she said.

  “I am experimenting with human nature. America’s defense needs it. If you can’t deal productively with America’s defense then maybe this is not the right place for you.”

  “Mr. Grove. You’ve tried that before. You can’t replace me. I know what a good English sentence is. They don’t make that kind anymore.”