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  "Addressing the fraudulent nature of her udders should drive her off," Chiun said with irritation.

  Johlene stiffened. "What did he say?"

  "Oh, yeah." Remo glared pointedly at the sculpted bustline. "Boob implants. I absolutely can't stand fakes. It turns me off big time."

  "But look at them," she pleaded. "They're so firm and symmetrical."

  "What have you got in there-aluminum softballs? Yech."

  Johlene finally left, and Remo ignored the alternately pleading and disdainful looks she gave him during the rest of the flight.

  "Your mean form lacks grace, which is a result of your lack of precision dexterity," Chiun explained when she was gone.

  "Say that again, Little Father?"

  "Your training was unbalanced. I failed to instill the proper respect for the written word. From the creation of beautiful words on parchment comes the appreciation of beautiful movement of the rest of the body."

  "You're joking, right?"

  "I joke not."

  "Listen, Chiun, the training is done. I'm trained. You did the best you could, and it turns out you are a wonderful teacher. I'm good at my job."

  "Your job?" Chiun turned to face him finally. "Is that what Sinanju is to you? An occupation?"

  "Of course not."

  "Is that why you have decided to stagnate? You have deemed yourself adequate and see no profit in improvement? Oh, Remo, you send all my hopes crashing down like fine crystal goblets pushed off high shelves."

  "Oh, brother."

  "This is a white attitude. It is the blood of your European ancestors that makes you lazy. I prayed that your Korean blood would give you perseverance. Even the Native Americans who have sullied your ancestry will inherently strive for improvement against the greatest adversity."

  "I never said I was going to rest on my laurels!" Remo argued.

  "Laurels? How European. How Roman. How like you to use those words."

  "It's a figure of friggin' speech. I don't even know what laurels are!"

  "I feel grave concern for your future, Remo."

  "I thought you felt hopeless."

  "I am gravely concerned for your standing among the Masters. I do not want to be known as Chiun, Trainer of Remo the Slothful."

  Remo said, "That's what this is about, huh? How I reflect on you in the Sinanju scrolls?"

  "Of course! The status of a Master depends in great part on the status of the Master he trains."

  "And I'm not good enough?"

  "You are not trying hard enough."

  "So I haven't been pulling my weight?"

  "You are complacent," Chiun replied without hesitation.

  Remo didn't answer. He looked at the seat back in front of him and thought about Chiun's words.

  This was more than an idle insult-and Chiun was the king of idle insults. The old Master had been considering this. He was sincere.

  But was he right?

  It sure didn't feel to Remo that he was slacking. He'd had a rough ride of it in recent years, starting with his Rite of Attainment and getting worse as he closed in on the Rite of Succession. Even Chiun had admitted that Remo had faced harder obstacles than most Masters reaching their prime.

  Was it possible that his attitude had changed for the worse since he became Reigning Master? Was he slacking?

  "Okay, Little Father," he said finally. "First chance we get; I promise, we'll get into the whole penmanship thing."

  Chiun narrowed his eyes.

  "I mean it," Remo added.

  "What are you hiding?"

  "I'm not hiding anything. I meant what I said, that's all. I'll take the calligraphy lessons."

  "I sense a ploy."

  "No ploy. No tricks up my sleeve. I promise you I'll give the lessons a shot."

  THE WING SEEMED well anchored to the fuselage of the aircraft, but wings and limbs could become separated from their bodies easily enough. What Chiun had never understood was why such great masses of metal could not be made inflexible. But he had been assured that they were designed to wobble in the wind. And they all did. Wobble.

  There had been a time when Chiun was worried about his unlikely protege for much the same reason he was worried now. It was just after Remo had, miraculously enough, passed through the Rite of Attainment.

  Common sense decreed that Sinanju skills should never have flourished inside the inherently clumsy body of a white, but Remo had such skills in abundance. His proved Sinanju lineage only partially explained it.

  But after his Attainment, after he solved the mystery of his parentage and offspring, there was a time when Remo had become, of all things, content.

  Contentment was no good. Contentment led to complacency, and complacency could get a Master annihilated.

  Then came a time of increasing hardship as the leaders of the world seemed to descend en masse into idiocy. The U.S. put in place a puppet president whose only possible qualification could be for entertainment purposes. The challenges to Remo became greater, as well, as he became afflicted with the Master's Disease and was haunted by the manifestation of the Master Who Never Was, foretelling worsening hardship.

  It all seemed to culminate at the time of the Rite of Succession, when Remo's ritual assumption of the title of Reigning Master of Sinanju was interrupted by the resurrection of old and powerful enemies. Chiun himself was wounded emotionally and almost broken. He still carried in his mind the image of a decimated village of Sinanju. The image was false, a mirage, but for a short time he had believed it, and the distress he felt had left a scar.

  When the danger was over, and Remo was Reigning Master, his strange behavior began. Despite his new burden of responsibility, despite new dangers foretold, Remo seemed at ease. Why?

  Even for a man of far-reaching wisdom such as himself, Chiun found answers elusive. Could Remo be bluffing through the burden of being the Reigning Master? Could it be that he was in truth straining under the weight of this awesome responsibility? What if, unknown to Chiun, Remo was in distress and approaching an emotional breakdown?

  Chiun had thought Remo was sleeping, but then the young Reigning Master sat up straight in his aircraft seat and spoke aloud.

  "Pork tamales."

  Remo sounded quite pleased with himself.

  Then Chiun knew the truth. As good as his body was at making the motions of the martial arts Sun source that was Sinanju, his feeble white brain had simply been unable to keep pace and it had finally folded in upon itself.

  Ah, well. Folcroft Sanitarium was a pleasant enough place for an imbecile. Chiun would make sure that Smith gave Remo the nicest room in which to spend his remaining years doodling, sloppily, on the walls.

  Chapter 14

  It was well past regular hours and the outer office was empty. Folcroft Sanitarium felt abandoned in the depth of the night, and they met no one on their way up to the office of Director Harold W Smith. As they reached the outer office, domicile of Smith's longtime secretary Eileen Mikulka, Chiun turned to Remo.

  "Wait here."

  "What for?"

  But Chiun was already gliding inside Smith's office and closing the door behind him.

  "Hey, Chiun, what's the deal?" Remo asked, following him inside and finding the old Korean leaning close to the gray, patrician features of the CURE director, whispering fiercely.

  Chiun wheeled on him. "I told you to remain outside!"

  "Yeah, but I didn't. You planning a surprise parry for me or something?"

  Chiun sniffed disdainfully, but there was a look of worry on his brow. "Yes, something."

  Remo tried to read the old man's expression, but it was an inscrutable combination of distrust and-what, concern? Smith revealed nothing. Mark Howard sat in the couch looking like a man who had no clue what was going on around him.

  "So let me in on it," Remo demanded.

  "Later perhaps," Chiun said, and gave Smith a prompting glare.

  "Uh, yes. Tell me about Nashville."

  "Southern inhospi
tality, too much money, too little taste. What else you want to know?"

  Smith's gray face puckered sourly. "Anything. A clue. A hint."

  "Nope. None of that. Lots of crazy dead dancers, and later lots of crazy bikers. That's about it."

  "We're still getting reports on the murders at the Rock Hard Cafe," Smith said. "All the police are releasing is that the biker gang called themselves the Nashville Road Sharks. The gang stormed the Rock Hard seemingly without provocation."

  "That's about the size of it," Remo agreed.

  "'That's nuts," Mark Howard objected. "There has to be motivation for it."

  "You'd think," Remo admitted, relaxing in one of the chairs before Smith's desk. Chiun chose to stand, unusually guarded, Remo noticed. Guarded against what? "We asked the bikers. Politely at first, and then we got persuasive and they wouldn't tell us why. Said they were just really angry."

  "Were they hiding their motive?" Howard asked. "They could not hide their intentions from a Master of Sinanju," explained Chiun. "They claimed they were simply filled with rage."

  "Here's what we found out," Remo said. "They were at their usual hangout, you know, just having a few beers like every night, and they were talking about overpaid monkey suits at the yuppie bar down the street," Remo explained. "Only this time they decided it was time they stop talking about bashing heads and actually go bash some heads."

  "Skilled killers they were not," Chiun sniffed. Remo explained how they stopped in for a visit at the biker bar that had been the Nashville Road Sharks hangout. After delivering the sad news of the demise of Bork, Virgil, Maurice and the rest, they questioned the tearful, mourning patrons about anything unusual that happened in the bar that evening.

  "Only one thing out of the ordinary," Remo said. "That night the Road Sharks came in with a friend. A new guy the locals had never seen before. Claimed to be a TV commercial producer looking for a real, honest-to-goodness biker gang for a new ad campaign for beer-flavored vodka."

  "You think he was just trying to get close to the gang?" Smith asked.

  "Looks like it." Remo shrugged. "He bought them a few rounds and said he would be in touch, then left. Half an hour later the Road Sharks had transformed from peace-loving Harley huggers into homicidal maniacs with a taste for yuppie blood. That's when they headed for the Rock Hard."

  "And nobody got a good look at the man who claimed to be a TV commercial producer, I suppose."

  "The clientele of the tavern were inebriated, Emperor," Chiun explained. "They remembered a man in his twenties with ridiculous face whiskers. Not another pertinent detail could any of them provide."

  Smith sighed. Mark Howard put his hands behind his head and stretched back in the couch, staring at the ancient ceiling tiles, so yellowed with age their original color was impossible to discern.

  "Well?"

  Remo looked at Chiun. Howard and Smith looked at Chiun.

  "Well what?" Remo asked.

  "Do you not have more you would like to say?" Chiun said.

  "Like what?"

  "Do you have something more to report, Remo?" Smith asked sternly.

  "Uh-uh. What about you?" Remo looked sharply at the old Korean.

  "I have said all I know of the matter," Chiun replied leadingly.

  Remo asked, "You think I know something about this that you don't?"

  "Naturally not. I have been with you over the past twelve hours. All you have learned, so I have learned."

  "So what are you fishing around for, Chiun?"

  "I am not fishing:" The bony hands appeared from within the kimono sleeves and waved airily. "I was merely guessing you had some sort of pronouncement to make to the Emperor."

  "I don't think I've ever made a pronouncement in my life."

  "Fine," Smith said with weary impatience. "What about the bikers' behavior?"

  "It was atrocious," Remo stated.

  "Compared to the addicts you encountered in the condemned building," Smith added.

  "Well, they did a lot less screaming and they weren't as jittery," Remo recalled. "They were more clearheaded than the crack heads, but that's not saying much. What about the drugs I took from the crack house?"

  "The analysis shows nothing out of the ordinary," Mark reported.

  "I think it is still reasonable to assume that these killers were drugged," Smith added. "The man in Bunsen, Mississippi, Arby Maple, was reported to have shared a drink with a stranger just prior to embarking on his murder spree. That's the same as with the Nashville bikers and the crowd at the Big Stomp. I think it's safe to say it was probably something similar with the addicts."

  "What's the difference between the screamers and the nonscreamers?" Remo asked. "Think it was the drugs?"

  Smith nodded. "Makes sense. Whatever was used to bring about these fits of violence could have reacted with the crack cocaine the addicts ingested."

  "That does not account for the aftereffects, though," Mark said. "The killers in each case seem to have different long-term reactions to the drug," he explained to Remo and Chiun. "Arby Maple claims to remember nothing-otherwise he seems healthy. The addicts who were taken into custody by the police after the killings have gone from paranoid and uncooperative to uncontrollably demented and violent. Some of them are starting to drop into semiconsciousness. None of them seem to have the power of speech any longer. The customers at the Big Stomp have also started experiencing decreased metabolism and slowing brain function. A few have slipped into comas. The medical teams are trying to come up with a treatment to keep them alive."

  "Doesn't add up," Remo said.

  "You're right," Smith agreed. "None of it does. Yet."

  HE KNEW HIS PLOY would never work, but Remo went through the motions anyway. First he waited for the snores like fingernails on slate to fill the confines of the suite that was their Folcroft home-away-from-home, then Remo slipped into the hall. The cadence of the snoring in Chiun's room never changed, but he hadn't gone far before he knew he was being stalked through the Folcroft corridors.

  He ignored it and entered an office on the upper floor. The room was so tiny there was barely room for the desk and the single guest chair, and yet the man sitting at the desk never sensed he was not alone until Remo closed the door and said, "Knock knock."

  Mark Howard launched himself out of his seat and started to say something, only to find a very solid hand clamped firmly against his face.

  "Shh. Keep it down:"

  "What's going on, Remo?" Mark demanded when he was released.

  "I need a little help."

  "What kind of help?"

  "I think I've got a line on what's behind the weirdness in the heart of Dixie."

  "Why all the sneaking around? Let's go see Dr. Smith."

  "No. Uh-uh."

  "This is not the time for playing games."

  "I'm not playing games, Junior."

  "Then why-"

  "Last warning, loudmouth. Keep your voice down." Remo nodded at the big oak desk, which dominated the room like a coffin in a closet. "Start typing."

  Howard sat and raised the screen from the desktop, hands poised above the keyboard. "I need to know-"

  "Get into the air travel records and flight plans. The airlines, the charters, private aircraft."

  "You have to know we've done a search already," Howard said. "Want to tell me what I'm looking for?"

  "A delegation from Union Island."

  "You must be kidding me."

  "Do it."

  Mark shrugged, and his fingers started flying over the keyboard. Remo leaned over and stared at the screen for a moment. The electronic windows were hogwash. Howard could be checking the balance in his checking account for all Remo knew.

  "Huh," Mark said.

  "What huh?" Remo asked.

  "The delegation was in Boston at the time of the drug distribution. Hold on. They were in Nashville. The entire itinerary matches up."

  "I thought so."

  "But that doesn't exactly prove any
thing. The time frames were loose enough that we could put thousands of people in the right place at the right time."

  "What's this bunch doing all the traveling around for, anyway?" Remo asked.

  "Don't you read the news? Their president is on the talk-show circuit. He's trying to drum up support for their independence movement. They want to break away from the United States."

  Remo frowned. "Show me what the president looks like."

  Howard tapped a few keys and pushed back from the screen. Remo slid around the desk and looked at a Web page for the Union Island Independence Movement. The page was dominated by the smiling face of the elected leader of the island, President Greg Grom.

  "What do you know, it's the same kid I saw on TV," Remo said. "He doesn't look old enough to vote, let alone get elected."

  "He's not as young as he looks," Howard said, doing something esoteric with the little blinking line on the screen to make the window change to a biography of the kid in question. "Says here he's twenty-nine."

  "For the president of the He-Man Woman Haters Club that's old-for president of anything bigger it's young."

  "Doesn't mean he can't do his job," Mark protested. "He might actually achieve his goal."

  "The independence thing? Just because he's got Puerto Rican go-it-aloners on his side?"

  "That's strictly part of the PR campaign to generate sympathy for the cause. What counts is he's getting congressional support."

  "How's he doing that? What's the angle?"

  Howard shrugged. "I haven't been following it too closely, but it's all kind of confusing. I haven't heard anyone come up with a real reason Union Island should want independence, let alone why anybody on the Hill would support it. But it's happening."

  "Is there any possible way they could benefit from all this killing?" Remo asked.

  "That's what I'm looking into," Howard said as he typed furiously. "None of the people involved in the killing have ties to Union Island. There's never been known drug trafficking through Union, so there doesn't seem to be a logical organized-crime link."

  "But if they were independent they could run drugs through the place," Remo suggested.

  Howard shook his head. "Independence wouldn't help them there. Even if they set up the island as a distribution hub, we'd find out, blockade them and shut them down."