Chapter Nine
Remo had been talking to himself for the past ten minutes. Chiun was in the room with him, the same bedroom where Remo and Posie had discovered one another, but the old man was on a different plane. He sat on the floor in full lotus, his middle fingers and thumbs pressed together as he chanted Korean mantras in a low buzz. The only response Remo could get out of him were variations in the buzz. Intense buzzes signaled disagreements with Remo's seemingly solitary arguments. Chiun, Remo knew, was not about to dignify Remo's presence with words. Being a hero had relegated him to the dungheap of Chiun's emotional backyard in the first place. And, judging from the frenzy of the buzzes, Chiun wasn't that crazy about his new proposition, either.
"It's an assignment, Little Father," he pleaded, holding out the white toga toward the old man, who continued to buzz serenely. "!t doesn't mean anything. We'll wear them on top of our clothes."
There was a quick snort to assert Chiun's views on the idea, followed by the same low Korean buzz. The old man's eyes were closed.
"The ceremony's going to start any minute, and
103
104
Foxx is primed. He knows we're on to him, and he's scared. If he's going to do something stupid, now's the time he'll do it."
Chiun rolled his eyes and continued to buzz.
"He'll send a message to somebody or move something, or talk to somebody in the place. I tell you, he's going to show his colors."
Chiun's face squeezed together in fury as the buzz pitched into a shriek and broke off. "As you showed your colors?" he burst out, unable to contain himself any longer. "As you duped those lunatics into believing you were a hero for executing a second-year exercise, while the feats of the Master of Sinanju were attributed to a couple of cretins wearing bath towels?"
"They're not towels," Remo explained, holding out the garments in his hands. "They're togas. The Roman senators used to wear them."
"And people voted for them? Were they nudists?"
"Everybody wore them."
"Who?" Chiun demanded. "No self-respecting person would don such a degenerate-looking thing."
"Lots of people did. Aristotle wore one."
"Never heard of him," Chiun sniffed. "A charlatan."
"He was one of the most famous philosophers of all time."
"Did he speak of the beauty of the shores of Sinanju?"
"Well, not exactly. ..."
"Then he is a charlatan. Everyone knows all true philosophers are Korean."
"Okay," Remo sighed. He searched his mind for another toga wearer. "I've got it. Julius Caesar wore one. He was a great emperor."
105
Chiun pouted. "Who cares what white men wear?"
"Just put it on. We can't get into the ceremony without them."
Reluctantly, Chiun took it from Remo's outstretched hands. "I will wear this shameful garment on one condition," he said.
"Yeah?" Remo asked hopefully. "What is it?"
"That you tell these fools gathered here that it was! who performed the double-spiral air blow that sent the two degenerate ones into the heavens."
"I can't do that. They'll turn against us. Right now they like us, so even Foxx can't throw us out. We've got to stick around to see what he's doing."
While Remo spoke, Chiun was swinging his head back and forth, his eyes closed, his jaw clamped shut with finality.
"Aw, come on, Chiun. It'll make things so much harder. And I want to be down there now, before Foxx makes his move."
"That is my condition."
"Anything else. Ask for anything else, and I'll do it. We can spend our next vacation in Sinanju, if you want it."
"We are spending our next vacation in Sinanju in any case," he said. "It is my turn to choose the yearly vacation, and I have already made my choice clear to Emperor Smith."
"Then how about a new Betamax?" Remo suggested. "I'll get you the whole setup, with a four-foot-wide screen and everything."
"I am content with such humble viewboxes as I already have," Chiun pronounced.
Remo gave up. "Isn't there anything you want badly enough to wear that toga for?" he asked in desperation.
106
Chiun was silent. Then a gleam came to the old almond-shaped eyes, and he spoke. "Perhaps there is one thing. One small thing."
"Here it comes. Okay, shoot."
"Bring me a picture of Cheeta Ching in ceremonial Korean robes. For this, will I cast aside my self-respect to appear publicly in a bathtowel. It will prove to her the extent of my admiration of her beauty."
Remo's mouth tasted sour at the thought of confronting the Ho Chi Minh of the airwaves. Still, it beat revealing to the patrons of Shangri-la that Chiun had nearly murdered two of their number over a passing thought. "You got it," he said.
"O wondrous day," Chiun cheeped happily as he wrapped the white toga around his yellow brocade robe. "Remember, you promised."
Remo grunted.
The banquet hall at Shangri-la was a sea of white togas and sparkling martini glasses. The chauffeur who had driven the guests from the train station at Enwood milled around the crowd, looking uncomfortable in his toga, passing out grotesque two-foot-tall Aztec masks.
"What's this for?" Remo asked as the chauffeur handed him a huge green and white mask.
"The pageant," the chauffeur said dourly as he passed on to the next guest.
"A play," Chiun explained. "It is like television." He placed his mask over his face with great ceremony. "O lovely one," he intoned, "when I behold your gracious ways. . ."
"Shhh," someone interjected as the lights dimmed and the figure of Felix Foxx, unmasked, stepped up to a dais on the far side of the room.
107
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began.
Chiun clapped wildly. "It is good to encourage actors," he said.
"We are gathered here tonight to partake of the miracle of Shangri-la. The stripping away of the years, the defiance of time, the triumph of youth and beauty are the province of the esteemed few who hear me now."
"Hear, hear," Chiun yelled.
Foxx looked into the darkened crowd, then continued: "As Coleridge wrote of the dreamer in his immortal poem Kubla Khan: 'Weave a circle 'round him thrice, and touch his eyes with holy dread, for he on honeydew has fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise.' In Shangri-la, we are all such dreamers, weaving our own magic circle, privileged to partake of the milk of Paradise ourselves. . . ."
"With a needle full of drugs from the body of a dead girl," Remo said to Chiun.
"Silence, unenlightened one," Chiun snapped. "He is a fine actor. Perhaps on the level with Bad Rex in 'As the Planet Revolves.' Not as good as Cheeta Ching."
"And so it is in this spirit of magic that we begin the Exit of Age. Will the players come forward?"
Foxx stepped off the dais. At the same moment, Chiun rushed forward, elbowing those in his way toward the far corners of the room as he stepped up on the platform.
"We will begin with an ode written by myself. It describes the sorrow of the Korean virgin Hsu T'ching after the passing of the warrior, Lo Pang, in the province of Katsuan during the reign of Ko Kang, regent of Wa Sing," Chiun said.
A low moan of dismay went up from the crowd as the players in the pageant tried to mount the dais and
108
were pushed off by Chiun, who swatted them away like flies as he recited*. Two men managed to mount the platform, and took Chiun by either arm. With a slight jerk Chiun sent them sprawling against the walls.
While everyone's eyes were on the crazy old Oriental on the stage, Remo was watching Felix Foxx on the right side of the room, near the archway into the small kitchen that served the guests in the ballroom. Ignoring the spectacle Chiun was creating on the dais, Foxx whispered something to the chauffeur. The chauffeur nodded. Remo didn't like the look on the chauffeur's face as he handed Foxx a huge red and black mask. He liked it even less when Foxx slipped
out of the room.
Remo followed, pushing past the guests crowded into the dim amber-colored room, but by the time he reached the archway, Foxx had returned, a martini in his hand, his face covered by the mask. He recognized Remo with a cold nod and a brief uplifting of his glass. As Foxx wandered around the room, Remo's eyes never left him.
"And, lo, the wind, wild as the fury of the warrior's spear. . ."
"Couldn't we please get on with the pageant?" someone suggested.
Chiun sniffed contemptuously. "Lo, the wicked wind . . ."
Foxx was behind Remo. With his peripheral vision, Remo could trace the movements of the swaying white toga as it inched slowly around to the rear of the room until Foxx was directly behind him. Remo concentrated on his own feet, which would pick up the vibrations of footfalls through the floor. The ones he sensed were nearly balanced, but not quite. There
109
was apprehension in them, an almost imperceptible haltingness. And he was carrying something. Nothing as heavy as a gun, but something, held in front of him so that his weight pitched slightly forward.
"Thus rode Lo Pang into Katsuan, wielding the horns of the antelope . . ." Chiun spoke.
And then the room was bathed in total darkness.
There was a stampede. There was panic and terror. But even before the first scream, Remo felt the man behind him pitch forward with the weapon in his hands, and Remo knew what it was while it still swooped overhead.
Wire.
It looped and sang downward, slicing through the air in front of Remo's face. He followed the momentum of the wire with his palms, jutting them forward and down to throw his assailant off balance. Remo kicked backward and connected with bone in a sickening, muffied crack, then used the leverage of his own position to toss the man overhead. To the accompaniment of frenzied shrieks, the man landed with a thud, halfway across the room.
A handful of people had pulled out cigarette lighters to illuminate the suddenly darkened room in dim, unconnected patches of light. Remo took one of the lighters and brought it close to the unmoving figure on the floor, his black and red mask at a crazy angle to his body.
Don't let him be dead, Remo thought in a rush of panic. If he'd killed Foxx, all his secrets would go with him. / should have been more careful. I knew he was coming. I should have pulled back. . . . He stripped off the mask. Beneath it, eyes open and glazed, a thin trickle of blood escaping from his mouth, was the lifeless face of Foxx's chauffeur.
110
"Chiun!" Remo called. But Chiun was already beside him, his face pressed against the outside wall.
"He is gone," the old man said. "The gates outside have closed."
"Gone?" someone screamed. "Foxx?"
Suddenly Remo was surrounded by people acting as if they were in a burning airplane. "What about the injections?" a man asked. "We'll miss the injections."
"Guess you'll just have to wait," Remo said irritably, trying to pull himself away from the grasping hands and loud wails of the guests.
"We can't wait," a woman sobbed. "We'll die. You don't understand. It has to be tomorrow." She was clutching Remo like a drowning person. "It'll be too late. We're dead. We're all dead."
"Aren't you all being a little dramatic?" Remo said, forcing his way toward the open door. Outside, Chiun was already making his way through the five-foot-high snowdrifts. "Please. I've got to go."
"No, don't go," she screamed. "You helped us before. You've got to help us now. Help us! You have to. You owe it to us!"
She struggled and squealed as a pair of hands pried her loose from Remo. In the darkness, Remo had to squint to see who his rescuer was.
It was Posie. She was smiling, a strange, sad smile. "Don't worry about us," she said.
"Do you know where he's going?" Remo asked.
She shook her head. "Wherever it is, he wants to be alone," she said with a sexy Mae West irony. "He's cut all the power lines and locked the outside gate. I've just checked the basement. The treatments for us are gone."
111
"I'm sorry, Posie," Remo said. "I guess the next few days are going to be rough for you. Without the drugs, I mean."
"It's okay, "she said. She smiled, but her face had a hollow, frightened look. "He'll leave tracks that you can follow. That is, if you don't freeze to death. You have a terrific body, but I'd throw something over it besides that toga if I were you."
Remo looked down at the flowing white drape with embarrassment and tore it off. "Can you keep everybody under control here until I get back?"
"Sure," she said. "But don't bother hurrying back. You won't make it in time, anyway."
"What are you talking about?"
"Just get Foxx," Posie said. "He's the one who's responsible for what's going to happen here."
"Is everybody nuts?" Remo said. "You all act like some stupid injection is a matter of life and death."
He hesitated for a moment. Her face suddenly looked drawn and . . . old, Remo thought. But she smiled, and the image passed. Even at seventy, Posie Ponselie was a gorgeous creature.
"Just spoiled," she said winsomely. "Don't worry about us. We'll stay inside and tell ghost stories by candlelight." She touched his face. For a moment, he thought he saw that same impossible aged look creep over her stunning features. "Remo," she asked haltingly, "will you do something for me before you leave?"
"You don't have to ask," he said.
"Kiss me."
He held her close and pressed his lips to hers. The same electric warmth he had first felt with her surged through him again. "I'm going to miss you while I'm gone," he said.
112
She drew a manicured finger alongside his face. "I'll miss you, too. More than you know."
She let him go. Near the door, Seymour Burdich stood waiting, a down parka tossed ludicrously over his toga.
"I don't know what the hell's going on around here, but I'm going with you," he said, looking pale and trembling.
"Forget it," Remo said. "It's too cold, and you'd never be able to follow us, anyway."
"But it's spooky here," Burdich complained. "Everybody's crying bloody murder. There's something terrible happening. I want to help."
"There's nothing you can do. I didn't see a house or a gas station within twenty miles of here. Anyone who went out in this weather longer than ten minutes would freeze."
"You're going out"
"We're different," Remo said. "You just stay inside with the rest. I'll send help when I can."
Before he left, he looked back once more at Posie Ponselle. She was carrying two lit candles into the room from the kitchen. The firelight made her look, in her Grecian gown, like some pale and beautiful statue. He'd come close to loving her, and for that he would always owe her one. As he watched, she lifted her head in his direction. She smiled. At that moment, she was more beautiful than she'd ever been.
Her lips formed one word. "Good-bye," she said, and then she turned away.
113
We Interrupt This Book For a Message from Chiun
After ail my warnings, you are still reading this nonsense?
Shame on you.
Have ! not told you that those two paper-ruiners, Murphy and before him, that Sapir, get everything wrong? And if they do not get it wrong, then Pinnacle Books gets it wrong?
Don't you ever learn anything?
But at last, there is hope. I, Chiun, Master of Sin-anju, have finally written a book of my own. It is called The Assassin's Handbook, and it tells the true story of the House of Sinanju and is filled with wonderful, exciting tales about such marvelous Masters as Wang the Greater. It includes my almost-favorite Ung poem and The Assassin's Quick Weight-Loss Diet and 37 Steps to Sexual Ecstasy.
There is a book inside the book that tells of the death of Remo, my student. Nowhere else will you read this true story.
Unfortunately, the book also has some junk in it, including a picture of Sapir and Murphy. But that is the price we a
rtists must pay to bring beauty to a troubled world.
Buy my book. Buy one for a friend so that he too may appreciate the beauty of the real assassin.
You can get this book by filling out the little coupon below. The book costs $6.95. All the money will go to me. This is as it should be. I do all the work.
-Chiun
By his awesome hand in this 2,712th year of the dread Dragon Wind.
114 TH E DESTROYER #50
Available at your bookstore in November 1982, or clip and mail this handy coupon for prompt postal delivery:
PINNACLE BOOKS-Reader Service Dept.
1430 Broadway, New York, NY 10018
Please send me_ copy(ies) THE ASSASSIN'S HANDBOOK
by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir/ compiled and edited by Will Murray (41-847-7/ a hardcover-sized paperback), at $6.95 each, plus $1 to cover postage and handling. Enclosed is my check or money order-no cash or C.O.D.'s.
Name .
Address
City __State/Zip
Please allow six weeks for delivery. Price and availability subject to change without notice.
Chapter Ten
Chiun was already on the far side of the gate, the toga gone and replaced by the shimmering yellow of his long robe. The tire tracks from Foxx's Jeep traversed both sides of the gate and led off into the snow-drifted road beyond. There were no other vehicles on the grounds. Foxx, Remo realized, had seen to this eventuality long before.
Foxx's departure couldn't have been more advantageously timed. Five minutes after Remo vaulted over the ironwork gate at Shangri-la, the snow had started to fall; within another twenty minutes the tracks were all but obscured beneath the swirling snowstorm that raged all around them.
The cold was not a factor. Like a lizard, Remo had learned to adapt his body temperature to his environment. In the sixties, America's scientific community was stood on its ear when it was reported that Soviet cosmonauts had begun to learn control of their bodies to the point of lowering the temperature of their big toes at will. Remo could tower the temperature of his big toe in his sleep. Controlling his body temperature was as natural as breathing. He was beginning to achieve the stage in his development where he, like
Killing Time td-50 Page 9