Last Rites td-100

by Warren Murphy

  "And what is that?"

  "I remembered you pointed south. You didn't say the exit was south. You just pointed. That meant technically you didn't lie to me."

  Chiun said nothing.

  "I knew if my life was at stake, you wouldn't lie," Remo went on. "You wouldn't lie to me about something that important."

  And the Master of Sinanju went to the bow and stood there like some troubled figurehead, staring across the Aegean toward Athens, where the floodlit Acropolis gleamed like an ancient pharos.

  Among his nets, Remo Williams succumbed to sleep and dreamed fitfully.

  HE FOUND HIMSELF FACING a pleasant little Asian man dressed in the garb of rural Korea. They were in a place of rolling hills touched by the pink blossoms of the flower known as rose of Sharon in the West, which the Koreans called mu-gang-hwa.

  The man greeted him with the ancient and traditional greeting of the Korean countryside. "Pam-go-sso yo?"

  "Yes, I have had rice today," Remo answered in his best Korean.

  "Good," said the pleasant little man. He smiled. It was an infectious smile despite the man's lack of a full set of teeth. Remo couldn't help but smile back.

  So when the pleasant little man tried to take Remo's head off with an unexpected snap kick, Remo was caught off guard. He evaded the strike only because his body was trained never to be caught unawares.

  "Hey! What's your problem?"

  "I am the second."

  "The second what?"

  The little man bowed politely. "My name is Kim."

  "Big deal. So's every third Korean's."

  "Your reflexes are exquisite," said the little Korean pleasantly.

  "Thanks. Why did you try to kill me just now?"

  "I wanted to see if it was true what they say."

  "What's true?"

  "That a big-nose, round-eyed white had mastered Sinanju."

  "What's it to you?" demanded Remo.

  "It is a point of family pride."

  "What family are we talking about?"

  "Your family." And the little man dropped into another bow. He bowed so low he vanished from sight with a tiny pop like a cork letting go.

  WHEN REMO WOKE AGAIN, he got up and found the Master of Sinanju watching the lights of Athens from the bow.

  "What was the name of the second Master of Sinanju?"

  "I have taught you that," Chiun said coldly. "You should know."

  "Was it Kim?"

  "There were many Masters named Kim. 'Kim' is a common name in my land. It means metal. It is like your 'Smith.'"

  "Answer my question."

  "There was Kim the Younger, Kim the Elder, the Lesser Kim and the Greater Kim, as well as several unremarkable Kims. But yes, the second Master was named Kim. The Lesser."

  "I just had a dream about him."

  Chiun said nothing for a very long time. Abruptly he turned away from contemplating the lights of Athens and said in a cold, remote tone, "We are about to make landfall, and I have no time for your unimportant dreams."

  Remo stood alone on the deck wearing a hurt expression on his strong face.

  HE WAS STILL WEARING IT when they climbed the hill called the Acropolis and looked down upon the white city of Athens below.

  Chiun began pacing amid the ruins until he found a spot he liked. "You must dig."

  Remo looked at the spot. "How do you know this is the right spot?"

  "Dig," repeated the Master of Sinanju sternly.

  So Remo dug. This time he used his bare big toe to disturb the earth, not dropping to his knees until the glint of metal peeked up from the ancient soil.

  "Got another coin," he said. "A drachma."

  Remo stood up. This time he cleared the dirt of the coin by tapping each side once with a fingertip. The dirt flew off as if vacuumed away.

  One side had the profile of a man with a winged helmet.

  "Hey. This looks kinda like one of those old Mercury-head dimes I used to see when I was a kid."

  Chiun raised an eyebrow. "You recognize Mercury?"

  "Sure. He was the Greek god of-wait a minute. Wasn't he Roman?"

  "The Romans took their gods from the Greeks."

  "Oh, right. Who did the Greeks get their gods from?"

  "Hither and yon. The Egyptians and the Koreans mainly."

  "I don't remember any Korean gods except that bear that was supposed to be the first man."

  "As usual, you have gotten everything confused. The face on that coin is Hermes, whom the Romans called Mercury."

  "It's coming back to me. Zeus was Jupiter. Ares was Mars. Hercules was.... What was Hercules?"

  "A drunken wastrel."

  "No, I meant what was his Greek name?"

  "Heracles."

  "I never liked that name," Remo said thoughtfully. "He was always Hercules to me."

  "The vestal virgins who raised you filled your mind with useless junk. You know no Korean tales but those I taught you."

  "Is there a point to all this carping and criticizing?"

  "If there is, you are too dense to see it," snapped Chiun, who started down off the mountain.

  Remo followed him down. "That's it? We climb this mountain, dig up an old coin and we're on our way again?"

  "Yes."

  "How about we check into a hotel for a few hours? I'm beat."

  "You have had six entire hours of sleep. And a nap. You cannot be tired."

  "I must be getting old."

  "You are getting lazy, and there will be no hotel. We are going to Giza."

  "Isn't that in Japan?"

  "You are thinking of the Ginza. Giza is in Khemet."

  "Never heard of Khemet, either," grumbled Remo, taking a last look back at the crumbling Parthenon and thinking how much it reminded him of Washington, D.C.

  " 'Khemet' means 'Black Land,'" said Chiun.

  "Still never heard of it."

  "That is because the rulers of Khemet threw away their brains."

  Remo looked his question, but the Master of Sinanju said nothing.

  Chapter 8

  On the plane Remo fell asleep.

  A darkness filled his mind and, after a time, it churned and boiled and out of this darkness stepped a man wearing the robes of ancient Egypt and the face of a sad pharaoh. Despite his pharaonic attire, he was unmistakably Korean.

  His mouth parted and the words coming out were doleful and hollow. "History has forgotten me."

  "Who are you?" Remo asked.

  "Wo-Ti was my name."

  "Was?"

  "I served Pharaoh Pepi II all of his days."

  "Good for you," said Remo.

  "His days numbered ninety-six years. And because I was pledged to guard his body, I did not see the village of my birth for the remainder of my days. The world still remembers Pepi II, but not Wo-Ti who ensured his long life."

  "Where is this place?" asked Remo, seeing all around him only a blackness so intense it seemed to vibrate. "This is the Void."

  "Yeah. I thought so. Pleasant. Do all Masters of Sinanju end up here after they go?"

  "The Void is not a place of bitterness, unless one brings bitterness into the Void with him. Remember that. When you drop your body, leave all bitterness behind you to lie moldering with your bones."

  "I'll try to keep that in mind," Remo said dryly. Wo-Ti lifted gnarled hands and flexed them with a warning crackling of cartilage. "Now we must fight."

  "Why?"

  "Because you have failed to recognize me."

  "What kind of cockamamy reason is that?" said Remo. "I never met you before."

  "That is no excuse." And Wo-Ti lashed out with a stabbing finger Remo checked with one thick wrist. The opposite hand flashed out. Remo caught it with his other wrist and stepped back.

  "This is ridiculous. I gotta be three times younger."

  "And I possess three times your experience. Defend your life."

  Wo-Ti made two fists like mallets of bone, and Remo copied his posture, stance and blocking mov
es.

  Their fists orbited each other, feinting, circling, withdrawing just on the verge of connecting. No blow was struck. This was not a contest of strikes or blows. Each man knew from the way the other reacted that his blow would fail if launched, and, knowing this, wasted no effort.

  It was the purest form of Sinanju fighting, a training exercise that could only be undertaken by two full Masters. Any lesser human being would not survive the first three seconds. It was called Lodestones, because the closed fists acted like magnets, attracting and repelling by turns, but never touching. To either land or receive a blow brought disgrace to both combatants equally. For contact signified that both teacher and pupil had failed in their duties to the House of Sinanju.

  It took Remo back to his earliest days of training, when Chiun would land many blows and become enraged at Remo for allowing it.

  "How long does this go on?" he asked Master Wo-Ti.

  "When you can tell me the lesson of my Masterhood."

  "What if I don't remember?"

  "It will be as much of a disgrace to you and your teacher as if your fist struck my body or my fist struck yours," said Wo-Ti, probing for an opening.

  Remo thought hard. Trouble was, it was nearly impossible to do Lodestones and concentrate on anything else.

  Wo-Ti. Wo-Ti. Why was Wo-Ti important? Remo thought.

  It hit him in a blaze of insight.

  Yeah. I remember now. Pharaoh Pepi II had the longest reign of any emperor in history, thanks to Wo-Ti. And all because Wo-Ti promised Pepi I he'd watch over his son for the rest of his life.

  "A Master should never serve a succeeding emperor!" Remo said quickly.

  And without another word, Master Wo-Ti dropped his guard and bowed out of existence.

  WHEN REMO AWOKE there was an AirEgypt stewardess sitting in his lap staring searchingly into his eyes.

  "I have a question," Remo said.

  "Ask, O alabaster-skinned one."

  "Where in Egypt is Khemet?"

  "Egypt is Khemet. It is the ancient name for Egypt. You are obviously very interested in Egypt."

  "Since we're about to land in Cairo, yeah."

  She smiled duskily. "Then you must be interested in Egyptians."

  "Vaguely."

  Her fingers toyed with a lock of his dark hair. "And Egyptian women."

  "In the abstract," admitted Remo.

  "Have you never heard of the Mile High Club?"

  "I'm a eunuch. I don't normally like to admit it but I notice you're fingering my zipper even though we just met, so I think you should know in advance."

  "Perhaps if I tickle it, it will grow back."

  Remo made his face sad. "Many have tried. But it doesn't work."

  "You still have lips for kissing and a tongue for deeper kissing."

  "Wrong again. The people who chopped it off snatched my tongue away."

  "Then how do you speak?"

  "Prosthetic tongue. It's plastic. Tastes like a squirt gun. You wouldn't like it."

  And while the stewardess was staring with a befuddled expression lapping at her kohl-rimmed eyes, Remo reached up and touched a nerve in her neck that froze her in place. Then he gently picked her up and carried her across the aisle, still frozen in a seated position, dropping her into an empty seat. There were a lot of empty seats. These days Muslim fundamentalists were murdering tourists in Cairo with wild abandon in an effort to call down the sympathy of the world community upon their latest cause. Which, since the Israeli-Palestinian accords, seemed focused on blowing up secular poets, godless pop singers and protesting family planning.

  When the jet rolled up to the gate, the remaining stewardesses were waiting to see Remo off the plane. So Remo and Chiun sat patiently in their seats until the entire plane had emptied out.

  On the way out the passenger exit, Remo shook hands with every flight attendant, whispering, "I'm a eunuch. Honest. I'm a eunuch."

  On his way out, the Master of Sinanju shut the cabin door behind him, giving it a smack that made the entire fuselage shake like a gaffed fish and incidentally fusing the door shut.

  The sound of fists beating against unyielding metal followed them up the jetway ramp and into the busy terminal.

  A smiling Egyptian man bowed Remo and Chiun into his cab outside the terminal, and Chiun slipped in first. When Remo dropped into the seat beside him, he found the driver had already been given his instructions. The cab took off, screeching through the clangor and congestion of downtown Cairo.

  "Care to enlighten a tourist as to his destination?" Remo asked Chiun, rolling up his window to keep out the sulphurous smog.

  "You are going to confront the dreaded Sun Lion."

  "I'm not afraid of lions."

  "This is a very large lion."

  "How large can a lion be?" asked Remo.

  The Master of Sinanju only smiled with a tight satisfaction.

  UNDER THE BORED GAM of the Cairo police Theron Moenig, UCLA professor of inexplicable phenomena, had set the four surveyor's lasers, one for each point on the compass, around the crumbling treasure of ancient Egypt men called the Great Sphinx.

  The lasers were calibrated to nanometer tolerances. Set equidistant, they would detect the most minute vibrations in the great limestone idol. The great moment approached.

  Theron Mcenig had toiled for six years for this great moment. Six years of seeking grants, funding and specialized equipment normally used to test the structural integrity and plumb of high-rise skyscrapers. And now it was here.

  He must not fail. Science looked to him for the answer to one of the great riddles surrounding the Great Sphinx of Giza.

  There were many questions surrounding the Sphinx. They had been asked repeatedly down through the dusty centuries. The empty echoes of answers that were never forthcoming resounded down the decades.

  Who had built the Sphinx? Why was it built?

  And who or what was represented by the giant, multiton figure of a recumbent lion with the head of a pharaoh?

  Some said it wore the face of Pharaoh Khufu, who was known as Cheops to the Greeks. Others claimed the Sphinx wore the visage of his son, Khafre, at the foot of whose pyramid it reposed. Most scholars believed the Sphinx dated back to the end of the Old Kingdom. A few believed it was older than the earliest pharaoh.

  Questions immemorial. The centuries rolled on, but the theories still hung in the sandy air of the desert, unanswered. If not unanswerable.

  Professor Moenig had come to the land of the pharaohs not to investigate the old, unprovable theories but to pose one that had never been asked in all of history. Has the Sphinx been moving?

  It was a preposterous question, which was why it had taken six and not the usual three years to wrest a halfmillion-dollar grant from UCLA's archaeology department. No one ever considered that the Sphinx had moved from its original spot. It had been buried by the encroaching deserts the ancient Egyptians called the Red Land countless times. In fact, had it not been buried four and a half centuries after it was carved, and thereby sheltered from the biting erosion of the windblown sands of the desert, the Sphinx might conceivably have become even more disgracefully eroded than it was.

  It was the orientation of the Great Sphinx to the Pyramid of Khufu that first posed the theory in Theron Moenig's mind. Ancient records had shown conclusively that the Sphinx lay at a precise right angle from the Khafre pyramid's eastern face. Yet a modern satellite picture showed a clear three-degree tilt away from the perpendicular.

  That the Sphinx had moved over the centuries as it sat patient and brooding seemed as inescapable as it was impossible.

  The Leaning Tower of Pisa tilted. Everyone knew that. Big Ben had even started leaning one way. This was known. The seas receded. Glaciers melted and tides lifted. These were facts.

  But what could have caused the Sphinx to move slowly, inexorably and-prior to sensitive surveying lasers-imperceptibly from its original east-facing orientation?

  Professor Moenig was determined
to find out. Armed with six million dollars of UCLA money-one million of it needed to bribe Egyptian authorities-he would discover the truth.

  Even if he had to live in the three-hundred-dollar-a-day Pharaoh Suite of the Nile Hilton from now until the turn of the century to do it.

  Opening his sun parasol, Moenig sat down before the computer terminal that displayed the Sphinx transfixed by the lasers' equidistant beams and pulled a paperback book from his backpack, settling down for the long haul. The longer the better.

  THE CAB CARRIED Remo and Chiun over a bridge and out of the city. They were soon on Pyramids Road, and the imposing cluster of three great pyramids bulked up through the stinking smog. Desert sands lay on either side. Camels plodded majestically along, carrying tourists and pilgrims alike.

  "Now, Khufu had many sons," Chiun said suddenly, as if picking up a story left unfinished. "But only one could be pharaoh. This was in the days of Master Saja. Khufu chose Djedefre as his successor. But one of his wives schemed to install her son by Khufu, one Rama-Tut. Ignorant of Khufu's unspoken choice, she conspired with a wicked vizier to rid the world of the rival sons of Khufu. Many accidents befell the sons of Khufu, who was in those days overseeing the building of the greatest of the pyramids before you. For pharaohs believed themselves to be gods who walked the earth and who, upon death, would ascend to the stars and rule the afterlife."

  "That why they built the pyramids?" asked Remo.

  Chiun nodded. "'The pyramids that you see are both tombs and staircases to the stars. In each structure that you see lies a shaft, facing north and slanting upward toward what was then called the Imperishable Stars-those that never set."

  "Like Polaris?"

  "In those days the pole star was a yellow star known to the Egyptians as Thuban, which lies at the tail of the constellation known since Roman times as Draco. Polaris has now taken its place in the sky. After we are dust, it will be the star Koreans call Chik-nyo. For not even the fixed stars in the sky are forever, Remo. But rest assured, when Chik nyo enjoys ascendancy the House of Sinanju will yet be strong."

  The hot air grew dustier with every mile. Remo said nothing. The pyramids seemed to grow before them without giving the appearance of coming closer. They were immense, their dun outlines crumbling.

  Chiun spoke on. "Now, Khufu had many burdens. He fretted over his pyramid, whose construction and sanctity would ensure a happy afterlife, and he worried about the misfortunes that were felling his lesser sons. So he summoned his chief vizier and asked him if the stars blessed the ascendancy of his son Djedefre to pharaoh. And this treacherous vizier, who was in league with the wicked mother of Rama-Tut, told Khufu that Djedefre would never be pharaoh. The stars looked with favor upon Rama-Tut instead.