Bidding War td-101

by Warren Murphy

  Maybe, he thought as he rode his chestnut mare, it was time to think about settling down and raising a family, as Remo had once dreamed of doing. The old scars had all healed. A happy life was possible now. Anything was possible for a man who had found his father and the truth about himself.

  As Remo rode, his dark eyes went to the biggest landmark on the Sun On Jo Indian Reservation. Red Ghost Butte. There the chiefs of the Sun On Jo tribe—his tribe, he now knew—going back for several centuries were mummified. The tribe had been founded by an exiled Korean, Kojong, whose name had come down to the Sun On Jos as Ko Jong Oh. However his name was spelled, Kojong had been Remo's ancestor, a Master of Sinanju. Like Remo. In a way, that made Remo a kind of prodigal son. And now he had come home.

  It was funny how things had worked out, Remo thought as he watched the red Arizona sun dip toward Red Ghost Butte, reddening the sandstone hills and the rippling dunes as far as the eye could see. He was the first white man to learn Sinanju, the sun source of the Eastern martial arts. Now he knew that wasn't exactly true. He was white, true. But he also had Sun On Jo blood in him, which made him, technically, part Korean.

  For years, under the tutelage of Chiun, the last pure-blooded Master of Sinanju, he had grown to feel more Korean than white. Now he knew why. It was the blood of his ancestors resurging in him.

  It felt good. It felt right. For the first time in his life, all the pieces of his life fit.

  Except, he thought with a sudden apprehension, one.

  The one ill-fitting piece came riding across the reddening sands from Red Ghost Butte. Riding an Appaloosa pony and wearing his seamed visage like a yellowish papyrus mask, set and unhappy. Always unhappy.

  The Master of Sinanju had seen every sun of the twentieth century and a fair sampling of the last. A century of living had puckered and seamed his wise face, denuded his shiny skull of hair except for puffy white clouds over each ear. Yet his hazel eyes were clear and unclouded by age.

  Those eyes zeroed in on Remo and took in his buckskin clothes, beaded moccasins and the red hawk's feather drooping from his lengthening hair.

  Remo prodded his mare. They met halfway, the two horses nuzzling each other in friendly greeting.

  Remo and Chiun regarded each other warily. The Master of Sinanju, who had taught Remo the skills of correct breathing that unlocked the near-superhuman potentials of his mind and body, wore the tiger-striped kimono of the Sinanju Master. His long-nailed claws held the reins tight. He held his face tight, too.

  "Been visiting Kojong?" Remo asked to break the silence.

  "I have broken the bitter news to my ancestor," Chiun said in a grave voice. A dry, dusty breeze played with his wispy tendril of a beard.

  "What bitter news is that?"

  "That thanks to the stubborn intransigence of his two eldest male ancestors, he has been consigned to dwell in a lightless cave until the very sun turns to coal."

  Remo kept his voice light. "I met Kojong in the Void. Remember? He's doing fine."

  "His bones yearn for the sweet hills of Korea. I have explained this to your recalcitrant father, but the years of dwelling in this harsh land have evidently filled his heedless ears with sand and his uncaring heart with stones."

  "This is Kojong's land. He came here years before Columbus. This is where he lived. This is where he died. I think his bones are pretty happy here."

  "Pah. Spoken like a fork-tongued redskin."

  "Now, cut that out. Besides, it was the white man who spoke with forked tongue."

  "And you are part white. Your mother was white. The forking of your tongue must come from your mother."

  "If you keep insulting my mother, this is going to be a short conversation," Remo warned.

  "You are white. Do not deny this."

  "White. Sun On Jo. Korean. Probably some Navajo, too. Sunny Joe tells me I have a few drops of Irish, Italian and Spanish blood. Maybe some others. We're not sure who all my mother's ancestors were."

  "That is another way of saying 'mongrel.'"

  "I like the way for years you've been trying to convince me I'm part Korean, and now that we know it's true, you're throwing my white genes back in my face."

  "Dirty laundry is dirty laundry," Chiun sniffed.

  "That's not what I meant by 'genes.' And wasn't the first Master of Sinanju supposed to have been Japanese?"

  Chiun's cheeks puffed out in righteous indignation. "A canard. Told by ninjas to advance their trade."

  Remo looked away. "Forget I brought it up."

  Chiun dropped his voice. "It is time we left this treeless place, Remo."

  "Not me. I'm staying."

  "How long?"

  "Don't know. I kinda like it here. It's open and clean, and there are hardly any telephones."

  "Emperor Smith has work for us."

  Remo eyed Chiun. "You been in touch with him?"

  "No. But he always has work for the House. And the House is never idle. It cannot afford to be idle, for now there are two villages to support."

  "Don't try that con on me. The tribe is doing fine. Sunny Joe has plenty of money. And they know how to grow their own food—which is more than I can say for the people of Sinanju."

  Chiun sat up in his saddle. "There are no fish in a desert."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Nor have I seen any ducks."

  "Say it so I understand it," Remo promised.

  "One cannot live on rice alone."

  "I've been branching out."

  Chiun started. "You have not eaten swine?"

  "Of course not."

  "Nor steer beef?"

  "My beef days are long over. You know that."

  "Then what?"

  "That," Remo said, "is between me and my honored ancestors."

  The Master of Sinanju regarded his pupil critically, as if measuring him. He leaned forward in his saddle. "Your color is different."

  "I'm out in the sun more. I'm tanning."

  "The whites of your eyes are no longer the good hue of rice."

  "My eyes see fine."

  "I detect a yellowing. Faint but discernible."

  Remo pretended to be interested in a red-tailed hawk balancing itself on a low thermal.

  And leaning forward even more, Chiun began to sniff the air delicately. "Corn!" he howled. "I smell corn upon your fetid breath! You have sunk into eating filth and swill. Next you will stoop to digging potatoes from the dirt and gnawing them raw."

  "There's nothing wrong with Sun On Jo maize. It's grown naturally and tastes great."

  "You cannot eat corn."

  "Ko Jong Oh ate corn."

  "Who told you that lie!"

  "Sunny Joe. All the Sunny Joes descended from Ko Jong Oh ate corn. It was the sun food."

  "He is called Kojong, and maize cannot sustain a Master of Sinanju. It lacks goodness."

  "Maybe. But mixed in with rice it's great. I haven't had com in maybe twenty years."

  "I forbid you to eat maize."

  "Too late. I've developed a taste for it. I'm not going back to rice and only rice."

  "Of course not. You must also have fish and duck."

  Remo made a face. "I never liked duck. You know that. I only eat duck to wash the taste of fish from my mouth. Then I switch back to fish before duck grease coats my tongue permanently."

  "If you eat only rice and maize and not duck or fish, you will sicken and die. And then where will the House be?"

  "Where it's always been. Stuck in Clamflat, North Korea."

  "Do not speak of the Pearl of the Orient that way."

  "I have an idea," Remo said.

  Chiun narrowed his hazel eyes dubiously. "What is your idea?"

  "Why don't we bring all your people out here?"

  "Here! They would sooner starve."

  "Which is exactly what would happen if the House didn't support them. But I mean it, Chiun. The climate is great year-round. There's plenty of food. And it's in America."

  "A c
ountry less than three centuries old. It is hardly broken in yet."

  "You have a better idea?"

  "I had been considering offering these poor Korean refugees sanctuary in my village of Sinanju."

  "In North Korea? Where it's winter three seasons out of four and there's no food or freedom?"

  "There is freedom in my village. No one would dare say otherwise. I have forbidden all derogatory speech."

  "You talk to Sunny Joe about this?" Remo asked.

  "Not yet. I wished to speak to you first."

  "I doubt he would go for it."

  "These poor relations of ours have fallen into low habits, Remo. They eat corn." His eyes narrowed. "And they drink it."

  "No disagreement there. But now that Sunny Joe's back for good, he's going to straighten them out."

  "Once Koreans fall into corn-eating habits, drinking spirits follows naturally. One cannot cure the symptom without eradicating the disease. They are obviously homesick."

  "It's not going to go over, so forget it."

  Face stiffening, the Master of Sinanju drew back the reins to put space between Remo and himself. "On the morrow," he announced, "I am leaving."

  "Okay."

  "With or without you."

  "I haven't decided what I'm going to do with rest of my life yet," Remo said in a nonthreatening voice.

  "You will do what you must."

  "Count on it."

  "And the path you must follow is the path you have followed. You are a Sinanju assassin."

  "I don't want to be an assassin anymore. I've put in my time. And I've put killing behind me. I'm a man of peace now."

  "Is that what you want me to tell Smith?"

  "Definitely."

  "And do you also want me to inform Emperor Smith of your recent good fortune?"

  A flicker of a shadow crossed Remo's face. "You can leave that out."

  "Because if I do, he may order me to do something I would rather not do."

  "If you're driving someplace in particular, state your destination."

  "Very well. Smith selected you above all other whites to be placed in my hands because you were a foundling. Now that you are no longer fatherless, he may see in this development a threat to his organization."

  "You suggesting Smith would order a hit on Sunny Joe?"

  "You must not call him that. It is too familiar. Call him Appa, which is Korean for 'father.'"

  "I'm not comfortable calling him that. I've only known him a few weeks. I like 'Sunny Joe' better."

  "It is un-Korean. And disrespectful."

  "I'm more Sun On Jo than Korean. Remember? But back to Smith. If you're trying to blackmail me into going with you, forget it. I'm through being an assassin."

  "Have I ever told you about the stonecutter?"

  "If you had, I've long ago forgotten. And if you plan to, I'm not interested. Don't tell Smith about Sunny Joe. Because you know if he sends anyone here, it'll be you. And you also know if you come for Sunny Joe, you'll find me standing in the way."

  The Master of Sinanju regarded his pupil with stony eyes for a long moment. "I do not appreciate you taking that tone with me, Remo Roam."

  " 'Williams.' I'm keeping the name I've been used to all these years."

  "But I would not respect you if you failed to stand up for the one who is truly your father," Chiun continued. "So I will let it pass."

  "Good."

  Chiun pointed his mount eastward. "Tomorrow I depart."

  "Okay."

  " With or without you."

  "I'm staying here until I decide different."

  "And if the one who sired you agrees to relocate his people to my village?"

  "He won't."

  "But if he does?"

  "Ask me then."

  "Very well. I go now to write my speech."

  "It better be one heck of a speech if you hope to convince the Sun On Jos to leave their reservation."

  "My speech does not have to convince them all. Only one person."

  And with that, the Master of Sinanju turned his Appaloosa pony and sent it trotting back toward the heart of the Sun On Jo Reservation.

  From his saddle Remo watched him go. He felt nothing. He didn't know what to feel, really. For most of his adult life he had been torn between two worlds—the East of Sinanju and the West of America. His love of his country and the deep devotion and respect for the Master of Sinanju who had given him so much.

  Now he stood between the stranger who was his father in blood and the man who was his father in spirit, both tugging him in different directions.

  If only all the pieces would fit, he thought grimly.

  And then he forked his mount and made for Red Ghost Butte.

  He felt like paying his respects to Ko Jong Oh, too.

  It felt good to have family and ancestors and a place where he truly belonged.

  No one was going to spoil it for him, Remo promised himself.

  Not even the Master of Sinanju, whom he loved with his whole heart.

  Chapter Three

  Harold Smith didn't report the stripping of his station wagon until he was safely in the sanctum sanctorum of his office at Folcroft Sanitarium. He considered not reporting it at all, but that would be more suspicious than reporting it.

  The Harlem police sergeant sounded bored. "We'll never find it."

  "It was parked on Malcolm X Boulevard not two hours ago," Smith returned thinly.

  "We'll never find it intact. You got insurance?"

  "Of course."

  "Some people don't. My advice is call your adjuster."

  "I would like every effort undertaken to recover my vehicle."

  "We'll do what we can," the police sergeant said with an appalling absence of conviction or enthusiasm.

  Smith thanked him without warmth and returned the telephone receiver to its cradle.

  This, he thought, was exactly the reality the President who had established CURE three decades ago had hoped to avoid. A lawlessness and anarchy where private property and human lives were not longer respected. Where even the police in major cities had given up enforcing every law to the fullest because they had neither the money, manpower nor will to hold back the tide of lawlessness.

  Three decades of operating outside the Constitution, bending it, ignoring it and even subverting it, had preserved the security of the United States but had not restored domestic order. The America Harold Smith had grown up in wasn't the America he was growing old in. It had changed. Despite all efforts, all sacrifices, large sections of urban America had been ceded to anarchy and fear.

  It was in reflective moments like this that Harold Smith wondered if it had all been worth it. He had been CURE'S first director back in the early sixties. A President soon to be martyred had placed the awesome responsibility in his hands. America was sliding into anarchy. CURE was the prescription. Only Smith, the incumbent President and his enforcement arm would know it existed. Officially there was no CURE. Officially Harold Smith was director of Folcroft, his CIA and OSS days firmly behind him.

  For three decades CURE had worked quietly to balance the scales of justice and preserve American democracy, which many considered an experiment and which only Harold Smith knew had failed utterly. CURE exposed corruption private and public. It worked through the system, manipulating it to see that the deserving were punished to the full measure of the law and, where the law could not reach, it struck down the forces bent on undermining the nation.

  For the most serious missions, CURE was sanctioned to kill without regard to due process. If the media were ever to learn that a secret branch of the U.S. government controlled a covert assassin, unknown to Congress and the electorate, CURE would be shut down in a blizzard of hearings and federal indictments.

  And within two years—perhaps three at most—the nation would begin to unravel like a cheap sweater.

  That knowledge alone kept Harold Smith going when his old bones ached for the long-deferred peace of retirement.


  Today Smith wondered if CURE were not close to fading into the twilight zone of unsanctioned government operations.

  For a year now, ever since the Friend attack, his enforcement arm had been threatening to quit. Remo Williams had threatened to leave CURE many times before. It was understandable. How long could a man, even a committed patriot, be expected to solve his country's worst crises?

  This time Remo seemed determined. True, he had executed several missions. Some reluctantly, some with enthusiasm and others because his trainer had coerced or cajoled him into fulfilling his contractual obligations.

  The trouble was that increasingly Remo's obligations were to the House of Sinanju, the five-thousand-year-old House of assassins that had performed the same service to King Tut that it did the current U.S. President. Ancient Persia had enjoyed its protection, just as modern Iran had feared its wrath. Less and less had Remo felt the pull of his nation's duty. More and more he belonged to the House.

  For the past year Smith had kept Remo in play on the pretext of helping find his roots. It was a hopeless task and Smith knew it. For it was Harold Smith who years ago had a young beat cop named Remo Williams framed for a killing he never committed. Executed in an electric chair as rigged as the murder trial that condemned him, Remo was erased from existence. His fingerprints pulled, his identity and face altered, he became CURE'S enforcement arm. An ex-Marine with a pure killer's instinct.

  Smith had selected Remo in part because he was unmarried and an orphan. There were no roots to hold him to his past.

  But under the training of the last Master of Sinanju, Remo had grown new roots. It was inevitable, unavoidable perhaps, but it had complicated matters the cut-and-dried Harold Smith had preferred left simple and uncomplicated.

  It had been three months since Smith had any word from Remo and Chiun. The last he had heard, Remo was undergoing a grueling ordeal called the Rite of Attainment, which would sanctify him as worthy of becoming the next Reigning Master of Sinanju, the heir to the House of Sinanju and its tradition of hiring itself out to the highest bidder.

  Smith had no idea how long the rite was to last. Certainly three months' silence was a long time. Had something dire befallen either of them? Would they return to America? There was no telling. Chiun had always been prickly and unpredictable. And Remo moody and temperamental.