"And it came to pass a little while later that Wang was summoned to perform a minor service in Egypt. While there he was trapped in a chamber with a secret sect of soldier priests, for the pharaoh wished to see if the tales he had heard were true. Wang, being Wang, easily vanquished the men. But that was not the end. He encountered the same problem in China, Assyria, Babylonia and several lesser kingdoms. None believed that he could be what he claimed."
"Wait a second," Remo interrupted. "Wasn't this what started the Master's Trial? People challenging Wang like he was the best gunslinger in Dodge?"
Chiun's gaze grew hooded. "I am certain as he looks on this very moment, the Great Wang appreciates being compared to a shooter of boomsticks," he said dryly.
Remo had been so drawn in to Chiun's story that for the first time in a year he had forgotten about his invisible company. He shrugged an apology at the vacant air.
"But that was part of the reason for Wang starting the Master's Trial, right?" he asked. "Don't tell me I have to go on that trip again, 'cause if you remember last time it went massively wrong in about a million different ways."
"You went through that ritual long ago. The Master's Trial is an honorable contest between ancient peoples. While the origin is similar, this is something different."
"Yeah? Just so long as this ends different, I'll be happy."
The Master of Sinanju pursed his wrinkled lips. "Are you going to listen or are you going to waste the rest of the day drying your flapping tongue in the sun?"
"I'm listening, I'm listening."
Chiun seemed skeptical. After a moment of fixing his pupil with a gimlet eye, he continued.
"And Wang, who was frustrated that the first years of his masterhood had been spent proving himself to disbelieving rulers, did return to the village deeply troubled. Even from its earliest days Sinanju had always been an art of assassination. But this new age he had ushered in was threatening to turn his most sacred calling into little more than a spectator sport. For many days he did think on the problem. And when the solution finally came to him, Wang's heart soared, for he knew it was right. Hiring runners from neighboring villages, he did send them to the corners of the Earth. The runners carried letters in every language known to man and were delivered to the rulers of every land.
"The letters were an invitation to king and pharaoh, emir and emperor. These leaders were encouraged to send the greatest assassins in their respective lands into battle with the Master Wang. In the ensuing years, when Wang traveled on business to a particular region of the world, the invited thrones sent their chosen combatants to kill the new Master by whatever means and specialities they could devise. The world was smaller in those days, but the journeys were longer. It took ten years' time, but in the end Wang had met the greatest champions of all who questioned the strength of our House. With the end came the dawning of the New Age of Sinanju, for all had seen and all believed. All hail Wang the Great, founder, protector and nurturer of the modern House of Sinanju."
With a proud smile, the Master of Sinanju rested his hands to his lap, fingers interlocking. His pose indicated that he was finished the tale.
"Hail Wang, all right," Remo droned. "He skinned that shogun for thirty-eight big ones more than he was supposed to get, then took the show on the road. He must have scammed a bundle for racking up that ten-year body count."
"The only tribute Wang collected in that time was for the normal services he would have performed as Master anyway," Chiun explained. "He did not charge for the removal of his would-be assassins."
The world seemed to grow very still around Remo. Even the branches of the ash above his head appeared to still in the cold breeze, as if the hand of Wang himself had quelled their gentle movement.
"He killed them for free?" Remo asked, astonished.
"It was a pure ritual, baptized in blood. Wang did not want the taint of money to corrupt it."
Remo blinked. He opened his mouth to speak. He closed his mouth and blinked again.
"Let me get this straight," he said finally. "Free?"
"He deemed the tribute unimportant," Chiun said. He seemed uncomfortable with the notion. "Wang had discovered something almost as vital as tribute itself-the importance of advertising. Have you never wondered, Remo, why in our travels in this, what you would call the modern world, Sinanju is not known to the general population, yet is whispered about by kings in throne rooms and cutthroats who hide in the dark corners of taverns from Marrakech to Taipei?"
"Our reputation," Remo replied. "We've been doing this job for years."
"Yes, and the clown who flips cowburgers and the man with the donkey who picks coffee beans have been about their business for far less time," Chiun replied. "Yet they are known to all. We are known only to those who need to know about us. Thank the wisdom of Wang for this. He understood that ours is a service that is oftentimes rendered in secret. Even before Wang we lived among the shadows, always running the risk of being forgotten when came the dawn. With no night tigers and only one Master of Sinanju in all the world, Wang understood that this new Sinanju ran the risk of being forgotten. Especially with the rise of civilizations and the armies that came with them. And so, lest the world forget, Wang did issue a decree that each generation must embark on the same journey he undertook. The new Master is introduced by the retiring Master at court, after which the court's designated killer may strike. The end result proves to the leaders of the world that Sinanju is the power to be sought by every throne. For a reasonable fee, of course."
"Wait a second," Remo said, snapping his fingers. "Those letters you were sending out last year. This is what they were for. That's why that Swiss assassin who was chasing us around during that fiasco with those oxygen-sucking trees had one in his house when we caught up with him. It was an invitation to try to kill me."
Chiun allowed a tiny nod. "The main letters in the larger gold envelope go to the head of the government. Inside there is a silver envelope, which goes to the assassin of their choosing. That man happened to have received an invitation by the German government to enter the contest."
"What about that Afghan who just tried to blow me up? Shouldn't we have had an audience with the head of the Junior Towelband, or whatever-the-hell backward rock worshipers we've installed to run that dump now?"
"As I said, the Afghans deviated from the rules," Chiun replied with distaste. "Hardly a surprise. Those people have been in a state of decline ever since Mongol rule fell apart in the hundred years after the death of Genghis Khan. Their deception has lost them the chance to participate."
"Good," Remo said. "Because I sure as hell wasn't going to work for them no matter what. And since someone broke the rules, does that mean the game's off and we can go home?"
Chiun fixed him with a baleful look. Unscissoring his legs, the old man rose fluidly to his feet. Remo's head sank. He let out a protracted sigh.
"So you're saying I've gotta hump my way around the globe killing the best assassins money can buy?" The Master of Sinanju raised a haughty brow.
"We are the best assassins money can buy," he sniffed. "Well, I am. You are whatever it is you are. But it is too late to do anything about that now." He clapped his hands. "Come!" he commanded. "We must hie to the airport, for France awaits." With that he turned on his heel and marched across the grass. For a long moment, Remo just sat there.
"Well, could be worse," he mused to himself, his voice a tired sigh. "At least I get to kill a Frenchman."
Rising reluctantly to his feet, he followed the Master of Sinanju from the park.
Chapter 10
"I saw your father this morning. I said to him, Mr. Dilkes, where are you going so early? Can you believe it, he was going out for the paper? I've told him a dozen times he can get it delivered, but he says the walk does him good. It must be doing something, because he looks wonderful. I think it's amazing how he's able to get around at his age. He's got to be-what-eighty? Eighty-five?"
"He'll be ninety-two in
April."
"Ninety-two? Imagine that. Ninety-two."
As Francine Standish and Mr. Dilkes's son rode up on the elevator in the King Apartments in Boca Raton, Florida, she clicked her tongue and shook her head in quiet amazement.
Francine was forty-five, with a pretty smile and hips that were starting to grow a little too wide. She had probably turned her share of heads in her glory days. But too much blond dye had turned her hair to straw and too much makeup now filled the subtle lines of her aging skin. Still, she was an attractive woman. There was more to her chatter than the awkward talk of neighbors on a shared elevator ride.
She offered the smile. It was the same one women always gave him. The smile that told him she didn't care whether his father fell down the front steps and cracked his skull open on his way to get the morning paper.
Benson Dilkes had gotten that smile a lot in his life. Even now, at a time of life when virility was in retreat for most men, women still flirted. It was no surprise. Dilkes had retained his rugged good looks into his early sixties. Although his dark hair was peppered with gray, there remained a boyishness about him, amplified by the crimping laugh lines that creased his eyes when he smiled.
In the rear of the car, Benson Dilkes pretended he didn't see Francine Standish's leering smile.
"Yes, ninety-two," he said politely as he watched the floor numbers light. His voice was a soft rasp, with the twang of his native Virginia. "The other day Mr. Freeman on the third floor asked if we were brothers. I hope he was joking. It made Dad pretty happy."
Francine snorted, as if this were the funniest thing she had ever heard. The laugh was cute when she was homecoming queen. It was the same laugh that-among other things-had finally driven her husband away five years before.
Unlike her ex-husband, who had once liked her snorting laugh, Benson Dilkes found it instantly irritating. So much so, he nearly killed her right then and there.
It would have been easy enough. Just a simple blow to the temple. Right where the blue veins throbbed beneath a curl of lacquered hair. Oh, there were other, more exotic methods. There were a hundred different options open to him. But he'd always preferred simplicity.
Despite the urge, he didn't crack his fist to her temple. A murder in the building would have inspired too many questions. Benson Dilkes didn't like questions. Instead, he waited for the car to stop on the sixteenth floor. When it did, he gave his fellow tenant a courteous "nice talking to you" before stepping off the elevator. The doors slid shut on Francine's disappointed face.
Dilkes headed up the blue-carpeted hallway. His apartment was at the far corner.
Corner apartments were always preferable. They only shared a single wall with one immediate neighbor. The other walls in Dilkes's apartment were exterior walls, with one facing the hallway. The building narrowed at the floor above, so there was no apartment over him, just a flat roof.
Dilkes unlocked his door with two keys. One for the standard lock, the other for the explosive charge that, if not deactivated properly, would have blown the floor and most of this side of the building across Boca Raton.
Stepping inside, he closed the door.
The apartment looked like any other in the building. It was an important charade to preserve. When he had guests over-which he sometimes did to maintain a cover of normalcy-he didn't want anything to seem out of the ordinary.
The drapes were drawn on the daylight.
Dilkes had recently heard a reporter compare Florida to Rick's Cafe in Casablanca. The Sunshine State, with its porous border to the open sea, was a welcoming haven for illegal immigrants, drug runners and terrorists. Dilkes liked it for the fresh-squeezed orange juice.
When his father had retired here, Dilkes leased two apartments. One for the old man, one for himself. Despite the fact that Benson Dilkes had himself retired to a ranch in Zimbabwe, leasing a second apartment that remained largely unused was still preferable to staying with his father during visits to Florida. Even though Benson Dilkes generally only used the apartment a few weeks each year, he knew he wouldn't have lasted long under the same roof with his father.
Dilkes really only pretended to have a relationship with his father, mostly out of obligation to his dead mother. The truth was, Benson Dilkes wouldn't have cared if the nasty old bastard was buried under ten tons of collapsed building.
In his darkened apartment, the thought made him smile.
When he came to visit this time, people were as polite to Dilkes as they always were. He had been coming to the King Apartments yearly for the past few years. Most of the permanent residents knew him. They assumed that, like usual, he would stay for a short time and then head back home.
But one month became two, became three. People eventually realized that this time he was here to stay. The other tenants didn't know much about their new neighbor. They knew that he paid the rent on his father's apartment. The old man lived on the fourth floor. From the father they learned that the son had been some kind of businessman who had spent much of his time in Africa.
Dilkes allowed his father to perpetuate the lie. If the other tenants of the King Apartments ever learned the truth, Benson Dilkes would have to kill them all. He had gone the mass-murder route before. Hotel and apartment fires were easy enough to arrange. They worked better in Third World countries, where few questions were asked and everyone could be bribed, but the same techniques could have been applied to the King Apartments. Fortunately no one really asked questions of any consequence, and so Benson Dilkes wasn't forced to kill all of his neighbors.
As Dilkes passed through the living room of his darkened apartment, he fished something out of his jacket pocket.
The small plastic case rattled in his hand. He had gone to collect it from the storage room in the basement.
Most of the items downstairs had been shipped from his Zimbabwe ranch. They were seemingly innocuous items from his old African office that he had stored out in the loft of his garden shed. When he had closed his office five years before, he had assumed the stuff would collect dust forever.
Bright red thumbtacks clattered inside the case. Dilkes had hoped to never see that case again. But the world had dragged him from his life of well-earned leisure.
He noted the change in his skin tone as he brushed some grime off the cover of the plastic case.
Back home in Zimbabwe he grew rosebushes for pleasure. His work in the sun had given him a dark tan. In the months since he'd left Africa, the tan had begun to fade.
With melancholy thoughts of his beloved rose garden, Dilkes went up the hall to his bedroom.
The curtains were pulled tight here, too. When he flipped on the lights his lips thinned unhappily. There was a collection of corkboard world maps standing on easels near the far wall of the bedroom. The countries had been painted in bright, clashing colors.
The maps, which used to hang in a back room in his old offices, were hopelessly out-of-date. They were made for Dilkes back in 1977. World maps were drawn differently now. Since that time, countries had come and gone, borders had been redrawn. An entire empire had collapsed.
But countries were always changing. Maps could never be completely accurate from year to year. Dilkes knew that well from the many years he had worked in Africa. But although man changed maps to suit his whims, the geography itself didn't change. Nor, Benson Dilkes feared, did tradition.
Red thumbtacks were pressed into spots all around the corkboard maps. Many were in Europe, while others were in the United States and Asia. A few were in Africa and South America. Each tack represented a life.
The one in Washington, D.C., was Dilkes's old associate Sylvester Montrofort. There was one in Rome for Ivan Mikhailov, a brutish Russian from the old Soviet-era Treska hit squads who was supposed to be impossible to kill. Lhasa and Gunner Nilsson were represented by a pair of tacks, one in New York's Catskills Mountains, the other in New York City. Hilton Marmaduke Spenser's life was marked by a lonely red tack pressed into Madrid. And on the island
of St. Martin in the Caribbean, a thumbtack showed where the body of Merton Lord Wissex had washed up on a beach way back in 1982.
All had been killers. Famous in certain circles for cunning or skill or strength or family reputation. Benson Dilkes had known most of them, either in fact or by reputation. And every last one of them was dead. Dilkes popped the lid on the plastic case and picked out two red tacks. Setting the case on his nightstand, he walked over to the map of Europe. Very carefully, he pressed the tacks side by side into London.
He had just gotten the news from an old contact in Source. Thomas Smedley and Mrs. Knight had been good. Not up to the level of Benson Dilkes, of course, but they were more than just run-of-the-mill killers.
Two more red thumbtacks. Each representing a life. Soon to be joined by many others.
"And so it begins," Dilkes said to the darkened room.
He wondered if, when the time came, someone would record the end of his life thusly. He doubted it. Few people in his business were as efficient as Benson Dilkes.
Taking his pipe from an ashtray next to the thumbtack case, he lit the bowl and sat in a comfortable chair. To wait for the world to contract around his neck.
Chapter 11
Remo and Chiun took the tunnel train from England to France. Their destination was outside Paris.
This meeting was much like the one at Buckingham Palace. This time it was a secret chamber in a part of Versailles that was off-limits to tourists, and this time it was the elected president of France instead of a monarch.
Remo had met the French president a few years before and hadn't been terribly impressed. For politeness's sake he shook the man's offered hand then stood back and let the Master of Sinanju do the talking.
Chiun bowed and pledged eternal loyalty to the Capetian House and the Valois and Bourbon dynasties, which made the French president more than a little uncomfortable. Much of what the Master of Sinanju said was in French. Remo knew he was being played up for the president when he saw the grand gestures the old Korean gave, as well as the knowing nods he'd occasionally make back in Remo's direction.
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