Remo hefted the plank into place. The floor was forming, and next would come the walls, but the hard part would be the roof. As a kid, Remo had never been good in woodworking class, but he had picked up the basics. But as far as he knew, no American high school had ever taught classes in thatching. Perhaps Chiun could help him with the roof.
"Mah-Li already has a house," remarked Chiun after a short silence.
"It's too far from the viilage," Remo said. "She's not an outcast from the village anymore. She's the future wife of the next Master of Sinanju."
"Do not get ahead of yourself. I am the current Master. While I am Master, there is no other. Why not build Mah-Li's new house closer to mine?"
"Privacy," said Remo, looking down the hollowed tube of a bamboo shoot. He set several of these on end, in a row, and chopped off the tops with quick motions of his hands until they stood uniform in length.
"Will that not be hard on her, Remo?"
"How so?" Remo said. He split the first shoot down the middle with a vicious crack. The halves fell into his hands, perfectly split.
"She will have far to walk to wake you in the morning." Remo's hand poised in mid-chop.
"What are you talking about?"
"You are not even married yet and you are already treating your future bride disgracefully."
"How is building her a house disgraceful?"
"It is not the house. It is where the house is not."
"Where should it be?"
"Next to the house of my ancestors."
"Oh," said Remo, suddenly understanding. "Let us sit, Little Father."
"A good thought," said Chiun, settling on a rock. Remo sat at his feet, the feet of the only father he had ever known. He folded his hands over his bent knees.
"You are unhappy that I'm not building closer to you, is that it?" Remo asked.
"There is plenty of space on the eastern side."
"If you call twelve square feet spacious."
"In Sinanju, we do not dwell in our homes for hours on end, as you did in your former life in America." Remo looked out past the rock formation known as the Horns of Welcome, past the cold gray waters of the West Korea Bay. Somewhere beyond the horizon was America and the life he used to live. It was still all so fresh in his mind, but he shut away the memories. Sinanju was home now.
"A home on the eastern side would cut off your sunlight," Remo pointed out. "I know you like the sun coming through your window in the morning. I would not deprive you of that for my own pleasure.
Chiun nodded, the white wisps of beard floating about his chin. His hazel eyes shone with pleasant approval of his pupil's consideration.
"This is gracious of you. Remo."
"Thank you."
"But you must think of your future bride. On cold mornings, she would have to walk all the way from this place to your bedside."
"Little Father?" Remo said slowly, trying to pick the best words to phrase what he had to say.
"Yes?"
"Her bedside will be my bedside. We will be married, remember?"
"True," said Chiun, raising a long-nailed finger. "And this is my point exactly. She should be at your side."
"Right," said Remo, relieved.
"Right," said Chiun, thinking that Remo was getting the point at last. Sometimes he could be so slow. Residual whiteness. It would never go away entirely, but in a few decades Remo would be more like a Korean than he was now. Especially if he got more sun.
"So what's the problem?" Remo asked.
"This house. You do not need it." Remo frowned.
Chiun frowned back. Perhaps Remo had not gotten the point after all.
"Let me explain it to you," the Master of Sinanju said. "Mah-Li's place is at your side, correct?"
"That's right."
"Good. You had said so yourself. And your place is at my side, correct?"
"You are the Master of Sinanju. I am your pupil." Chiun rose to his feet and clapped his hands happily.
"Excellent! Then it is settled."
"What is settled?" Remo asked, getting up.
"Mah-Li will move in with us after the marriage. Come, I will help you take this unnecessary structure apart. "
"Wait a minute, Little Father. I never agreed to that. "
Chiun looked at Remo with astonishment wrinkling his parchrnent visage.
"What? You do not want Mah-Li? Beautiful Mah-Li, kind Mah-Li, who has graciously consented to overlook your unfortunate whiteness, your rnongrel birth, and accept you as her husband, and you do not want her to live with you upon your marriage? Is this some American custom you have never shared with me, Remo?"
"That isn't it, Little Father."
"No?"
"I wasn't planning on Mah-Li moving in with us."
"Then?"
"I was planning on moving in with her."
"Moving in?" Chiun squeaked. "As in moving out? Out of the house of my ancestors?" Chiun's many wrinkles smoothed in shock.
"I never thought of doing it any other way," Remo confessed.
"And I never thought you would dream of doing it any other wav than the way of Sinanju," Chiun snapped.
"I thought you'd want your privacy. I thought you'd understand."
"In Korea, families stick together," Chiun scolded. "In Korea, families do not break apart with marriage as they do in America. In America, families marry off their young and live many miles apart. In their apartness, they grow cool and lose their family bonds. It is no wonder that in America families fight over inheritances and murder other family members out of spite. American whites are bred to be strangers to one another. It is a disgrace. It is shameful."
"I'm sorry, Little Father. Mah-Li and I talked it over. This is the way it is with us."
"No, this is the way it is in the unfriendly land of your misbegotten birth. I have watched your television. I have seen Edge of Darkness, As the Planet Revolves." I know how it is. It will start with separate homes and escalate into contesting my will. I will have none of it!"
And saying no more, the Master of Sinanju turned on his heel with a flourish of skirts and sulked up the shore road back to the center of the village of Sinanju, nursing a deep hurt in his magnificent heart.
Remo said "Damn" to himself in a small voice and went back to building. He sliced dozens of long bamboo shoots with fingernails that had been made hard by diet and exercise, until he had enough to make the siding for his new home.
Remo had never dreamed that he would feel so miserable when he finally had a home to call his own.
It was near dusk when Remo finished the sides. The scent of smoking wood wafting from the village told him the cooking fires were going. The clean scent of boiling rice came to his nostrils, so sensitized by years of training that to him the aroma was as pungent as curry on the tongue. His mouth watered.
Remo decided the roof could wait.
When Remo stepped out from among the sheltering rocks that protected the village of Sinanju from the sea winds, he spotted Mah-Li, his wife-to-he, below. He slid onto a boulder and watched unnoticed.
In the village square, the other women had gathered around her. Mah-Li was a young girl, several years younger than Remo, but the older women of the village paid court to her as if she were the village grandmother.
Remo felt a swelling joy in his heart. Only weeks before, Mah-Li had been an outcast, living in a neat hovel beyond the rocks, far from the mainstream of the tiny village.
Weeks earlier, during the terrible days when it appeared that Chiun was on his deathbed, Remo was surrounded by the villagers of Sinanju, who despised him because he was not Korean. He had felt a greater loneliness than he could ever remember knowing.
It was then that he had met Mah-Li, herself an orphan, shunned by the other villagers and called by them Mah-Li the Beast. Remo had first found her living in her small hut, wearing a veil. He had thought she was deformed and felt pity for her. But her gentle ways had soothed the confusion in his soul, and he grew to love her.
When, in an impulsive moment, Remo lifted the veil from her face, he had expected to find horror. Instead, he had found beauty. Mah-Li was a doll. Mah-Li was called a beast because, by the standards of the flat-faced Sinanju women, she was ugly. By Western standards, she made the obligatory female newscaster on most TV stations look like hags.
Remo had not thought twice about proposing. And Mah-Li had accepted. Remo, whose life had lurched from one out-of-his-control situation to another, now felt complete.
Mah-Li's laugh tinkled up from the square. Remo smiled.
As the bride of the next Master, she was respected. There was a certain hypocrisy about it. Until he had agreed to shoulder the burdens of the village, they had spat whenever Remo had walked by too. But that was the way of Sinanju villagers. For thousands of years they were the moths that circled the flame of the sun source. They were not encouraged to work, nor to think. Only to be led and fed by the Master of Sinanju, who plied the art of the assassin for the rulers of the world.
The first Masters of Sinanju had taken to their work to support the villagers, who, in times of need, were forced to drown the youngest children in the bay waters. Perhaps it had been that way once, Remo thought, but instead of the motivation for Sinanju, the villagers had became more of a convenient excuse.
Either way, they were not to blame.
Mah-Li happened to look up then, and Remo felt a shock in the pit of his stomach. Her liquid eyes never failed to do that to him. She was so gorgeous, with a face that was perfection.
Remo started down off the rocks. But Mah-Li was already on her feet, her delicate hands lifting her long traditional skirts, and met him halfway.
They kissed once, lightly, because they were in public. Over Mah-Li's shoulder Remo saw the faces of the village women looking up at them with a rapt softness in their dark eyes that took the curse off the harsh planes of their square jaws and flat cheekbones.
"Where have you been, Remo?" Mah-Li asked lightly.
"It's a secret," Remo teased.
"You cannot tell me now?" She pouted.
"After we're married."
"Oh, but that is so long a time."
"I'm planning to talk to Chiun about that. I don't know why we can't get married right now," Remo complained. "Today."
"The Master of Sinanju has set an engagement period. We must obey him."
"Yeah, but nine months-"
"The Master of Sinanju knows best. It is his wish that you learn our ways before we are wed. It is not so difficult. "
"It is for me. I love you, Mah-Li."
"And I love you, Remo."
"Nine months. Sometimes I think he was put on earth to bust my chops."
"What are 'chops' ?" asked Mah-Li, who had learned enough English to talk to Remo in his own lanaguage, but was confused by slang.
"Never mind. Have you seen Chiun lately?"
"Earlier. He looked unhappy."
"I think he's upset with me. Again."
Mah-Li's face tightened. The Master of Sinanju was like a god to her.
"You had words?"
"I think he's going to have trouble adjusting to our being married."
"The people of this village never argue with the Master. It is not done."
"Chiun and I have been arguing for as long as we've known each other. We've argued all over America, across Europe, from Peoria to Peking. When I think of the places I've visited, I don't remember the people or the sights. I remember the arguments. If we're fighting about my refusal to grow my fingernails long, this must be Baltimore. "
"It is strange. In America, you show your love by arguing. After we are wed, do you expect me to argue with you as a token of my love?"
Remo laughed. Mah-Li's face was puzzled and serious, like a child confronting some great, complex truth. "No, I don't expect ever to argue with you at all." Remo kissed her again.
He took her hand and they walked down to the village square. The villagers made way for them, all smiles and crinkling eyes. The village was full of contentment and life. As it should be, thought Remo.
Except for the House of the Masters, in the center of the village. It was a great carven box of teak and lacquers set on a low hillock. Built for the Master Wi by the pharaoh Tutankhamen, it was the largest edifice in the village. Back in America, it wouldn't have impressed a newlywed couple as a suitable starter home. In fact, it was more of a warehouse than it was a dwelling. The earnings of centuries of past Masters of Sinaiju lay piled in elegant profusion inside its walls. It was there that Chiun lived. Now the great door was closed and the windows curtained.
Remo wondered if he should go to Chiun and try to explain things to him again. But then he remembered that every time he had explained himself in the past, Chiun had always gotten his way. Even when Chiun was wrong. Especially when Chiun was wrong.
"He'll keep," said Remo half-aloud, thinking how hungry the smell of boiling rice was making him.
"Who will keep what?" asked Mah-Li.
Remo just smiled at her. With Mah-Li around, there was no one else in the universe.
Chapter 3
Dr. Harold W. Smith was never happier.
Strolling into his Spartan office in the morning was a pleasure. The sun beamed in through the one-way picture window, filling the room with light. Smith deposited his worn briefcase on the desk and, ignoring the waiting paperwork, sauntered to the window.
Smith was a spare, pinch-faced man in his mid-sixties, but today a thin smile tugged at his compressed lips. He noticed the faint reflection of the smile in the big picture window and forced his lips to part slightly. Good, he thought. The flash of white teeth made the smile warmer. He would have to practice smiling with his mouth open until he got used to it. Smith adjusted the red carnation in the buttonhole of his impeccable three-piece suit. He liked the way the flower lent color to his otherwise drab apparel. Perhaps one day he would buy a suit that wasn't gray. But not just yet. Too much change too rapidly could be overwhelming. Smith believed in moderation.
Dr. Harold Smith had worked in this very office since the early 1960's, ostensibly as the director of Folcroft Sanitarium, on the shoreline of Rye, New York. In reality Smith, an ex-CIA agent and before that with the OSS during the war, was the head of the countercrime agency called CURE. Set up by a President who was later assassinated, CURE was an ultrasecret enforcement organization that operated outside of constitutional restrictions, protecting America from a rising tide of lawlessness.
CURE's one agent, Remo Williams, and his equally difficult mentor. Chiun, were safely back in Sinanju. Smith expected he would never see them again. He hoped so. The present President had been led to believe Remo was dead-killed during the crisis with the Soviets-and that Chiun had gone into mourning.
It had nearly been the end of CURE, but the President had sanctioned CURE to continue operations. But with no enforcement arm. Just Smith and his secret computers-just like in the beginning, the good old days. Only now, America was getting back on track. True, there were still problems. But the Mafia's back was being broken in major cities all over America. Public opinion was tipping the scales against drug use. White-collar crime was on the decline, thanks to the heavy exposure of corporate crime on Wall Street-exposure that Smith had helped to bring to light.
But best of all, no Remo and no Chiun. Smith had grown to respect both men, even to like them in his uncommunicative fashion. But they were difficult, unmanageable. Life was so much simpler without them.
A tentative knocking at his office door shook Smith out of his dreamy thoughts. He adjusted his Dartmouth tie before turning front the window.
"Come in," he sang.
"Dr. Smith?" Mrs. Mikulka, Smith's personal secretary, thrust her matronly head inside. Her face was troubled.
"Is something wrong, Mrs. Mikulka?"
"That was what I was going to ask you, Dr. Smith. I heard strange sounds in here."
"Sounds."
"Yes, whistling sounds."
&
nbsp; Smith tried his new smile on his secretary. "I believe that was me," he said pleasantly.
"You."
"I believe I was whistling 'Zip a Dee Doo Dah.' "
"It sounded, if you'll excuse me for saying so, like the steam radiator had popped a valve."
Smith cleared his throat. "I was just thinking how good life is now. I always whistle when I'm happy."
"I've worked for you for over five years, and I can't recall you ever whistling before."
"I was never happy at work before."
"I'm glad, Dr. Smith. It's nice to see you come in at a more reasonable hour, too. And spending more time with your family."
"That reminds me," said Dr. Smith. "My wife will be here at twelve-thirty. We'll be having lunch."
"Really?" said Mrs. Mikulka. "How wonderful. I've never met your wife."
"I thought she'd like to see Folcroft. She's never been here. Perhaps you'd like to join us."
"I'd be delighted," said Mrs. Mikulka, who was astonished at the change in her tight-fisted boss. "I hope I'm dressed properly."
"I'm sure the cafeteria workers will find you presentable," assured Smith..
"Ah," said Mrs. Mikulka, realizing that her employer hadn't changed quite that much.
"Will that be all?" asked Smith, returning to his desk.
"Oh. I left you a newspaper clipping I thought you'd want to see. It's another odd one."
"Thank you, Mrs. Mikulka."
The door closed after the bosomy woman, and Smith leafed through the papers on his desk. He found the clipping. It was a brief item, a UPI dispatch:
Authorities are puzzled by the mysterious deaths of two New Hampshire men, only days apart, in Hillsborough County. Harold Donald Smith, 66, of Squantum, was found beside his parked car on a section of Route 136. His neck was crushed. Harold Walter Smith, 61, of Manchester-only twenty miles from the site of the earlier death-was discovered in his apartment. His skull had been shattered by a blunt instrument. Robbery was ruled out as the motive in both cases.
Smith tripped the intercom lever. "Mrs. Mikulka?"
"Yes, Dr. Smith?"
"You're slipping," Smith said in a light voice.
"Sir?"
"I've seen this one," he said cheerily. "You clipped it for me two weeks ago."
Return Engagement td-71 Page 2