Return Engagement td-71

by Warren Murphy

  "I hear it flush from time to time."

  "It is necessary to keep even antiques in proper working order," Chiun sniffed.

  "Chiun, you've got tons of gold just sitting here doing nothing and your people are living like . . . like . . ."

  "Like Koreans," supplied Chiun.

  "Exactly."

  "I am glad we understand one another."

  "No, we don't," Remo said. "If I'm going to live here the rest of my life, I want to do something constructive. These people don't need more gold or more security. They need a better standard of living."

  "The people of Sinanju have food," said Chiun slowly. "They have family. they have protection. Even Americans have not that. Americans are subject to all manner of brutality from other Americans. In Sinanju, as long as there is a Master of Siilanju, no one need fear theft."

  "That's because no one has anything worth stealing."

  "They have me. I am their wealth. They have the protection of the awesome magnificence that is Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju. They know that. They appreciate that. They love me."

  Just then there was a knock on the door. "Enter, beloved subject," said Chiun loudly. Pullyang, the caretaker, scuttled into the room. He came to Remo's side and whispered into his ear. He took no notice of Chiun.

  "Three," said Relno.

  Pullyang doubled over with laughter. He ran out into the night. Rcmo heard him repeat his answer over and over. Other laughter welled up into the night.

  "He didn't wait for the punch line," said Remo. "That wasn't even the funny part."

  "What did Pullyang ask of you?" demanded Chiun.

  "He wanted to know how many Pyongyangers it takes to change a light bulb."

  "That was my joke!" Chinn hissed. And with a furious swirl of sleeves and skirts he leapt to his feet and bounded to the door.

  "It takes three Pyongyangers to change a light bulb," Chiun shouted into the night. "One to change the bulb and two to shout encouragement while he does this!" The laughter died abruptly.

  Chiun slammed the door and returned to his throne. "I don't understand the Korean sense of humor," said Remo.

  "That is because you have none yourself. You are like all Americans, who turn the relieving of bodily wastes into a leisure activity. If I let you get your way now, you will next litter my poor village with condoms."

  "What's this?"

  "Condoms," repeated Chiun. "They are another American confidence trick. The tall buildings in which there are many rooms and each person owns a different room. But actually they own only the empty space within those walls, which is to say they own nothing."

  "Those are condos," Remo corrected.

  "And this is the treasure house of Sinanju. The house of my ancestors, and the house of all future Masters of Sinanju. Including you. Is it not good enough for you, toilet-loving American white?"

  "I like it fine."

  "Good. Then you will live here."

  "When I am head of the village, yes," said Remo. "But until then, Mah-Li and I will live in the house I am building with my own hands."

  "So be it," said Chiun, coming to his feet. "I have given you everything and you have spurned my best. Take your filthy belongings and go sleep on the beach."

  "What belongings?" said Remo. "I'm wearing everything I own."

  Chiun's fingernails flashed to the mahogany floor and speared the slip of paper on which Remo had written his list of improvements for the village of Sinanju.

  "This filthy belonging," said Chiun, lifting it to Remo's hurt face. "I will have no toilets or condoms in Sinanju."

  "Have it your way, then," Remo said unhappily.

  He plucked the list and walked out of the House of the Masters without a backward glance.

  Chapter 5

  Dr. Harold K. Smith was a simple country doctor. The people of Oakham, Massachusetts, liked Dr. Harry, as he was called. He made house calls. No doctors made house calls anymore. Not when there was so much money to be made off the sick, and the most efficient way was to jam them into the office waiting room with plenty of waiting.

  Dr. Harry had been making house calls for nearly forty years. He liked the homey touch. It was a nice, stress-free way to practice medicine. It filled his sixty-nine-year-old soul with peace. And even at his age, peace was what he most yearned for.

  Dr. Harry might never have taken this route in life, but upon his graduation from Tufts Medical School, he was drafted. That was in 1943. Dr. Harry spent the next two years as a combat medic with the First Attack Squad, A Company, as they liberated France.

  He had seen young men running one minute and screaming in muddy ditches-their legs chopped to hamburger by .50-caliber machine-gun bullets-the next. Crouched in foxholes, he had watched them being blown to ragged chunks of meat by grenades, crushed under panzer treads, and snuffed out with such appalling suddenness that even today he still had nightmares and woke up in cold sweats.

  It had not been the best way to first practice medicine, but it had meant something. For some of the wounded Dr. Harry had treated, it had meant the difference between life and death, between walking back on the troop ships to America and hobbling on one leg and two crutches. Dr. Harry had absorbed everything it was possible for a physician to learn about wound cavitation, traumatic amputation, and human endurance, but after returning home in 1946, he went into family medicine and put the war out of his mind. Almost.

  And so, on a particularly bitter winter's day, when a triple amputee was wheeled, unannounced, into his shabbily genteel office, Dr. Harry didn't hesitate to greet him. Even though the sight of the man brought back shuddering memories.

  The man's age was impossible to guess. His face was rilled like a topographical map of the mountains of Mexico. His skin was unnaturally pale, and the thin red blanket that rested on his lap, covering the front of the motorized wheelchair, hung slack. There were two blunt bulges under it where his legs stopped.

  The man's right arm ended in a steel claw, one of the new appliances which were such a boon to the amputee population. Dr. Harry had read about them, but had never seen one. His medical curiosity overcame his war memories and he found himself looking forward to examining this patient with unexpected eagerness.

  "I'm Dr. Smith," said Dr. Harry to the old man and his beautiful blond companion. "What seems to be the trouble'?"

  "I'm Ilsa," the blond said. "He's having trouble with his good arm. I think it's the sciatic nerve. It's acted up before. "

  "You are his nurse?"

  "His companion," said Ilsa.

  She is so young, thought Dr. Harry, and so beautiful. He could tell by the solicitous way she hovered over him that she was intensely devoted to this shattered shell of a human being.

  "Follow me into the examination room, and we'll have a look," Dr. Harry suggested.

  "Ilsa, you will wait here," the man said. His voice was as dry as his eves were bright. And they were very bright, unnaturally bright.

  "Yes, of course."

  Behind the closed pine door, Dr. Harry opened the stainless-steel drawer containing his instruments and said, "Please remove your shirt."

  Dr. Harry watched the man unbutton his shirt with his good hand. The fingers, gnarled and scarred, fumbled at the buttons. Dr. Harry nodded. Dexterity was impaired, but not as bad as all that. Probably the nerve was just inflamed.

  When the shirt was off, Dr. Harry saw that from the neck down the man's body was a striated mass of scar tissue. Burns, horrible ones, had done that a very long time ago.

  "I hope my appearance does not disturb you," said the old man. Dr. Harry suddenly remembered that he'd not asked the patient's name. Normally he left that to his receptionist, but she had already gone home for the day.

  "I saw as much and worse in my time. During the war."

  The patient seemed to tense as Dr. Harry approached with the blood-pressure cuff.

  "You were in the war, World War Two?" the patient asked.

  "Medic. European Theater of O
perations."

  "Those were terrible times, for both sides."

  Dr. Harry nodded absently as he fitted the blood-pressure sleeve about the patient's bicep. "Do you think you could work the pump?" he asked.

  The patient took the bulb and began squeezing rhythmically. The sleeve began inflating.

  "I have never seen an appliance like yours," Dr. Harry said. "Bionic?"

  "Yes. It is a boon to me, especially after all these years. You see, I, too, was in the war. My life ended there, for all intents."

  "A terrible thing," said Dr. Harry sympathetically, looking at his watch, but surreptitiously examining the claw. It fitted onto the wooden stump of the man's wrist, the joining sealed in a plastic sleeve. Tiny wires led from the base of the appliance to the man's intact shoulder muscles. Electrodes. Brain impulses to those muscles produced twitches which in turn sent electrical signals to the artificial hand. The signals produced humanlike finger movements.

  Even as Dr. Harry watched, the steel claw tensed.

  The machinery whirred briefly. It was fascinating. He couldn't take his eves off it.

  "Medical science is making remarkable strides," the patient said, noticing the doctor's gaze.

  "They're way ahead of this country doctor. I understand they'll be making bionic legs one day."

  "Yes, but those are for men who still have one good leg. I know, I have looked into this. They cannot make them strong enough to support a man on two metal legs."

  "Interesting that you should say that," said Dr. Harry, taking the inflating bulb from the patient's hand. "I was reading about a new process someone has invented for forging titanium. You know, it's stronger than steel and lighter as well. They've had excellent luck using it for implants, artificial joints and the like."

  "Well, steel is too heavy for some uses, and lighter metals, like aluminum for example, are too weak. They can't take the stress. If this man's process works as they say it does, I can see the day when they'll build bionic legs of titanium to help men like yourself to walk."

  "I am intrigued. I must look into this. My doctors told me that there was no hope for me."

  "There is always hope. You just have to hang around long enough for science to catch up to our problems."

  "You are a great believer in hope, Dr. Smith."

  Dr. Harry laughed. "I imagine so."

  "Were you ever in Japan, Dr. Smith?" asked the patient.

  "After the war, I came home. I haven't left Massachusetts since."

  "I meant during the war. Were you there?"

  "No,"

  "Perhaps you do not remetnber?"

  "I'm sure I would," Dr. Harry said absently, reading the sphygmomanometer. "Your blood pressure is high. Hmmm. it seems to be rising even as you speak. When did this trouble come on?"

  "Forty years ago. In Japan."

  "Forget Japan. I meant the nerve."

  "It all started then." The steel claw whirred open like a venus flytrap preparing to catch a meal. "I have longed to meet you, Dr. Smith."

  "Really?" said Dr. Harry Smith, taking his eyes off the claw with difficulty.

  "Yes. Ever since that day in Japan, June 7, 1949." The man's voice had dropped to a growl, and Dr. Harry took an involuntary step back. The man's arm-his good one-shot out, catching his open wrist. The grip was firm.

  "Excuse me," said Dr. Harry, wriggling free. But pulling free was a mistake, because with the touch of a lever, the grizzled old man sent the wheelchair surging forward. Dr. Harry felt something clamp onto his right thigh. He looked down.

  It was the steel claw. It bit through the cloth of his smock, which was reddening. Had he spilled some mercurochrome? But of course, he had not, and that voice was growling close to his ear.

  "You thought I was dead, Dr. Smith. Harold K. Smith. You thought you had killed me that day. You did kill my future. But you did not kill my spirit. I live. I lived for you. All these years for you. And this moment."

  Dr. Harry groped for the man's wrist. Maybe if he snapped the connection at the wrist sheath. Maybe. But the claw dug deeper with that damnable whirring, and Dr. Harry slipped to his knees.

  "Ilsa!"

  Dr. Harry heard the throaty bark through ringing ears. The pain was intensifying.

  The blond bounced in through the door.

  "He's not dead yet," she said. Her voice was disappointed.

  "I would not have called you if I did not need help," the old man snarled. "Hold him down."

  Dr. Harry felt soft fingers clamp his rounded shoulders, keeping him down on both knees. He tried to fight, but could not. And then through the ringing in his ears, he heard the whirring of the steel claw as it found his throat. The last words he heard were the girl's.

  "I hope this one doesn't wet all over me too."

  Dr. Harry fell onto the legless lap of the man in the wheelchair and slid off, taking the thin red blanket with him. On the underside, the crooked black cross of the swastika blazed like a blackened ember in its white circle.

  "Was it him?" Ilsa asked breathlessly.

  "No, it was not him. I could tell the first time he spoke. It was not his voice."

  "Then why did you kill him?"

  "His name was Harold Smith. It was reason enough. Pick up the flag and let us depart."

  "Are we going to Boston next? There must be a lot of Harold Smiths there."

  "No. Boston must wait. This doctor told me something important. We must return home, immediately. I must speak with my doctor about an important new discovery in metals."

  Chapter 6

  The Master of Sinanju was unhappy.

  Seated amid the opulence of the treasures of his ancestors, he hung his head low. He could not sleep. He lacked appetite-not that it mattered to the people of his village.

  When Chiun had not joined the communal evening meal, no one had come to inquire of his health. No one had offered so much as a bowl of cold rice. Not Pullyang, the formerly faithful, nor Mah-Li, to whom he had bestowed a dowry of gold so that she could marry Remo-a dowry that had been the last shipment of gold from the mad non-emperor Harold Smith.

  The Master of Sinanju picked up the goosequill that would inscribe this day's infamy in the personal daily records of Chiun, whom history-he hoped-would call Chiun the Great.

  Dipping the quill into the black ink in a stone receptacle, Chiun began to transcribe, not for the first time, the story of how he had taken a white, a homeless unwanted white, and bestowed upon him the great art of Sinanju. He paused, pondering how best to describe Remo.

  In past years, he had avoided the obvious; Remo the White. Too indelicate. Remo the Fair seemed a good compromise. But for this scroll, Chiun decided, he would be called Remo the Ingrate.

  Chiun wrote "Remo the Ingrate" in the complicated ideographic language of his ancestors and, satisfied, wrote on.

  He recorded how the village, dazzled by the coming of the ingrate, Remo, had turned against Chiun. Not in obvious ways, he hastened to scribble-for he did not wish his descendants to call him "Chiun, the Master who lost the respect of the village"-but in subtle ways, insidious ways. They paid attention to Remo. And in paying attention to him, there was less attention paid to the proper person. Chiun decided not to mention who the proper person might be. Better that future Masters learn to read between the lines, where truth usually lay.

  Chiun wrote of his pride-a pride now sullied by ingratitude-in bringing the white to Sinanju. For this fair-skinned Korean had taken to Sinanju better than any pupil before him. He had grown through the phases of Sinanju, from the night of the salt to that glorious day when the spirit of Wang, greatest Master of Sinanju, had visited him. It had been only last year, but the boundless pride of it still filled Chiun's aged heart. Remo had seen the great Wang and was now a full Master of Sinanju. It was only meet that the villagers accord him due respect, despite his deficiencies of pigment. But even the great Wang would have been the first to say that in Remo's case, less is more.

  "Less is more," cackle
d Chiun aloud. He had heard the phrase on an American TV commercial and liked it. In a few centuries, when America had gone the inevitable way of the Roman Empire and slipped into history, no one would know that the aphorism was not Chiun's own.

  Remo, Chiun wrote, was the fulfillment of the greatest legend in the history of Sinanju. He was the night tiger who was white, but who in coming to Sinanju would be revealed as the incarnation of Shiva, the Destroyer. Chiun had known Remo was Shiva for many years. But there had never been proof other than the clues the legends had foretold.

  But in the American city of Detroit, Chiun wrote on, a city so unhappy that on certain religious holidays the inhabitants attempted to burn it to the ground, Chiun had confronted, not Shiva the Destroyer, but Shiva Remo.

  Remo had been injured in a fire. Chiun had pulled him from a tangle of wreckage. When Remo had come to life, he spoke not in Remo's voice. He said words that were not words Chiun had come to expect from his former pupil. They were cruel words. For Remo had not recognized Chiun. Not at all. Not even after all they had been through together.

  Even now, months later, Chiun had difficulty suppressing the shock he had experienced seeing Remo under the spell of the Hindu God of Destruction. In one accident, all that Chiun had worked for, the training of a new Master, one who would one day return to Sinanju, marry, and raise yet another Master, had been dispelled like a fragile soap bubble.

  Remo's spell had been temporary, but Chinn could not know how long it would be before Shiva repossessed Remo's mind once more. And so Chiun, to save the years of training he had poured into the ungrateful white, to ensure the continuation of his line, had contrived to break the bonds that tied Remo to his homeland. The nature of this subterfuge, Chiun wrote on the scroll, was not important except perhaps to note in passing its brilliance. After a pause, Chiun inserted the word "unsurpassed" before the word "brilliance." Some truths did not belong between the lines.

  It had worked, Chiun wrote on. He and Remo had returned to Sinanju, no longer bound to work for the client state of America. Remo had agreed to succeed Chiun and had fallen in love with a Korean maiden. And now they were to wed. In time, there would be grandchildren. And Chiun's lifework would be complete. Chiun, who had married unwisely and had no living heir to call his own. Chiun, who was forced to take a white pupil to continue the line of Sinanju, and although his misjudgment might have been catastrophic, had in fact produced the greatest Master of Sinanju, Remo the Fair.