Remo The Adventure Begins (9 page)

When he eased back into the main training room, he tried not to cast his breath too far forward. He heard a strange noise. Chiun was gasping.

“No,” said Chiun.

There was another voice in the room. It was a man’s voice.

“I’m sorry, Jim. I’ve got to level with you. That leg’s got to come off.”

Who was Jim? What leg?

“No, I was going to be an all-American.” This from a young man. Remo was still in the doorway. He couldn’t see into the room. He took one more step, a gliding move that shifted the weight before the feet, not using the feet as normal people did to pull their bodies along with clumps along the ground, but to move the body itself.

There in a glaring red flowered kimono sat Chiun, transfixed before a television set. Remo had never seen Chiun direct himself so totally at any one thing. You were supposed to remain balanced internally at all times so that you would not be surprised. He felt he could pounce on Chiun now and the old man would not be aware. On the other hand, if he were less than fully aware he might kill Remo without knowing it at this point.

A man in white on the television screen answered the young boy.

“You can be an all-American for courage,” said the actor who was supposed to be a surgeon.

“Does Mom know?” answered the boy.

Then Remo realized: Chiun, who thought nothing in this barbaric country was worth a notice, had been transfixed by the simple soap opera
Love and Death.

“That,” said Remo, “is a soap opera.”

“Shhhhh,” said Chiun, turning slowly. For the first time, Remo saw anger in the eyes of the Master of Sinanju.

“Jim’s mother doesn’t know,” said Chiun, going back to the screen.

When the commercials came on, Chiun turned off the television.

“You were watching a soap opera, Master of Sinanju,” said Remo.

“Your country’s one undeniable contribution to the arts. It concerns family, love, honor and courage . . . all that is noblest in the human spirit.”

“That’s a soap opera,” said Remo.

“You never told me they were on every day,” said Chiun. And then quite coldly, he said:

“Out. Out with it.”

“With what?” asked Remo.

“The meat. You ate meat. You went out while I was gone briefly. And you put meat into your system.”

“That was an hour ago. It’s digested.”

“Not yet, meat reeker. You ate cow meat. You couldn’t overcome your roots. You couldn’t rise above that den of ignorance where you were raised. You put dead cow meat into your belly, the belly I trained, to feed the body I trained.”

“I was hungry.”

“You had a half-inch of fat around your thighs. I have seen on your television all the problems you people have losing weight. If they used the fat for energy, which is its purpose, energy stored like a barn stores grain, then there would be no fat problem. You had fat on your body which you did not need. Then why did you add more dead animal to your system? Think about that, while I change.”

To watch Chiun change was to be deprived of the opportunity to think about anything else. The Master of Sinanju had all the natural desire to expose his flesh to air of a cloistered nun. Somehow the robe Chiun was wearing was levitated above his head while from underneath it came its replacement. Only when the new robe was securely on, through some miraculous form of body contortion Remo was sure, did the one he was originally wearing come off. And then it was with utmost discretion and modesty. His new evening robe was pigeon’s-egg blue with embroidered depictions of Chinese palaces and swans swimming before them. Remo had seen it once before. The colors, Remo thought, would have embarrassed a pimp.

“Do you have an answer yet as to why, when there was no reason to, you added animal meat to a body that had fat? A body I trained?” said Chiun.

Remo shrugged.

“I was hungry,” he said.

“You were hungry. I have given you the greatest secrets of all mankind, and you were . . . were . . .”

“Hungry,” said Remo. He had a right to eat. He had gone along with all this but he had not given up his right to eat. “Yeah, hungry. Do you mind?”

“Of course I mind,” said Chiun. “Give you Sinanju, and prepare you ultimately to be an assassin, and you put dead cows in your mouth because that was the way your mother and father taught you.” The wisps of hair quivered.

“I didn’t have a mother and father.”

“Really, then to what do I attribute your existence? One of your American machines in Detroit?”

“I mean I didn’t know my parents. I was dropped off at an orphanage, and I was raised by nuns.”

“And they taught you to put this filth into your body?”

“Actually, we didn’t have much meat.”

“Yes, nuns are your virtuous women, yes? I know about nuns. We know your white customs. You had vestal virgins and then you had nuns later.”

“I didn’t have any vestal virgins. I don’t know of any vestal virgins.”

“The Romans,” said Chiun. “They had them just seventeen hundred years ago. Romans. You whites.”

“Well, I’m not Italian,” said Remo.

“You don’t know what you are,” said Chiun. “You’re an orphan, you said. Whoever got you first ruined you. They trained you to murder your senses by filling your belly with dead cow meat.”

“No special training. We just eat meat. We are meat eaters. I am. I like a glass of beer and a hamburger from time to time,” said Remo. “I like to rest. I like to just not think about breathing. I like to just live.”

“They should have buried alive those nuns who let you do such things. They lacked strictness.”

“They were very strict,” said Remo.

“White?”

“Most of them.”

“Hah,” said Chiun and then turned to the forces of the universe, his eyes heavenward to bemoan in front of Remo what had been cast before him. “I try to give him the sun source of all human power, I try to raise him to be an assassin, and what do I get? What is my reward?”

“I am not going to feel guilty,” said Remo. He kicked the wood floor of the training room.

“I didn’t ask for guilt,” said Chiun, righteously folding the robe around himself.

“Well, you’re not getting it. I am doing damn well. And I do not believe, excuse me please, I really do not believe that killers and murderers are so elevated in the world that a bite of a hot dog will ruin them morally. Yes.” Remo stuck out his chin on the last word.

Chiun was quiet. “I suppose I deserve this. I suppose I have failed.”

“You didn’t fail.”

“Not for you to say, yak dropping,” said Chiun. “I will tell you how I failed. I will tell you how Sinanju has failed in its one way throughout the ages, especially me.”

“What do you mean? You’ve been telling ’em about this emperor or this prince or that general that dies instantly under your hands no matter how they protect themselves. When I am not breathing in new ways or jumping across buildings, I am hearing about how to approach someone when he is guarded by one, by two, by a wall, by this and that and the other thing.”

“Our problem in Sinanju,” said Chiun, ignoring what Remo had said. “If we have one problem, it is that we are too nice.”

“You’re the deadliest killers of all time.”

“I deserved that,” said Chiun. He folded his hands under his kimono.

“Aren’t you?” said Remo.

“We are not,” said Chiun.

“Then what are you?”

“We are,” said Chiun, “assassins. Something I think you never will be.”

“An assassin’s a killer.”

“A swan is a bird. A sunset is a reddish color. The sea is water.”

“Well, is there something more? Am I missing something?” asked Remo. Chiun looked at him a moment. Remo had learned to breathe in many ways. The bulky plodding fat had melted off his body. And he did listen at times.

But then again, after seeing the gleam of the star in Remo’s soul, Chiun had given him so much. Why shouldn’t he have been so far along?

And then he went out and put meat into that body Chiun had given the best to.

Chiun moved to a steamer trunk where one of the training devices was. It was something that would be most familiar to this white, something he had used himself.

It was a pistol with six bullets in it. Chiun did not like the feel of guns. Their very power robbed the true power of mankind. But it was a fitting tool for a meat eater. Chiun aimed the pistol at Remo’s chest and fired twice.

• • •

Major Rayner Fleming did not have to attend the special funeral mass for Private Anthony D’Amico. She did not belong to his division. She didn’t know him personally. Major Fleming went there to collect the tears, to bring back something to remember if she should ever falter in the face of all the red tape and bureaucracy or if she should ever be tempted to listen to General Watson’s reminders about what was good and bad for her career.

And in the little town of Wilton, Pennsylvania, she got the memory she wanted. Anthony D’Amico’s grandfather, who could barely speak English, came over to her after the funeral mass.

The old man had been in the Italian Army in World War I. He knew an officer when he saw one.

“I talk to you, officer, even though you are a woman. Please do not take this as offense,” said the old man. “Tony, he was my favorite. I love that boy. I love him still. My heart will go into that grave. But I say to you. This is a good country. This is a good Army. It fights for good things. So there is no war now. I know my Tony die for this country, just as if someone, he be shooting at us. Do you understand?”

Major Fleming nodded.

“He die so that our boys, they no go into war without good guns. We had bad guns sometimes in Italy. But in America, our boys, they have the best. Just the best.”

“Sir?” said Fleming.

The old man looked up to her.

“Yes, sir,” said Major Fleming. She had everything she needed. She was ready to do battle with General Watson, commander of the deadly flanking memo, power behind the committee, daring leader of the newspaper leak, and defender of the bastion of Congress.

The good general might not know a cannon from a Cuisinart, but he knew the voting pattern of every congressional district in the country, and could find a way to get a part of a weapon built in every one of them. And Major Fleming was ready to take him on in his own chosen battleground, the five-sided Pentagon.

General Watson easily disposed of her first complaint with a full report, enveloping any criticism in four hundred pages of technical language. The brilliance of this maneuver was not lost on Fleming. Should anything continue to go wrong, there was General Watson’s report with the warning included. But he had as neatly turned both its flanks with technological reports on the projected efficacy of the AR-60, and at the last minute committed the entire Navy to its use. He had won the day. There was no use fighting against the use of the Grove AR-60.

What Fleming had to do was make sure Grove delivered AR-60s that worked, or pay the price. It was strictly rearguard action. Somebody had to make Grove accountable. She leaked a story on how the AR-60 might let America down in a war.

But to her amazement, there was General Watson on television calling the AR-60 “the gun of the future, for the soldier of the future.”

“But, General, we hear that they are badly made.” This from a television reporter.

“We are always open to any reports you might have. The one thing we value, and work for, and continue to work for, is reliability. And we welcome any reports anyone might have of guns not working. Do you know which one didn’t work?”

“We heard there was an accident with one, that a soldier was killed.”

And then General Watson’s clear blue eyes stared into the television camera, a face that exuded integrity of the highest order.

“That would be one in a million. One in a million ain’t bad.”

General Watson had won again.

But he did not have time to feel pleased with himself.

“Meet me at the tennis club,” came the voice.

“I have an important staff meeting.”

“You have a more important one with me.”

“I can’t do it,” said General Watson.

“I don’t like that word. I don’t believe that word. I did not hear that word. Scott, if I really heard the word ‘can’t’ I would believe that word. Then I would believe I couldn’t do things either, Scott. Do you understand me?”

Within a half-hour, General Scott Watson was changing into his tennis whites at the club. So was George S. Grove, chairman of Grove Industries.

They had adjacent lockers.

“Saw you on television yesterday, Scott. You looked good.”

“What do you want, George?”

“I don’t want to see you on television. I don’t want to see people talking about Grove equipment as having flaws. We are headed for the biggest, absolutely the biggest defense venture in the history of this nation, and I don’t want some stinking little rifle to ruin it.”

“George. We lost a man with one of your rifles.”

“So?”

“The soldier was killed.”

“Well, sweet Jesus, Scott, soldiers are supposed to be killed. What do you think they give out medals for? Give him a medal. Have a parade, but, Scott, don’t hold television news conferences.”

George Grove was a middle-aged man with hard dark eyes. A smooth face and hair graying at the temples gave him a benign appearance. That face exuding benign strength appeared on more fund-raising brochures than the symbolic open palm. George Grove helped the needy, and he wanted everyone to know it. In public he called giving “the only right thing to do, when you live in the best and strongest country in the world.” In private he called it part of the whole program. The program included more than just public giving. It was the private gifts that made you the real friends you needed.

One of those friends was Scott Watson, now General Watson. Grove had known him since he was a captain.

“You don’t understand the military, George,” General Watson complained.

“I understand it will do us no good to have bad things said about our products. I understand that,” said Grove.

“You just don’t kill a report. I handled it rather well.”

“Then why did I see you on television?”