"I know why, Little Father."
"Shhh. They don't know why. He will read the scrolls of the histories of Sinanju because he has come up against something he cannot defeat, and why cannot he defeat this?"
No one answered.
"He cannot defeat this because he does not know what it is," said Chiun.
"I would if you'd tell me," said Remo.
"It would do you no good. You cannot handle this person until you recover the treasure of Sinanju," said Chiun.
"Now I know you're running a game, Little Father," said Remo, who decided not to wait around anymore to hear that. He knew Chiun knew what they were up against, just as he knew Chiun would not tell him right away. But sooner or later he would have to, if for nothing else than to gloat.
Remo was not ready for what he heard as he walked away, though, not ready for the price that was now being offered on his behalf.
"But being regretful and full of great remorse, my son, Remo, knows he must make up for the treasure to all of us, and he has decided to give the village of Sinanju a son."
Heads raised. There was applause.
"From one of the village beauties of Sinanju," said Chiun.
"There is no such thing," said Remo.
"No child, no help with your enemy," said Chiun.
"He's your enemy too, Little Father."
"That he is, but you are the one more anxious to finish him now. Besides, you cannot stay childless all your life, and if you have a son with some white woman, she could run off like all loose white women do and not care for the child. If you have a child with a Sinanju maiden, you know he will be raised honored and glorified because his father is a Master of Sinanju."
"I don't want a child."
"You don't know till you try."
"Just let me at the scrolls," said Remo. "I know if you recognized that guy, the answer has to be in the scrolls. So that's why I'm going to read them again. But marriage, no."
"One night. One moment. One sending of your seed to meet an egg. I do not ask for a lifelong commitment. Let the mother give that."
"Just show me the scrolls."
"No one-night marriage, no scrolls."
"But you used to beg me to read the scrolls."
"That was when you didn't want to read them." Remo sighed. He looked around. The sooner he got the scrolls, the sooner he would know what Chiun had recognized back at Little Big Horn.
And what would be so bad about one night? He wouldn't have to raise the child. And Sinanju would have an heir to the Masterhood.
Would he want his child to know Sinanju? Funny, he thought, looking down at the wood shacks and the mud walks being serviced by three major empty highways, he could not conceive of having a son without him learning Sinanju, becoming Sinanju, no matter what the cost to him and the boy. It was the way of things.
He just didn't plan on making the mother a woman from this village necessarily. He was still American enough to expect to fall in love before he married someone and made a child.
"All right," he said. So what? he thought. Why not? How bad could one night be?
"Then I shall open all the scrolls again to you. You shall read about the difference between the laudations to the pharaoh of the Upper Nile and the Lower Nile. You shall see how not to be tempted by a Ming courtesan. All the things I tried to teach you before, you will know. And you will marry a good girl, too. I will select her."
"I didn't say you'd choose," said Remo. "I'll choose."
"As you wish. Select the loveliest. Choose the smartest. Do as you will. I do not wish to run your life," said Chiun, beaming.
But when Remo finally met the young women, he learned that all the good-looking ones had used the three main highways to leave Sinanju, and those left were the ones who would not leave their mothers, those who knew that even in Pyongyang, where there were more men than anywhere else in the world, they could still not find someone, and Poo Cayang.
Poo weighed 250 pounds and knew two words in English. They were not "yes" and "no,' they were not "hello, Joe" or even "good-bye, Joe." They were "prenuptial agreement."
Every other word in her vocabulary was Korean, specifically the Sinanju dialect which Remo spoke. But Poo's mother did the negotiating for her.
Poo did not think of herself as overweight but rather as fully blossomed. Poo had not gotten married because so far no one in Sinanju was good enough for her, she felt. And she didn't see any potential in Pyongyang. She was the baker's daughter, and before anyone else in Sinanju got their breads or cakes, Poo chose first. It was to be understood this arrangement was to continue if she were to marry the white Master of Sinanju.
More important and more specific, she was never to be forced to leave Sinanju or be more than an hour's walk from her mother.
"You'd stay here even if I left?" asked Remo.
"Yes," she said.
"Will you marry me?" said Remo.
"We haven't gotten to the ownership of the home yet," said Poo.
"Will it be in Sinanju?"
"It must."
"It's yours," said Remo.
"Now for point eighteen," said Poo. "Pots, pans, dinnerware."
"Yours," said Remo.
Chapter 5
It was a brilliant plan. Even the Israelis had to admire it after it was pulled off. Under cover of night, thousands of dhows, old Arab fishing boats, set sail from ldra across the Mediterranean for the Israeli coast.
If the Idran army had used the new Soviet destroyers or the French gunboats, or protected the craft with overflights of their fighters flown by Russians, the Israelis would have picked them up, and certainly the U.S. Sixth Fleet, which dominated the Mediterranean, would have seen them on the most advanced radar system in the world.
But the dhows were wood. And they were sailed by Iraqis who knew their craft from the Euphrates. The Iraqis had no love for the Idrans or Syrians, and actually hated the Iranians, who were not Arabs at all but Persians. They were old feuds. But they too had met a Mr. Arieson and, as they told their Idran passengers, there was something about him that made fighting a war so worthwhile.
"We feel good. We feel proud of ourselves," they said.