No divorce, he thought. Because I am a Master of Sinanju, I am married to this woman forever. And yet he was sure there had to be a divorce somewhere in four thousand years. It was probably covered up. That's how those things worked.
But he had been poring over the scrolls more now than ever before, and every time a Sinanju Master was married, it was duly recorded. And every time a Sinanju wife died it was duly recorded, as was the departure of a Master. No Master ever recorded a separation. Every wife died married to a Sinanju Master, from the Great Wang to the Lesser Gi. Even Chiun's wife had died.
Poo was Remo's forever. And vice versa.
Remo arrived in Bath, in the southwest part of England, and ran into more English plainclothesmen than attended a royal wedding. It was a strange sight to see cars backed up at roadblocks for miles. Men with walkie-talkies occupied virtually every building.
Remo was spotted as someone who didn't belong there as soon as he entered Avon county, home of the town of Bath.
He brought with him only a bamboo satchel containing a Sinanju parchment.
A bobby stepped in and courteously asked him what he was doing in these parts, and what was in the satchel.
"Something to read," said Remo. The bobby examined Remo's passport.
"You say you're visiting the mineral baths. May I ask why now?"
"Keeps me young."
"You're about twenty-eight, aren't you?"
"Would you believe you're off by at least twenty years?"
"Really?"
"Yeah. I'm eight," said Remo.
The bobby was not amused. Plainclothesmen desperatly looking for something, anything, closed in on Remo. Remo had stepped out of his taxi at the roadblock and the driver was now indicating he never saw Remo before, did not know the man, and Remo was just another fare who hadn't paid yet.
"This isn't a laughing matter, Mr. Williams. Our prime minister has been kidnapped in this area, and we regret that certain precautions must be taken. These precautions may limit your freedom."
"Fine, just tell me where not to go and I won't go."
"I'm afraid, Mr. Williams, we cannot let you in this area."
"And I'm afraid, old boy, I'm just going to have to go in."
"Then I will keep your passport."
"Frame it if you will," said Remo.
"We're going to have to stop you physically."
" 'Fraid I can't let you," said Remo, and whistling, walked past the bobby in the high blue hat. Apologizing, several plainclothesmen warned they would have to stop Mr. Williams. Apologizing, Remo said he couldn't let them do that.
He whipped out the scroll and tried to get his bearings. From the center of the little resort city, he knew where he should go to look. But he had to get to the baths themselves first.
Several arms reached out for him, and he let his body respond to the air pressure ahead of the hands so he could dodge the hands while thinking about something else. It was more an absentminded gesture than a calculated move, letting the body itself do the dodging as he walked down the road reading the scroll of Master Wa, who had been hired by Emperor Claudius of Rome to make sure a plot against him did not develop within the legions occupying Roman Britain.
It was always a threat, Remo had learned from the scrolls, that some praetor would march his legions back from the frontiers and take over Rome. Caesar had done it. Others tried to do it, and this period of turmoil within the Western world, of plots and counterplots revolving around a corrupt and debauched center of authority, had proved to be what would be later called "one of the golden ages of Sinanju."
For as Master Wa wrote:
"No emperor slept nor senator spoke without fear of death in the night from the hand of an assassin. Sinanju, naturally, was the most in demand."
Remo felt an officer whiz by him as his body curved out of the way of the officer's lunge. The officer went forward on the dark country road, skinning his hands painfully.
Chiun had selected this scroll. He knew Mr. Arieson would be in Bath. Why?
Was Mr. Arieson seeking out Remo? And if so, why? Obviously Arieson and the House of Sinanju went way back. But how?
And what were the mysterious techniques Mr. Arieson used to avoid blows? Two more British policemen swung out at thin air. Did Mr. Arieson use techniques like Remo's, only more advanced?
No. Mr. Arieson would have been dodging the air currents Remo had created back at Little Big Horn if that were the case. And what about the helmet and chest protector the Israeli archaeologist said were perfectly new, punctured using a technique more than two thousand years old?
Remo hadn't even seen the helmet and chest protector. But there they were when his blows landed on metal aboard the USS Polk.
"Stop that man. Stop him," came a voice from behind.
"We're trying. He's made of air," answered one of the policemen.
"Then bloody well follow him," came the voice. Remo nodded. That would be all right. They could follow him right up until he decided they might be in the way. And so Remo walked into the old Roman town of Bath, reading his scroll, certain now that Arieson was in some way taunting him. Arieson was trying to tell him something by coming to a city where Sinanju had worked. After all, hadn't Arieson phoned him, calling him "boyo"?
The answer was here in a part of England that had once belonged to Rome.
The town of Bath was pleasant, with old Tudor dwellings and modern dwellings, and what was left of Rome had been reconstructed in the mineralwater baths themselves. Bacteria had formed down at the base of the springs in the old Roman piping, which had to be removed. In the process, many coins and artifacts were found.
The baths were housed in a building, and in that building Remo went to a section where he was supposed to get dressed, and laid out the scroll in full. The Praetor Maximus Granicus had set up his headquarters here because he had aching bones. He had wanted to be near the springs as long as possible, until he and his legions left the Britannic shores for Gaul and Rome.
Granicus, like most ambitious men, loved luxury, and along the military road two stadia north, he built himself a palace which was supposed to be impenetrable to entry by anyone but friends.
"This Granicus domicile," the scroll went on, "had walls collapsing within walls, so that portholes were really traps. Secret entrances beneath the domicile were really mazes, and the beauty of this defensive structure was that the only way to enter it was to know how it worked.
"While I as a Master would love to record a new defense overcome by me, Wa, I regret that it was not a challenge at all, although later I would tell the Divine Claudius how dangerous it was, describing the gigantic trap as the worst obstacle of all. This, of course, was in keeping with the rule of the Great Wang, that no assassination should ever be made to look easy. A client does not think you are more wonderful because the work was easy, rather he thinks you deserve less.
"The great Granicus' defensive network was really only a weak imitation of Pharaoh Ka's lower cataract home, which was a brilliant interpretation of early Su-dynasty imperial residences. It was penetrated easily by an open confrontation in the main, not the auxiliary entrances, which could prove problematic. Granicus was completed with a simple death during sleep, a smothering with his own pillow. His legions were given to a more loyal Claudian servant, and the civil war was averted. Tribute: pearls, three saludia in weight, eighteen in number; gold in the sum of forty-two Hibernian pharongs; twelve minor rubies, seven obols apiece; and a lengthy laudation from Claudius with an offer of games in the honor of Sinanju, offer declined."
Remo folded up the scroll. Since there was only one place mentioned in the scrolls Chiun had given him, and since Chiun knew before being told that the area where the Prime Minister had disappeared had to be Bath, therefore Remo concluded the place of action had to be the old defensive home of Granicus Maximus, two stadia north on the military road.
Since Granicus, even if he had not left the world early with the help of a Sinanju Master, would have been gone for almost two thousand years now, and since everyone who ever knew him would have been gone that long, and since anyone who knew the people who knew him would have been gone by centuries also, Remo Williams didn't bother to ask for directions but simply headed north.
In a British control base, the stranger in the gray slacks and black T-shirt was being duly recorded. It was recorded that he entered the house containing the springs, read a scroll, and then asked the nearest person, who happened to be a plainclothesman like most everyone now in this area, where the old military road was.
Constable Blake answered.
"There was a road here used to store arms for D-Day, if that's what you mean, sir."