"Then may I wish you luck with Remo, because he is the only one to negotiate, for it is his share that is yours, not mine. And as between Remo and me, we've already arranged things."
"But what share does Remo get?"
"Whatever share I say he gets. That is the tradition of Sinanju."
Remo saw blood drain from the round face of Poo.
"Look, sweetheart," he said, "if you feel tricked into this marriage, you can back out now."
"No," she wailed. "No Master of Sinanju ever gets divorced."
Chiun smiled, leaving Remo with Poo, who now wanted a better accounting of Remo's property than an American CPA. Just before he was out of sight, Chiun said:
"The next time Mr. Arieson calls, and he will. I will go with you. And I'll show you how to handle him."
Chapter 9
"Does Chiun know him?"
"I think so," said Remo. He was on the line with Smith in the baker's house. The baker's wife had a new dress from Harrods. As she prepared the evening dinner, she passed by Remo, making gestures. There would be a finger turned limply downward, and a contemptuous smile. There would be a noodle draped over a bowl and then a pointing to Remo. An old man would walk outside, stooped over, and she would nod to the old man while smiling to Remo, indicating the same performance could be expected from Remo.
Remo ignored her. In all the world, he had never gotten so much disrespect as in Sinanju itself. Especially from Poo's family. He could probably change it, but that would require making love to Poo. He would sooner dip his body in braised chicken liver with raw onions. He would rather swim nude through warm aspic. He would mount a vat of frozen marmalade first.
These were the things he thought of precious Poo, and the more he thought them, the more he did not wish to make love to this woman, not once. Not quickly like a chipmunk. Not ever.
It was not that Poo was fat. Weight on a nice woman could be attractive. Poo was at the core, if one could wade through to the core, a very un-nice person. She was like a magnet for every personality flaw of womankind.
Three minutes in the King David Hotel and Poo had adopted the spending habits of a Great Neck, Long Island, matron.
She came back from London like the worst of British royalty, thinking everyone around her had to be either condescended to or ignored.
She wanted to become his business partner.
And she used her mother like her own personal whip. Remo could feel for the baker, a truly harried man. In a society where women were supposed to be subservient, he was like a slave.
The fact was, for some reason the attitude of even the nicer Sinanju women was that a man was only good for what he could do for her. Remo had never heard really kind words from Chiun about his wife, other than that he had managed to live with her. But then the Masters of Sinanju had something else. They had Sinanju. That was more than a wife or a mistress: it was the one permanent relationship a Master would have. Everything else passed.
There was a closeness Remo, born in Newark in America, had with Chiun and every other Master for millennia that transcended anything humans shared with each other. It was a knowing. It was a being. Even if he and Chiun were at diametrically opposite positions on any matter, they were, after all, the same. More the same than twins. So as Remo tried to explain to Smith what the situation was, in a way he couldn't.
"He recognized Arieson. From the beginning. At Little Big Horn."
"Who is he?"
"It's not something he can tell me," said Remo.
"Why not? Look, I don't know if you realize what we're up against. But here is a person, a movement, a thing if you will, that cannot be stopped."
"I stopped him."
"No you didn't, Remo," said Smith. They had gone over all three incidents in detail, with Smith asking his usual calculated questions. And they had gone over them again and again. And each time, Smith became more worried.
"What we have here, Remo, and I have analyzed this thoroughly, is a person or system or something that cannot be stopped. The evidence so far indicates he has stopped of his own free will, not because you did anything."
"Physically, I can't stop him yet. The answer may be in the Sinanju scrolls."
"I'm not sure what answer you'll find. Are you aware of what truly worries your president and me?" Remo turned away from the baker's wife and faced out into the street. It was noon and the sun baked the cold slate waters of the West Korea Bay. Gulls dipped and winged, and landed on rocks and fishing boats, cawing insolently to the muddy little village.
"There seems to be no rational motive behind what he is doing. It's like a rocket going every which way. The man has no purpose anyone can divine. First he helps the Indians in a war, then he turns the Idrans into soldiers attacking a U.S. aircraft carrier. Then he takes random units of the Irish Republican Army and turns them into one of the flnest fighting units ever to wage war in Europe. Then he leaves, and everything he has built falls apart and he starts again. What is this person or thing up to?"
"He seems to have an old feud with the House of Sinanju. At least Chinn recognized him."
"All right. You know Sinanju, Remo. How many feuds has Sinanju had?"
"We don't. That's just it. Nowhere in the scrolls does it say we have a feud anywhere. But look, don't worry."
"Why not?"
"Chiun told me he'll show me how to deal with him."
"I hope he's right, Remo. This morning someone kidnapped the pope. The Italian police, who cannot enter the Vatican, report that for the first time in centuries the Swiss Guards are ready to fight a war."
"Good. Sounds like Mr. Arieson. Now we'll let Chiun show me how to handle this."
For Rome, Chiun packed a black kimono with silver embroidery, a gift from the finest Italian family to the House of Sinanju several centuries before.
There was a florid parchment in the folds which read:
"To a house we have learned to appreciate-your good and faithful friends the Borgias."
"We haven't used this kimono since we worked in Italy," said Chiun on the small hovercraft taking them to the waiting aircraft carrier where they would pick up their military flight to Rome. "A good family, the Borgias. Except they suffered from a do-it-yourself complex. They couldn't leave well enough alone. Lucretia Borgia used poison, and because she thought that the goodness of an assassination lay only in killing someone, the whole family ended up with a bad reputation in history. How many times have we seen a successful ruling family fall because they can't leave well enough alone? So many think they can do it themselves just because we make it look easy."
"What are you going to do with Arieson?" asked Remo.
"You'll see," said Chiun.
"I'd feel a lot better if I knew."
"I'd feel a lot better if you knew, too. But you don't, do you?"
Before they went to the Vatican, Chiun insisted on walking the streets of Rome. Some of the ancient marblework had been preserved, the old Forum looking like a partial skeleton of marble, withered in the adjacent modern street. They passed the old home of the Vestal Virgins, pagan priestesses, on whose example modern convent life in the Catholic Church was modeled. And then, of course, the bitter little remnants of the old temples to the old gods that were no more.
Before Christianity there were only these gods in what was called the civilized world. For every attribute-love, drinking, war, the sea-there was a special god. From Venus to Neptune these gods ruled the daily lives of the people and received their offerings.
But with the advent of Christianity, with the promise of eternal life, with a god who had died for his people, an unseen God from the Hebrews, the great temples became empty, and the last priests lived alone without followers, without offerings, tending the statues of their cults.
And when the priests were gone, when the coffers built up over hundreds and hundreds of years were finally empty, either Christians set up their churches in these pagan temples, or as Remo saw now, the buildings just decayed. Standing before the site of the Great Temple of jupiter, where once thousands would crowd in for feasts, Remo saw just a worn simple marble slab in the dirt of Rome with a bronze inscription saying there had been a huge temple here.