"What was this misfortune?"
"He was born white and American."
Sung gasped at the horror.
"Each morning he had to look at his round eyes in the mirror. Each meal he had to eat hamburger. Each day, naught but others with that same affliction for company."
"And what did you?"
"I found him and saved him from the Americans. From their thinking and ill manners."
"You did well," said Sung. But Myoch'ong, being of a suspicious nature, asked how Chiun knew this was not just another American but a Korean heart in an American body.
"Because he learned correctness exceeding well, and to prove the point he will demonstrate what he has learned when he comes to honor his heritage here in Sinanju."
"How do we know," asked Myoch'ong, "that it is not just an American to whom you have taught all of Sinanju?"
"An American?" said Chiun with a scoffing laugh. "Did you not see Americans in the great war with the south? Did you not see Americans when you had them with their ship? An American?"
"Some Americans are hard," said Myoch'ong. But so taken with the words of the Master was Kim Il Sung that he forgot his own truth and looked at Myoch'ong with scorn. Of course, this white man has a Korean heart, he said.
"His name is Remo," said Chiun.
And thus it was that evening, in the large People's Building in Pyongyang, when the name Remo was mentioned again to the Premier, Kim Il Sung recognized it. He was told a message had been received that an American named Remo would be disgraced in the village of Sinanju, and that he would be disgraced by a man named Nuihc.
And the sender of this message was himself Nuihc and he pledged the devotion of his soul to Kim Il Sung and the People's Democratic Republic of Korea. And he signed his message in this fashion:
CHAPTER NINE
"I'd like a million dollars, lady, in singles. Don't count it, weigh it."
Lynette Bardwell looked up at her teller's cage and smiled at Remo.
"Hiya," she said. "Missed you last night."
"You were among the missing last night," Remo said. "But I thought there's always tonight. You almost done here?"
Lynette looked at the clock in the center of the bank lobby, high up over Remo's head. The craning of her neck caused her bosom to rise.
"Ten minutes more."
"Dinner okay? Your husband won't mind."
"I guess he won't," said Lynette. "I haven't heard from him. I guess he did go away for awhile."
Remo waited in front and Lynette came boobily bobbing out in precisely ten minutes.
"Take my car?" she said. Remo nodded. In her car in the parking lot, she leaned over to brush his cheek with her lips. The top of her body pressed against his right shoulder. Remo grimaced.
"What's the matter? You hurt your shoulder?"
Remo nodded.
"How'd that happen?"
"Would you believe I ran into a barrel of basketballs?"
"No."
"Good. Don't."
Lynette drove and Remo picked the dinner spot this time, an even darker restaurant than the night before, but one that looked as if it could cook rice.
It could, and Remo joined Lynette in eating.
"Did you see Wetherby?" she asked.
"Yes. But he couldn't help."
"Couldn't help you what? You know I don't know what it is you're after."
"I'm doing a book on Oriental fighting. Your husband, Wetherby, they all have some special training, something unique. I know enough about it to know that. But they won't tell. I think I've stumbled onto some new training secret, and, well, I'm stubborn."
"I wish I could help," she said, picking over a piece of crabmeat. "But it's not my bag."
"What is your bag?"
The crabmeat vanished into her mouth without a trace. "I'm a lover, not a fighter."
Over her brandy, Lynette confided that her husband had never stayed away at night before. "You didn't scare him away, did you?"
"Do I look like I could scare anybody away?"
Remo picked slowly at his rice, first using his right hand, then his left. The pain in his shoulders was growing, and each time he brought the fork to his mouth he could feel the burning heat of injury moving through the shoulder joint, throbbing its pain into his consciousness. If only Chiun were in the States, instead of gallivanting around in Sinanju, he might be able to help. Someplace in that memory of his would be a way to make Remo's arms work again, someplace a way to stop the pain and the weakness.
And these were just the first two blows. He knew now that he had been targeted by Nuihc, the nephew of Chiun, who sought Chiun's title and had vowed Remo's death. Already Remo's arms were gone, worthless. What was next?
Finally eating wasn't worth the pain, and Remo just let the fork drop from his fingers. He found himself nodding at Lynette without hearing what she was saying, and soon they were driving toward her house and he heard himself accept her offer to stay in her upstairs spare room so he could rest.
And he felt so badly he no longer tried to maintain any pretense by asking if her husband might object. The husband was dead, and fuck 'im, he had hurt Remo's arm and he couldn't rot in that coffin fast enough to suit Remo.
Lynette helped him upstairs to a big bedroom in her house and he let her undress him. She did it slowly, trailing her fingers over his body and she put him naked under the covers. She was soft but efficient and Remo thought it rather marvelous how she had learned to hold her liquor much better than she had the night before. That was funny. Funny, funny, Remo thought. Look, look, look at funny Remo.
He could not move his upper body. The pain surged through his shoulders and down his arms, numbing his fingertips, into his chest where it seemed to attack each one of his ribs, into his neck where it made movement painful.
Hurt, hurt Remo. Look, look, look at hurt, hurt Remo.