Remo wasn't buying it.
"It's right there in black and white," he insisted. "'Sinanju will never serve a succeeding emperor.' That was the lesson of Wo-Ti."
"There is more than just that to the story," Chiun said. "In foolishly agreeing to safeguard the life and throne of Pepi II for all of that pharaoh's natural life, Wo-Ti was stuck in Egypt until Pepi died at the age of ninety-six. Afterward, Wo-Ti's successor declared that Sinanju does not guarantee life, but only death. This could be considered the greater part of his lesson. If so, he has his legacy and we would be safe to dispense with that other trivial part."
"I think Wo-Ti would have something to say about that," Remo warned. "When I met his spirit a few years back, he was under the impression that the 'no successor' lesson was the big one."
"Wo-Ti has been dead for three thousand years," Chiun clucked. "He has likely not kept up with the modern demands of our ever changing craft."
Remo shook his head. "This reeks of a dodge, Little Father," he said. "I know you've cooked the books before, and most of the time I didn't care because I didn't really think it mattered. But this one's too big to let slide. We work for Smitty until he's gone. After that, we're done and that pimple-faced twit assistant of his can go pound sand."
"We have just had this discussion recently," Chiun said. "America is the only nation that can afford both of us."
"Well, maybe we should-I don't know-maybe we should split up, then. Find two countries next door to each other and go there. I'll take England and you can have France. We'll holler insults across the English Channel. Or maybe we could just go home for a while and veg out."
"Home where?" Chiun said suspiciously.
"To Sinanju," Remo said. "I could go baby shopping for an apprentice. You could lock yourself away like Monty Burns in that bank vault you call a house, counting and recounting every nickel Smitty's ever sent you. It'd be fun."
"When, Remo, did you develop this affection for Sinanju?" Chiun asked, his hazel eyes hooded.
"I haven't," Remo said. "I can't get all gaga like you over a pile of shit-smeared rock. But if we're checking out options, we have to consider them all, because tradition dictates that we can't work for Smith's successor."
"And who is the current guardian of our traditions?" Chiun asked haughtily.
Remo opened his mouth to answer, but stopped abruptly. "Wow," he said, blinking surprise. "Deja vu."
"What is wrong?" the Master of Sinanju asked.
"Huh? Oh, nothing," Remo said. "I just flashed back to California. That thing that I ought to remember, but can't." He shook his head in an attempt to dislodge the strange sensation. "Weird. I almost had it, I think." He glanced at the Master of Sinanju. "You sure you don't wanna tell me what this is all about?"
Chiun shook his head. "I have spoken too much as it is, my son," he said. "It will come in its time. As for returning to Sinanju, I may do so to visit, but at this stage in my life, to move back there for any extended period of time would be to move back there forever. And I am not yet ready to enter that final phase of my life."
The old man closed his wrinkled eyelids, settling in to sleep for the rest of the long trip to Alaska.
Remo shook away the residual effects of this latest odd episode. Whatever was trying to break through, he hoped it did so soon. "Smitty's helper is a drip," he offered.
"Sinanju has worked for worse," Chiun replied, his eyes still firmly shut. "I could tell you stories about Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia that would whiten even your fair skin. As long as their gold takes proper teeth marks, nothing else matters. Now get some rest."
His final command delivered, the old man fell asleep.
When the snoring started a minute later, Remo hardly heard it. His troubled eyes were directed out the window. His thoughts were far away.
Beyond the glass the gossamer clouds continued to slip silently by.
Chapter 13
The cold wind carried a faint odor from the vast Pripet Marshes and across the wide, cracked tarmac. Even the frigid Russian winter wasn't cold enough to keep the stench down. In the summer the smell was powerful enough to make a strong man retch. Anna Chutesov ignored it.
Sergei stood behind her, the hems of his coat flapping in the wind. Fanned out around him were five others.
Six men. All that was left.
The men moved, stopped, even seemed to breathe in unison.
A warm hood was pulled up tight over Anna's blond hair. Her hands were stuffed deep in the pockets of her down parka. Blue eyes impatiently scanned the sky above the vast tracts of empty land that abutted the airfield.
"This is absurd," she muttered as she checked her watch for the twentieth time.
When she spoke, Sergei shifted guiltily. She shot him a deeply displeased look.
Only after she had read the news report he had found online had the young man reluctantly admitted something to her. It turned out to be an item of vital importance that he, in his stupid male loyalty, had kept from her far too long. Not wishing to betray the others, Sergei had waited to tell her with whom they were truly dealing.
The terrible truth only fueled Anna's fear.
Behind Anna and her Institute-men, an abandoned flight tower scraped the sky. An empty barracks squatted below it.
The airport buildings were all in various states of decay. Tar paper hung from roofs in sheets. Broken windows howled forlornly in the gales. Chunks of concrete littered the ground where once had trodden the boots of many a Red Army and Soviet air force soldier. On the field, wind whistled through the rusting hulks of three old MiG-23s.
The old base was a shadow of its former self. Anna would leave it to the poets and the hard-line zealots to draw from its condition whatever conclusions they might like to make about the Russian nation as a whole.
Anna's ride sat near the flight tower. The remodeled Kamov helicopter, called a Helix in the West, resembled a giant wheeled fish. Above the fuselage, two rows of silent rotors-both upper and lower-shuddered in the desolate wind.
Anna's ice-blue eyes continued to impatiently rake the weak white sky.
To the west was Poland. Northeast was Moscow. And farther east well away from Russia and its former client states-was the place where Anna Chutesov should be.
"Men," she muttered to herself.
The moment she said the word, her ears tickled with the distant hum of a plane engine. With darting eyes she found the aircraft. The Ilyushin was a tiny speck in the sky.
Anna crossed her arms tightly. "It is about time." It took an agonizing few minutes for the big aircraft to land. The Ilyushin bounced across the ruts and holes in the runway, finally rolling to a stop near the tower. The pilot didn't cut the engines.
Anna ran across the tarmac to the waiting plane. Sergei and the other men ran with her, cold, silent shadows.
The Russian presidential plane was nothing like America's Air Force One. The poor Ilyushin looked to be on its last legs. The fuselage was dull and grimy. The tires were nearly bald. A thin, almost invisible stream of white smoke slipped from the starboard nacelle. The pilot had been assuring Russia's worried president for weeks that white smoke wasn't anything to worry about. They could go all the way through the various shades of beige to black before it became necessary to take the plane in for expensive servicing. Fuel drizzled to the tarmac from a pinhole leak.
As soon as Anna reached the plane, a door popped open behind the left wing and a retractable ladder extended. She kicked the bottom rung so that the metal ladder locked in place and scurried up. At the top a hand reached out and helped her inside.
The man's copilot uniform was faded and worn. Ragged threads hung from the cuffs. Since he hadn't been paid in three months, he had recently been forced to sell his insignia to some visiting American teenagers to buy food.
"That way," the copilot said, pointing.
Anna had already pushed past him. Even as her entourage of six began boarding the plane, she was hurrying down the aisle to the lounge.
The engine sounds were muted inside. Wind buffeted the plane, rocking it from side to side.