"Breathing," Remo said. "Nothing mysterious. Nothing great. Just good old American science. By white men."
Chiun chuckled. "Am I now led to believe the awesome magnificence of the Glorious House of Sinanju has been put into a little pill for people? That centuries of discipline and wisdom can be discovered in a test tube?"
"No test tube," said Remo. "Breathing."
"When we talk of breathing, we talk of approaching the unity which makes you a force," Chiun said. "When that man talks of breathing, he means puffing."
"I don't think so, Little Father. I think they may have stumbled onto something. Maybe by accident."
"So glad to meet you, sir. The name's Charlese. Dr. Averill Charlese, no relation to Averill Harriman, the millionaire. And you, sir, are Mr. Chiun?"
Chiun looked off into the blue Mexican sky outside their window.
"He doesn't like to discuss these things with strangers, especially foreigners."
"I'm not foreign. I'm American," said Dr. Charlese. "And so are you."
Remo heard Chiun mumble something in Korean about being able to take whiteness out of the mind but not the soul.
"Go ahead, talk. He's really listening," Remo said. Dr. Charlese began drawing diagrams of the mind on small white cloths he found under an unused ashtray.
Breathing, thought Remo. It had been more than a decade now since he heard that first strange instruction. More than a decade since he had stopped using his body and mind only partially, as other men did.
What appeared to others as great feats of strength and speed were really as effortless to him now as flicking a light switch. As Chiun had said, effort was expended when one functioned improperly. Correctness brought ease.
Remo had been taught that ease when he had been given Sinanju, called Sinanju after the village on the West Korea Bay whence came the Masters of Sinanju. From king to king and emperor to emperor, from pharaoh to Medici, these masters-one or, at most, two-generation-rented their talents and services to the rulers of the world. Assassins whose services paid for the food in the desolate little Korean village where crops did not grow and the fishing was poor. Each Master did not rule the village, but served it, for he was the provider of food.
During many generations their actions were observed by those who would imitate Sinanju. But they only saw, as Chiun had said, the kimono and not the man. They saw the blows when the blows were slow enough for the human eye to see. And from these blows and kicks and the other movements that were slow enough for normal men to see, came karate and ninja and taikwando and all that was thought to be the martial arts.
But they were only the rays. Sinanju was the sun source.
And in the travels of the Masters of Sinanju, the current one, Chiun, made contact with an American group that said, "Take this man and teach him things." It had been more than ten years. And it had started with the blows and became the essence-the breathing that now so excited Remo who, since he was born in the west, had always sought to explain Sinanju to himself in Western terms. And always failed.
Maybe Chiun was right: Sinanju could not be explained in terms of the West. Then again, maybe he was wrong.
Remo listened to Dr. Charlese, and although Chiun seemed to be contemplating, Remo knew the Master of Sinanju was taking in every word.
"So you see," said Dr. Charlese in summation. "People are not using their full abilities. More than 90 percent of the human brain is never used. What we do is unlock the human growth potential."
Chiun finally turned and looked at Charlese, whose pudgy pale face was beaded with sweat, even in the air-conditioned chill of the fourteenth-floor Conquistador suite.
"You would see something then?" asked Chiun.
"You betcha," said Dr. Charlese.
Chiun's long fingernails at the end of parched bony hands made a circular signal, calling on Remo for a move.
"That's nothing," Remo said.
"You were the one, Remo, who would invite some passing stranger into the bosom of our home. Then you may demonstrate. And of course I selected a 'nothing.' I did not want you to do it incorrectly."
Remo shrugged. It was a simple exercise. It depended on slowness. You approached the wall with momentum, and then bringing it flat to you so you could practically smell the dust in the ceiling corner, you walked straight up, letting the momentum carry your waist height to the level of your head and then, with your feet just beneath the ceiling, dropping the head down straight to the floor and bringing the feet beneath you just before the head touched. Like so much in the discipline of Sinanju, it appeared to be what it wasn't. The legs only followed the momentum of the body up to the ceiling, though it looked as if you were using them to walk up a wall; it was really only using forward momentum deflected upward by the impact with the wall.
"Golly, wow," said Dr. Charlese. "Wow. Walked right up the frigging wall."
"Well, not exactly," said Remo.
"And you too would do these things?" asked Chiun.
"I'd be rich," said Dr. Charlese. "I could buy off the parents."
"What parents?" Remo asked.
"Well, that damned little girl. I had a demonstration of teaching her to swim through imagination. Little bitch."
"What happened?" said Remo.
"Panicked. Didn't trust me. I told her if she panicked, she'd drown, but if she relaxed, she'd be fine. Had the parents' signature on the release form too. But you know the courts in America. Didn't let it hold up. It would have been a breakthrough. Could have sold the program by mail order if it had worked."
"You took the life of a child?" said Chiun.
"She took her own life. If she had listened to me, she would have swum right out. I would have been famous. But the little bitch called out for her mommy. Damn. Had the local press there too."
"I see," said Chiun. "If the child had followed your instructions, she would have lived."
"Absolutely. One hundred percent. Lord's honest truth," said Charlese.
"Then I will show you how to walk walls," said Chiun, "for no secrets should be kept from one of such great faith."
This surprised Remo, because he knew that for the most deadly killers the world had ever known, the purposeful killing of a child was anathema. And there could be no question that Charlese's accident was not purposeful killing. Not to a master of Sinanju, Remo knew, because while discipline for adults was screw-lock tight, children were considered incapable of anything but receiving love. You nourished a child with love for the long hard journey through a life that had so little love.
This teaching, Chiun said, would occur at night. Remo listened to him talk. Some of what he said to Dr. Charlese was Sinanju, but most was, as Chiun often said, chicken droppings.
Early evening there was a phone call. Remo's Aunt Mildred was going to the country. She would be there at 3 a.m., and Remo should not worry about her kidney stones. It was a telegram read by Western Union. Remo did not worry about his Aunt Mildred or her kidney stones. He had no Aunt Mildred. He had no living relatives, which was precisely why he had been chosen more than a decade before by the people who hired Chiun to train him.
At 1 a.m., with Dr. Charlese bubbling over with speculation on the potential of the human mind, Chiun, Remo and Charlese walked fifteen flights up a back stairway to the roof. Below them Mexico City, once a city built on a swamp and now a modern city built on the rubble of ancient cities, twinkled brightly. The air was dusty hot, even at night, and the roof above the playroof gave no relief. The air covered them like a pressure cooker lid. Charlese's fancy clothes were darkened with perspiration. The front of his shirt looked as if someone had thrown a bucket of water at his navel.
"Do you believe?" asked Chiun.
"I believe," said Dr. Charlese.
"Do your breathing thing and then I shall show you a miracle," said Chiun.
Charlese closed his eyes and breathed deeply three times.
"I'm ready," he said.