"Wait a second," Remo interrupted. "Wasn't this what started the Master's Trial? People challenging Wang like he was the best gunslinger in Dodge?"
Chiun's gaze grew hooded. "I am certain as he looks on this very moment, the Great Wang appreciates being compared to a shooter of boomsticks," he said dryly.
Remo had been so drawn in to Chiun's story that for the first time in a year he had forgotten about his invisible company. He shrugged an apology at the vacant air.
"But that was part of the reason for Wang starting the Master's Trial, right?" he asked. "Don't tell me I have to go on that trip again, 'cause if you remember last time it went massively wrong in about a million different ways."
"You went through that ritual long ago. The Master's Trial is an honorable contest between ancient peoples. While the origin is similar, this is something different."
"Yeah? Just so long as this ends different, I'll be happy."
The Master of Sinanju pursed his wrinkled lips. "Are you going to listen or are you going to waste the rest of the day drying your flapping tongue in the sun?"
"I'm listening, I'm listening."
Chiun seemed skeptical. After a moment of fixing his pupil with a gimlet eye, he continued.
"And Wang, who was frustrated that the first years of his masterhood had been spent proving himself to disbelieving rulers, did return to the village deeply troubled. Even from its earliest days Sinanju had always been an art of assassination. But this new age he had ushered in was threatening to turn his most sacred calling into little more than a spectator sport. For many days he did think on the problem. And when the solution finally came to him, Wang's heart soared, for he knew it was right. Hiring runners from neighboring villages, he did send them to the corners of the Earth. The runners carried letters in every language known to man and were delivered to the rulers of every land.
"The letters were an invitation to king and pharaoh, emir and emperor. These leaders were encouraged to send the greatest assassins in their respective lands into battle with the Master Wang. In the ensuing years, when Wang traveled on business to a particular region of the world, the invited thrones sent their chosen combatants to kill the new Master by whatever means and specialities they could devise. The world was smaller in those days, but the journeys were longer. It took ten years' time, but in the end Wang had met the greatest champions of all who questioned the strength of our House. With the end came the dawning of the New Age of Sinanju, for all had seen and all believed. All hail Wang the Great, founder, protector and nurturer of the modern House of Sinanju."
With a proud smile, the Master of Sinanju rested his hands to his lap, fingers interlocking. His pose indicated that he was finished the tale.
"Hail Wang, all right," Remo droned. "He skinned that shogun for thirty-eight big ones more than he was supposed to get, then took the show on the road. He must have scammed a bundle for racking up that ten-year body count."
"The only tribute Wang collected in that time was for the normal services he would have performed as Master anyway," Chiun explained. "He did not charge for the removal of his would-be assassins."
The world seemed to grow very still around Remo. Even the branches of the ash above his head appeared to still in the cold breeze, as if the hand of Wang himself had quelled their gentle movement.
"He killed them for free?" Remo asked, astonished.
"It was a pure ritual, baptized in blood. Wang did not want the taint of money to corrupt it."
Remo blinked. He opened his mouth to speak. He closed his mouth and blinked again.
"Let me get this straight," he said finally. "Free?"
"He deemed the tribute unimportant," Chiun said. He seemed uncomfortable with the notion. "Wang had discovered something almost as vital as tribute itself-the importance of advertising. Have you never wondered, Remo, why in our travels in this, what you would call the modern world, Sinanju is not known to the general population, yet is whispered about by kings in throne rooms and cutthroats who hide in the dark corners of taverns from Marrakech to Taipei?"
"Our reputation," Remo replied. "We've been doing this job for years."
"Yes, and the clown who flips cowburgers and the man with the donkey who picks coffee beans have been about their business for far less time," Chiun replied. "Yet they are known to all. We are known only to those who need to know about us. Thank the wisdom of Wang for this. He understood that ours is a service that is oftentimes rendered in secret. Even before Wang we lived among the shadows, always running the risk of being forgotten when came the dawn. With no night tigers and only one Master of Sinanju in all the world, Wang understood that this new Sinanju ran the risk of being forgotten. Especially with the rise of civilizations and the armies that came with them. And so, lest the world forget, Wang did issue a decree that each generation must embark on the same journey he undertook. The new Master is introduced by the retiring Master at court, after which the court's designated killer may strike. The end result proves to the leaders of the world that Sinanju is the power to be sought by every throne. For a reasonable fee, of course."
"Wait a second," Remo said, snapping his fingers. "Those letters you were sending out last year. This is what they were for. That's why that Swiss assassin who was chasing us around during that fiasco with those oxygen-sucking trees had one in his house when we caught up with him. It was an invitation to try to kill me."
Chiun allowed a tiny nod. "The main letters in the larger gold envelope go to the head of the government. Inside there is a silver envelope, which goes to the assassin of their choosing. That man happened to have received an invitation by the German government to enter the contest."
"What about that Afghan who just tried to blow me up? Shouldn't we have had an audience with the head of the Junior Towelband, or whatever-the-hell backward rock worshipers we've installed to run that dump now?"
"As I said, the Afghans deviated from the rules," Chiun replied with distaste. "Hardly a surprise. Those people have been in a state of decline ever since Mongol rule fell apart in the hundred years after the death of Genghis Khan. Their deception has lost them the chance to participate."
"Good," Remo said. "Because I sure as hell wasn't going to work for them no matter what. And since someone broke the rules, does that mean the game's off and we can go home?"
Chiun fixed him with a baleful look. Unscissoring his legs, the old man rose fluidly to his feet. Remo's head sank. He let out a protracted sigh.
"So you're saying I've gotta hump my way around the globe killing the best assassins money can buy?" The Master of Sinanju raised a haughty brow.
"We are the best assassins money can buy," he sniffed. "Well, I am. You are whatever it is you are. But it is too late to do anything about that now." He clapped his hands. "Come!" he commanded. "We must hie to the airport, for France awaits." With that he turned on his heel and marched across the grass. For a long moment, Remo just sat there.
"Well, could be worse," he mused to himself, his voice a tired sigh. "At least I get to kill a Frenchman."
Rising reluctantly to his feet, he followed the Master of Sinanju from the park.
Chapter 10
"I saw your father this morning. I said to him, Mr. Dilkes, where are you going so early? Can you believe it, he was going out for the paper? I've told him a dozen times he can get it delivered, but he says the walk does him good. It must be doing something, because he looks wonderful. I think it's amazing how he's able to get around at his age. He's got to be-what-eighty? Eighty-five?"
"He'll be ninety-two in April."
"Ninety-two? Imagine that. Ninety-two."
As Francine Standish and Mr. Dilkes's son rode up on the elevator in the King Apartments in Boca Raton, Florida, she clicked her tongue and shook her head in quiet amazement.
Francine was forty-five, with a pretty smile and hips that were starting to grow a little too wide. She had probably turned her share of heads in her glory days. But too much blond dye had turned her hair to straw and too much makeup now filled the subtle lines of her aging skin. Still, she was an attractive woman. There was more to her chatter than the awkward talk of neighbors on a shared elevator ride.
She offered the smile. It was the same one women always gave him. The smile that told him she didn't care whether his father fell down the front steps and cracked his skull open on his way to get the morning paper.
Benson Dilkes had gotten that smile a lot in his life. Even now, at a time of life when virility was in retreat for most men, women still flirted. It was no surprise. Dilkes had retained his rugged good looks into his early sixties. Although his dark hair was peppered with gray, there remained a boyishness about him, amplified by the crimping laugh lines that creased his eyes when he smiled.
In the rear of the car, Benson Dilkes pretended he didn't see Francine Standish's leering smile.
"Yes, ninety-two," he said politely as he watched the floor numbers light. His voice was a soft rasp, with the twang of his native Virginia. "The other day Mr. Freeman on the third floor asked if we were brothers. I hope he was joking. It made Dad pretty happy."
Francine snorted, as if this were the funniest thing she had ever heard. The laugh was cute when she was homecoming queen. It was the same laugh that-among other things-had finally driven her husband away five years before.
Unlike her ex-husband, who had once liked her snorting laugh, Benson Dilkes found it instantly irritating. So much so, he nearly killed her right then and there.
It would have been easy enough. Just a simple blow to the temple. Right where the blue veins throbbed beneath a curl of lacquered hair. Oh, there were other, more exotic methods. There were a hundred different options open to him. But he'd always preferred simplicity.
Despite the urge, he didn't crack his fist to her temple. A murder in the building would have inspired too many questions. Benson Dilkes didn't like questions. Instead, he waited for the car to stop on the sixteenth floor. When it did, he gave his fellow tenant a courteous "nice talking to you" before stepping off the elevator. The doors slid shut on Francine's disappointed face.
Dilkes headed up the blue-carpeted hallway. His apartment was at the far corner.
Corner apartments were always preferable. They only shared a single wall with one immediate neighbor. The other walls in Dilkes's apartment were exterior walls, with one facing the hallway. The building narrowed at the floor above, so there was no apartment over him, just a flat roof.
Dilkes unlocked his door with two keys. One for the standard lock, the other for the explosive charge that, if not deactivated properly, would have blown the floor and most of this side of the building across Boca Raton.