Smith released a sigh that was a mixture of bile and burned meat loaf.
"It would be easier," he admitted. "Certainly this is a complication none of us needs. With Remo and Chiun already skipping around the world for the Time of Succession, their activities are already too close to public. A rage-fueled vendetta on the part of the Master of Sinanju possibly directed against the North Korean government is not something I would like to see added to the mix right now."
"So we don't tell him," Howard said.
Smith shook his head. He offered something that might have started as a weary laugh but came out a tired moan.
"The only option worse than telling him would be to keep the knowledge from him." Smith sighed. Rolling his chair firmly into the desk foot well, the CURE director stretched his hands to his keyboard.
REMO CAUGHT UP to the Master of Sinanju on the steps of Czar Alexis's dingy French apartment building.
"What's wrong?" he asked, bounding down the stairs.
"I must think," Chiun replied tersely. He swept across the sidewalk to their waiting taxi.
"This can't be because of that Russian stink machine in the black bathrobe," Remo insisted. "Chiun, don't let him rattle you. I saw better hustlers than him rigging three-card-monte games on Coney Island when I was a kid."
But the Master of Sinanju didn't respond. He flung the rear door open and slipped into the cab. Remo hopped in beside him as the old man was barking orders at the cabbie.
"A little bad breath and mood lighting and you're running like French cheese?" Remo asked as the cab drew away from the curb. "That's not like you." The Master of Sinanju shot him a dark glance.
"Did you not hear the words of the wicked monk?" he snapped.
"See? There's my problem. If you'd said good monk, or happy monk or goddamn Dopey, Doc or Grumpy monk, I might put some stock in what he had to say. As it is, I listen to wicked monks about as much as I listen to crack-smoking mullahs."
"You would be wise to heed the words of this one," Chiun insisted. "He has been bestowed a gift, imparted to him by the dark forces with which he is aligned. My father knew well of him. The monk sees the future."
The words were said with such gravity that Remo dared not disagree.
"Okay, so he's a fortune-teller. So what? If he wanted to impress me, he'd predict himself a bar of soap."
"Do you not have eyes?" Chiun demanded. "Explain to me what just happened in that apartment." Shrugging exhausted surrender, Remo dropped his hands to his knees.
"I don't know, Little Father. I really don't. Maybe it was trick lighting. Maybe it was something more. Maybe you rigged it all somehow just to pull my leg. If you want to know the God's honest truth, whenever this sort of stuff happens I do my damnedest not to think about it."
"Is that what I have trained? A gangly legged ostrich with his big, dumb head stuffed in the ground? Have you seen nothing in your years as my apprentice? By now you should know well that there are forces at work in the universe that are beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. Apparently for ostrich you, that is doubly true."
"Fine," Remo said. "You want to know what I saw? I saw exactly what you did. Which is to say I don't know what the hell I saw. A hundred-year-old crown prince who looks like he's late for gym class and a Svengali monk who can Casper his way in and out of rooms. So I accept it. There. And he can tell the future. So what did he say? Watch out for the night and watch out for the day. What's that supposed to mean other than typical ambiguous fortune-telling gibberish?"
"He told us to beware the false night and day," the Master of Sinanju insisted.
"Okay, so what does that mean?"
"I don't know. But we must further beware of the hand that reaches from the grave. Darkness comes from the cold sea. For both of us, for he said Masters of Sinanju."
"Are you telling me you bought into that bullshit about someone being alive who was dead?"
"It seems unlikely," Chiun replied. "While the secret to true necromancy was supposed to be known to the priests of ancient Egypt, it was lost many years ago."
"I know necro is dead. Who the hell's Nancy?"
The old Korean gave a withering look. "It is the raising of the dead, numskull."
"I hate to break it to you, Little Father, but if the world starts vomiting up the living dead at us, it won't exactly limit either one of us. We've been tossing bad guys overboard to the sharks for more years than I like to think about. And there's a whole slew of dead chambermaids and bellboys who got in the way of your TV over the years. Not to mention ex-girlfriends, pissed-off gods and the occasional poor slob who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If we've got some oogidy-boogidy from the great beyond stalking us, he's going to have to take a number. "
"It does not necessarily mean direct involvement by someone either of us has dispatched," Chiun said, stroking his thread of a beard with slender fingers. "Maybe it means a trap an enemy set before we delivered them to the Void."
"Like what?" Remo asked.
Chiun's wrinkled forehead creased. "I do not know," he admitted. "But he said that we are already stalked by death. Whatever it is may already be out there."
"Could be he's just talking about the Time of Succession," Remo suggested, hating the fact that he was being drawn into the demented monk's predictions. "We've got hit men already hiding behind every mailbox."
"Perhaps," Chiun said. He did not sound convinced.
Remo could see that his teacher was deeply disturbed. He touched the old man's shoulder.
"Hey, don't worry, Little Father," he said, his tone reassuring. "I don't put as much faith in Raspoopin as you do, but we've gone up against worse prophecies before and we're both still here to tell the tale. Let the world throw whatever it's got at us. We'll come out fine. I promise."
Chiun looked deep in his pupil's open, confident face.
Still so much a child. The boy had come to the edge, yet still had so much to learn.
Chiun knew. His father had told him. The monk was gifted. The monk was never wrong. And according to his words, two Masters of Sinanju were destined to die. Master and student, father and son.
Remo and Chiun.
Sitting in the back of the Parisian taxi, the old Korean studied the innocent, smiling face of the man he had trained. The man who was going to die. His son.
Grief overtook him. As Remo smiled, Chiun gave a brief nod, quickly turning away.
As Remo settled in for the cab ride, the old Korean stared out the window at the passing Paris lights.
Chapter 16
Benson Dilkes was certain he was a dead man.
He had been driven from comfortable retirement in Africa, hired to kill the next Sinanju Master by a man he had met only once and came back to the world he had fled for a contest that was as unwinnable as it was unavoidable. As far as he was concerned, his fate was already sealed.
But when the small Korean standing in the bedroom of his Boca Raton apartment did not make a move toward him, Dilkes began to get a new sense. It was the name that finally did it. When the man mentioned his name, Benson Dilkes dropped his handgun to the carpet.
"Did you say Nuihc?" Dilkes breathed.
"There is nothing wrong with your hearing, Benson Dilkes," replied the Korean in the black business suit.
Dilkes's palms were sweating. He could feel the prickly sensation. Dilkes rarely perspired. Most days it took him an hour of kneeling out under the blazing hot sun in his rose garden back in Zimbabwe to even break a sweat.