"Why do you ask questions when the answers are known to you already?" the Korean replied.
It was him. Dilkes could scarcely believe it. He felt his heartbeat quicken even more. He tried to will it to slow.
"I beg indulgence for my persistent impudence, O unequaled one," he said, bowing, "but it was my understanding that you had disappeared many years ago. It was assumed by many in my profession-I do not call it 'our' profession, for it sullies your great and hallowed reputation to be likened to worthless bunglers such as myself-that you had died."
The Korean's hooded eyes were flat. "Spare me that flowery foolishness," he droned. "You are not good at it, and I do not require songs of flattery to stroke my ego. I am not my uncle, decrepit and needy of validation. As for that other, I was asleep. That is all you need know."
Dilkes could see he had given offense.
"I beg forgiveness," he said. "It's just that you caught me by surprise."
The Korean nodded quiet understanding. "That is a rare thing for you, Benson Dilkes. I have heard of you. You are too cautious to be surprised. That is a good thing. The price of failure is high, given the work you do, yet you have survived longer than most. I am impressed."
"You honor me, sir."
"The proper term is 'Master.'"
"Forgive me, Master," Dilkes said.
The American assassin's eyes strayed to door and window. The window was sealed and wired. The same for the door. They would take precious seconds to disarm. Not that it mattered. Even if he made a dash for it, he was certain there was no way he could hope to make it past the Korean.
But even as the wild thoughts flew through the brain of Benson Dilkes, the Asian was shaking his head. It was as if the man in the business suit had read his mind.
"Do not make me question my faith in you," the Korean said. "You know full well that if I wished it you would be dead already. Therefore, I must not want you dead."
"But the contest..." Dilkes began, confused. His voice trailed off.
He was suddenly distracted, a worried look on his tan face. Dilkes had finally noticed the other person who had somehow stolen into his bedroom unannounced.
The other stranger had likely been standing near the Korean the whole time. It was easy enough to miss him, the way he loitered in the dark corner near the door. As it was, Dilkes had to squint to make him out.
The man was obviously not Asian.
He was white. Thin and pale. A mane of flowing blond hair like tousled corn husks hung down to narrow shoulders. His face was so sunken he looked like the hollow projection of a human. Even though he was younger than the Korean, he somehow looked older than his years. He didn't speak or move. Just clung to the dark. A subservient ghost.
"Who is that?" Dilkes breathed.
The man in the suit didn't turn. Didn't acknowledge the presence of the other man.
"No one. A failure. A tool that broke. A shadow of what he was supposed to be. Pay him no mind."
"As you wish, Master," Dilkes said.
The word fit comfortably on his tongue.
Many men, alive and dead, would have been surprised at the ease with which the great Benson Dilkes had accepted so subordinate a term. Even among those in his profession who knew of Sinanju, few fully understood what it was. Dilkes knew. For this reason the word Master came easily to him.
The man who called himself Nuihc padded across the room. Dilkes backed against the bureau, allowing a wide path for the small man to pass. The Korean stopped before the line of corkboard maps. Face upturned, he studied the many red pins.
The blond-haired man stayed back near the door. As still as death, the blond man studied the small Asian. For the first time Dilkes saw the Caucasian's eyes.
If a Caribbean sea could catch fire, that was the color of the younger man's eyes. They were blue. Brilliantly so. As the young man studied his Master, his electric-blue eyes sparkled with a vitality far greater than the pale, emaciated face in which they were sunk.
Dilkes found himself so entranced by the younger man's eyes that he missed something the Asian said. "Excuse me?" he asked.
"I said this is not accurate," the Korean repeated. He waved a hand across the big maps, pointing, one, two, three. "There, you missed some in India and China. Several in Lobinia. Here, in San Francisco and New York."
The reality hit Benson Dilkes. This was a Master of Sinanju. Of course he would know all the little pin marks in Dilkes's absurd maps. He had doubtless made many of them.
"You were there," Dilkes said.
"For a few," the Korean admitted. "Not for most. But I, like you, kept track."
Dilkes frowned. "But you're the pupil of the Master of Sinanju. And these-" he hesitated, searching for the right word "-events have spanned the past thirty years. Shouldn't you have been there for most of them?"
The Korean still studied the maps. At Dilkes's question, there was a slight twitch at the corner of the Asian's mouth. A hint of buried emotion. When he spoke, his voice was so soft Dilkes had to strain to hear.
"I was Master before any of these took place," the Korean said coldly. "I was Master when you first began your pitiful business of breaking necks and setting fires for money in barbarian African backwaters. These are all the result of an anomaly. The handiwork of an old man who stayed beyond his time. One who would betray everything he claims to hold dear. A pathetic shell of dust and bone who would take as a pupil a worthless white mongrel and present it to the world as something other than the unfit cur that it is." He shook his head. "This will end."
With that the Asian raised his foot five inches off the floor. With a look of icy determination, he dropped the sole of his black leather shoe hard to the carpet.
The thunder rattled the room. The vibrations seemed to find focus on the wooden easels that held up the world maps. One by one the tiny red tacks popped out, clattering to carpet like hard rain. The last tack to rattle loose was that of Jean-Pierre Sevigne. The plastic-capped pin that had become a grave marker for the French assassin fell to the floor and was lost in the scattering sea of red thumbtacks.
"It is one thing to follow a trail," said the Asian. "Quite another thing to blaze one. We are going to tear down a house and build a new one on its foundation."
As he spoke, the small man walked over and retrieved the plastic case from the nightstand.
Dilkes shook his head. "I don't understand."
The Asian turned. "You and the pins in this box are going to help me, Benson Dilkes. When I am done, not one stone will be left on another. Our task is a simple one. Builders do it all the time. The destruction of a house."
The Korean took two fresh pins from the case. Rolling them in his palm, he brought them over to the map. One after the next, he flipped them to the tip of his thumb and flicked them with his index finger. With near simultaneous whirs they flew at a map, burying themselves deep in the corkboard.
Dilkes saw that the tacks had embedded themselves near the Korean peninsula. Just at the edge of the curve of the West Korean Bay. When he turned back to the Asian, there was a look of excited wonder on his face.
Dilkes had been dragged from Africa, from the comfort of retirement. Practically kicking and screaming. He had thought his new life of leisure suited him. He was wrong.
Benson Dilkes-the man who lectured others about the power of the House of Sinanju, the man who twenty-five years before had run rather than encounter the most feared practitioner of that most ancient art-felt an old tingle in the pit of his fluttering stomach.
He thought it was long gone. The excitement of youth. The thrill of the kill. Replaced by drudgery and mechanics and, finally, by retirement, by uselessness. But it was back. Blazing bright and newborn. In a flash, the certainty of death that had loomed above his head all these months was replaced by the exciting possibility of ultimate success.
Benson Dilkes turned to the Korean, his tan face flushed with youthful energy.
"I understand, Master," Dilkes drawled, his Virginia twang suddenly as thick as the day he had made his first kill. "Just tell me what you need. I am yours to command."
The killer offered a deep, formal bow of submission.