Sober and shaking, Kim Jong Il listened to the plane tires squeal. It rolled to a stop before the group of men.
The air stairs were quickly put in place. When the door opened a minute later, a lone man stepped into the cold air.
At the sight of the Master of Sinanju, Kim Jong Il felt his bowels clench.
"It's show time," he said with a reluctant moan. Entourage in tow, he headed to the base of the stairs.
The Master of Sinanju descended like a floating mummy. His eyes were as hard and cold as the Korean terrain.
"Master of Sinanju!" Kim Jong Il enthused, a phony smile plastered wide over his face. "Welcome home. We weren't expecting you so soon. So where's that sonny boy of yours?" He stood on tiptoes, looking worriedly up the stairs.
Chiun's voice was glacial. "He is not here." A spark of hope lit the Korean premier's eyes. "Oh, no," he said, attempting a sympathetic tone as insincere as his vanishing smile. "I sure as heck hope no one got the better of him in this contest thing."
Chiun gave him a cancerous look that told the Korean leader that Remo was alive and well.
"Sorry," Kim Jong II said, holding up his hands in apology. "I can't help it. That kid of yours gives me a serious case of shit-the-pants. The way he's always smacking me around, busting the place up when he's in town. I don't think he likes me. But you and me. That's a whole 'nother story. We understand each other."
Smiling again, he offered the Master of Sinanju his hand in friendship.
Chiun took the premier's hand. The premier was glad Chiun took his hand. Shaking hands was nice. Friendly people shook hands. And they were both Koreans, after all. Koreans understood each other with the sort of understanding that was sealed with friendly handshaking niceness.
"There." Kim Jong Il beamed. "One, big happy Korean fam- Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!" He was down on his knees before he even realized that Chiun hadn't warmed to a shared bond of Korean niceness after all. He hadn't shaken the premier's hand. Instead, the old man took the web of flesh between the premier's thumb and forefinger and squeezed. The pain was unbelievable. Blinding.
Kim Jong Il's shocked brain couldn't register what had happened. To help it along in understanding, the Master of Sinanju squeezed again.
"Ahhhhhhhh! " Kim Jong Il screamed again.
All around came metallic clicks, like winter crickets suddenly popping from hibernation.
Kim Jong Il's eyes grew wild.
"Hold your fire!" he yelped at his troops, who had quickly taken aim with rifles and handguns on the little man who had brought the Leader for Life of North Korea to his knees on the bitterly cold tarmac of Pyongyang airport. "Back off, back off! That is a goddamn order! Ahhhhhhhhh!" he cried anew, falling farther to the ground. He propped himself up with his free hand. "What's wrong?" he begged.
The old man's eyes were frozen hazel shards. "Are you responsible?" the Master of Sinanju demanded. The premier didn't have time to answer.
As ordered, the men with the guns had backed off. They stood at a short, anxious distance, unsure what to do. But amid the crowd one man had decided on a course of action.
Puffs of angry white steam shot from the flaring nostrils of Shan Duk. He looked like a Korean bull. And like a bull, Shan Duk charged, howling with rage.
No one there was quite sure what happened next. Things moved so quickly they saw only the result. They were certain that Shan Duk had attacked the little old man. They were reasonably certain that he had succeeded in crushing the tiny man to paste, for the old man vanished very briefly underneath the towering mountain of meat that was Shan Duk.
But then Shan Duk was in the air. Floating. And then they saw the bony arm.
It held the mighty North Korean Communist warrior in the air by his back like a waiter's serving tray. The arm was attached to the little old man who, with his free hand, continued to assault North Korea's Leader for Life even as he held the big bodyguard aloft.
Shan Duk was like a turtle on his shell. His big arms were useless as he tried to grab around to the bony hand that propped him up by his meaty back. His tree-trunk legs kicked helplessly at the air.
There was no strain on the hard face of the Master of Sinanju. He continued to stare cold accusation at Kim Jong Il. The premier cowered under the huge, flailing shadow of Shan Duk.
"Are you responsible?" Chiun demanded once more.
"For what?" the premier begged.
"There was an atrocity committed in my village. A man is dead who was more honest and decent than any born of the slatterns in this brothel city. And so I ask again, on pain of a thousand deaths, are you responsible?"
"No!" Kim Jong Il shrieked. "God, no! I swear on a stack of outlawed Bibles. Sinanju is off-limits now. I made sure everyone knows that."
Chiun detected no deception coming from the North Korean premier. He released Kim Jong Il's hand, spinning in a whirl of kimono silk.
For an instant he suddenly seemed to remember Shan Duk, all 270 pounds of which was still balanced on his fingertips. As an afterthought, Chiun lobbed the bodyguard-who was thrashing by this point into the mob of soldiers. The men fell like bowling pins.
Chiun twirled through the toppled mass of men, heading across the tarmac. As he walked he shouted, "I require an automobile."
And all around, terrified men produced jangling sets of car keys. Mostly Chryslers and Subarus. The finest cars the Communist leadership of North Korea could buy.
IT WAS GENERAL KYE PUN who was elected to drive the Master of Sinanju home. Chiun remained silent in the back seat of the car.
A major highway, the likes of which existed nowhere else in all of North Korea, led to the coast. It stopped dead at a frozen mud road.
When the intelligence officer slowed to a gravelly stop at the end of the paved road, the Master of Sinanju got out of the back. He padded wordlessly away from the car.
The car turned for the ride back to the capital. When General Kye Pun looked in the rearview mirror, he saw the solitary figure of the elderly Master of Sinanju walking up the old mud path between the clumps of winter weeds.
"May we never cross paths again, old one," the general muttered to himself as he drove back down the road.
Alone on the path, Chiun heard the general's softly spoken words. He listened to the sound of the car engine driving away. It was an ugly sound. A modern intrusion into a place otherwise untouched by time.
The automobile sound faded, replaced by the howl of the wind and the roar of the nearby sea.
As always when he returned to the village of his birth, Chiun soaked in the history of his surroundings. Countless centuries ago, the sandals of the first Master of Sinanju had walked this very path. Chiun returned along that road. The same path he had walked as a young man when first he ventured out as Reigning Master.
Usually a return to Sinanju was cause for rejoicing. But this was not a happy homecoming. With a heavy heart he walked the path of his ancestors to the village proper.
The homes and shops were closed up tight. Windows were shuttered against the relentless wind. No one was about.
It was not the elements that kept the people inside. Chiun had sensed it even before he reached the village. Fear hung heavy in the cold air.
He walked through town unchallenged.
The House of Many Woods sat on a bluff beyond the far end of the main road. Buffeted by wind, Chiun climbed the hill and entered the house of his ancestors.
The treasure was where it belonged. To his sharp eye it was clear nothing had been disturbed.
That he had not been robbed was a small consolation. There were things larger than mere robbery. Greater even than if bandits had come in and whisked away all the centuries' worth of accumulated treasure.
He was coming out of a back room when he heard the sound of the front door opening.