Illuminated in the blue light of a million flickering stars, Sinanju almost seemed peaceful.
Hyunsil was about to turn away from the window when she caught something from the corner of her eye.
A glimpse of movement. A man's face. Another. And another.
They came into the village from the north.
Their faces were not Korean. They were white and black and Asians of all kinds. Hyunsil could see a Japanese, a Chinese and a half-dozen others. They carried weapons, these strangers. They brought arms into the village where none-from the Mongols of ages past to the Communists of modern times-had dared set foot to soil.
The men kicked in doors. Hyunsil watched as her fellow villagers were dragged out into the street. Women and children wept. The men of Sinanju cowered in fear as the strangers went about their evil business.
Hyunsil was frozen in place.
The Master had gone. She knew not where. But he had disappeared hours ago. The House of Many Woods sat in darkness on the bluff overlooking the village.
The door across from her home was forced open. Light from within spilled out onto the street. Hyunsil saw a face. Suddenly clear in the stab of yellow light. Her breath caught.
It could not be.
The face was the face of death. Twisted, gleeful. Hyunsil had seen him die. And yet here he was. The people of Sinanju lined up before him. He went from face to face, studying each in turn before moving on.
And then-fear tightening as she watched the man move around the village square as if he was unaware of his own death-Hyunsil remembered something that her father had once told her. Part of an ancient Sinanju legend.
"And he will summon the Armies of Death, and the war they wage will be the War of Sinanju," Hyunsil whispered.
A shadow fell across her window. She jumped. The front door burst open in a spray of white splinters. A big man stomped inside. Grabbing the old woman by the arm, he dragged Hyunsil from the window.
The rough treatment didn't matter. The caretaker's daughter had already seen the face of death. Hyunsil didn't struggle. She allowed herself to be dragged from her home, confident in the knowledge that she would soon be in the company of her dear father.
Chapter 26
As soon as Remo got to Russia and the secret throne room of the czars, he could see that he was in for more headaches just by the way the Russian leader was fidgeting. The president of the Russian commonwealth nervously told him that Russia's contestant-a very brutal former KGB killer-had gone missing. Remo had had enough. He called the man a govnyuk, broke Czar Ivan's favorite throne into little pieces and assaulted the president's personal security brigade when they swarmed in to see what the commotion was.
"What do you say now?" Remo demanded as the last man fell, a rifle barrel coiled around his neck like a metal snake. "Still can't find someone to try to kill me?"
The president looked at his security detail lying on the floor. Some of them moaned. They were probably alive. Those who didn't moan seemed to be the lucky ones.
"I could make a few phone calls," the president offered weakly.
"Don't bother," Remo grumbled. "I don't even know what I'm doing here. It's not like I'm ever going to work for a country where the only way to tell the difference between its currency and its toilet paper is that the currency absorbs better and flushes without clogging."
Leaving the president and his twitching guards, Remo prowled out of the secret throne room.
Away from the Kremlin, he found a phone at the Moscow Pizza Hut. He stabbed out the special CURE number so hard the metal 1 button cracked. The pieces were falling to the tile floor when Smith picked up.
"I've had it, Smitty," Remo announced. "I don't know if somebody said I pinch like a girl or have B.O. or what, but nobody wants to play with me. I'm coming home."
He didn't even give the CURE director time to answer. Slamming the phone down, he stormed out of the restaurant. He could hear the telephone ringing as he marched out the door.
At Sheremetevo-2 International Airport in Moscow, he bought a ticket for New York. Finding an out-of-the way seat, he sat down and waited for his flight.
A few times while he sat, some agents who worked for the airport came up to tell him he had a telephone call. He had no desire to talk to Smith again. He chased them all away. Eventually they stopped coming.
Disgrace. That's what Chiun would say. And he'd be right. Remo had screwed up. Somehow it was his fault. He could feel the disapproving eyes of a hundred Masters of Sinanju staring into his soul. The soul of a failure.
Dead or not, Remo couldn't look them in the eyes. He looked at his shoes. They were nice shoes. Handstitched Italian leather. He thought of the person who made them. The man was obviously not a failure. He made good shoes. Hell, he made great shoes. Perfect shoes. Remo could beat a cowhide silly and cut and stitch for a million years and not come up with a finer pair of shoes. The man who made the shoes was a success. Unlike Remo. Remo, the first Master of Sinanju to flunk the Time of Succession. Remo, who would get an F for the Hour of Judgment. Remo the Failure.
He sat there in a funk, eyes downcast, for he didn't know how long. A shadow fell over his perfect shoes. He assumed it was another airport agent insisting that there was an urgent phone call for him. Another gruff Russian voice that sounded as if it had been born hoarse and raised on Marlboros.
It wasn't.
"Mr. Remo?" asked a sweet voice that was like a chorus of angels.
Remo looked up from his perfect shoes into a face that put the perfection of his shoes to shame. The face matched the heavenly voice. The woman smiled. Her face was radiant. Her soft brown eyes twinkled with joy.
"How are you?" she lilted.
In the lonely corner of Moscow's airport, Remo Williams had met the most beautiful woman who would ever kill him.
AFTER REMO HUNG UP the phone, Smith allowed the CURE system to redial for him automatically. He let the phone ring a dozen times. When a Russian voice eventually answered, he hung up.
He was back in his office in Folcroft. Entering a few commands into his computer, he found that Remo had called from an American chain restaurant that now had a franchise in Moscow. Marveling at the changes the world had undergone in the past ten years, he returned to his computer.
Smith couldn't say he blamed Remo for wanting to come home. His time in Europe couldn't exactly be termed a rousing success. Still, the Master of Sinanju would not be pleased if CURE's enforcement arm returned in defeat from this crucial phase of his training. And Chiun had a tendency to make his private gripes disturbingly public.
The CURE director would give Remo a little time to cool off. He would call him at the airport.
As he typed, Smith felt the weariness of his quick round-trip to Florida. Thankfully, Mark Howard was now safely tucked away in CURE's basement security wing.
The Folcroft doctors had concurred with the prognosis of the physicians in Florida. The assistant CURE director was in no immediate danger. It was only a matter of time before he came out of this strange unconscious state.
Smith was more than a little concerned about his assistant's blackout. It was the sort of thing that could cause a security problem for the covert agency. After all, the FBI men on the scene had used Mark's phony ID to contact Smith. The line was untraceable and, thanks to the orders they had been issued at the start of the Dilkes affair, no one had filed a report about the incident. Still...
Smith took some comfort in the fact that there was nothing in the young man's medical record to indicate that anything like it had ever happened before. Howard didn't abuse drugs or alcohol. He had submitted to regular testing since his assignment to Folcroft. Disturbing though it was, with any luck this was an isolated incident.
As he worked, Smith couldn't shake the nagging sense that the incident with Howard had something to do with the young man's strange sixth sense.
Smith was sifting through the latest data on Remo's missing assassins when the blue contact phone jangled to life. It was half an hour since the last time it rang. Assuming Remo had had a change of heart, he scooped it up.
"Remo," he said sharply.
The urgent voice that replied didn't belong to CURE's enforcement arm.
"I need to speak with Remo," the squeaky voice of the Master of Sinanju announced sharply.
"Oh, Master Chiun," Smith said. "Was there a problem--?"