Yet not all the patients had been released. In fact, they seemed to have been let go in an unprofessionally haphazard fashion. Smith made a mental note to upbraid Dr. Gerling for this. The man knew better.
The IRS agents brought Smith to the last door on the left. It was not locked. One held the door open for him while the other gave his back a firm shove. Smith entered without complaint and turned as the door was slammed in his face.
"When you're ready to talk, we'll let you out," one agent said as the other threw a restraining bar across the door, locking it from the outside.
Smith said nothing. The agents' faces left the field of the small glass window that was honeycombed with chickenwire. The sound of their shoes echoing along the corridor began receding.
Then it stopped, stopped abruptly, and another sound came. It was a gurgling. A hoarse curse came in its wake.
Smith rushed to the window, trying to see what was happening.
"Let him go, damn you." It was the voice of one of the agents.
The gurgling stopped amid a sound like bones grating together. Smith thought he recognized it.
"Don't hurt them!" Smith shouted suddenly. "Master Chiun, do not harm those men! That is an order!"
The other agent cried out. "I know you! You're-"
A second gurgling started.
"Release that man at once!" Smith howled.
The fracturing of bone squelched the ugly death gurgle.
Grinding his teeth in frustration, Harold Smith could only crane his neck in a futile effort to see down the corridor.
Then a face appeared in the window. It was a wrinkled mask of hate. A single eye rolled at him while dry lips peeled back off peglike teeth under a frosty white mustache.
"Avast me hearty," a voice cackled. "The tables be turned."
Then a hydraulic steel hand came up into view and began expanding and contracting like an articulated vise.
Chapter 25
The Master of Sinanju walked the lonely corridors of Folcroft Sanitarium.
There was no reason to remain any longer in the dank basement where the gold had lain. It was time to patrol the fortress that had for the first time since he had set foot in it fallen to enemies.
That these enemies were representatives of the Eagle Throne of America was of small comfort. Harold Smith had ordered them not to be slain, and so they would not be felled by the implacable hand of Sinanju. So long as their grubby hands did not despoil the gold of Sinanju-wherever it was.
Chiun's smooth forehead gathered in wrinkles as he considered the missing gold. It was miraculous, what Remo had done. It smacked of magic. The white had learned well. Perhaps too well, for not even the one who had taught Remo all he knew could fathom its fate.
Perhaps, Chiun ruminated, he would chance upon the secret hiding place of the missing gold in his search for Uncle Sam Beasley.
His wanderings took him past prowling IRS taxers of wealth, who-although their eyes were open wide and their ears unplugged by wax-saw and heard only a fraction of what they should. He passed them undetected and unsuspected while his eyes and ears caught all. His fingers relieved them of their wallets in passing. If they later complained, he would call it the Sinanju tax.
Coming to the great gymnasium where long ago he had first been introduced to his pupil, Chiun stopped and let the memories roll over him.
It was here that Remo's training had begun. First the Master of Sinanju had been content to offer his unworthy white pupil simple arts suitable to his lack of promise. Karate. Aikido. Judo. The castoffs of the purity that was Sinanju. Chiun had even presented him with a white karate gi and, because the simpleminded white seemed to think it was a mark of distinction, a pretty-colored sash to wear around his overfed waist.
It seemed hopeless. The white drank fermented barley, smoked foul-smelling weeds and virtually lived on the firescorched meat of dead cows. Years of being a hamburger fiend had filled his essence with all manner of poisons.
The first week he had made Remo eat kimchi to leach the poisons from his system. The second, water was allowed. And on the third he got cold rice. After the fiery kimchi, Remo had been thankful for the water. By the time he had his first bowl of rice, Remo was grateful simply because it was not kimchi.
"When do I get warm rice?" Remo had asked, shoveling the sticky grains into his mouth with his fingers because, typically, the chopsticks were beyond his comprehension.
"When you have mastered the most rudimentary steps."
"How long is that in dog years?"
"I do not know, but certainly within the first five years of your training."
The look on the hamburger fiend's face had stayed with Chiun all these years.
So when Remo was allowed warm rice in the first six months, the white had been exceedingly pleased with himself.
What had been asked of Chiun was simple but odious. To train a white man in the assassin's art so that the white could move among his own kind, undetected and unsuspected.
It was not only an impossibility, but an insult. Chiun, retired because his own pupil, Nuihc, had gone renegade, had all but balked at the requested service.
"The Masters of Sinanju, my ancestors, have served thrones going back before the days of Herod the Just," he had told Smith. "Point to me your enemies, and I will slay them. You need no white to do the work which is properly done by a Korean."
"We require an assassin who will if necesary do our bidding for the next decade. If not two," Harold the Grim had said.
"It is too late," Chiun had countered. "One begins at birth. Remo is fat and sloppy. On the other hand, I am prepared to perform such service if the gold is plentiful."
"You are very old," had said the thoughtless and insulting white.
"I have seen but eighty summers and will see another forty before I am considered old by the measure of my ancestors."
"What we want is much different," Smith had said. "Please, Master Chiun. Train Remo as best you can."
And so Remo was trained in the foolish arts that had nothing to do with Sinanju except that they were pilfered from the sun source by Chinese and Japanese thieves who copied the moves but not the soul.
Over time Remo showed promise. Over time he took to the breathing and the grace as if of Korean blood. In time, Chiun had begun to supect that somewhere in Remo's mongrel past, Korean blood flowed. Not just the blood of any Korean, but the blood of the heirs to his village traditions, his own ancestors.
It was ridiculous, but to think otherwise was to accept that Sinanju could be taught to anyone-even a white-with satisfactory results. This was impossible, Chiun knew. For even some of the village men had proven incapable of mastering such basics as the fundamentals of correct breathing.
No, Remo was Korean. But the Master of Sinanju did not come to this understanding until many months had passed and he had made Remo throw away his karate gi and started him on the true path to Masterhood.
In this gym of so many memories, Chiun reflected how Remo had become like a son to him, and how he had happily fallen into the role of adopted father. Many happy years had come and gone since those days.
Now, because of one enemy-a mind that was not human but a fragment of the white machines that plagued the very society that worshiped them-all was being sundered.
The organization for which they worked was no more. Emperor Smith was a willing prisoner of his own government, and Remo was determined more than ever to find his past.