"That's less than half of the crew. The others must have drowned."
"Or escaped with the gold. We must question these men.''
"It can wait till morning," Remo said wearily. He went among the men, saying, "Catch your breath. We'll have you bedded down in no time."
"Damn North Koreans," a man muttered.
"There's your answer," Remo told Chiun.
"That man is obviously delirious," Chiun replied in Korean.
"What makes you say that?"
"Because Kim II Sung would never defile the gold of Sinanju." .
"Maybe so. But what about Kim Jong II?"
"That whelp! He is no son of his father if his hands are on this perfidy."
As they got the men up on their feet and started up the shore road, a woman came down to meet them. She prostrated herself in a full bow and said, "O Gracious Master, there are tanks at the edge of the village, despoiling the pure air of the village you are sworn to protect with the harsh smoke of their engines."
Chiun hiked up his soaked shirts in indignation. "Tanks? Whose tanks?"
"The tanks of Kim H Sung."
"Tell then they are not welcome."
"They have ordered me to tell you that Kim Jong II himself has sent word from Pyongyang, demanding to speak with you."
"News travels fast," said Remo.
"Perhaps it carries with it the truth of these events," said Chiun, wringing out his kimono skirts and starting up the shell-strewn road.
Chapter 24
When Kim Jong II was ten years old, his father took him aside and revealed to him his glorious destiny.
"You are a child now," Kim II Sung had said, "and I am the Great Leader of Korea. But one day you will surpass me."
"How do you know this, Father?"
"I know this because the day before you were born on the holy mountain Paekdu, an old man dwelling there came upon a swallow that spoke to him in a human voice, saying, 'On the sixteenth of April, a mighty general will be born who will one day rule the whole world.' And the day you were born, a bright star appeared over the exact spot you came into the world, flowers bloomed in the snow, birds sang in joy and a double rainbow ruled the sky."
Hearing these words, Kim Jong II had run to his mother and repeated everything he was told.
"You were born in Russia, in a refugee camp," his mother had said. "And it rained all day."
"But father said—"
"You father is drunk on the pungency of his own escaping intestinal gas."
Young Kim Jong II's eyes had widened in his round face. "Then I will not grow up to be a mighty general lording over the world?"
"I do not know what you will grow up to be, but right now you are a short fat piece of poop extruded by your father, who is a great unfaithful turd."
Stunned, Kim Jong II had run back to his father and told him what his mother had said.
That night his mother had disappeared and was never seen again. When he asked, Kim Jong II was told that his mother was a traitor to the party and the state and had been beheaded for her many failures, not the least of which was her inability to please the Great leader in bed.
Thus did Kim Jong II learn about truth and power.
The years came and went, and Kim Jong I! grew to adulthood.
Every year on his birthday he would go to his father and ask plaintively, "Is it time yet for me to begin my glorious conquest of the world?"
"Next year," his father would say. Always it was next year.
And so the years passed in a bored blur of soft women and hard liquor.
To occupy his son, Kim II Sung put Kim Jong II in charge of the passport ministry and later, various Intelligence ministries. But it was not enough to appease the young man.
One year he stood before his father, now deep into his elder years and said, "I have a new ambition in life, Father."
Kim II Sung's eyes grew veiled in surprise. "Yes?"
"I wish to direct movies."
"Movies?"
"Operas especially. These are the things that interest me most."
"But what about your glorious destiny?" asked Kim II Sung.
"A general and a director are not much unalike. If I learn to direct, the lessons of generalship will surely follow."
This made perfect sense to Kim II Sung, who had subsumed his dreams for his son to his own enjoyment of power.
But there were those who criticized the elder Kim for indulging the future Dear Leader of Korea so shamefully. And others who feared the establishment of a un- Communist dynasty above the Thirty-eighth Parallel.
So Kim Jong II was also installed as supreme commander of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Armed Forces, heir apparent to the blood lineage of the juche tradition, and director of some of the finest operas ever captured on cinema in North Korean history—which naturally meant human history, as well.
It was a good, productive existence with many actresses to bed and cases of smuggled Hennessy Scotch to imbibe. Until the day his father had fallen gravely ill.
It all changed then. At first Kim Jong II thought it a good thing, succeeding his father. But the nation had fallen into hunger and privation. The military would have toppled him on the first day, but were preoccupied with putting down insurrections in the countryside.
Besides, if Kim n Sung were to come out of his coma and discover his beloved son dead, heads would roll into the next century.