As he recited, suffused in the beauty of the words intoned, the front door of his condominium opened.
"Chiun, I'm back!"
Remo. In a state of bliss, the Master of Sinanju ignored his pupil's braying voice.
...... insect snared, flutter flitter......
A moment later, Remo stuck his head around the door. He was puzzled to see Chiun sitting immobile on his reed mat in the center of the livingroom floor. "Didn't you hear me?" he asked, stepping into the room. "I'm home."
Chiun did not look his way. He continued reciting his poetry undaunted.
"Are you crying?" Remo asked, suddenly worried. When Chiun still didn't respond, Remo listened for a moment. The light finally dawned. "Pee-yew," he said once he'd caught a few words.
"I'd cry, too, if I had to listen to that Ung crapola. What are you up to, the millionth verse?"
"'...Nature's endless Beauty Cycle.' Visigoth!" The last word didn't seem to be part of the poem. Remo had heard the spider poem more times than he cared to remember and he didn't once remember any references to Visigoths. He asked Chiun about this.
" '.. . spider spinning, web in strands.' Heathen!
'O insect snared, flutter flitter.' Vulgarian!
'Spider, insect,' barbarian!
'Insect, spider,' oaf!
Hater of beauty who ruins even the most elegant of lyrics with his fat, stomping white feet and his stupid, loudmouthed, loutish interruptions!"
Picking himself up on bony knuckles, Chiun spun away from Remo. He dropped back down facing away from his pupil. Staring at the wall, the old Korean continued to recite his poem.
Remo got the message. "If you wanted privacy, you should have used the meditation tower," he grumbled.
Backing from the room, he left the tiny Asian alone. He wandered back to the kitchen for something to eat.
In the back room, he found the wall phone off the hook. Chiun must have taken it off before he had started on his Ung. Expecting a call from Upstairs, Remo replaced the phone delicately in the cradle, figuring that when it rang he could snare it before the noise bothered Chiun.
He had no sooner hung up the phone when it rang sharply.
Remo snatched the receiver back up. Down the hall, the Master of Sinanju's angry mumbling grew louder.
"Hi, Smitty," Remo whispered.
"Remo?" asked the puzzled lemony voice on the other end of the line. The tart voice belonged to Dr. Harold W. Smith, Remo's employer and director of the supersecret organization known only as CURE.
"Yeah." Remo turned away from the open kitchen door. He used his body to muffle his voice.
"Is there something wrong? You sound odd."
"You've got a lot of nerve for a guy who sounds like his voice box was soaked in grapefruit juice," Remo commented.
Smith didn't press the issue. Instead, he went straight to the subject at hand. "Remo, what the devil happened in Providence?"
"What do you mean?" Remo asked, his tone one of absolute innocence.
"You knew the assignment, did you not?"
"Yes, I knew the assignment," Remo sighed, annoyed. "It's just things didn't work quite right once I got there."
"I should say not. The accountant you were supposed to deliver into federal hands is dead, and with him goes our hope of sending Bernardo Patriconne to prison."
"Your hope," Remo stressed. "I'd just as soon go in and separate that rat bastard's head from his neck."
Smith sighed. "Need I remind you that this is not a one-man war against the Mafia?" he explained patiently. "The Mob is dying as a criminal force in the United States. We must continue to allow it to seem as if the system is taking care of society's worst elements."
Remo guffawed at this. "Maybe you're the last guy to hear this, but the system is not working, Smitty. For every Mob boss the Feds spoon out, an ocean of scum floods back in to take his place. Cubans, Jamaicans, South Americans, Russian Mafia, Yakuza, Indonesians and about a billion donless Guidos are all running like madmen through the streets. Let alone the Crips, the Bloods, the Gangsta Disciples and all the other homegrown junior skunks."
"I am not going to argue the issue with you," Smith said tartly. "We are discussing last night's debacle. According to my information, Hy Solomon knew enough to sink much of the Patriconne syndicate. Now he is dead."
"I got a replacement," Remo said defensively.
"Yes," Smith said, voice thin. The drum of rapid typing filtered through the receiver as Smith pulled up a file on his computer. "Ennio Ticardi. A low-level Mob functionary with no real knowledge of anything remotely connected to Bernardo Patriconne. It is even questionable if he has ever even met the Rhode Island don."
"Not a problem. If you want I can get him to swear he did," Remo offered slyly.
The ten seconds of ensuing dead air spoke volumes. "Let us put this disaster behind us," Smith droned eventually.
"Fine with me," Remo replied jovially.
It seemed a chore for the CURE director to forge ahead.
"There has been an incident near the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico," Smith began. "Two charred bodies were discovered in the desert this morning."
"And?" Remo asked. "What, a couple joyriding teenagers broke down in the desert and fried in the sun?"
"Hardly. These two were not alone. Similarly burned bodies have appeared in and around Alamogordo. Clearly they are linked murder victims."
"A serial killer who gets his jollies dousing people with gasoline," Remo speculated.
"Perhaps," Smith admitted. "Local authorities have reported a number of deaths. In fact, members of some of the surrounding police forces have succumbed, as well."
"Succumbed?" Remo asked, puzzled. "Don't they believe in guns?"
Smith sounded puzzled. "I am not entirely certain what is going on. But so far, by all accounts only one man seems involved."
"Wait a minute, Smitty," Remo said. "They know who the guy is who's doing this?"
"As I said, I do not know for sure. The accounts are sketchy. From what I have been able to learn, however, it could very well be one man. A man known to authorities."