Remo looked at Chiun. "Whenever we're supposed to go someplace, you always want to go to Persia for melons," he said. "Why all of a sudden Spain?"
"Because Persia is now Iran and the melons are no longer any good and we tried working for the Persians and they are idiots," Chiun said. "I
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thought you and I might look around in Spain. El Cid was really very good. Until Sinanju went to work for him, he could do nothing right, but then we straightened things out for him and he chased out the Arabs. We made him a star."
"I don't believe it," Remo said. "Charlton Heston would never have anything to do with the House of Sinanju."
Chiun ignored that. "We gave him Valencia," he said.
"Sure," said Remo.
"We made him what he is today," Chiun said.
"He's dead," Remo said.
"Exactly," said Chiun. "A terrible tragedy."
Remo turned back to Smith. "That means El Cid tried to stiff the House of Sinanju on their fee, and they turned on him. You better make sure that Thanksgiving shipment of gold to Sinanju is never late."
"It's always on time,'' Smith said. "And now you're going to England.'
"I don't want to."
Smith pressed the buzzer on his desk. "Ruby, would you come in here, please ?"
Remo stuck his fingers in his ears.
Ruby entered the office.
"Remo doesn't want to go to England," Smith told Ruby. "Would you please convince him to go?"
Ruby started. Remo pressed his fingers harder into his ears. It was no use. He could not drown her out. If he pressed his fingers in any farther and any harder, he would puncture his own eardrums.
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He waved his hands in surrender.
"There be a plane at Westerchester County Airport waiting for you," Ruby said. "You better be getting there fast."
"It's not Westerchester. It's Westchester," Remo said sullenly.
"Whatever it is, the plane's waiting there for you. Get a hop on, 'cause if you miss it, you be in big trouble."
"I'll fix you for this, Smitty," Remo said. "Some night, I'm going to pour quick-setting cement down her throat so she can't yell at me anymore and then I'm coming back for you."
"Fine," Smith said, "but first go to England. And make sure nothing happens to that Russian."
Remo and Chiun left Folcroft Sanitarium in the backseat of an institutional car. They did not see the man in a ten-gallon hat sitting behind the wheel of a red Chevrolet Nova parked near the Folcroft entrance. Ruby, watching Remo and Chiun leave from a front window, did and wondered what somebody in cowboy clothes was doing parked near Folcroft. She called the front gate and told the guard to be very casual about it but to write down the license number of the parked car.
Just in case.
They were the only two passengers on the private twin-engined jet that nosed around immediately toward the east and began humming its way across the Atlantic.
Chiun sat by the window, staring at the wing. He had once told Remo he was amazed at how
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well the western world had done in stumbling on a good design for an aircraft, but he also believed that nothing done by a white man was ever fully correct. So if the design was good, the wings must be loose. On flights, he always sat by the window, staring at the wings as if willing them to stay on.
Remo folded his arms and sat back in his soft leather seat, determined not to enjoy the flight.
"How the hell are we going to defend some Russian when we don't know if we'll be able to get to him and we don't know who we have to defend him from?" he grumbled.
"It was in the days just after Wang, the first great Master of Sinanju," Chiun said.
"What was?"
"The Great Wang had had much success in bringing the services of Sinanju to many places and accumulating gold to help care for the weak and the poor of the village. But then he died, as all men must. And in the prime of his life, too. Barely eight decades of life had he lived.
"Sinanju was young then, too, and those who had asked the help of our House thought that the secrets of Sinanju had died with the Great Wang. They did not know that each Master trains his successor. Some are fortunate to have good students, respectful and obedient. Others are less fortunate."
"You're getting ready to pick at me again, Chiun, and I won't stand for it. I didn't pick you; you picked me. And you only did it because there wasn't anybody in Sinanju good enough to teach," Remo said.
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Chium ignored him.
"So after the death of the Great Wang, there was no more work, and without work there was no gold. Soon the village was hungry again. We were preparing to send the babies home to the sea."
Remo grunted. Hard times in Sinanju, for scores of centuries, had always been accompanied by "sending the babies home to the sea"-tossing newborns into the North Korea Bay to drown because there was no food for them to eat.
"The new Master was Ung. He was a quiet man, much given to the writing of his poetry."
"He's responsible for that dreck you're always reciting at me?" Remo said.
"You are gross, Remo. You are really gross. It is well known that Ung poetry marks one of the high points in the history of literature."
"Three hours of unky-punky grunts about a flower getting ready to open? Bull-whipple," Remo said.
"Silence. Listen and perhaps you may yet learn something. The Master Ung, with sorrow, put aside his pens and realized he must do something to save the village.
"Now it happened at this time that there was a Japanese warlord who was usurping the property of many other lords around him. And this warlord did greatly fear for his life because there were many who wished his death. This story did reach our village and the Master Ung heard of it, and left for that faraway country. Before he left, he sold his writing implements and his many poems so that the village could be fed."
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