Remo Williams strode up the aisle toward the speaker's stand. At his seat above and behind the podium, the president of South Korea was as alarmed as the members of the National Assembly.
"You see?" shouted the highest-ranking member of the Reunification Democratic Party over the murmurs of the crowd. "Do you see how they feel as if they can just storm in here? We are not an ally-we are but a servant!"
Remo hopped up to the platform. "And you are a whore to your masters in Pyongyang," he said.
The speaker's microphone amplified his words, carrying them back across the National Assembly. There was a gasp from the crowd.
The Reunification Democratic Party member's face turned red with rage. Forgetting all decorum, he lunged at Remo, arms outstretched.
Remo sidestepped the man, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck as he passed by. He hefted him high into the air before the assembly. "See the true servant," he announced in perfectly accented Korean. "People like this want you to surrender your freedom to the idiot son of Kim Il Sung."
A look of disgust creasing his hard face, Remo flung the man to the floor of the assembly.
The president had found a microphone by now. "Who are you?" he demanded of Remo.
Remo looked over at the man. "I am the son of the Master of Sinanju," he announced.
There were gasps from the crowd. Remo heard many of the men whispering "Sinanju" to one another. Good. By the looks he was getting, many of them had heard of the ancient house of assassins.
"I have heard the Master of Sinanju had taken a white as his heir," the president said, nodding. "But I have heard that you work for America."
"That's right."
"Then you are here on behalf of American interests," the president of South Korea pressed.
"I am here in the interest of sanity," Remo replied. "There doesn't seem to be a heck of a lot around here lately."
"How do we know you are truly of Sinanju?" one of the members of the Democratic Justice Party shouted from the assembly floor.
"Yes!" yelled the embarrassed member of the Reunification Democratic Party. "You are not Sinanju! He is CIA!" he cried to his fellow assemblymen.
"A spy!" shrieked another.
The murmuring, which had been more confused than anything else until now, began to grow more hostile. Things were getting out of hand. Remo had to find a way to calm the assembly down.
He glanced around. The nearest thing available was the podium at which the representatives to the assembly had been taking turns denouncing America and calling for reunification talks with the North.
Slapping his hands to either side of the quarterton slab of wood, Remo tossed the big stand up into the air. The National Assembly gasped as the huge stand rose impossibly toward the vaulted ceiling of the chamber.
All at once, the podium reached the crest of its arc, dropping like a lump of lead to the stage. The assembly held its collective breath, expecting the impact to be deafening. But five feet before it was set to crash, its movement was abruptly arrested.
The men and women watched in astonishment. The podium had landed on the tip of Remo's raised index finger.
With his free hand, Remo began spinning the huge podium in place-like a kid in a schoolyard performing a simple basketball trick. As it whirred, the stand began to hum a loud, even purr.
Remo's hand flew faster and faster until the stand was a blur. It eventually moved so fast that it seemed to disappear altogether. That was when the sawdust appeared.
Wooden powder flew off in large clouds with each invisible spin of the podium. If someone had thought to check his watch, he would have seen that it all took no more than forty seconds.
The whirring stopped. The podium reappeared.
It was now only a narrow piece of wood, fatter at the top and bottom. Like an apple that had been eaten to the core. Remo stood in an ankle-deep pile of dark sawdust.
He set the remains of the podium down.
"I am the future Reigning Master of Sinanju," Remo announced to the crowd. "Does anyone still doubt me?"
No one dared dispute his claim. None in the assembly dared to even speak.
"Good," Remo said, satisfied. He glanced around, finding the president. "You," he said, pointing to the terrified Kim Dae Jung. "We've got to talk."
He grabbed the president by the scruff of the neck and hauled him from the room. No one in the astonished assembly attempted to stop him.
"ARE YOU HERE to kill me?" the president asked nervously once the two of them were alone. They were in a private office off the main assembly chamber.
"I could have picked a less public way of doing that, don't you think?" Remo asked blandly.
The president thought about some of the things he had heard about the Masters of Sinanju. If only a handful of them were true, he would not be alive now.
"Then you are not here to kill me," he said. The president breathed a relieved sigh and was immediately annoyed with himself for being so concerned for his own life.
"No," Remo said. "I'm here to figure out what the hell is going on."
"I suspect you know already as much as I do." The president took a seat behind the cluttered desk in the room. He looked old. And tired. "It is madness. All of it."
"We didn't launch the missile on purpose," Remo insisted.
The president waved a dismissive hand. "I know this," he said. "It was a stupid mistake."
"Maybe not," Remo said.
This caught the South Korean leader's attention. "You say it was not deliberate, then you hint it might have been. Which is it?" he asked.
"It's not deliberate on behalf of the U.S. government," Remo explained. "But according to my information, the men who fired the cruise missile into Seoul all committed suicide afterward. That tells me they were protecting someone."
The president shrugged. "A theory," he said.
"What else would it be?" Remo asked.
"I do not know," the president admitted wearily. "It makes sense-I will admit that. But I am tired of making sense to that mob out there." He motioned vaguely in the direction of the assembly hall. "The young cry out for reunification with the North. They do not know what it would be like. Our population is greater, but Kim Jong Il's tanks are stronger. Without the involvement of the United States, we would fall under the treads of the invaders from the North."
"Tell them that, then," Remo argued, his tone exasperated. "Tell them we didn't have anything to do with the bombing, that it was probably part of some bigger scheme and that they'll have a certifiable nut running things around here if they don't smarten up."
The president looked at him, eyes dead. "You drove to get here, presumably?"
"What's that got to do with anything?" Remo asked. "Yeah, I drove."