"You thought I was dead, Dr. Smith. Harold K. Smith. You thought you had killed me that day. You did kill my future. But you did not kill my spirit. I live. I lived for you. All these years for you. And this moment."
Dr. Harry groped for the man's wrist. Maybe if he snapped the connection at the wrist sheath. Maybe. But the claw dug deeper with that damnable whirring, and Dr. Harry slipped to his knees.
"Ilsa!"
Dr. Harry heard the throaty bark through ringing ears. The pain was intensifying.
The blond bounced in through the door.
"He's not dead yet," she said. Her voice was disappointed.
"I would not have called you if I did not need help," the old man snarled. "Hold him down."
Dr. Harry felt soft fingers clamp his rounded shoulders, keeping him down on both knees. He tried to fight, but could not. And then through the ringing in his ears, he heard the whirring of the steel claw as it found his throat. The last words he heard were the girl's.
"I hope this one doesn't wet all over me too."
Dr. Harry fell onto the legless lap of the man in the wheelchair and slid off, taking the thin red blanket with him. On the underside, the crooked black cross of the swastika blazed like a blackened ember in its white circle.
"Was it him?" Ilsa asked breathlessly.
"No, it was not him. I could tell the first time he spoke. It was not his voice."
"Then why did you kill him?"
"His name was Harold Smith. It was reason enough. Pick up the flag and let us depart."
"Are we going to Boston next? There must be a lot of Harold Smiths there."
"No. Boston must wait. This doctor told me something important. We must return home, immediately. I must speak with my doctor about an important new discovery in metals."
Chapter 6
The Master of Sinanju was unhappy.
Seated amid the opulence of the treasures of his ancestors, he hung his head low. He could not sleep. He lacked appetite-not that it mattered to the people of his village.
When Chiun had not joined the communal evening meal, no one had come to inquire of his health. No one had offered so much as a bowl of cold rice. Not Pullyang, the formerly faithful, nor Mah-Li, to whom he had bestowed a dowry of gold so that she could marry Remo-a dowry that had been the last shipment of gold from the mad non-emperor Harold Smith.
The Master of Sinanju picked up the goosequill that would inscribe this day's infamy in the personal daily records of Chiun, whom history-he hoped-would call Chiun the Great.
Dipping the quill into the black ink in a stone receptacle, Chiun began to transcribe, not for the first time, the story of how he had taken a white, a homeless unwanted white, and bestowed upon him the great art of Sinanju. He paused, pondering how best to describe Remo.
In past years, he had avoided the obvious; Remo the White. Too indelicate. Remo the Fair seemed a good compromise. But for this scroll, Chiun decided, he would be called Remo the Ingrate.
Chiun wrote "Remo the Ingrate" in the complicated ideographic language of his ancestors and, satisfied, wrote on.
He recorded how the village, dazzled by the coming of the ingrate, Remo, had turned against Chiun. Not in obvious ways, he hastened to scribble-for he did not wish his descendants to call him "Chiun, the Master who lost the respect of the village"-but in subtle ways, insidious ways. They paid attention to Remo. And in paying attention to him, there was less attention paid to the proper person. Chiun decided not to mention who the proper person might be. Better that future Masters learn to read between the lines, where truth usually lay.
Chiun wrote of his pride-a pride now sullied by ingratitude-in bringing the white to Sinanju. For this fair-skinned Korean had taken to Sinanju better than any pupil before him. He had grown through the phases of Sinanju, from the night of the salt to that glorious day when the spirit of Wang, greatest Master of Sinanju, had visited him. It had been only last year, but the boundless pride of it still filled Chiun's aged heart. Remo had seen the great Wang and was now a full Master of Sinanju. It was only meet that the villagers accord him due respect, despite his deficiencies of pigment. But even the great Wang would have been the first to say that in Remo's case, less is more.
"Less is more," cackled Chiun aloud. He had heard the phrase on an American TV commercial and liked it. In a few centuries, when America had gone the inevitable way of the Roman Empire and slipped into history, no one would know that the aphorism was not Chiun's own.
Remo, Chiun wrote, was the fulfillment of the greatest legend in the history of Sinanju. He was the night tiger who was white, but who in coming to Sinanju would be revealed as the incarnation of Shiva, the Destroyer. Chiun had known Remo was Shiva for many years. But there had never been proof other than the clues the legends had foretold.
But in the American city of Detroit, Chiun wrote on, a city so unhappy that on certain religious holidays the inhabitants attempted to burn it to the ground, Chiun had confronted, not Shiva the Destroyer, but Shiva Remo.
Remo had been injured in a fire. Chiun had pulled him from a tangle of wreckage. When Remo had come to life, he spoke not in Remo's voice. He said words that were not words Chiun had come to expect from his former pupil. They were cruel words. For Remo had not recognized Chiun. Not at all. Not even after all they had been through together.
Even now, months later, Chiun had difficulty suppressing the shock he had experienced seeing Remo under the spell of the Hindu God of Destruction. In one accident, all that Chiun had worked for, the training of a new Master, one who would one day return to Sinanju, marry, and raise yet another Master, had been dispelled like a fragile soap bubble.
Remo's spell had been temporary, but Chinn could not know how long it would be before Shiva repossessed Remo's mind once more. And so Chiun, to save the years of training he had poured into the ungrateful white, to ensure the continuation of his line, had contrived to break the bonds that tied Remo to his homeland. The nature of this subterfuge, Chiun wrote on the scroll, was not important except perhaps to note in passing its brilliance. After a pause, Chiun inserted the word "unsurpassed" before the word "brilliance." Some truths did not belong between the lines.
It had worked, Chiun wrote on. He and Remo had returned to Sinanju, no longer bound to work for the client state of America. Remo had agreed to succeed Chiun and had fallen in love with a Korean maiden. And now they were to wed. In time, there would be grandchildren. And Chiun's lifework would be complete. Chiun, who had married unwisely and had no living heir to call his own. Chiun, who was forced to take a white pupil to continue the line of Sinanju, and although his misjudgment might have been catastrophic, had in fact produced the greatest Master of Sinanju, Remo the Fair.
Chiun stopped and crossed out the word "Fair," substituting "Ingrate." Then he crossed that word out and tried to think of a word that somehow meant both. He could think of none.
And in thinking, he was reminded of his sadness. All of his dreams for Remo-and for Sinanju-had come true. Yet he was unhappy. The treasure house of Sinanju was bursting with new gold and old treasure. Yet he was unhappy. He need never work in a foreign land again. Yet he was unhappy. Remo had promised to remain with hirn in Sinanju, taking no outside work without mutual agreement. And Chiun was unhappy.
But he dared not admit this. Remo had always complained about Chiun's constant carping, as he had called it. Chiun thought the choice of words unfortunate, even harsh, but understood that there was a grain of truth in them. Chiun had for years beseeched Remo to abandon America and work for more reasonable empires. Like Persia, now fallen into disgrace and called Iran. Chiun had hoped that working for another country would be the first step toward making Remo a Korean.
Now Remo had done better. He had come to Sinanju and had won over its inhabitants. Chiun had never thought it would happen, much less happen this easily. And still Chiun was unhappy.
He would have liked to complain openly, but he dared not. If Remo thought that Chiun was unhappy, as much as Remo loved Chiun, he might do something rash. Like insist that they return to America, where Chiun had been happier. Comparatively.
A peculiar look crossed the wrinkled features of the Master of Sinanju at that thought.
He set aside his scroll to dry, and from a low table took a square piece of parchment. It had been manufactured during the reign of Thutmosis II. By Western standards it was priceless. To the Master of Sinanju it was notepaper worthy of the greatest house of assassins in history.
Chiun addressed the note to Remo, suddenly thinking of a word that meant both "fair" and "ingrate," and began to write.
A green outline of the United States of America filled the right-hand side of the computer screen.
Dr. Harold W. Smith tapped a key and the borders of the forty-eight contiguous states appeared within the outline. On the left-hand side of the screen, separated by a dotted line, was a vertical list of Harold Smiths, along with the dates and places of their deaths. Smith had called up the list after a new man, a Dr. Harold K. Smith, had been found murdered in his Massachusetts office. His was the last name on the list, which was arranged chronologically by date of death.
Dr. Smith's fingers flurried across the board, tapping in a keying sequence.
One by one, a number was assigned to each name on the list. And one by one, a corresponding number appeared on the map. Each time a new number appeared on the outline, a solid green line ran from the previous number to its location, like a child's connect-the-dots game.
When the program ceased running, Dr. Smith had a zigzag line running from Alabama to Massachusetts. The line meandered in a winding but definite progression. That probably meant the murderer-if there was only one-traveled by road.
Smith tapped a key and all major U.S. highways appeared on the map.
The zigzag line seemed to correspond to the major highway systems in the states in which the murders had been committed. It was a confirmation; there was a pattern. And the line, which had headed in a northerly direction from Alabama up through the Great Lakes region and into New England, was now moving south. The next Harold Smith to die, Smith deduced would be in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or Connecticut. And after that?
The traveling killer could not drive east into the Atlantic Ocean. Thus he could continue either south into New York, or west, into upstate New York. Either way, Smith realized with a queasy feeling, the killer's path would bring him, eventually, inexorably, to Rye, New York.