?Chapter Five
"Abraxas, Abraxas."
Chiun stood on the small terrace of the motel in West Mahomset, a half-mile from the Peabody house, and muttered into the wind. His almond eyes were narrowed in concentration. His hands with their long taloned fingernails lay folded inside the sleeves of his long green satin robe. The breeze was high, causing the white wisps of hair on his head and chin to billow gently. "Abraxas," he repeated. "I am sure that is what it was."
"What'd you say, Little Father?" Remo shouted from inside. When the old man didn't answer, Remo peered out, stuffing the photograph of Orville Peabody into an envelope. "What's that?"
"Hmmmm? A name, I think. It is confusing." He shook his head. Long tendrils of mustache swayed from side to side.
"Tell me. Maybe I can help."
"Help? You?"
"Stranger things have happened," Remo said jauntily. "All right, then. Don't tell me."
"Abraxas," Chiun said, his face solemn.
"Abraxas?"
"That is the word. I do not yet know what it means."
Remo smiled. "Case solved, Chiun. 'Abraxas' is what this Peabody guy said before he died. You must have heard it on Cheeta Ching's Left Wing Propaganda Update."
"The news? You think so?"
"Of course. What else could it be? Smitty told me about it over the phone."
Chiun looked at once thoughtful and worried. "There is something strange about the name. I have difficulty banishing it from my thoughts. It seems to follow me, even in sleep."
"Abraxas? I never heard it before Smitty called."
"Is that so unusual?" Chiun snapped. "Most thoughts pass by your mind with no more impression than a butterfly's breath."
"That's Korean gratitude for you," Remo said. "I help you out, and you insult me."
"Another thing," the old Oriental said hesitantly, his pensive frown returning.
"About Abraxas? Or my feeble mind?"
"I see the name, rather than hear it. It is like a vision. And when I see it, the vision appears in both English and Korean."
"A vision with subtitles," Remo mused.
"Idiot. The name is the vision, the name itself! Oh, why was it my fate to teach a brainless white boy with the sensitivity of a buffalo?" He jumped up and down, the ancient eyes glinting with anger. "The name Abraxas is the vision. It appears in bold characters, strung on a webbing of fine gray lines—"
"Calm down, Little Father. I understand," Remo said softly.
"You do not understand. You are humoring me because you think I am an old man losing my grasp on reality. That is what the ignorant young always think of their elders when confronted with something beyond their knowledge."
Remo took a step backward. "Whatever you say."
"Silence! I should never have mentioned it to you. Go on about your business."
"Look, uh... I don't think my meeting with Mrs. Peabody is going to take long. Why don't you just wait here for me till I come back?"
"I shall do as I please," the old man said stubbornly.
"Sure, Chiun. I want you to. Really. It's just—"
Chiun clenched his jaw in exasperation. "I am not crazed, Remo."
"Okay, okay." He held the envelope in front of him like a shield.
"So? Will you please go? Or do you think that this doddering maniac will leap to the street to molest infants in your absence?"
"Aw, don't be antsy." He caught his breath. "I mean... I mean..."
"Never mind," Chiun said. "I am going to the library. When I return, you will see that the Master of Sinanju is still in full possession of his faculties and that you, once again, are wrong."
"What's at the library?"
"Knowledge," Chiun said flatly. "I intend to search out the lesser writings of Ung the poet and Wang the Greater, most important Master of Sinanju. If the name 'Abraxas' is of any importance, it will be found in their sublime thoughts."
"I don't know how many sublime thoughts are floating around the West Mahomset Public Library," Remo said.
"If it is a true vision, then it will be made clear to me."
Remo waited a moment longer, watching the old man. At last he said, "Okay, Chiun. I'll see you later," and left.
But the thought of his old teacher chasing after wild hallucinations frightened him and made him sad. He decided to call Smith as soon as he was through with Mrs. Peabody and request a leave for himself and Chiun in Sinanju. Seeing his home again would make the old man happy.
He walked to the Peabody house feeling very tired.
Arlene Peabody was a tidy little birdlike woman with a bubble of bright red teased hair surrounding her face and making her look like a sunburned medicine ball. "I just don't understand it!" she shrieked with an ease that led Remo to believe that shrieking was the woman's mode of communication. "I mean, he was right here, right here on the couch in his pajamas watching "Masterpiece Theatre" one night, and the next morning he was gone. Poof. It was like he vanished." She burst into a torrent of hysterical laughter followed by a heavy flow of tears.
"It's all right, Mrs. Peabody," Remo said placatingly, patting her shoulder.
She threw off his arm with a wild gesture. "It's not all right! Everything's a mess. The kids won't go to school anymore. People keep telling them their father was a killer. I can't show my face in the supermarket. The house is always crawling with cops and CIA men and reporters, and now you."
"I was a friend of Orville's," Remo lied.
"You were?" The tears were still fresh in her eyes.
"And I don't think he put himself up to that business in Rome."
She leapt up from the couch. "That's what I've been telling everybody!" she screeched. "Never a word, nothing. Just poof, gone. No good-bye kiss, nothing. He didn't even take a clean shirt. Then three weeks later he shows up dead. On the front page of the newspaper!" She wailed like a banshee.