When it was done and Lu lay close to death beside the body of the beautiful woman who had loved him, he knew what he must do. He took a ring from the finger of the woman he had loved and killed, then buried her by the light of the moon. After saying a prayer to the old gods of Sinanju, he took his infant son in his arms and walked into the village. At the first house, he delivered the baby to the occupants. "Raise him as your own," he said, "for I will not live to see the sun rise."
Then he went alone to stand before the statue of Kali. The statue was smiling.
"You have destroyed me," Lu said.
And in the quiet of the still night, the statue answered him from a place deep within his own mind: "You tried to betray me. It was a just punishment."
"I am prepared to die." He touched his wife's ring and felt it give him strength.
"You will die when I command it," Kali said.
"No," Lu said, and for a moment the old power returned to him, and he said, "I am the Master of Sinanju. You will die when I command it. And I command it now."
With those words, he put his arms around the statue and uprooted it from the ground. Kali burned him with Her stone flesh, and Her many arms reached out to gouge his eyes, but Lu would not stop. He carried the statue down the mountain to the sea and with each step he was mutilated by the terrible force of the goddess. And with each step did he remember the love that had given him life, the love he had killed with his own hands, and he walked onward.
When he reached the cliffs overlooking the sea, the goddess spoke to him again.
"You cannot destroy me, fool. I will come back."
"It will be too late. I will be dead with you," Lu said.
"I will not come back for you, but for your son. Your descendant. One who follows your line will be mine, and I will exact my revenge on him, though it take many thousands of moons. He will be my instrument of revenge and my wrath will be mighty through him."
With the last of his strength, Lu cast the statue over the cliff. It sank into the blue water without a ripple. Then, as dawn sent out its first rays of light, the Master Lu wrote his story with his own blood on reeds that grew along the cliff's edge. With his final breath he wound the reeds through the ring which had belonged to his wife, and there he died.
"The Brothers Grimmsville," Remo said. "A fairy tale."
"We have the reeds," Chiun said.
"How? If Lu died in this mythical spot in Ceylon, how'd you get them back to Korea?"
"Fate works in strange ways," the old Oriental said. "Lu's body was found by a merchant who spoke many tongues. He delivered the reeds to Sinanju."
"I bet it was great for the merchant," Remo said. "Knowing your village, I suppose they slit his throat."
"He was not killed. He lived a long life of wealth and luxury with many wives and concubines."
"But he was never allowed to leave town, right?" Remo said.
Chiun shrugged. "Who would want to leave Sinanju?"
Far below, a horn sounded in the street and Remo parted the curtains and looked out. "It's Smitty. I recognize the Rent-a-Wreck. I thought he left an hour ago."
"He wishes for me to travel with him," Chiun said. "Where are you going?"
"I told you. I must journey to Sinanju."
"I'll wait here until you get back," Remo promised. Chiun smiled sadly. "Would that were true, my son. When you leave, leave a mark for me so that I may follow."
"Why should I leave? I can go nuts in Denver just as well as anywhere else."
"You will leave," Chiun said. "Just do not forget the story of Lu."
The old man gathered his kimono about him and glided toward the door. "Promise? You will not forget, Remo?"
"I don't know what any of this is about," Remo said. "I'm not Lu's descendant. I'm from New Jersey."
"You are the next Master of Sinanju. An unbroken line of thousands of years connects you with Lu the Disgraced."
"You're wasting your time on this trip," Remo said.
"Remember Lu. And try not to do anything stupid while I am gone," Chiun said.
Chapter Thirteen
If Ban Sar Din had learned one thing during his reign as head of an Indian religion, it was never to trust anybody who believed in an Indian religion.
So he had his doubts about A. H. Baynes, but the problem was that he could not figure out why. Because going against the tradition of centuries of his family and telling the truth-Ban Sar Din had to admit that Kali had no more loyal follower than the airline executive.
Baynes had taken to sleeping inside the ashram each night now, huddled on the floor at the foot of the statue, just "so no crazies come in and try to harm Our Lady." And all his waking hours, too, were spent in the ashram, and when Ban Sar Din asked him, if he didn't have an airline to run, Baynes had just smiled and said:
"It's running itself. We're the safe airline. No deaths. We don't even have to advertise anymore. The people are waiting in line for tickets on just Folks."
But was that all Baynes wanted? Ban Sar Din wondered. So the American had struck a deal with Ban Sar Din and now there were no more killings aboard just Folks. But Baynes could have had more. He could have had a cut of the proceeds. He could have used the killers as instruments of revenge on people who had offended him.
But he seemed to want none of those things. He said he wanted only to serve Kali. "I've served Mammon, big business, all these years, " Baynes told him, and clapped a big hand on the small round Indian's shoulder. "It's time I served something I believed in. Something bigger than myself."
He had sounded sure of himself when he said that, and this morning, he was even more convinced. He had come running into the small yet luxurious apartment Ban Sar Din had built inside a garage across the alley, waving a fistful of tickets.
"She provided. She provided," Baynes was shouting.
"She provided what?" asked Ban Sar Din. "And who's She?"
"O blessed Kali," Baynes said. There were tears of joy streaming down his cheeks. "I slept all night under the statue. No one else was there. And when I woke up this morning, these were in Her hand." He waved the tickets. "A miracle," he said. "She blessed us with a miracle."
Ban Sar Din checked the tickets. They were all on Air Europa, all round trips, enough for an entire plane. A telephone call to the airline confirmed that they had all been paid for, in cash, but no one remembered who had purchased them. Ban Sar Din was nervous. God was one thing, but miracles, real miracles, were something else.
"Isn't it wonderful?" Baynes said.
"Well, it saves us some money anyway," Ban Sar Din said. "We'll give them out tonight. Along with a lot of rumals."
"A lot of rumals out," Baynes said. "A lot of cash coming back. And all through the grace of Kali. O Kali be praised." And he had left Ban Sar Din's apartment to go back to the burgeoning office he had set up in the small room behind the ashram where Ban Sar Din had been living.
Later in the day, when Bar Sar Din went into the office, Baynes had a finger stuck in his ear and was shouting into the telephone.
"Sure thing, Herb, old buddy," he yelled. He was yelling because the chanting in the outer room would have registered on a seismograph.