"It's called the Sinanju handshake," said Remo pleasantly. "It goes away if you hurry home and make love to your wife."
"What if we don't?"
"Your peckers fall off by sunset at the latest."
"Ah don't believe that for a goldurn moment."
"It's your pecker," said Remo, climbing back into his rental car and driving around the roadblock.
In the rearview mirror the stunned state troopers could be seen imploring motorists to drive them back to the city.
"I have never heard of this Sinanju handshake," sniffed Chiun, rearranging his kimono skirts.
"It's a new wrinkle. Invented it myself."
"I do not like these new wrinkles of yours."
"Then don't use them," said Remo.
"Rest assured, I will not."
WHEN THEY REACHED the entrance to the Petersburg National Battlefield, a bus came rolling up from the other direction. It veered off the road and came to a stop blocking Crater Road. When the doors opened, out poured two dozen fighting men wearing red fezzes, short blue jackets, baggy red pantaloons and carrying antique muskets.
They set themselves in a skirmish line, and a color banner went up.
"Which side are they on?" Remo wondered aloud.
"I do not know," admitted the Master of Sinanju. "Let us inquire."
They approached with open faces and empty hands, the better to put a potential enemy off guard.
A group of muskets swung in their direction, fixing them in their sights.
"Halt!" a man shouted. He might have been an officer. Then again, he might not. His colorful costume was no more or less ornate than anyone else's.
Remo and Chiun kept coming.
"We're unarmed," Remo called out.
"Which army?"
"Neither."
"You sound like a Northerner."
Remo and Chiun kept walking. Remo read the legend on the banner. It said Louisiana Costume Zouaves.
"Louisiana sided with the South," Remo undertoned to Chiun. "But what a Zouave is, I don't know."
"It is a French word," hissed Chiun.
"Big deal. So is souffle. Maybe they're the Louisiana Souffle Brigade, come up to feed the Confederate troops."
"It is French for clown soldier, " said Chiun.
"Guess that makes them the Bozo Brigade."
"I say again, halt and identify yourself," one of the Louisiana Zouaves ordered.
"Press," said Remo, reaching for his wallet, where he kept cover ID cards for all occasions.
"Then ya'll are spies!" a harsh voice snarled. "Shoot the damn Yank spies!"
And six muskets boomed forth lead balls and clouds of black-powder smoke.
Remo had been trained and trained by the Master of Sinanju until he had unlocked every cell in his brain. Modern science had always claimed that twentieth-century man had never learned to access his whole brain, only about ten percent of it. Scientists speculated that within that untapped ninety percent lay vast potential, powers man might command should he ever fully evolve, as well as skills he had long ago lost when he dropped down from the trees to walk upright and forage the savanna for food.
Centuries ago the Masters of Sinanju began to harness these powers. Their first halting steps planted the seeds for all the Eastern martial arts from defensive kung fu to paralyzing jujitsu. It fell to Wang the Greater, in the darkest hour in the history of the House of Sinanju--which served the thrones of antiquity-to achieve full perfection in mind and body. The Sinanju Master who had trained Wang died before Wang could be taught the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of those who had come before.
It should have been the end of the House of Sinanju. But Wang went out into the wilderness to fast, subsisting on rice hulls and grass, meditating on the fate of the village of Sinanju on the rock-bound coast of West Korea Bay, which for generations had survived only because the cream of its manhood went out into a hostile world to ply the trade of assassin and protector of thrones.
One night a ring of fire appeared in the sky before Wang and spoke in a clear voice.
"Men do not use their minds and their bodies as they should," said the voice of the ring of fire to the Great Wang. "They waste their spirit and their strength."
And in a single burst a flame, the ring off fire imparted the ultimate knowledge that came to be known as the art of Sinanju, then vanished forever.
What Wang had learned he passed down to Ung, and Ung to Gi and on until in the midtwentieth century the last pure Master of Sinanju, Chiun, passed it on to Remo Williams. Remo dismissed ninety percent of the colorful stories and legends that accompanied the teaching of Chiun-especially the ring of fire, which sounded like a medieval UFO sighting-but emerged from his training breathing with his entire body, which in turn awakened his entire brain and unlocked the limitless potential of his body.
Among these abilities were increased reflexes, heightened senses and near-absolute control over his body. It had long ago ceased to be a conscious thing. It had become ingrained. Second nature. Remo no longer had to think about the simple tricks like climbing sheer walls, sensing enemies and dodging what the first Master who encountered them had called "flying teeth" and today are known as bullets. Remo's body performed those maneuvers automatically.
Remo heard the sound of the black-powder explosions before the first lead musket balls whistled toward him. That much was unexpected, because modern rounds fly at supersonic speed and usually reached his vicinity before his ears heard the shot.
Remo had been trained to never wait for gunfire. Instead, the click of a falling hammer or the jacking of a round into a chamber was the trigger for the bullet-dodging reflexes to come into play. There were many techniques. Remo liked to let the bullets come at him, tracking their trajectories until the last possible moment and then casually sidestepping out of their deadly path and back into place so it seemed to a gunman that the bullet had passed harmlessly through his target.
It was easy. Remo's ears might not be able to hear the shot because even supersensitive ears had to await the arrival of the sound, but the eyes read threatening motion as fast as light. So Remo tracked bullets as they came and got out of their way.
These lead balls were to a modern round what a Ping-Pong ball was to an arrow. There was no comparison. His reflexes, accustomed to the supersonic speed of approaching death, hardly stirred.
One ball came toward his side. Remo didn't even have to dodge it. He just leaned to the right slightly, placing his left hand on his hip.
The musket ball obligingly whistled through the open space between his rib cage and his bent left elbow.
Another ball arced toward his head.
Remo bent his knees. The ball grazed the top of his dark hair. Normally that would have been bad form and cause for a severe rebuke from Chiun, but the big lead ball was so clumsy and unthreatening that Remo experienced a playful urge, as if someone had tossed a big blue beach ball in his direction. It was more fun to let it touch hair than do a full evade.