In the back, on the floor, Sammy Kee huddled under a rug.
"I know," said Sammy Kee. "I can smell it too."
"Is it always this bad?"
"No. It's actually worse when the wind is from the east. The smog."
Colonel Ditko nodded. For the last hour he had driven through some of the most heavily industrialized landscape he had ever imagined. Great smokestacks belched noxious fumes. Everywhere he looked there were factories and fish-processing plants. Once, they had driven over a rude iron bridge and the sluggish river below was a livid pink from chemical wastes. He saw few residential areas. He wondered where all the dronelike workers who must toil in the endless factories lived. Perhaps they slept at work. More likely, they slept on the job. It would not have surprised Colonel Ditko, who held a low opinion of Orientals in general and the North Koreans in particular.
Ditko followed the macadam road until it petered out into a dire pathway that actually made for smoother driving, so bad had been the potholes in the paved road-which was alleged to be a main highway.
Suddenly the land opened up. The factories ceased to dominate the landscape. But curiously there were no houses, no huts, no signs of habitation. Before, peasants could be seen riding their ubiquitous bicycles down the road. No longer. It was as if the land that lay at the end of the road was poisoned. Ditko shivered at the eeriness of it.
When he ran out of road, Ditko drew the car to a stop next to a crude signpost of wood on which was burned a Korean ideograph that looked like the word "IF" drawn between two parallel lines.
"I think we are lost," he said doubtfully. "The road stops here. There is nothing beyond but rocks and an abandoned village."
Sammy Kee slid up from the protective depths of the rear seat. He blinked his eyes in the dull light. "That's it."
"What?"
"Sinanju," said Sammy Kee, watching for North Korean police.
"Are you serious? This is a security area. Where is the barbed wire, the walls, the guards?"
"There aren't any."
"None? How do they protect their village, these Sinanjuers? And their treasure?"
"By reputation. Everyone knows about the Master of Sinanju. No one dares to approach Sinanju."
"Fear? That is their wall?"
"The old man in the village explained it to me." said Sammy Kee. "You can climb over walls, dig under them, go around them, even blow them apart. But if the wall is in your mind, it is infinitely harder to bring down."
Colonel Ditko nodded. "I will let you out here."
"Can't you escort me to the village? What if I get picked up by the North Korean police?"
"I will watch you until you enter the village, but I will not go any closer."
Colonel Ditko watched Sammy Kee slip out the back seat and pick his careful way from boulder to rock until he had passed from sight, down into the village of Sinanju. In his peasant clothes, the American was as much a part of North Korea as his fear-haunted face. Sammy Kee would be safe from the North Korean police, Ditko knew. They would not dare pass beyond the wall.
Colonel Viktor Ditko was certain of this, for he could see the wall himself, as clearly as if it were built of mortar and brick.
The first thing Sammy Kee did was to find the spot where he had buried his video equipment. The flat rock he'd used for a marker was still there. Sammy dug into the wet sand with his bare hands, the coldness numbing them, until he uncovered the blue waterproof vinyl bag. He pulled it free and undid the drawstring neck.
The video equipment-camera, recorder, belt battery pack, and spare cassettes-was intact. Sammy quickly donned the battery pack and hooked it up. He shivered, but it was still early. He hoped the sun would come out to warm his body.
Sammy climbed an outcropping of rock, feeling the rip and scrape of the brown conelike barnacles which were like the eyes of certain lizards. He had a perfect view of the village of Sinanju. There were the houses, mostly of wood and sitting on short wood stilts, and scattered on the ground like many thrown dice. In the center was a great open space, called the village square, although it was just a flat pancake of dirt. And facing the square, the splendid treasure house of Sinanju, the only building with windows of true glass and a granite foundation. It was the oldest structure, and it looked it, but even its carved and lacquered walls gave no hint of the great secrets those walls contained.
Sammy brought the video camera to his shoulder, sighted through the viewfinder, and filmed a ten-second establishing shot. He rewound the tape and played it back through the viewfinder. The equipment functioned perfectly. He was ready to begin.
As Sammy watched, the sleepy village came to life. Cooking fires were lit and a communal breakfast began in the square. But something was different. The villagers were not dressed in their faded cotton, but in glorious silks and furs. Sammy watched for the old man who had talked to him so much of Sinanju-the caretaker, Pullyang. He would wait until Pullyang was alone and he would approach him. The old man knew everything there was to know about Sinanju. Perhaps he could force him to open the treasure house.
When Pullyang finally emerged, from, of all places, the treasure house itself, Sammy Kee was surprised. But his surprise turned to shock when, on a litter of sorts, a very old man was carried out into the plaza to the adulation of the crowd.
Walking beside the litter, tall and erect and proud in a way unlike the subservient villagers, was a white man. He wore Western-style clothes, slacks and a high-necked shirt.
And Sammy Kee knew with a sickness in the pit of his empty stomach that the Master of Sinanju had returned to the village.
Sammy half-slipped, half-fell from the boulder. He landed on his rump, wondering what he should do. He dared not attempt to enter the treasure house now. That would be impossible. Not to mention fatal.
Escape, too, was impossible. Only one road led away from the sheltered cove that was Sinanju. And Colonel Viktor Ditko, as they had agreed, sat in his car, awaiting Sammy's return.
Sammy crawled on his hands and knees down toward the water. He did not know why he did that. He was frightened. He was sick of being frightened, but he had to do something-anything.
A teenage boy crouched down near the water, washing something. Sammy thought he must be a fisherman, cleaning his nets, but then he remembered the legends of Sinanju. Nobody fished in Sinanju. Not to eat, at least.
When the boy stood up, Sammy saw that he was not wetting a fishing net, but cleaning a stain from a great costume. A blue-and-green dragon. Sarnmy knew it was a dragon because the head lay beside a rock.
The boy, satisfied that the stain was gone, began to slip into the costume.
It was then that Sammy Kee understood what he had to do. After all, whose life was important?
He sneaked up behind the boy and struck him on the head with a rock.
The boy folded like a paper puppet. Quickly Sammy stripped the lax form of his costume, which was of colored rice paper and silk. It was full, voluminous, and would fit him with room to spare so that his battery pack belt was not obvious.
Sammy pulled on the silken folds. No one would recognize him in this. He shouldered the camera, and, balancing carefully, pulled the stiff paper dragon mask over his head.
The camera fit. The lens pointed down the open snout, and Sammy tested the angle of field. The camera, roving around, saw without obstruction. By accident, the crushed skull of the boy came into the viewfinder.
The boy was dead. Sammy hadn't meant to kill him. But it was too late for regrets. He was just another peasant anyway. Sammy Kee was a journalist.
Sammy paused to drag the boy's body into the cold sea before he trudged into the village of Sinanju, his head light with excitement, but his stomach heavy with fear.
Remo wasn't hungry, but that didn't stop him from taking offense.
The villagers of Sinanju were squatting all over the plaza, dipping their ladles into bowls of steaming soup and yanking gobs of meat off a roasted pig. In the center, the Master of Sinanju sat on his low throne, eating rice, the caretaker, Pullyang, beside him.
Remo sat downwind. Like Chiun's, his body was purified, he could not eat red meat or processed food. Or drink anything stronger than mineral water. So the smell of roasted pig offended his nostrils.
But it was the behavior of the villagers which offended Remo more. Here he was, the next Master of Sinanju-if Chiun had his way-the future sustainer of the village, and no one offered him so much as a bowl of white rice. Instead, they treated him like an idiot child the family only let out of the attic on special occasions.
Remo was disgusted. He had never understood why Chiun continued to support his lazy, ungrateful fellow villagers. They did nothing but eat and breed.