"Oh, the old Shahs. Sinanju were the servants of death. But they are all gone. They left long ago. Cyrus. Darius. They are gone with the great emperors."
"Sinanju is still here," said Remo.
"You are Sinanju?"
"So you have heard?" Remo said.
"The old legend tells of the world's greatest assassins who came from Sinanju and they protected the Shahs in olden times. You are Sinanju?"
Remo did not answer. He let the man see that the cold night did not bother Remo's exposed arms. He let the man feel himself lifted by one thin arm. He let the man know the answer in his senses.
"But Sinanju is from the East. You are a Westerner."
"Are you such a fool?" intoned Remo. "Do you not see the cold made harmless to my body? Did you not see the night give up the severed head? Do you not see that one man now holds you aloft? Like a baby?"
"You are Sinanju?" hissed the Iranian.
"You betcha, you wool-covered bum," said Remo. It lacked rhythm but he didn't like this country anyhow and he wanted to get out. He had finally seen this fabled land of Persia and it smelled. They never did get their sewer systems down right.
"Sinanju is back," the leader said. "Will the Shah return?"
"No business of mine," Remo said. "I told you. I don't care what you believe. But you don't attack the American President. You hear? Off-limits. Repeat after me. Off-limits."
"Off-limits."
"You attack other Great Satans, if you want. I don't care. Run around your streets yelling. Run around your own embassies blowing them up. Do whatever you want, but America is a no-no."
"No, no," said the Iranian.
"Good," said Remo. "Every group you talk to now, every group you send out, you give them the warning of Sinanju. The American President is a no-no. And if you don't listen, then Sinanju will be back and we hang heads like blossoms as in the olden days."
"What?"
"Heads like berries," said Remo.
"I don't understand," the leader said.
"Heads like mushrooms," Remo said. "You don't have a legend where we hung heads like mushrooms?"
"Like melons on the ground," said the Iranian leader.
"Right," said Remo. "Right. Melons on the ground," and he hung the man upside down for a moment by his boots to let it sink in. Of course the man had remembered it better than Remo had. Remo had generally ignored the tales of Persia before it became Iran because he had generally not wanted to come here. He had been, of course, generally right in that desire. Iran sucked. Old Persia was probably no better. Legends were always better in the telling than in the living.
The leader was returned to the campfire with further instructions.
All during the night, as the young Iranian volunteers snuggled warm in their wools and furs to keep out the cold, they thought of him who needed no clothes. They thought of the voice from the dark. They thought of the head that had been wrenched off the body.
Simple death was one thing. But that which lurked out in the dark was another. They had been trained not to fear death. Thousands of their friends had died in suicide charges during the Iraqi war. Of course, their friends had been yelling and chanting as they raced toward death. But this thing out there was not death in glory for them. It was the night. It knew. It was there. Always there. It came at its own time and it would come for them.
They whispered to themselves that it was the Great Satan and while they had all wanted to fight the Great Satan, it was something else when it really was the Great Satan.
In the morning, the leader spoke very softly. It was a whisper over the cold black charcoal to ears that strained to listen. He said that it was not the Great Satan that had ruled the night. It was he who come from the old Shahs, even before Mohammed, he from those who dealt death, with heads rolling like melons on the ground, like the night before.
One of the followers from Quom had heard of those who dealt death that way. But they were from the East, he said. The vision was white.
"Sinanju," the leader said quietly. "The vision is from Sinanju," and he went on to say that there was only one way to escape the vision and that was never to harm or think of harming the American President. They would not be going to America to organize bands of suicide heroes to strike at the head of the snake of the Great Satan. They would strike instead at other Great Satans. Perhaps the neighboring Arabs would be a better target. Beirut was always good for a suicide bomb. Kuwait was a jewel to slaughter whoever might be walking by. And in Ryadh, there were rich Saudis who could be stabbed, beaten and, of course, bombed, in their bedrooms right in Mecca itself, the holiest of places.
The leader looked around the young faces surrounding the burned-out fire. Not a voice called for a renewal of the war against the Great Satan who lived in Washington, D.C.
Out of the blood-red sun on that harsh dry morning came a sound, like whistling.
"Good morning," said the person walking in over the horizon. He was a man but his face was the face of last night's vision. He was smiling and while he wore only a short-sleeved shirt and trousers, he seemed not to notice the cold.
If one of them had started to run, they would all have run. But they sat around the fire unmoving.
"You sweet fellows are going to escort me to Tehran and there you will give me one of your silly plastic flowers, tell me I am going to heaven, and then plunk me on a Pan Am the hell out of here."
It was the best suggestion they had heard all morning. Remo thought it was pretty good too. Especially the part about the hell out of here.
He was in Atlanta by the next sunrise, in the penthouse of the Peachtree Plaza Hotel, trying to remember the tune he had been whistling the day before in the Iranian barrens.
He thought he had done rather well. He liked the mystical part. He had always had trouble with the mystical part, but this time it had all worked.
"Well?" came a squeaky voice from the main room of the suite.
"Went fine," Remo called back. "Like a charm. Everything you said."
He heard a slight expelling of air, and then, "Of course it went well."
"I didn't think it would go that well. The legend part and everything."
Remo entered the living room of the suite. A frail wisp of a man sat in a glittering yellow morning kimono. Frail strands of white hair circled his parchmented Oriental face like a halo. His stringy beard quivered as he spoke.
"I told you what to do," he said. "I was clear. Was I not clear?"
"Oh, yeah," Remo said. "You were clear. But you know, you kept referring to Iran as Persia and talked about the old Shahs and how they honored the House of Sinanju, and, well, you know."
"I may not know, but I am finding out," said Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju, teacher of Remo, and one who had detected once again that first smoke from the fire of ingratitude.
"You Were right," Remo said. "The legends are still there, about Sinanju and the old Shahs. Still there."
"And why wouldn't they still be there?" asked Chiun, his voice flat and cold like the first ice covering of a winter pond.
"Right," said Remo. "Right you are."
"Very wrong," said Chiun. "Very wrong you are. I have given the best years of an assassin's life to the training of a white, and still he is surprised that what I tell him is so. Surprise? Are you surprised when the cold does not cut or the world slows for your eyes? Are you surprised when your hand is one with the force that the universe intended man to have?"