"Yes, well, we have to get them on our side, don't we?" said Caldwell. "We'll take them away from whoever they're working for."
"I don't know who they're working for. The white guy, Remo, just calls himself one of the good guys. He's getting better now, I hope."
"From his fight with this man Braun?"
"No. Some form of old curse."
"You have done well for us, Ms. Bonner. We are pleased. 'Consuelo' is Spanish. Do you have any Spanish ancestry?"
"My mother's side. Castilian."
"Any noble blood?"
"Only if someone got out on the wrong side of the mattress. Illegitimate noble blood possibly."
"We can tell, you know," said Caldwell.
"The Nuclear Control Agency?"
"No," said Caldwell, pointing to himself. "Well, thank you very much for your time. Now you may leave."
"You are going to do something about this?" asked Consuelo.
"You can be sure of it," said Harrison Caldwell. Consuelo was taken from the immense gilded room, through an exquisite hallway bordered by massive paintings and statues. Gilt seemed to be everywhere. She saw one banner thirty feet high embroidered with what seemed to be a gold coat of arms against a purple velvet background.
She had seen that coat of arms before but couldn't place it. Only when they locked the iron bars behind her did she remember it. It was the apothecary jar on Remo's pendant.
The bars did not open. The room was dark and had a single cot. The walls were stone. There were other small rooms with bars. It wasn't exactly a jail. It was too dank for that. She was in a dungeon. And then the bodies started being brought down. All she could make out was that there was some kind of contest upstairs somewhere where people were killing themselves to see who was the toughest.
Out on Long Island Sound a boat stopped, and several men with binoculars pointed to a large brick-enclosed institution. It was Folcroft Sanitarium.
"Is that it?" asked one. He was loading a clip in a small submachine gun.
"That has to be it. No confluence of electronic signals could come from anywhere else," said the engineer. "All right," said the man with the submachine gun. "Tell Mr. Caldwell we found his target."
On one high corner of the building was a room with mirrors reflecting outside. Inside was Harold W. Smith, and he did not know whether he was lucky or unlucky.
Folcroft's defense systems could read anything sending and receiving signals within a radius of twenty miles. And when he had focused it on that suspicious boat out in the sound, he read that someone had found him and was told to wait until reinforcements arrived so they could surround the sanitarium and make sure no one got away.
Chapter 12
Remo could see the room, feel the bed, feel his arms, and most important, breathe properly, breathe to get his balance, his center, and himself. But his head was still ringing when Chiun told him for the seventeenth time, he was not going to say he told him so.
"Say it. Say it and get it over with. My head feels like it was sandpapered from the inside."
"No," said Chiun. "The wise teacher knows when the pupil understands."
"Tell me it was the curse of the gold that did it to me, and then leave me alone," said Remo.
"Never," said Chiun.
"Okay, then don't tell me you're not going to tell me again. I don't want to hear it."
"All right, I'll tell you. I told you so," said Chiun. "But would you listen? No. You never listen. I told you the gold was cursed. But no, you don't believe in curses even when their secrets are chronicled in the glorious past of Sinanju."
"You mean Master Go and the Spanish gold?"
"No. Master Go and the cursed gold."
"I remember it. Master Go. Somebody paid with the bad check for the day-rotten gold-and he refused to take it. That was around six hundred years ago. Maybe three hundred. Somewhere in there. Can I get a glass of water?"
"I will get it for you. If you had listened to me about the cursed gold at the beginning, then you would be able to get it yourself."
"You said you weren't going to mention it."
"I didn't. I said I was getting you water. But it would not hurt for you to recite Master Go again."
"Not now. The last thing I want to hear now is a recitation of the Masters."
"Just Go."
"But even the Lesser Wang would be too much," said Remo, who knew that the entire history of the Lesser Wang was exactly two sentences, while the Great Wang took a day and a half if you rushed. Wang the Lesser was a Master of Sinanju during an odd period of history when peace settled over most of the world. This era was called the unfortunate confluence of the stars. Since there seemed to be a minimum of strife among rulers, the Lesser Wang spent most of his life sitting in Sinanju waiting for an overthrow, an attack, or a decent usurper to come along. When he finally got one request for service, it turned out not to be worth even leaving the village for. As a result, the tales of the Lesser Wang went like this: "Wang was. And he didn't." It was the only brief thing Remo had ever heard Chiun recite. But even that seemed overwhelming to Remo.
"Then I will do it," said Chiun, "because you should know why you suffered."
And thus Chiun began the tale of Master Go, who had gone west to the many kingdoms of Spain in the year of the duck, and in a time of modest prosperity for the House of Sinanju. There was good work in most of Europe because of an outbreak of civil wars, but Master Go chose the somewhat peaceful Spanish king because of a most interesting situation. The king said he wanted the Master of Sinanju to kill enemies he had yet to make.
Now Master Go thought this might be a new, more intelligent way to use an assassin. Why, he asked himself, should kings wait until they made enemies before calling on an assassin? Why not prepare beforehand? It could only bring honor and glory to Sinanju to serve such a wise king.
But when he reached the court of the Spanish king and enjoyed an audience, he found out the king had no specific enemy in mind.
"Everyone will be my enemy who is not my friend, and even some of my friends will become enemies."
"And how is that, your Majesty?" asked Master Go in the formal manner of the Spanish court.
"I am to be the wealthiest man in the world," said the king.
Now Master Go said nothing. Many of the Western kings, like little children, considered only their small place and time in the world. Though these kings were the richest of their regions, there were many wealthy kings elsewhere whom Westerners had never heard of, with jewels and gold that would make even the richest in the West seem poor. But, as is proper, Master Go said nothing, for an emperor's enemies, not his ignorance, are what a Master of Sinanju comes to cure.
"I have more than a gold mine. I have the mine of the human mind."
With that, the king ordered many weights of lead to be brought to him, and he called his alchemist before him and said, "Show this man from the Orient how you can change lead into gold."
Now the alchemist, rightly fearing disclosure of his secret, performed his transformations in private. But though there are defenses against most men, the defenses against Sinanju are none. The Master easily made himself into the silent shadow of the alchemist to watch and see if the man indeed could make gold from lead.
And he did, mixing the lead with many ingredients. But he also added real gold, the gold paid by the Spanish king. And all of this, he claimed, he made from lead. What this meant, Master Go did not know, until he saw the alchemist receive more money to make more gold for the king. Money was, of course, gold. And this time, the alchemist added even more of the king's gold to the pile he claimed he produced.