"The last any would suspect. Our bitterest enemy, but for Sinanju. The Shanghai Web proved true. The Master and his gweilo thought they had evaded each snare laid in their path. They did not dream that only through flight could they escape their doom. Only through flight."
His hands grasped the arms of the old-fashioned wooden chair that now served as his throne. He had once had a true throne of rosewood and rare gems, but Sinanju had robbed him of that glory. Just as they had robbed him of fifteen years of his life in death. The Final Death. But now his long years of shame had been expunged by the words of his gweilo nurse.
"The plan?" he asked, his blind pearl eyes upturned to where he sensed the girl to be.
The girl hesitated. "All is not well," she admitted.
A frown like a spring thundercloud passed across the Leader's shriveled purple features. "Explain."
"Their dead number only in the thousands, Leader. Not millions. Your requirements for the Final Death have not been achieved." She shrugged. "Not enough chicken-eaters, I guess."
The Leader seemed to relax ever-so-slightly. "The despised Master of Sinanju is no more?" he asked.
"Yes, Leader."
"If the Master can be stopped, cannot the pupil?"
Mary frowned. "Yes," she replied at length.
"Then where is the failure?"
"The failure is to your ancestors, Leader. To our Creed."
"Missy, this Creed of which you speak is as old as I, and older still. It is no more yours than the air you breathe, or the ground upon which you tread. The gyonshi will survive Sinanju, that is all that matters. Be it by a week, a day, an hour. The gweilo will come, and he will be consumed. Like the sacred blood that breaks our fast."
"But . . . the Final Death?"
"Will be achieved, Missy. There are other poisons. Plagues, famines, disease. If I am not here to carry out the work, it will be another. It will be you." He said it as an offhanded gesture. She was, after all, but a woman. And a white. She could be true to the Creed in spirit, but not in blood.
Mary Melissa Mercy's ample chest swelled with pride. "I will not let you down, O Leader."
He turned away from her, waving his guillotine-nailed hand in a shooing gesture. "I know you will not, my nurse."
Chapter 20
The Master of Sinanju knew not where he abided.
Upon regaining his senses, Chiun muttered a low curse for having allowed himself to fall victim to the Leader's trap.
The Leader knew what Chiun would do. Knew what he must do. It was the Leader himself who, years before, had infected the Sinanju elder with the gyonshi virus. The Leader knew of Chiun's father. It had been the Leader who had engineered his father's ultimate disgrace. If the elder of the village had succeeded in striking Chiun so many years ago, his plan would have come to fruition that much sooner. Sinanju would have ended then, the long bloodline severed.
But Sinanju had not ended. It lived. It lived in Chiun. It now lived in Remo as well.
Chiun got out of bed, setting his sandaled feet to the floor.
The Master of Sinanju glanced down at his feet. Most curious. It was unusual that the American doctors had not removed his sandals.
Chiun studied the room carefully. The walls were painted in two unappetizing shades of green. Folcroft. He did not know how he had gotten here. He hoped that someone other than Remo had found him with the Taoist. Remo would never allow him to live down the shame of letting a Chinaman land a blow, even if that Chinese had been a gyonshi bloodsucker. It would be just like Remo to overlook an important detail such as that.
The green room seemed smaller now. Much smaller. Only a quarter of the size it had been a moment before.
It must be the gyonshi poison, affecting my senses, the Master of Sinanju decided.
Chiun felt his neck. His hand came away in horror. Blood. His fingertips were coated in blood. There was a gash in his neck as wide around as a Sumerian gold piece.
It was strange his body had not gone to work to heal the wound. Stranger still that the American doctors who seemed to sprout up like dandelions, around the Fortress Folcroft of Emperor Smith had not bound his neck in thick sheets of disease-ridden bandages. That always seemed to be their answer to everything.
The room now appeared smaller still.
Chiun pressed his hand to his forehead. Beads of perspiration had formed there. They mingled with the drying blood and rolled onto his palm. He closed his hand delicately around them.
Something was wrong. A Master of Sinanju does not perspire without cause.
The walls continued to close in.
It could not be mechanical, this closing inward. The Master of Sinanju felt no vibration of gears grinding. He did not discern the walls moving toward him. Yet they were close enough that he could have reached out and touched them with his bloodstained fingers.
If this was some diabolic trap, whoever had engineered it had forgotten one thing.
He had forgotten to close the only door.
The Master of Sinanju padded out into the hallway. He was free.
When he looked back into the room, the walls had returned to the positions they had occupied when he first opened his eyes.
Chiun nodded to himself. There was no doubt now. The Leader's poison. It was the only explanation. His mind was playing tricks on him. It would cleanse itself soon enough.
The hallway was cast in a deep gloom. There were no lights on, and beyond the windows it was dark. Chiun did not know where such sparse light as there was originated.
He sharpened his senses. There was no one else nearby. He expanded his awareness. The entire building was empty.
At the end of the hall was a long wooden staircase. Padding to the top step, he descended this to the ground floor.
The stairs creaked beneath his feet.
That should not be. He was a Master of Sinanju.
Taking a sip of reviving air, Chiun took a cautious step. Still, the stair creaked in complaint. And it seemed as if there were more of them now. They stretched limitlessly into some infinite abyss below.
Something was desperately wrong. He continued, humiliation burning with every betraying creak.
Chiun touched his neck once more. The wound was as fresh as the moment it had been opened. It felt larger now. Even his neck felt larger. As if it too were growing to accommodate the expanding injury.
Suddenly, the stairs ended and Chiun found himself standing at the sterile entrance to Folcroft Sanitarium. The door was open, and the chill air of night blew in around Chiun's ankles.
He looked back. It was no longer the staircase behind him, but the door to Folcroft. Somehow he had ended up outside, beyond the door, and the door was closed.