MacCleary was himself again. Exhausted, more parts missing than usual. But alert.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. His tired voice was a pained rasp.

  The Master of Sinanju folded his arms across his chest. “A simple thank-you would suffice,” the old Korean sniffed.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” MacCleary insisted. A thought suddenly occurred to him. “Oh, I see. Did Smitty send you?”

  “The emperor told me that an accident had befallen his worthless general,” Chiun admitted.

  “Thank God,” MacCleary said. “Please do it fast, Master Chiun. The nurse was just here. She could come back.”

  Chiun’s face grew puzzled. “Do what fast?”

  “Kill me, of course.”

  The old Oriental’s eyes grew dull. “Forgive me, but in your delirium have you forgotten to whom you are speaking?”

  MacCleary’s face sagged. “What? I don’t understand. You’re the Master of Sinanju. You’re an assassin. The best in the world. Killing is what you do.”

  “Killing?” Chiun asked, indignant. “Killing? Does the spring kill the winter? Does the rising tide kill the shore? When the seed dies so that the flower may grow, has the flower killed the seed? Killing. Pah! You have claimed to be an expert on Sinanju, but how limited still is your knowledge of that which we are.”

  MacCleary still didn’t understand. “But that’s what you do,” he insisted. “You’re professional assassins.”

  Chiun nodded. “With the emphasis on professional. I do not recall any gold passing hands.”

  “Smith paid you. That’s why he sent you here, right? To kill me? He did send you?”

  The old man tipped his head. “Indirectly,” he admitted. “I was out for an innocent stroll around the palace grounds and happened to pass by his window. As he spoke to my pupil about you, a word or two may have reached my blameless ears.”

  “He’s sending Remo?”

  “That might have been said. There was so much white blathering it was hard to keep track.”

  Relief formed deep in the care lines of Conrad MacCleary’s ghostly pale face. “Good,” he breathed. “But how did you get here first?”

  “Because a bolt of lightning is faster than goose droppings. Honestly, MacCleary, I don’t know where you found this one. He is lazy, he talks back to his elders. If he is late now, it is only because he chased a butterfly into the park or he lost the little note with the hospital’s name on it that someone pinned to his sleeve.”

  The pain was coming back. Conn’s head sank deeper into his pillow. “You think he won’t come?”

  “Who knows with that one?” Chiun shrugged. Conn felt hope slip away.

  “He has to. If not…” He was growing desperate. “Master Chiun, Smith is good for it.”

  Chiun shook his head firmly. “No credit.”

  “I don’t have any money. I think they took my wallet.”

  “It wouldn’t matter anyway,” Chiun said. “Paper money is merely a promise of payment.” MacCleary wanted to shake his head in frustration, but the casts and tubes prevented movement.

  “If not to kill me, then why are you here?” he said in tired exasperation.

  “Your Smith has ordered your death against his own wishes. I could hear the sadness in his regal voice. Like most young emperors he does not yet understand the powerful sword at his side that is Sinanju. I would prove to him that his fears are groundless. I have come to liberate you.”

  The light of understanding dawned weakly. MacCleary shook his head. “No,” he exhaled. “I can’t leave.”

  “White medicine is a dangerous thing,” Chiun warned. “We must hie from this den of quacksalvers before they decide to open your veins in order to bleed the sickness from you.”

  “I can’t leave here, Master Chiun,” MacCleary insisted weakly. “I was carrying my Folcroft ID.”

  “All the more reason to spirit you away. If the emperor’s enemies learn his general is vulnerable, they might see weakness and use the opportunity to move against him.”

  “Smith’s enemies are our country’s enemies, Master Chiun,” MacCleary explained tiredly. “I know you don’t see it like we do, but you have to trust us. I can’t go back to Folcroft now. I’d be leading America’s and Smith’s enemies straight to him. Smith understands that. The best way for him and the nation to survive—maybe the only way—is to eliminate me. I agree with him.”

  The old man’s frown lines deepened. This was something unexpected. He had come to America expecting sloth and selfishness. But here was a white, ready to offer up his life in service to his king.

  “You are stubborn, even for a general,” he said quietly.

  “Does that mean you’ll kill me?”

  “I do not give to charity,” Chiun replied. “However, since my useless student may never find his way here—he having no doubt gotten lost in a downstairs broom cupboard where he is even now brutally assassinating the mop he has mistaken for you—I will assist you in doing what you think you must. Strictly in the interest of fostering good client relations.”

  Chiun had noted the open closet door when he first arrived. It was immediately next to the bathroom. MacCleary’s bloodied clothes had been thrown out. His personal effects were locked away in storage. All that remained were his shoes and one other item. The plastic forearm of MacCleary’s prosthetic had been damaged in the fall, but it was still intact. It had been removed prior to surgery and brought here afterward.

  Chiun retrieved the false arm, bringing it over to the bed. The curved hook glinted in the room’s pale light.

  No words were spoken. None was necessary. MacCleary closed his eyes as the Master of Sinanju pressed the hollow end of the prosthetic up around the elbow nub. Chiun fastened the silver buckles around the forearm and shoulder.

  In his fatigued brain, Conrad MacCleary was counting down the seconds of his own mortality. His lack of passion surprised him. He had lived life hard.

  He had always figured when the time came he’d go out kicking and screaming.

  In his last moments of life Conn tried to sort through recent events. A thought suddenly occurred to him.

  “Chiun, do you have a son?” MacCleary asked abruptly.

  The old Korean was just finishing with the shoulder straps.

  “What business is that of yours?”

  There was coldness to the Oriental’s voice.

  Conn opened his eyes. The pain was swelling. His whole body ached. For now it was dull and distant. “I don’t know. I think I might have met him,” MacCleary said with a frown. “Is that possible? Maybe at that building in Jersey? The one I fell out of. There was a guy, I think. An Oriental. He had your eyes.”

  MacCleary heard a little slip of air.

  When he looked up he would have sworn the color had drained from Chiun’s face. Or maybe it was just a trick of the weak light.

  “I have no son,” Chiun said softly.

  “Oh,” MacCleary said. His head collapsed back wearily on the pillow. “I’m sorry. Maybe it’s the drugs. Everything’s still a little fuzzy. I’m not sure of anything right about now. I swear there was a guy, though.” He tried to concentrate. To think back to the events at Felton’s apartment. “There were other guys, too. And a kid. I think But the Oriental had your eyes. Same color, same everything. It was like looking at you, but younger. I don’t know, maybe it was part of the dream. Hell, probably it was.”

  Chiun didn’t respond. He straightened from the bed.

  “You are ready,” he announced.

  MacCleary didn’t notice the flatness in his voice. Conn lifted his false arm. He turned the hook around, inspecting the sharp end. “Thanks,” he grunted.

  Chiun wasn’t listening. He had cocked one shell-like ear to the open hallway door.

  “Someone is coming,” he hissed all at once.

  The Korean recognized the confident footfalls. Not quite a glide, but no longer a normal man’s walk. With an admonition of silence to MacCleary, the old man ducked inside the bathroom, pulling the door nearly closed behind him. He brought one hazel eye to the narrow gap.

  Remo entered the hospital room a moment later, shutting the door to the hall quietly behind him. MacCleary’s face was partially bandaged. Those features that were visible were heavily bruised. Remo didn’t even look at the face as he leaned over the body.

  Through the slivered door Chiun saw Remo move a hand up the damp plaster cast that encircled MacCleary’s chest. Good. He was looking for a cracked rib to press into the heart. The technique was sloppy, but it would get the job done. Unfortunately, the young man’s heart wasn’t in it. He didn’t do the deed fast enough.

  “Hey, buddy,” came MacCleary’s faint voice. “That’s a hell of a way to make an identification.” Remo’s hands fled the cast. As Chiun frowned, MacCleary began to babble some white nonsense to his pupil.

  It was as Chiun feared. Remo had become distracted when he should have been focused on his task. This was the real reason Chiun had come to the hospital in the first place.

  Remo was a sentimentalist. He liked MacCleary and so would find it difficult to kill the man. He might have done it if the silly old general who wanted death had kept his fool mouth shut. But he had to talk, and now Remo was looking at him no longer as a target but as a man. Worse, a friend.

  Remo had learned too much in those early months of training. He had grasped the rudiments of Sinanju. That was partially Chiun’s fault. But now he had been set loose on a world that might mistake him as truly Sinanju.

  That was bad enough, but a failure in this first assignment might be—however unfairly—blamed on the House of Sinanju. As the last Master, Chiun couldn’t allow that. He had hoped to get MacCleary back to Smith’s castle, thus forestalling Remo’s first assignment until his mind could be properly prepared. But the general was stubborn. He saw his act of suicide as noble. A final act of loyalty to his emperor and to his nation.

  There was no doubt about it. These Americans were each one more lunatic than the last.

  And so Chiun had done his part to help his pupil and thus Sinanju’s reputation along. And when Remo arrived he hid in the next room, listening as the two fools chattered pointlessly, all the while hoping that the young man would come around and assassinate his dying friend.

  For a little while Chiun was concerned that he might be discovered. Fortunately, the boy was a bit of a dullard. Remo didn’t even seem curious why the hospital staff would leave the prosthetic arm and hook on a patient on whom they had performed emergency surgery and who was suspected to be suicidal. Obviously it would have been removed.

  They talked for a time. When they were done, Remo turned and walked from the room.

  In bed MacCleary’s whole injured body tensed as he called weakly after CURE’s new enforcement arm. “Remo, you’ve got to do it. I can’t move. I’m drugged. They took my pill. I can’t do it myself. Remo. You had the right idea. Just pressure the rib cage. Remo. Remo!”

  But the door slowly closed on room 411.

  As the big man called vainly into the empty hallway, Chiun stepped out of the bathroom.

  “I can’t believe it,” MacCleary gasped as the Master of Sinanju swept up to the bed. “He was supposed to do it. All the personality projections said he’d do it.”

  The old spy seemed crestfallen.

  “Some men are more than the sum of their projections,” Chiun replied evenly. “I must go now.” MacCleary was too weak to nod. Failure weighed heavy on his battered bones as he scratched his hook up across his chest cast to his neck. The defeat he felt came not from a life now at its end, but rather from distress that he might have failed in picking CURE’s perfect weapon.

  Chiun sensed the injured man’s concern. Since it no longer mattered and since there was no one around to hear, the Master of Sinanju leaned close.

  “Leave your worries about this one to the world of flesh, brave knight,” Chiun confided in a whisper.

  “I have seen the seeds of greatness in him. They are small and few in number now, but given time and care they can flourish. Even he does not know they are there. For what he is, you can be proud as you leave this life. For what he might become, Sinanju owes you a debt that can never be repaid.”

  An uncertain peace seeped across MacCleary’s battered face. “Thank you, Master Chiun. I hope you’re right.”

  With that, he buried the point of his hook deep in his own throat. Jerking his arm, he tried to tear it across, but the strength just wasn’t there. Eyes wide with pain and pleading looked up at the Master of Sinanju.

  Chiun’s jaw tightened. “You asked a question before,” the old Korean whispered. “Since you are an honorable man, bravely facing death, I will answer. It is true I once had a son. However, he no longer lives.”

  Chiun flicked the curve of the hook. In a twinkling it tore open Conrad MacCleary’s throat, exposing a chasm of bubbling crimson. A font of red soaked the white pillowcase.

  As the EKG monitor beside the bed spiked one last time before going forever flat, the old man shook his head.

  “But sadly he was not the only one to share my blood.”

  Chapter 19

  That long-ago spring day had been unseasonably warm. The sun smiled bright in the cloudless blue sky, scattering sparkling diamonds on the waters of the West Korean Bay.

  The air hummed. The village of Sinanju—the very world itself—was alive with joyful song.

  It was a great time for the chosen few, those who by luck of birth were able to call Sinanju, the Pearl of the Orient, their home. It was the Time of Departure, the time in every generation when the old Master surrendered the mantle of protector and provider to his successor. After years of training, the pupil was finally allowed to go out into the world as Reigning Master of Sinanju.

  The people had gathered to await the appearance of the new Master, who was preparing to leave the village for the first time. The old Master was there. Standing silently before the House of Many Woods. When his successor finally appeared through the door an hour after the preordained time, a chorus of happy voices rose from the village square.

  “Hail, Master of Sinanju, who sustains the village and keeps the code faithfully,” the people shouted as their new protector strode down the path. “Our hearts cry with joy and pain at your departure. Joy that you undertake this journey for the sake of we, the unworthy beneficiaries of your generosity. And pain that your toils take your beauteous aspect from our midst. May the spirits of your ancestors journey safe with you who graciously throttles the universe.”

  The Masters who had preceded him back beyond the oldest memory, all the way back to before even the Great Wang, had all accepted the traditional words of departure with stoic countenance. But this Master was different than what the village had ever seen before. He smiled at the crowd as they sang his praises, accepted the flattery as his due. Hazel eyes turned left and right, soaking in the adulation.

  Behind the new Master came the old one. Unlike his pupil, the former Master of Sinanju kept his eyes trained above the heads of those gathered, focused on some unseeable distant point. His face was stone.

  “It is about time the old Master stepped aside,” some of the villagers whispered after the two men passed by. “Look at this new one. Such pride, such bearing. Here is a Master whose praises we will gladly sing.”

  “Yes,” more agreed. “He is not like that old-fashioned one who went before him and stayed long past his time. This one will bring glory to Sinanju.”

  “It is fortunate things worked out as they did,” still others said. “If the old one’s son had not died in training, he would not have had to take on another pupil. Then we would not have this great new Master to feed the children and care for the old and lame of our village. How lucky we are.”

  They all agreed they were very lucky the old Master’s son was dead. As he walked through the village of his ancestors, the Master pretended not to hear their words.

  Though his son had been dead for years, the wound was still as fresh as the day he had carried the little boy’s battered body down from Mount Paektusan. Their words brought anguish to his weary heart. But he was a Master of Sinanju, and it was tradition since the time of the Great Wang himself that a Master could not raise his hand against any of the village. And so the retired Master made his ears deaf to all the hateful, petty things the people were saying.

  In the village square the new Master stopped.

  “I leave now on my great journey,” he announced. “In Sinanju death feeds life. I will ply our art faithfully, for there is no higher calling. Death feeds life. What I embark on this day feeds the village. My labors sustain the villagers I love. Such has it been, ever shall it be.”

  When the cheers came, he soaked them up like desert rain.

  The Master who had trained him could hear the falseness in the young man’s voice. In truth he knew his pupil felt little but contempt for the village of his birth. But as Master of Sinanju his duties were clear. He would uphold the traditions as had all the Masters who had come before him.

  Singing songs of praise to their new protector, the people swept the new Master up to the road that led from the village. With joyful hearts they sent him on his way. With tearful eyes they stood on the road, watching until he was a speck on the horizon and then disappeared into the muddy paddies. Certain that this new Master would restore the glory of the greatest Masters of Sinanju to the small fishing village, they returned to their homes to await the tribute from king and emperor that would fill their souls with pride and their cooking pots with food.

  And they waited. And waited.

  But the tribute never came.

  Their new Master, their great protector, the one who would lead the village into greater glory, never returned.

  Word came through circuitous means that he had abandoned the village, seeking to ply his trade for personal glory.

  The villagers heard from the missing Master only once. When first he left, he performed a service that indirectly benefited his despised village. He kept the money, but he did send a servant back with a message for his teacher and uncle, the man who had been Master before him. On a small parchment scroll were carefully inscribed the characters, “I await the day.” The retired Master slew the messenger.