Remo hobbled to keep up with him.

  “Didn’t you once tell me, Little Father, that every time you entered the village, they threw flower petals in your path?” asked Remo, noticing that the road to the village center was empty of people and that Chiun, for all the so-called majesty of his office, might have been just another golden-ager out for a walk.

  “I have suspended the flower petal requirement,” said Chiun officiously.

  “Why?”

  “Because you are an American. I knew you might be misunderstanding of it. It is all right. The people protested but in the end I prevailed. I do not need flower petals to remind me of the love of my subjects.”

  No one met them on the street. No vehicles were to be seen. There were only a few stores and Remo could see people inside them but none came out to greet Chiun.

  “You sure this is Sinanju?” asked Remo.

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “Because it seems that a town you support and that your family has supported for centuries ought to pay a little more attention to you,” said Remo.

  “I have suspended the attention-paying requirement,” said Chiun. His manner, Remo noticed, was less official and sounded a little like an apology. “Because…”

  “I know, because I’m an American.”

  “Right,” said Chiun. “But remember, even if they do not come out, people are watching. I wish you would walk right and not embarrass me by seeming to be an old man, old before your time, older even than your western dissolution would seem to require.”

  “I will try, Little Father, not to embarrass you,” said Remo and, by an effort of will, he forced himself to put some weight on his injured right leg, reducing the limp, and, even though each motion pained him, he forced himself to swing his arms from the shoulders almost normally as he walked.

  “There is the ancestral palace,” said Chiun, motioning ahead with a nod of his head.

  Remo looked ahead. Into his mind flashed a building he had once seen in California. It had been created by its builder from junk, made of broken bottles and tin cans and Styrofoam cups and old tires and broken pieces of boards.

  Chiun’s house reminded Remo of a house built by the same craftsman, but this time with access to more materials, for in a village of wooden shanties and huts, Chiun’s home was made of stone and …

  And … glass and steel and wood and rock and shell. It was a low, one-story building whose architecture seemed to be American ranch as seen through an LSD haze.

  “It’s … it’s … it’s … really something to see,” said Remo.

  “It has been in my family for centuries,” said Chiun. “Of course, I had it remodeled many years ago. I put in a bathroom which I thought was a good idea you westerners had. And a kitchen with a stove. See, Remo, I am willing to take advice when it is good.”

  Remo was pleased to hear that, for he had some additional good advice for Chiun—tear it down and start all over. He decided to tether his tongue.

  Chiun led Remo to the front door, apparently made of wood. Only apparently, because the door had been totally covered over with shells of clams, oysters, and mussels. The door looked like a section of Belmar Beach four hours after a New Jersey rip tide.

  The door was heavy and Chiun pushed it open with seeming difficulty. He looked at Remo almost apologetically.

  “I know,” said Remo. “You have suspended the door opening requirement.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Because I’m an American,” said Remo.

  While Remo had considered the building’s exterior as ugly, not even that had prepared him for the inside. Every available inch of floor space seemed to have something on it. There were jugs and vases and plates, there were statues and swords, there were masks and baskets, there were piles of cushions in place of chairs, there were low tables of highly polished wood, there were colored stones in glass jars.

  Chiun spun around and indicated his domain with another sweep of his hand.

  “Well, Remo, what do you think?”

  “I am underwhelmed,” said Remo.

  “I knew you would be,” said Chiun. “These are all the prizes of the Masters of Sinanju. Tribute paid us by rulers from all over the world. From the Sun King as you call him. From Ptolemy. From the shahs of those countless countries that make grease. From the emperors of China when they remembered to pay their bills. From tribes of India. From a once-great nation of black Africa.”

  “Who ripped you off giving you a jar of colored stones?” asked Remo, looking at a jar which stood in the corner of the room, a foot and a half high, filled with dull stones.

  “How American you are,” said Chiun.

  “Well, I mean one of your ancestors got hustled.”

  “The jar was the agreed-upon price.”

  “A jar filled with rocks?”

  “A jar filled with uncut diamonds.”

  Remo looked at the jar again. It was true. It was filled with uncut diamonds and the smallest was two inches across.

  “But I would not expect you to understand that,” said Chiun. “For you, for the western mind, all the world is divided into two categories: shiny and not shiny. For you, a piece of glass. But for a Master of Sinanju, diamonds. Because we can look under the dullness and see the value of the core.”

  “Like you did with me?” said Remo.

  “Even Masters of Sinanju sometimes get fooled. Something that is supposed to be an uncut diamond may turn out to be just a rock.”

  “Chiun, I wanted to ask you something.”

  “Ask me anything.”

  “I wanted to know,” and then Remo felt the strength draining from his limbs and he knew that his muscles had been extended beyond the point that they could be extended, and his right leg started to cave, and suddenly the effort of will ended, and his shoulders were blazing with pain. He opened his mouth to say something more, but he couldn’t, and then he was falling toward the floor of the room.

  He did not remember hitting the floor. He did not remember being lifted.

  He only remembered waking up and looking around. He was in a small sunlit room, lying on a pile of cushions, naked, covered only with a thin silken sheet.

  Chiun stood by his side and when Remo’s eyes opened, he knelt. Carefully but quickly, his hands began to remove the bandages from Remo’s shoulders.

  “The doctor put those on,” said Remo.

  “The doctor is a fool. No muscle is helped by being strapped. Rest, yes. Imprisonment, no. We will make you well soon. We will…” but his voice trailed off as he saw Remo’s right shoulder, as the last strand of bandage fell off.

  “Oh, Remo,” he said in a sad, pained voice. He said nothing further as he unwrapped the left shoulder and then he said it again, “Oh, Remo.”

  “The one who hit the leg was the best of all,” Remo said. “Wait until you see it.” He paused. “Chiun, how did you know I would come here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you said goodbye to Smith, you said I would be here.”

  Chiun shrugged as he bent toward the bandage on Remo’s right thigh. “It is written that you would.”

  “Written where?” asked Remo.

  “On the men’s room wall at Pittsburgh Airport,” said Chiun nastily. “In the books of Sinanju,” he said.

  “And what does it say?” asked Remo.

  Chiun deftly removed the bandage from Remo’s thigh. This time he said nothing.

  “That bad, huh?”

  “I have seen worse,” said Chiun. “Although not on anybody who survived.”

  He took a bowl from a small table near Remo’s sleeping mat. “Drink this,” he said. He lifted Remo’s head and brought a cup to Remo’s lips. The liquid was warm and almost tasteless except for what seemed to be a trace of salt.

  “Awful. What is it?”

  “It is a mixture from the seaweed that will start making you well again.”

  He let Remo’s head down slowly. Remo felt tired. “Chiun,” he said in a questioning voice.

  “Yes, my son.”

  “You know who did this to me, don’t you?”

  “Yes, my son, I know.”

  “He is coming, Little Father,” said Remo. His eyelids grew heavier as he spoke. It seemed as if his words were being spoken by someone else.

  “I know, my son. He is coming.”

  “He may try to hurt you, Little Father.”

  “Sleep now, Remo. Sleep and heal.”

  Remo’s eyes closed and he began to drift off. He heard Chiun’s voice again. “Sleep and heal, my son.”

  And then Chiun’s final words. “Heal quickly.”

  13

  AND thus it came to pass that the Master of Sinanju did walk along the path in the village where he had once been of such honor.

  His feet were heavy, as was his heart, because he knew that powerless, unprotected was the young disciple from the land across the sea, and because he knew that the evil force that would destroy that disciple would soon make its appearance on the rocky soil of Sinanju.

  And the Master thus had no patience with the tongues of fools, and when people approached him on the path, to talk about the young disciple, about the leadenness of his step, about the infirmities that seemed as if they were of age, the Master had no patience with them and flailed about and scattered them as the barking dogs scatters the goose. But he did not harm the people who gave him such aggravation, because it has always been written, since the dawn of writing, that the Master must not raise his hand in anger to harm a person from the village.

  And it was this very command that gave the Master such pain of spirit. Because the one who was coming to destroy the young disciple was of the village of Sinanju, yea, even of the blood of the Master, and the Master could find no way in which he might violate his ages-old vow and inflict upon that one the death he deserved.

  Yea, as the Master walked alone, he thought that his disciple, injured as he was, defenseless as a babe as he was, that his disciple would be killed, and Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, could not protect him because of his vow never to hurt someone from the village.

  14

  PREMIER Kim Il Sung was at the plain wooden desk in his office in the People’s Building in Pyongyang when the secretary entered the room.

  The secretary was a young captain of artillery. He affected a gabardine military uniform instead of the rough canvas-textured khaki that was official government issue, but Sung had never held this against him because he was a good secretary.

  Communists could come and Communists could go; military styles could come and go; pride even could come and go, but good secretaries were to be nurtured.

  Once, years before, Sung had been accused of turning into a reactionary rightwinger after seizing power, and he had explained in what he considered his gentle voice that all revolutionaries become conservatives after gaining power. “Radicalism is fine for revolution,” he had said, “but conservatism is what gets the trucks out of the garage in the morning.”

  He had then displayed his continuing revolutionary zeal by throwing the insulter into a prison for two weeks. When the man was released, Sung summoned him to his office.

  The man, a minor official from one of the provinces, had stood before Sung, humiliated, chastened.

  “Now you know you cannot judge everything by appearances,” Sung had said. “It was an easy lesson for you to learn because you are still alive. Many have not been so lucky.”

  So it was that Kim Il Sung rated his secretary by secretarial standards and not by any standard of appearance set for soldiers. And so it was that Sung rated the man his secretary ushered in to see him, not by his size or his clothing or his speech, but by a kind of internal fire that seemed to come through the man’s eyes and that invested all his words with power.

  “I am Nuihc,” the man said, “and I have come to serve you.”

  “Why am I so lucky?” said Sung.

  He saw immediately that the man named Nuihc had no sense of humor.

  “Because it is through you that I can regain the hereditary title of my family. Master of Sinanju.”

  “Yes,” said Kim Il Sung. “I have met the Master. He is a charming old rogue.”

  “He is a very old man,” said Nuihc. “It is time for him to tend his vegetable garden.”

  “Why do you bother me with this?” asked Kim Il Sung. “Who cares what a small band of brigands does in one tiny village?”

  He had chosen his words carefully and was rewarded by a small flash of anger in Nuihc’s eyes.

  “You know, my Premier, that that is not so,” said Nuihc. “The House of Sinanju has for centuries been famed in the ruling palaces of the world. Now it is up to you to decide whether or not you wish the house to be run by a Westerner … an American. Because that is the choice. Who will be the new Master: Me? Or an American who represents the CIA and the other spy agencies of the government in Washington?”

  “And again, I ask, why does it concern me?”

  “You know the answer to that,” said Nuihc. “First, our nation will be a laughing stock if this hereditary house becomes the property of an American. And second, the powers of the House are well known to you. Those powers could be put to use in your behalf, to the benefit of your rule. Not as they are now, working for the capitalists of Wall Street. Do you know, for a certainty, that the power of Sinanju will not be turned against you tomorrow or the next day? Whenever Washington wills it, Premier, you will pass into the pages of history for the dead, killed in office. You can prevent that.”

  Sung thought about those words for a long while before answering. He had met Chiun, and there had seemed to spring up almost a bond of friendship, but the old man had told him that he worked for the United States. This Nuihc might be right. One day, a word might come and soon Kim Il Sung would be dead.

  On the other hand, what guarantee did Sung have that Nuihc would be any better? He looked carefully into Nuihc’s face. His blood relationship with the old man was obvious; there were the same lines of face and body, the same feeling of coiled spring tension when the man only stood casually in front of Sung’s desk.

  “You wonder,” Nuihc said, “whether or not you can trust me.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can trust me for one reason. I am driven by greed. The leadership of the House will give me power and wealth. Beyond that, I want our nation to rise high in the world; I want it to happen because at the side of Kim Il Sung is Nuihc, the new Master of Sinanju.”

  Kim Il Sung thought again for a long while, then he said, “I will consider it. In the meantime, you may avail yourself of the hospitality of my house.”

  * * *

  It was almost dark when Chiun returned to his home. Remo still slept. The Korean girl who was Chiun’s servant knelt by the white man’s side, occasionally blotting up the sweat from his brow.

  “Be gone,” said Chiun.

  The girl rose and bowed deferentially toward Chiun.

  “He is very ill, Master.”

  “I know, child.”

  “He has no strength. Are white people always so weak?”

  Chiun looked at her sharply but could tell she meant no disrespect. Yet here she was, Chiun’s servant, the one loyal follower in the village, and even she could not hide her disappointment that Chiun had picked a white man to learn the role of the Master for that day when Chiun would rule no longer.

  He struggled to keep his temper, then said softly, “Many are weak, child. But this one was strong, a giant among men, until he was brought down by the cunning attacks of a cowardly jackal’s henchmen, a jackal too cowardly to attack himself.”

  “That is terrible, Master,” said the girl, her face and voice ringing with the earnestness of someone who wanted desperately to believe. “I wish I could meet this jackal.”

  “You shall, child. You shall. And so shall he,” Chiun said. He looked at Remo as if looking at a faraway cloud and then returned to the present moment and chased the girl from the room.

  “Heal quickly, Remo,” he said softly in the silent room. “Heal quickly.”

  * * *

  Nuihc had not tried to leave the room that Kim Il Sung had provided for him in the palace. He was not worried by the guards he knew were outside the door, but he was waiting for an answer.

  At dinner time, there was a knock on the door.

  It opened before Nuihc could speak.

  Kim Il Sung was there. He saw Nuihc sitting on a chair, looking out the window, toward the east, toward west, toward Sinanju. He smiled.

  “Tomorrow we go to Sinanju,” Sung said. “To crown a new master.”

  “You have chosen wisely,” said Nuihc. He smiled also.

  15

  THE caravan arrived in Sinanju shortly after noon the next day.

  There was a lead car in which sat Kim Il Sung and Nuihc, followed by a car containing the governor of the province and Sung’s adviser Myoch’ong. Lesser party officials followed in other cars, and while their mission was to drive the hated American influence from the history of Sinanju, none of them thought it incongruous that they drove in Cadillacs and Lincolns and Chryslers. The motorcycle escort of soldiers, six in front, six behind, six on each side, drove Hondas.

  The caravan was spotted more than a mile outside the city, on the paved road leading to the town which had grown up around the old village of Sinanju. Within minutes, word had reached the old quarter that the premier was coming, along with the real Master of Sinanju, and in only moments word was at the home of Chiun.

  “Master,” said the granddaughter of the carpenter to Chiun, who sat on a mat staring through one of the house windows toward the bay, “many men are coming.”

  “Yes?”

  “The premier is with them. And so, they say, is one of your blood.”

  Chiun turned slowly on the mat to look at the girl.

  “Know one thing, child. When trouble comes, it comes at its own time, never at yours. Even now, how quickly comes the day of darkness.”

  He turned back toward the sea and folded his arms and seemed to gaze beyond the bay, as if searching for a land where the sun might yet be shining.