“And what shall I do, Master?”

  “Nothing. There is nothing we can do.” Chiun’s voice sounded old and tired.

  The girl stood for a moment, waiting for more, then walked slowly away, confused and not really understanding why the Master was so deeply depressed.

  The caravan of cars skirted the main city of Sinanju, turned toward the shoreline, then followed a dirty sand road that led into the heart of the old village.

  They halted in the square in the center of town, and Nuihc and the premier stepped out onto the street. The premier wore his military tunic, Nuihc a two-piece black fighting costume. In the custom of Sinanju, it was unbelted. Fighting uniforms were belted for demonstrations; for fights to the death, no belts were worn. This tradition dated back four hundred years when two of Chiun’s ancestors had fought for the vacant title of Master of Sinanju. One of the contenders wore a uniform with belt. Five minutes later he had been strangled with the belt. Since that time, no Master had worn a belted uniform except in exercise, practice, or demonstration. But never in combat.

  Nuihc looked up and down the streets. He could see people peering through their windows but afraid to come out onto the street until they knew more about this caravan and its meaning.

  “It has been many years since I walked this ground,” said Nuihc. A heavy breeze blew off the bay and swirled his long, shiny black hair about his face. His eyes were narrowed into slits that looked like knife-cuts in smooth yellow flesh.

  Kim Il Sung saw Nuihc’s eyes and the blood lust in them, and it was there as if it always belonged there, and for just a moment Sung again wondered if it were not just a matter of time before that lust was turned upon him.

  Chiun’s palace was at the end of the street, thirty yards from the square, and now Nuihc looked at it and his face broke into a smile.

  “Let us do it,” he said.

  Without waiting for an answer, he stepped off through the dust and sand toward the house of the Master of Sinanju. Kim Il Sung remained standing alongside his vehicle. Purposefully, conscious of the eyes watching him, Nuihc strode to the front door of Chiun’s home and pounded on the door with his fist. Under the hammering, shells cracked and broke loose and powdered the wooden step in front of the door.

  “Who is there?” answered a young woman’s voice after a long pause.

  “Nuihc is here,” said the long-haired man in a loud ringing voice. “Descendant of the Masters of Sinanju, himself the new Master of Sinanju. Send out the American weakling and the senile traitor who has given him our secrets.”

  There was a long pause.

  Then the woman’s voice again.

  “Go away. No one is home.”

  Nuihc pounded upon the door again. “There is no hiding for you, old man, not for you or for the white lackey you would impose upon the people of this village. Come out of there before I come in and drag you out by the scruff of your scrawny neck.”

  Another pause.

  The woman’s voice again.

  “It is not permitted to enter the Master’s house without the Master’s permission. Be gone, urchin.”

  Nuihc paused as it seeped into his head what Chiun’s game was. Nuihc was protected in anything he said to Chiun because the old man, as Master of Sinanju, was not permitted to raise a hand against another from the village. But that protection ended should Nuihc enter Chiun’s home uninvited, and Chiun could have the right to deal with him as just another burglar. Nuihc did not like the prospect. Still, how to get the old man and the American out of the house?

  He walked back, jauntily, toward Kim Il Sung. His mind was clicking and he knew the answer.

  He spoke to the premier, and then Sung and his entourage followed Nuihc back to the house.

  Again Nuihc pounded on the door. Again the woman answered: “Go away, I told you.”

  “The premier is here,” said Nuihc, raising his voice to be sure both Chiun and the villagers heard.

  There was a pause.

  The woman’s voice again.

  “Tell him he is in the wrong place. The nearest brothel is in Pyongyang.”

  Nuihc spoke out crisply. “Tell the old man that unless he and the imperialist white swine come out, the premier will order this house destroyed by explosion for being what it is: a spy’s den giving comfort to an enemy of the state.” He turned and smiled at Sung.

  Another pause. Longer this time.

  Finally the woman’s voice again: “Return to the village square. The Master will meet you there.”

  “Tell him to hurry,” ordered Nuihc. “We do not have time to waste on the doddering of the ancient.” He turned and walked alongside the premier, back the thirty yards to the village square, where they waited by the premier’s Cadillac. Now they were not alone. The people of Sinanju, who had been watching and listening from inside their homes and shops, now stepped out onto the old wooden sidewalks and, as the premier and Nuihc passed, they cheered.

  Inside his home, Chiun had heard Nuihc’s final ultimatum and now he heard the cheers and knew what they were for. He stared out toward the bay. After all these years, after all his service, after all the centuries of tradition, it had come to this: a Master of Sinanju, humiliated in his own village by one of his own family, with the village citizens cheering the intruder.

  How pleasant it would be to do what should be done. To step out into the square and to reduce Nuihc to the pile of flesh and bone chip that he should be. But the centuries of tradition that had given him pride also gave Chiun responsibility. He was disgraced now before the villagers, but he would be disgraced in his own eyes if he should strike Nuihc.

  The younger man knew that, and the knowledge of his freedom from attack had emboldened his tongue.

  It should have been Remo, Chiun knew. It was for Remo to meet this challenge, to destroy Nuihc for once and all. So it had been written in the books ages before. But Remo lay asleep, his muscles unable to work, more helpless than a child.

  And because neither Remo nor Chiun could raise an arm against Nuihc, the title of Master of Sinanju was going to pass, for the first time in unremembered centuries, into the hands of one who would not wear it with pride and honor.

  Chiun rose from his mat and went into the main living section of the house and he lit a candle. From a chest, he took a long white robe, the robe of innocence, and a black fighting uniform. He fingered the black uniform fondly, then dropped it atop the chest. He would wear the white robe, the color of the unspoiled. The color of the chicken.

  He donned the robe quickly then kneeled before the candle and prayed to his ancestors. In that moment was crystallized all the training of Sinanju, because its root was: to survive.

  And Chiun had made his decision. He would give up the title of Master. He would trade it for Remo’s life. And then one day, when Remo was well, there might be a chance for Remo to reclaim that title.

  It would do Chiun no good. He would, by that time, have been marked in history as a disgrace, the first Master ever forced to give up his title. But at least the title might one day be wrested from Nuihc, and that was some small measure of consolation.

  Chiun reached forward a delicate long-nailed finger and extinguished the candle flame by squeezing the wick between thumb and index finger. He rose to his feet in one fluid movement that left his robe still and unswirling.

  “Master?” said the girl, appearing next to him.

  “Yes?” said Chiun.

  “Must you go?”

  “I am the Master. I cannot run.”

  “But they do not want you. They want the American. Give him up.”

  “I am sorry, child,” said Chiun. “But he is my son.”

  The woman shook her head. “He is white, Master.”

  “And he is more my son than any yellow man. He shares not my blood but he shares my heart and my mind and my soul. I cannot give him up.” And Chiun touched the girl lightly on her cheek and walked toward the front door.

  * * *

  In the square, the villagers crowded near the car where Nuihc and the premier stood. The motorcycle soldiers kept them at a respectful distance, but their voices spoke out clearly.

  “The Master is too old.”

  “He betrayed us by giving the secrets to the white man.”

  “Nuihc will restore the honor of Sinanju.”

  Some felt they should say that Chiun’s labors had always supported the village, that it was not given to mere villagers to know what was on the Master’s mind, and that the poor did not starve and the elderly were not discarded and the babies were not drowned, sent home to the sea, anymore because of Chiun’s efforts. But they did not say these things because it seemed no one wished to hear them, and instead all wished to heap praise upon Nuihc who preened himself and soaked up the adulation as he stood by the premier.

  “Where is he?” asked Kim Il Sung of Nuihc.

  His answer did not come from Nuihc. The crowd was silent, its humming babble stopped in midword. All eyes turned toward Chiun’s home.

  Coming down the street slowly, down the thirty yards toward the cars and the crowd and his tormentor, came Chiun, his face impassive, his steps slow but light, his hands folded within each other inside the voluminous sleeves of his traditional white robe.

  “Where is the American?” one man called.

  “The false Master still protects the westerner,” said another in outrage.

  “Traitor,” screamed another man.

  And then the voices rose above the tiny square, “Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!”

  Back inside Chiun’s house, the young woman who was his servant heard the catcalls and the hoots and her eyes watered with tears. How could they? How did they dare to do such a thing to the Master? And finally she realized the reason. It was not the Master they hated, but the white American. For the white American, the Master was doing this.

  It was not fair. The Master’s life destroyed because of the American.

  The American would not escape the responsibility for his being. She went to the living room and from a pearl-encrusted scabbard withdrew a highly polished knife with a long, curved blade.

  Holding it behind her, she went into the room where Remo slept. His eyes were still closed. She knelt down beside the sleeping mat. She raised her eyes to the heavens and offered up a prayer to her ancestors, to understand what she was doing.

  She looked down on the hated white man. “Lift the knife up and drive it into his heart,” a small voice whispered insistently inside her.

  The white man’s eyes opened. He smiled at her.

  “Hi, sweetheart, where’s Chiun?” he said.

  She lifted the knife up over her head and willed herself to drive it down into Remo’s chest, but there she let it drop from her hands and buried her face against Remo’s chest, weeping.

  16

  “WHERE is the swine American?” Nuihc’s voice was a sneer as he looked across the two feet of space separating him from Chiun.

  Chiun ignored him. To the premier, he said: “I see you have chosen a side.”

  The premier shrugged.

  “How like a creature from Pyongyang,” said Chiun. “To cast his lot with a trollop.”

  One of the motorcycle soldiers stepped forward. He raised his pistol over his head to club Chiun for his insult. Chiun did not move. The pistol poised and Kim Il Sung barked: “Cease.”

  The soldier let his hand down slowly, then with a look of hatred at Chiun he backed away.

  “Do not be angry,” said Chiun. “Your premier has saved you to die another day.”

  “Enough,” said Nuihc. “Remo. Where is he?”

  “He rests,” said Chiun.

  “I have challenged him. He is a coward not to be here.”

  “A coward. A coward. The traitor has given the wisdom to a coward,” came cries from the crowd.

  Chiun waited until the noise subsided.

  “Who is the coward?” said Chiun. “Is it the injured white man? Or is it the cowardly squirrel who used three people to have him injured?”

  “Enough, old man,” said Nuihc.

  “Not enough,” said Chiun. “You fool these people now into thinking how brave Nuihc is. Did you tell them how you last faced the American? In the museum of the whale? And how he left you tied up, with your own belt, like a child?”

  Nuihc’s face flushed. “He had help. He did not do it alone.”

  “And did you tell them how you tried to kill the Master, in the oil fields of that faraway land? And how I left you to dry in the sun like a starfish?”

  “You talk much, old man,” said Nuihc bitterly. “But I have come here to get rid of the American for good. And then I, not you, am the Master of Sinanju. Because you have betrayed your people by giving the secrets to a white man.”

  “Traitor!”

  “Traitor!” came the voices again.

  “You have forgotten the legend of the night tiger,” said Chiun. “Of the dead man whose face is pale and who will come from the dead and be trained by the Master to be the night tiger who cannot die. You have forgotten these things.”

  “Your legends are for children,” said Nuihc with a sneer. “Bring on your American and we will see who cannot die.”

  “Where is he?”

  “The white man … bring him forward!”

  The voices raised in a roar and under them, Chiun spoke softly to Nuihc. “You may have Sinanju, Nuihc. Let Remo live. That is my price.”

  Loudly, so he could be heard by all, Nuihc answered. “I do not deal with the senile and the foolish. Remo must die. And you must be sent home.” A hush fell over the crowd. In the old days, before the labors of the Masters of Sinanju had given the villagers sustenance, the old and the weak and the hungry babies were sent home—by being put into the cold waters of the bay to drown.

  Chiun looked carefully into Nuihc’s eyes. There was no mercy there, no pity, no flicker of humanity.

  His final offer.

  “I will send myself home,” said Chiun. “But the man with white skin must live.”

  His voice was a tired plea for mercy for Remo.

  His answer was a smile from Nuihc who said, “So long as he lives, Sinanju’s secrets are not secrets. He has learned the ancient ways, now they must die with him. Now.”

  “Now!” came the cries.

  “The American must die!”

  And then it was that a voice rang over the shouts of the maddened townspeople. And so it was that they turned and cast their eyes toward the palace of the Master and a hush fell over them as there they saw, standing in the dust of the road, the white man dressed in a two-piece black suit without belt.

  And his voice rang over the heads of the villagers like an alarm bell and they looked at each other in amazement because the white man spoke in the tongue of the villagers, and his words were the words of that land and its old ways, and what he did say was:

  “I am created Shiva, the Destroyer, death the shatterer of worlds. The dead night tiger made whole by the Master of Sinanju. What is this dog meat that now challenges me?”

  And the crowd was hushed, for their tongues were coated with the powder of fear.

  Chiun was looking at Nuihc when Remo’s voice sounded. The old man saw Nuihc’s eyes widen with surprise and perhaps fear.

  Kim Il Sung looked shocked, also frightened, but fright could be forgiven in one who was not of the House of Sinanju.

  Chiun turned slowly. Had the gods heard his prayers and visited a miracle of healing upon Remo?

  But the hope faded when he saw Remo, standing there heavily, most of his weight on his uninjured left leg, his hands and arms still hanging awkwardly close to his body, resting on his hip bones to take the pressure of their weight off his damaged shoulders.

  When Chiun thought of the pain Remo had endured to dress and to walk down that dusty road to the village square, his heart filled with love, but also pity because now Remo faced Nuihc’s murderous vengeance.

  Nuihc saw too. He saw the wrists resting awkwardly on hips; he saw the weight resting heavily on Remo’s left leg. With a smile that promised death, he walked from the small group of men toward Remo.

  Remo stood there, his brain throbbing from the pain of his walk. Nuihc was supposed to deliver the fourth blow to Remo’s left leg, the blow that would cripple or kill him.

  He had a chance if Nuihc got careless. If he got close enough to Remo, the bigger American might be able to drag him down with his weight and get in some kind of blow. It was all he had. As he looked up and saw Nuihc’s eyes meeting his, he knew it would not be enough.

  Over Nuihc’s head, Remo could see Chiun standing still, his face draped in sorrow. He knew the torment that must be in Chiun’s mind now—his affection for Remo, and his refusal to disgrace the House by hitting a villager, even if that villager was Nuihc.

  Nuihc stopped now. He was out of Remo’s reach.

  “So you still walk,” he said.

  “Get on with it, dog meat,” said Remo.

  “As you will.”

  Remo waited for him to come closer, to deliver the fourth stroke, the one to Remo’s left leg.

  Nuihc did not do it. His right leg flashed out and the point of his foot smashed into the knot of muscles at Remo’s right shoulder. Remo screamed as the muscles reseparated.

  His wrist dropped from its resting place on his hip. The weight of his arm could not pain any more than the shoulder itself did.

  Slowly Nuihc moved around behind Remo, as if the American were a stationary object. Remo could not turn to see the blow coming. He felt it land, inside the muscles in the back of his left shoulder. Again he screamed with the pain, as he could feel the fibers of muscle tearing.

  Still he stood.

  Nuihc was back in front of him, his face contorted with hatred.

  “So you are Shiva?” he said. “You are a weak white man, weak as all white men are weak, corrupted as all Americans are corrupted. How does this feel, night tiger?” he shouted and drove his left foot into the bunch of muscles in Remo’s already injured right thigh.

  Another scream.

  Remo went down. His face hit into the dust. The powder coated his lips. His mind felt each muscle of his body and each one shouted its pain. He did not try to rise. He knew the effort was hopeless.