Guerner moved to the window, looking out over his valley, rolling lawns in front, the last blooming garden off to his right. The autumn sun was dying red over the Hudson beyond, bathing the valley in blood.

  Maria picked up the 7×35 Zeiss Ikon binoculars from the shelf and noticed there was dust on the lenses. Strange. He worshipped that rifle as if a woman, and let a fine pair of binoculars gather dust. Well, he had once been very good.

  She walked to the open window by him and felt the late afternoon chill. A bird sang harshly off in the distance. She wiped the binocular lenses clean on her sleeve and did not notice that this drew a glance of contempt from Guerner.

  He looked forward out the window. “Two hundred yards from here,” he said, pointing, “there is a small furry animal. I cannot see it too clearly.”

  She raised the binoculars to her eyes. “Where?”

  “About ten yards to the left of the corner of the stone wall.”

  She focused on the wall and was surprised that through the lenses, the wall appeared better lit than to her naked eyes. She remembered this was characteristic of good binoculars.

  “I can’t see it,” she said.

  “It’s moving. Now it’s still.”

  Maria scanned the wall, and there perched on its hind legs, its forelegs tucked in front as though begging, was a chipmunk. She could barely make it out.

  “I know what you’re doing,” she said, still looking. “You know little animals are always on that wall and when you shoot it will hide and you will say you shot it.”

  Maria felt the crack of the rifle at her left ear, just before she saw the chipmunk spin over as though slapped in the head with a paddle, a ball of orange fur bouncing backwards, rolling out of sight behind the wall, then rolling into sight again, the legs just as they had been, but without a head. The legs quivered. The white patch on the stomach still pulsated.

  “That bird,” said Guerner quietly and Maria again heard the painful crack of the rifle, and suddenly in a flock of dark birds far in the distance, perhaps 300 yards, one dropped. And she did not lift her binoculars because she knew its head was gone too.

  “Another chipmunk,” Guerner said, and the rifle cracked, and Maria saw nothing, partly because she had stopped looking.

  “It is only possible if the target is alive,” Guerner said. “That is the secret. One must sense the life of the target. One must feel it move into the orbit of your life. And then, there can be no miss.”

  He clutched his rifle to his chest, as though thanking the instrument.

  “When do we perform against this fool, this Remo, who uses only his hands?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow morning,” Maria said.

  “Good. My weapon can hardly wait.” He squeezed it tenderly in his two large hands. “The target, the living target, gives itself to you. We want the living target to do it with. The secret is that you do it with the victim.” His voice was smooth and deep and vibrant. As it had been 30 years before, Maria remembered, when they had made love.

  10

  SEVENTY thousand dollars. How did they arrive at that price? Remo hung up the phone in the booth and walked out to Adams Street.

  The sun made Boston alive, a very dead city from the time the first settler designed the dirty, gloomy metropolis, to this September noon when the air was warm with just a hint of growing coolness.

  He had done his morning exercises behind the wheel of the rented automobile, driving all night from Montreal to the din of Chiun and the young Mrs. Liu. At one point, while he was reinforcing his breathing, Mrs. Liu surrendered to angry tears. Chiun leaned forward and whispered in Remo’s ear: “They don’t like that. Heh, heh.”

  “Chiun, will you cut that out now?” Remo said.

  Chiun laughed and repeated the phrase in Chinese that had caused the anger.

  “My government has sent me here to officially identify my husband,” Mei Soong said in English. “They did not send me here to suffer abuse from this reactionary, meddlesome old man.”

  “I show you how old I am in bed, little girl. Heh, heh.”

  “You are gross, even for a Korean. Do you still remember your last erection?”

  Chiun emitted a warlike shriek and then poured forth verbal Oriental abuse.

  Remo pulled to the side of the road. “All right, Chiun. Up front with me.”

  Stilled instantly, Chiun moved into the front seat and adjusted himself angrily. “You are a white man,” he said. “Like moldy dead grain. White.”

  “I thought you were mad at her, not me,” Remo said, pulling back to the Thruway where cars were zipping by, most of them no longer under the control of their drivers. At 65 miles an hour in a soft-sprung comfort car, the operator was aiming, not driving.

  “You embarrassed me in front of her.”

  “How?”

  “By ordering me up front like a dog. You have no feeling for real people because you are not people. And in front of her.”

  “All white men are like that,” said Mrs. Liu. “That’s why they need running dogs like you to work for them.”

  “Shit,” said Remo, summing up the situation.

  He had lost two of the three cars following him by pulling off the roadway. But the last car still was on his tail. With one hand, Remo unwrapped the red cellophane covering from a pack of cough drops on the dashboard. He smoothed it out as best he could, then held it in front of his eyes, peering through it as he drove through the pre-dawn darkness.

  He continued looking through the red filter for a full two minutes, as he began to push the car to its limits. Sixty-five. Seventy. Eighty. Ninety. As he came to the top of a rise with the pursuit car some 400 yards behind him, he saw what he was looking for. As soon as he cleared the rise, he turned off his lights and dropped the piece of red cellophane. His eyes, now functional in the dark, saw clearly the Boston exit, and without lights at 90 miles an hour, Remo whipped around the turn, then began slowing down without hitting the brake.

  In his mirror, he could see the pursuit car—its driver blinded by darkness—plow ahead on the Thruway toward New York. Good-bye car number three.

  “Barney Oldfield,” Chiun said. “A regular Barney Oldfield. Did it ever occur to you that your life would be safer if you stopped and did combat, Mr. Barney Oldfield?”

  “You can fasten your seat belt.”

  “I am my own seat belt. But that is because I can control my body the way civilized people are supposed to. Perhaps you should fasten your seat belt. Heh, heh.”

  “Reckless, inconsiderate driving,” said Mrs. Liu. “Do you know that driving at these speeds consumes gasoline more rapidly than driving at lower speeds? Besides, I want to find my husband, wherever he is, not precede him to heaven.”

  “Shit,” said Remo, and it was the last thing he said until they reached Boston. He wondered if he had been wise to shake the tail. But his mission called for finding General Liu, not endangering the general’s wife. His followers would pick him up again, if they hadn’t already, and he wanted the meeting on his terms, when his decisions would not be warped because of the danger to the girl.

  Now, he was in Boston, it was just after noon, and it felt somewhat exhilarating to know that someone thought you were worth $70,000 to kill. But as he walked back to his hotel, a vague anger began to grow. Only $70,000?

  A basketball player recently was sued for jumping a team, the team claiming he was worth $4 million. Four million for him and his life, and only $70,000 for Remo’s death. Inside the hotel lobby, Remo felt concentration on him. It was not strong and his anger had almost dulled his senses. Collecting the extra room key, he noticed a scruffy woman in a black dress and hat reading a newspaper. But her eyes didn’t move across the columns.

  Maybe he should sell tickets? He thought momentarily of collecting fees from everyone following him, Chiun and the girl. Maybe go up to the woman and say, “Uh, look. We’re the in thing this week. We’re going to be at Fenway Park on Saturday and you can’t tail us without a ticket that night. I recommend a good box seat so you can use a knife or even your hands if one of us should wander near the bullpen.”

  But Remo had been trained better than that. One never gave away the knowledge he was being tailed. One gives away nothing. As Chiun had said in the first weeks of training at Folcroft when Remo’s wrists were still sore from the current of the electric chair:

  “Fear is all right for you. But never induce it in your victim. Never exert your will on him. Never let him know you even exist. Give him nothing of you. Be like the strange wind that never blows.”

  It had sounded like any other of the many riddles Remo did not understand, and it took him years at his trade before he was able to perfect the skill of sensing people watching him. Some people experienced it occasionally, usually in crowded situations.

  For Remo, it was everywhere, all the time. Like in the lobby of the Hotel Liberty. And the apparently harmless old lady putting the spot on Remo.

  Remo strolled to the elevator. A crummy $70,000. The car stopped at the eleventh floor. A basketball player worth $4 million dollars.

  The car door closed behind him. As the elevator started up, he went up in full jump, his chest stretched out to catch the nine-foot ceiling. And down he came again, dribbling an imaginary basketball, with a small cry of victory.

  He had seen Lew Alcindor in a game once, and on that jump, Remo would have gone over him. On most jumps, he would have, Remo thought. What Lew Alcindor did better than Remo was stand taller. And, of course, find a better job. One, not only with retirement benefits, but with retirement.

  Remo wondered, when that last day came, if they would ever find a trace of his body. “That’s the biz, sweetheart,” he said to himself and unlocked the door to his room.

  Chiun was sitting in the middle of the floor, his legs crossed, humming happily to himself, a tuneless, nameless song that he used to express happiness at a joyous event. Remo was immediately suspicious.

  “Where’s Mei Soong?” he asked.

  Chiun looked up almost dreamily. He wore his white robes of joy, one of the fifteen changes he had brought with him. Remo had a valise, the girl brought everything in her coat pockets, and Chiun had a steamer trunk.

  “She’s fine,” he said to Remo.

  “Where is she fine?”

  “In her bathroom.”

  “She’s taking a shower?”

  Chiun reverted to his humming.

  “Is she taking a shower?”

  “Ooowah, hummmmm, ooohwah … nee … shu … hmmmmmm.”

  “Chiun, what did you do with her?” Remo demanded.

  “As you suggested, I made sure she would not escape.”

  “You bastard,” Remo said, dashing through the adjoining door. He had rented three rooms, the central one being Mrs. Liu’s. The bathroom door was locked from the outside.

  Remo opened it. And saw her.

  She hung from the shower curtain rod, trussed like an animal being brought back to a village for a feast. Her wrists were bound with strips torn from sheets, and tied together over the chrome shower rod. Her feet were bound in the same fashion, over the shower rod, and her body made a “u” as she faced the ceiling, her mouth gagged, her thick black hair flowing toward the floor, her clothes laying in a pile by the tub. She was nude.

  Her eyes were red with anger and fear, and she looked pleadingly at Remo as he threw the door open.

  Remo quickly untied her feet and gently placed them on the rim of the white bathtub, then untied her hands. When her hands were free, she went for his throat, trying to dig her nails into the flesh. But Remo caught the hands with his left, and untied her gag with his right.

  “Hold on,” he said.

  She screamed something in Chinese.

  “Now wait a minute. Let’s talk,” he said.

  “Talk, you fascist beast? You tied me up.”

  “I did not.”

  “Your running dog did.”

  “He lost his head. He won’t do that again.”

  “Do not take me for a child, beast. I know the tricks. Your partner abuses me. You are friendly and then convince me of the virtues of capitalism. You do this because you have killed General Liu and now you wish me to join your capitalist clique and make a false report to the People’s Republic of China.”

  “This is no hustle,” Remo said. “I’m sorry.”

  “The word of a capitalist. How can I trust anyone without social consciousness?”

  “I’m not lying.” Remo could see her body untense and set itself in quiet hostility to him. He released her wrists. She dropped her hands, and appeared to be going for her clothes, when she moved for a sneak punch, which Remo dodged without even moving his feet or changing his expression.

  “Bastard,” she said, angrier now because she had missed. “I am leaving this country now and heading back for Canada and then home. You may stop me by killing me as you did my husband. But my disappearance will be the final proof my government needs of your country’s perfidy.”

  Remo watched her step into her coarse white panties of material that would be unsuitable for any American or Japanese woman.

  The mission was now a failure. He had been taken out of normal function, assigned as a bodyguard to prevent what had just happened—or something worse—and now he watched Mei Soong prepare to leave, with Dr. Smith’s and the President’s peace melted in the heat of her anger.

  Since he was out of function already, he would step further out of function. It was a crazy ballgame and if the pitcher were suddenly assigned to play first base, then, dammit, he would do it the way he thought best.

  While Mei Soong was hitching on her bra from behind, Remo stepped close to her and unhooked it. She tried to break free by kicking backwards toward his groin, but Remo spun her around and, laughing carried her into the bedroom and went down with her onto the tan bedspread, pressing her into the mattress, as her arms flailed wildly at his head.

  11

  IN the other room, Chiun was amusing himself, reading a detailed analysis proving how little the New York Times understood of the turmoil inside China. The Page One article talked of militaristic elements anxious to stop the Premier’s visit to America and of the desire among China’s “more stable leadership”—Chiun snorted at that—to solidify relations with the United States.

  In Washington, the President was still planning for the Premier’s trip, the Times said, but there were rumors that he was fearful the Chinese would cancel it.

  Chiun put the paper down. The press was slowly beginning to learn of the disappearance of General Liu. That could be serious.

  But cancel the trip? Not if the Chinese thought there was any way of milking even one dollar from the fools who ran the United States.

  His attention was distracted by noise from inside Mei Soong’s room, and he cocked an ear to listen.

  Inside, Remo had pinned her knees with his body and with his left hand manacled her wrists together above her head. Her soft, smooth face was twisted now, the teeth clenched tight, the lips drawn thin, the eyes narrowed, a mask of pure hate. “Beast, beast, beast,” she yelled and Remo smiled down at her to let her see his calm and to understand it, to know that his need did not make him weak and that he was in full control.

  Her body would be his instrument. Her hate and violent struggle would be used to his ends, not hers, because in fighting, she had surrendered her control and all he had to do was exploit it.

  His right hand moved beneath her smooth buttocks, and neatly tore the coarse cloth panties. With his fingers, he began to work the muscles of her buttocks, while he kept his face impassive. His hand worked to the small of her back, and then down again to the other cheek, reinforcing the tension of the lower body.

  He entertained the thought to kiss her on the lips, but that would be wrong now. He was not doing this for fun. Chiun had taken even that away from him. He had done the impossible. He had made sex boring.

  It was on an early training session, this one a month’s long regimen at Plensikoff’s Gymnasium in Norfolk, Virginia, a small building off Granby Street that only a handful of people knew was not an abandoned warehouse.

  It had started with the lectures, the dry riddles and Remo asking, “Okay, when do I get laid?”

  Chiun had talked about the orgasm, which was a major requirement for a relationship only when nothing else held it together. Chiun was sitting on the gymnasium floor in a robin’s egg blue kimono with yellow birds sewn on.

  “When do I get laid?” Remo asked again.

  “I see we have exceeded your usual attention span of two minutes. Could it hold your attention if a naked woman were to walk in here?”

  “It might,” Remo said. “But she’s got to have big jugs.”

  “The American mind,” said Chiun. “You should be distilled and bottled as the American mind. Now. Imagine the woman standing here.”

  “I knew it was too good to be true,” Remo said. The wooden gymnasium floor was hard and making his duff numb. He shifted his weight and saw Chiun cast a disapproving look at him. Afternoon sunlight came through the dust-lathered windows of the gymnasium and Remo could follow a fly in its light, until it disappeared between the windows, then reappeared again in light.

  “Are you concentrating?”

  “Yes,” said Remo.

  “You’re lying,” said Chiun.

  “All right. All right. What do you want me to do?”

  “See a woman standing naked before you. Create her outline. See her breasts. Her hips, the juncture of her legs. Do you see?”

  Remo indulged the old man. “Yeah, I see her.”

  “You do,” Chiun commanded.

  Remo did.

  “But you are looking wrong. What does her face look like?”

  “I can’t see her face.”

  “Ah, very good. You cannot see her face because that is the way you see women. Faceless. Now try to see her face. I will draw it for you. Simply. And I will tell you what she is feeling standing there undraped. What do you think she is feeling?”

  “Cold.”

  “No. She is feeling exactly what she has been taught to feel since childhood. It could be embarrassment, or excitement, or fear. Maybe power. But her feelings about sex are social. And that is the key to awakening a woman’s body. Through her social upbringing. You see, we must…”