Warren Murphy: Waste Not, Want Not

"As a card-carrying Commie, you'd have to be," Remo said dryly. The sarcasm was lost on the North Korean general.

"How soon will you leave?" Kye Pun asked excitedly. "Do you wish for me to make the travel arrangements? They are still repairing the engine of the Iraqi jet you came in. Shan Duk's accursed skull caused much damage." He spit angrily on the ground. "Or I am certain the premier himself will gladly loan you his plane, as he has in the past."

"Hold your horses," Remo said. "First, are you absolutely sure we're all through here?"

The general looked at the clipboard in his gloved hand.

A stack of papers had been snapped to the board. Lines of neat text were written in English for the benefit of the new Reigning Master of Sinanju. Across the top of each page, columns were labeled National Leader, Assassin's Name, Method/Date of Shipment, Time of Contact/Name of Caller. To the left were lined up the names of countries, one atop another. To the far right were boxes to be checked off when a line was full. All of the boxes on the first page had received a tidy red check mark.

Most of the paperwork had been filled in four months before. The Contact/Caller column and the checks had been slowly filling up as the months wore on.

General Kye Pun licked the tip of his black-gloved thumb as he rattled through the paperwork.

"Yes, yes, ye-es," he said, nodding as he went. "As I mentioned when I arrived, it appears to be finished. Norway and some of the African nations took a long time to get back to us. But the last was Morocco, and that call came today. That is why I came here. Not that I would not trade my eyes for another glimpse of this, the Pearl of the Orient."

He waved a hand to grandly encompass the mud pit and decaying shantytown that was Sinanju. At the same moment, the shifting wind brought a fresh gulp of putrescence from the thawing public outhouses.

"Beautiful," Kye Pun enthused even as he turned to vomit down the side of the bluff.

"Thanks a lot," Remo groused. "That was the one spot in town that didn't have something disgusting dripping off it."

Kye Pun apologized profusely. The general was climbing down, handkerchief in hand to clean off the rocks even as Remo turned on his heel and headed down the path.

Remo's gait was easy as he headed into the village proper. More a steady glide than a walk. The villagers he passed seemed delighted to see him. They offered reverent bows as he strode through their midst. In Korean, they offered what sounded like words of praise.

"I will never get used to those eyes," one said, bowing deeply to the new Reigning Master.

"Yes, they are homely things," agreed another. "Still, they are better than that ghost-belly white skin."

Remo-who was fluent in Korean-pretended he didn't understand a word they were saying.

It was a little game he had been playing to pass the time. He had come to Sinanju many times over the past few decades. While there, some had heard him speak Korean. This visit, he wondered how easy it would be to convince the populace that he had only ever spoken words and phrases by rote, and that he didn't understand the language at all.

He was stunned to find the people of Sinanju were even dumber than they were lazy. A few helpless shrugs and loud "whats?" during conversations, and all of them were convinced he couldn't speak a word of their language.

Through feigned ignorance he was finding that he was having to knock the bottom out of his already low opinion of the ungrateful inhabitants of Sinanju.

"Woe are we to live in this time," a man said. "To have the greatness of Sinanju squandered on this white."

"Yes," lamented a decrepit old woman as Remo passed out of the square. "If that is our future, it almost makes me wish the old one was back as Reigning Master."

These last words stung Remo.

Not for himself. He could take whatever barbs the people of Sinanju hurled at him. His troubled thoughts were of another.

He had come to Sinanju four months previous as part of the Sinanju Time of Succession, the final rite of passage before his ascension to full Reigning Master. And now that it was finally time to leave, he was afraid he would be going alone.

He followed the path to where it veered away from the shore. The hills rose above the West Korea Bay.

A pair of tall rocks in the shape of curving horns framed the sparkling water. Climbing past the artificial rock formation, Remo found himself on a wide plateau.

The mouth of a deep cave yawned wide at the back of the hilltop. A wizened figure fussed near the opening.

The old man's skin was like leather left to bleach in the desert sun for a hundred years. It was as delicate as rice paper, pulled taut over an egg-shaped scalp. Above each shell-like ear, soft tufts of yellow-white hair danced in the breeze. A thread of beard touched his sharp chin.

Chiun, former Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju, wore a striking kelly-green kimono. Across the back, mirror-image dragons of bright red reared, their embroidered tails extending down the billowing sleeves. The piping at the neck and hems was spun gold. The robe's colors made the old man look like an ancient Christmas present, forgotten and left unopened for more than a century.

The kimono danced around the elderly Korean's ankles as he breezed around the cave's entrance. He fussed at the tiny copse of three trees that grew at the mouth of the cave.

Near the old man, a peculiar little animal stood on stumpy legs. It was no more than three feet tall, with a long body that looked like a blend of cow and camel. The sad-eyed creature chewed languidly on a pile of straw.

As Remo approached, Chiun's face remained bland. He didn't lift his head from his work.

"And to what do I owe this honor, that the Reigning Master would deign to visit this lowly villager?"

"Ha, ha," Remo said. "That's almost as funny as it was last night at supper, not to mention the thousand times before that."

With fingernails like curving daggers, Chiun snipped a dead branch from the hearty pine tree at which he worked.

"If my mean utterances do somehow bring offense to the delicate ears of the Reigning Master, I beg his forgiveness," he intoned seriously. "Now, if the most gracious and honored Reigning Master would kindly move his giant clubbed white feet, his servant would be most grateful."

Frowning, Remo moved and Chiun slipped by, humming happily to himself as he went.

"You know, if your attitude fell somewhere between the sarcastic ass-kissing and the full-out insults, that'd be okay with me."

Chiun paused in clipping another dead branch. The old man cast a dull eye on the Master who had succeeded him.

Remo sighed. "Just a thought," he said.

"Our new Reigning Master is truly compassionate. How kind of you to postpone this new flirtation with thinking until spring. It would have been cruel to force the mice who lodge in your brain out into the snow."

"Yeah, I'm in real tight with the North Korean SPCA," Remo said dryly. "Speaking of animals, are you sure it's safe to drag that thing around with you?" He aimed his chin at the strange creature near the cave.

The old man glanced at the sad-eyed animal.

"I appreciate the company," Chiun replied. "It is an improvement over what I am used to."

"I'll buy you a dog," Remo said. "That thing was built out of genetically engineered spare parts by a certifiable psycho. It's probably hatching diseases that don't even have names yet. Plus it's ugly as all hell."

"Do not say such things about Remo," Chiun scolded.

Remo frowned. "And that's another thing. I don't appreciate you giving it my name."

"I meant no disrespect," Chiun replied. "I only wished to honor our village's newest Reigning Master."

When he looked up at his former pupil, Remo noted the old man's eyes. He had been doing that a lot lately.