Warren Murphy: Father to Son

Chiun watched Wang watch the bird disappear. The old man could contain himself no longer.

"O Wang, Greatest of all the Masters of Sinanju-"

"None of that," Wang interrupted, attention snapping sharp from the suddenly eerie night sky. "I didn't come all the way here from my eternal rest in the Void to hear you polish my apples."

"Forgive me," Chiun said. "I only wish to know, you are here to take me home, are you not?"

"If you mean am I here to watch you die, no. Unless that's what you decide to do. If so, I'll send you on your journey on wings of doves. When we reach the land of your fathers, we will place rings on your fingers and give you a seat of honor for all you have accomplished." The chubby man leaned in close. "But you'll be missing out on the best half of the story." He offered a broad wink.

Chiun could only shake his head.

"I do not understand. I have finished my work on Earth. I have taken my pupil to the pinnacle of perfection. There is no more I can teach him."

"There's always more," Wang said. "And who knows? Maybe he can teach you a thing or two." He saw the look of utter bafflement on Chiun's face. "Haven't you figured it out yet? Why do you think you were entrusted with training Remo? You know his destiny. Yours and his are intertwined. You're a Master of Sinanju unlike any that have come before, including me. Your destiny is not to die out here in the middle of nowhere. Your songs will be sung in our village long after my name has been forgotten." At this, Chiun hung his head in shame.

"I fear not. I am disgraced, for thanks to my failure, the lips that would sing such songs have all been silenced. The frozen curses of the dead are my herald's song."

"You mean what you saw back in Sinanju?" Wang waved an easy dismissal. "A vision of what might be."

Chiun's face showed deep confusion. "I have seen it with my own eyes," he insisted.

"And even if your eyes tell you the truth, Sinanju lives in you and in your pupil. Assuming, that is, you choose not to die and he manages to get out of this mess alive."

"Remo will be fine," Chiun said. "He is back with his American emperor by now."

"Are you sure about that?" Wang asked.

His tone sent a worried warning flash across the Master of Sinanju's wrinkled face.

"Why?" the old man asked. "What of Remo?"

"Nothing," Wang said absently. He was back to studying the sky. This time his gaze was directed straight up. "Maybe everything. We'll just have to wait and see with that boy. By the way, I like him, Chiun. You two work well together. A few too many bodies for my taste, but you can't have everything. But whatever is or isn't wrong with our Remo will have to wait." He was still looking skyward. A smile touched his broad lips. "Your ride is here."

Chiun did not understand what the Great Wang meant.

Before he could ask, he felt his senses suddenly go haywire. All around he felt the prickly sensation of eyes winking on, one after another. The invisible gaze of hundreds directed on his wizened form.

Though old, it remained a familiar sensation, one not easily forgotten. For the year before his ascendancy to Reigning Masterhood, Chiun had endured the Masters' Tribunal, feeling in every moment the invisible stares of all the former Masters of Sinanju. The Hour of Judgment. But that was many years ago, when the world was young and every day held the promise of adventure. This was not Chiun's time. The past Masters should have been with Remo, not Chiun. There had to have been some cosmic mistake.

But there was Wang. If Wang was present, it had to be right.

The greatest Master of Sinanju was still standing there, staring up into the heavens. Chiun followed his gaze.

And then he saw it. Coalescing from the swirl of countless galaxies. A fog of mystic energy churning round and round, burning brighter as it swirled and flashed.

A spark in the mist. A flash to fire. The light more blinding and brilliant than anything touched by hard flint to mere earthly tinder. The ring of fire descended.

The glow from the supernatural light burned hot on the barren wastes of rock and scrub.

Small on the ground, the Master of Sinanju felt his heart catch. With utter incomprehension, he looked to Wang.

The smile had returned to the fat man's face. Wang's broad face was angelic in the warm radiant glow of the slowly descending light.

"Show time," the Great Wang announced.

And when the ring of fire touched ground, the brilliance of the light consumed them utterly.

Chapter 32

Captain Ralph Chauncy didn't like his orders one damn bit. Ordinarily he would have blamed it on just the locale. This special route always made him uneasy. Not that anyone in his right mind would blame him. It wasn't easy sneaking into North Korean territorial waters. Especially since the Navy had seen fit to give him command of an old rust bucket of a submarine like the USS Darter.

Every November 12 for the past seven years, Captain Chauncy was given delivery duty. He would sneak into the West Korean Bay in the dead of night so his men could paddle some special cargo ashore. Crates of something. Captain Chauncy never looked to see what was inside. For all he knew, they could have been crammed full of weapons for anti-Commie agitators or goddamn Watchtower pamphlets. It wasn't his job to ask. What was his job was keeping the leaky bucket that was the Darter from splitting apart at the seams.

That first trip Captain Chauncy had no idea why the Navy had given him the Darter-a boat that by all rights should have seen a complete refit or been sold for scrap. He found the reason at the bottom of the West Korean Bay.

Another U.S. sub was already there. Nestled in the silt. Gaping holes where the hull had been blown apart.

It was a chilling moment.

Captain Chauncy had heard about a sub being sunk in the West Korean Bay years before. He assumed it had been salvaged. Never thought he was being sent to the exact same spot. The rusting sub appeared to have been left as warning. On that first visit he realized he was looking at his own future, should fate so choose it for him. A forgotten watery grave for the USS Darter.

But the Darter was more than just a replacement for the ill-fated USS Harlequin. Chauncy learned afterward from Admiral Lee Enright Leahy, who had commanded the Darter for years, that the Darter had been the first sub to haul cargo on this route. In a way it was a homecoming for the creaky old sub. Captain Chauncy could not wax nostalgic.

It was bad enough to have to risk sneaking into enemy waters, bad enough to do so in a rust bucket, bad enough that he'd just done this whole dance three weeks ago with the regular cargo crates. But now his boat had been turned into a goddamn shuttle service.

Captain Chauncy was looking out the periscope. The weird rock formations that looked like a pair of blunt devil's horns told him he was back in the right place.

"Go get them," Chauncy ordered his executive officer. "Tell them we're here."

"Aye, sir."

As the exec hurried off, Captain Chauncy grunted unhappily to himself. He would have preferred crates. He had picked up his two passengers in the Pacific.

The men had been flown out to an aircraft carrier that had rendezvoused with the Darter.

One was an old man, the other a kid only about ten years older than the sailors aboard the sub. Oddly enough, it was the old man who seemed more comfortable on the sub. He sat on his bunk for most of the trip as if waiting for the next downtown bus. The young one looked queasier every time Captain Chauncy checked in on them.

The exec returned less than a minute later, the two men in tow. As usual the young one looked a little green.

"This is your stop, gentlemen," the captain said. "My men can have you on shore in fifteen minutes."