Warren Murphy: By Eminent Domain

Remo was hardly listening. "What are they paying you in, rubles or turnips? 'Cause if it was up to me, I'd take the turnips."

The old Korean noted his pupil's distracted tone. He raised a thin eyebrow as he looked up at Remo. "What about the woman?" he asked. There was a hint of paternal concern in his hazel eyes.

Even though Remo knew the question would come, he still dreaded having to answer.

"I didn't kill her, Little Father," he admitted. "By the sounds of it, Anna was bamboozled into all this by the pinheads who run this dump of a country. And, I don't know, this could have been partly my fault for the way I left it with her at the end years ago. So I just gave her the Sinanju amnesia thing. I ditched the bodies of the guys I killed at the place she works, and I trashed the tapes of us and threw them in the river. When she wakes up, she goes back to being an adviser to the president with no memory of us. And who knows, maybe someday she'll come in handy for us in a pinch.

"And before you carp at me for defying a billion years of Sinanju tradition, don't forget I'm gonna be Master someday, and I've got this big prophesied future as the herald of some new golden age for the House, so maybe this is part of it. Maybe I'm supposed to be the guy who starts a kinder, gentler House of Sinanju. So there, that's it. You can start yelling at me now."

Chiun remained silent, allowing Remo to blurt out everything he needed to say. When his pupil finally stopped talking, the old man frowned skeptically.

"A kinder, gentler Sinanju?" he asked blandly.

"Yeah," Remo replied. "Well, maybe not. Guess we'll just have to wait and see."

"I pray I have passed into the Void long before I have to witness such a time," Chiun said. Hands sought opposing wrists within his kimono sleeves.

Remo was glad when he didn't press the point further. He stuffed his hands deep in his pockets. The line began moving toward the gate.

"None of this is easy like it used to be, Little Father," he said. "Everything's complicated these days."

"Your life is changing," Chiun said. "Perhaps what you need now is an island of stability in the storm of your life." His hands reappeared from his sleeves. The old man began reading one of his real-estate pamphlets.

Remo shook his head firmly. "No house in Maine," he insisted.

Chiun shrugged. "In that case you figure out where to put the treasure I extorted from these godless, thieving Russians. We are running out of room back home."

Nose deep in his brochure, he passed through the gate.

Standing in line behind the old Korean, Remo didn't know whether he should laugh or cry.

Epilogue

She was called Sonmi.

No one in the village knew much about her. She was from one of the older families. But since none had moved into the village in many generations, they were all members of the older families by now.

Her mother had died giving birth to her more than seventy years ago. Her father had died only recently. Some said the old man was a powerful shaman. All in the village stayed away from him and his daughter. When he died, only Sonmi wept.

On this day, as the cold sun peeked above the eastern horizon, old Sonmi picked her careful way down the rocky shore. A small fishing boat of fine Egyptian cedar was tied to a wood post. Sonmi unhooked the rope and climbed aboard.

It took a long time to row. Her withered arms were sore by the time she made it far enough out into the bay.

From a pouch on the belt of her coarse dress she produced some blessed herbs. She scattered them upon the black water, reciting the mystical chants passed down to her from her father and his father before him.

Once she was done, she stood at the edge of the wobbling boat and jumped overboard. The cold waters of the West Korean Bay accepted her body with barely a splash.

Beyond the empty boat, across the bay and up the rocky shore, the village of Sinanju where the dead woman Sonmi had lived all her life, stirred awake.