Warren Murphy: Chinese Puzzle

And then, when he was ready, he would act with thoroughness, and when the plan proved successful, he would hold in his arms once more, Mei Soong, the beautiful flower, the only pleasure of his life outside duty.

This plan must not fail. Not even before this impossible American who had once again revived the ancient fairy tales of an ancient China. Yes. He must first discredit the fairy tales.

General Liu rose from his cot and banged on the heavy steel door. A man in drab army type clothing opened it. "I will meet with the leaders immediately," General Liu said. Then he shut the door with a clang and heard the lock fall into place.

Within minutes, all had gathered, standing in the little airless room. The early arrivals were fidgeting for want of fresh air. Some perspired and General Liu noticed how fat some faces were, how flaccid, how pale. They were not like the people of the long march. They were like the people of Chiang Kai Shek and his soft running dogs.

Well, General Liu had often led unfit men into combat. He talked now to them ... of the long struggle and of the dark hours and how these had been overcome. He talked of hunger and cold and how these had been overcome. He spoke to the pride in the hearts of the people before him and when they no longer suffered from the heat or the air but were overcome by revolutionary fervor, he hit his target where he wished to hit his target.

"Comrades," he said in the outlawed Cantonese dialect, looking around the room and meeting their eyes, "we who have accomplished so much, how can we now fall prey to a child's fairy tale? Was not the winter in the caves of Yenan fiercer than a fairy tale? Were not the armies of Chiang and his running dogs fiercer than a fairy tale? Are not the armaments of modern times fiercer than a fairy tale?"

"Yes, yes," came the voices. "True. How true."

"Then why," asked General Liu, "should we fear the fairy tales of Sinanju?"

One young man said triumphantly: "Never fear suffering. Never fear death. Never fear, least of all, fairy tales."

But an old man, in what were once the clothes of the mainland, said: "He kills like the night tigers of Sinanju. This he does."

"I fear this man," General Liu said, stunning his audience. "But I fear him as a man, not as a fairy tale. He is a formidable man, but we have defeated formidable men before. But he is no night tiger from Sinanju, because there is no such thing. It is just a village in the People's Republic of Korea. You, comrade Chen. You have been there. Tell us of Sinanju."

A middle aged man in a dark, single breasted business suit, with a face of steel and a haircut that looked an accident of shrub shears, came forward to stand by General Liu. He faced the men crowded into the stuffy room.

"I have been to Sinanju. I have spoken to the people of Sinanju. They were poor and exploited before the glorious revolution. Now they are beginning to enjoy the fruits of freedom and. ..."

"The legend," interrupted General Liu. "Tell them of the legend."

"Yes," said the man. "I sought out the Master of Sinanju. What master, the people asked me. The master of the night tigers, I said to them. There is no such thing, they said. If there were, would we be so poor? And I left. And even the Spaniard who once worked for us said he could not find the Master of Sinanju. So why should we believe there is such a one?"

"Did you put money in the pockets of the people of Sinanju?" asked the old man who had spoken before.

"I did not," the man responded angrily. "I represented the revolution, not the New York Stock Exchange."

"The people of Sinanju are money worshippers," the old man said. "If you had offered money and they had still said no, I would be more heartened."

General Liu spoke up. "The American we are talking about is a man whose face is pale as dough. Would the master of Sinanju make of a pale face a night tiger? Even in the legend, only people of the village of Sinanju become night tigers."

"You are wrong, Comrade general. The legend says that there will someday be a master so enamoured of money that for great wealth he will teach a pale face who has died all the secrets of Sinanju. He will make of him a night tiger, but the most awesome of night tigers. He will make him kin to the gods of India, kin to Shiva, the destroyer."

There was silence in the room. And no one moved.

"And within an hour," said General Liu, "this Destroyer, this dead man, will be lying on this cot. And I will give you the privilege of executing his legendary body. Unless, of course, our revolution must be cancelled because of a fairy tale."

This broke the tension, and everyone laughed. Everyone but the old man.

He said, "The white man has been seen with an elderly Korean."

"His interpreter."

"He could be the Master of Sinanju."

"Nonsense," General Liu said. "He is a frail flower ready for interment." To save the old man the great hurt of losing face, General Liu bowed to him in the old way. "Come, comrade. You have done too much for the revolution, not to join with us now in our moment of glory." He signalled for the man to stay. The others chattered with confidence as they filed through the narrow steel door. They were a unit again.

General Liu went to the door and closed it and motioned the old man to sit on his cot. He placed himself on the single chair in the room and said: "This Sinanju. I have heard the legend too, but I do not believe it."

The old man nodded. His eyes were old as shale, his face as stiffening leather.

"But I have been confronted by other things I find hard to believe," Liu continued. "Supposing this fairy tale, this Shiva the Destroyer, exists. Does the legend tell of a weakness?"

"Yes," said the old man. "He is influenced by the moon of justice."

Liu lashed his anger to the controlling rod, withholding the storm inside him. How often he had been forced to deal gently with the archaic poetry of thought that chained his people to poverty and superstition. He forced himself to speak gently.

"Are there any other weaknesses?"

"Yes."

"How can he be overcome?"

The old man said quickly and simply, "Poison." But he added cautiously: "One must not trust poison. His body is strange and may recover from the poison in time. Poison to weaken him, and then a knife or gun."

"Poison, you say?"

"Yes."

"Then, poison it shall be."

"You have a way to deliver this poison to his system?"

They were interrupted by a knock at the door. A messenger entered and handed Liu a note.

He read it and beamed expansively at the old man: "Yes, comrade. A lovely, charming delicate way to deliver this poison. She has just arrived upstairs."

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

It was the best beef in oyster sauce Remo had ever tasted. A special dark flavor that raised the senses to the thin strips of beef bathing in brown syrup. Remo speared another dark sliver with the stainless steel fork and twirled it in the oyster sauce, then lifted it, dripping, to his mouth, where he let it rest, tingling, vibrant and delicious.

"I have never enjoyed any dish like this before," he told Mei Soong.

Mei Soong sat across the white table cloth from him, at last silent. She had denied everything of course. She had not received any messages from Liu's captors. She didn't know where the little red book in her room had come from. She denied being told to lure Remo to the karate school.

She denied this while walking to the restaurant. She denied it while on her way to the ladies room in the restaurant, where she received her instructions from an old Chinese woman. She denied all this even as she placed her order for beef in oyster sauce, and she denied it as she suddenly lost her appetite and let Remo eat the entire dish.

Remo kept eating, just waiting for whatever would come out of the walls. They had gone through four major assaults and now, whoever held General Liu captive, must strike openly. The poor old bastard. Probably in a dungeon someplace, and now betrayed by his wife. Perhaps it was his age that had turned the girl against him. Or perhaps, it as Chiun had said: