Warren Murphy: Chinese Puzzle

The major had given the knife. Now, the old man would return it to the white race blade first. The black wooden handle was wet in his palm as the old man pressed the point to the white throat. He would plunge it straight in, then rip to one side, then rip to the other, and then step away to watch the blood flow.

The face seemed strangely strong in its sleep, the eyes deep behind their closed lids, the lips thin and well-defined. Was this the face of Shiva?

Of course not. He was about to die.

"Father and grandfather, and for your fathers and their fathers before them," the old man intoned. "For the indignities upon indignities suffered from these barbarians."

The old man knelt so that he would bring the full force of his shoulder behind the blade. The floor was hard and cold. But the face of the white man was growing pink, then red, as though filled with blood before blood was spilled. A brownish line formed between the thin lips. The old man looked closer. Was it his imagination? He seemed to feel the heat of the body about to die. The line became a dark brown dot on the lower lip, then an elongated puddle that flowed to the sides, then a stream, and then a gush as the face turned red and the body heaved, and out, coming out on the floor, out of the body's system was the oyster sauce and the beef and with it, the poison essences, mixed with the body's fluid and smelling like oysters and vinegar. The man should have been dead. He should have been dead. But his body was rejecting the poison.

"Aiee," screamed the old man," it is Shiva the destroyer."

With a last desperate effort, he raised the knife for the most forceful plunge he could effect. A last chance was better than none at all. But at the knife's apex, a voice filled the basement in thunder.

"I am the Master of Sinanju, fools. How dare you? Where is my child whom I have made with my heart and with my mind and with my will? I have come for my child. How will you die? Now you shall fear death because it is the death brought by the Master of Sinanju."

Outside the door to the little room, servants were screaming directions. "There, there. He is in there."

The old man did not wait.

The dagger came down swiftly and hard, with all his strength. But it did not plunge straight down. Instead, it created an arc to his own heart. It was pain and hot and shocking to his essence. But it was true to its mark and of all his pain, all the pain would not be so bad as punishment from the Master of Sinanju. He tried to twist the knife further into his own heart as his body trembled. But he could not. And it was not necessary. He saw the cold stone floor coming toward him and he prepared to greet his ancestors.

Remo came to with a bony knee in his back. He was facing the floor. Someone had vomited on the floor. Someone had also bled on the floor. A hand was slapping his neck sharply. He attempted to spin, cracking the slapper in the groin to render him harmless. When he was unable to do this, he knew it was Chiun slapping him.

"Eat, eat. Gobble like a pig. You should have died, it would have taught you a most lasting lesson."

"Where am I?" said Remo.

Slap. Slap. "Why should one who eats like a white man care?"

Slap. Slap.

"I am a white man."

Slap. Slap. "Do not remind me, fool. I have already been made painfully aware of that. Do not eat slowly. Do not taste your food. Gobble. Gobble like a buzzard. Stick your long beak into the food and inhale." Slap. Slap.

"I'm okay now."

Slap. Slap. "I give you the best years of my life and what do you do?"

Remo had raised himself to his knees. Momentarily, during the pounding on his neck, he thought he could perhaps get a sideband crack at Chiun's jaw, but abandoned the notion. So he let Chiun slap away until Chiun was satisfied that Remo was breathing properly again.

"And what do you do? After all my careful teaching? Hah. You eat like a white man."

"It was really great beef in oyster sauce."

"Pig. Pig. Pig." The word came with the slaps. "Eat like a pig. Die like a dog."

Remo saw the old man lying face down in a layer of blood, that was already darkening about the edges.

"You do the old man?" he asked.

"No. He was smart."

"He looks it," Remo said.

"He understood what would happen. And chose the wise course."

"Nobody as smart as you Orientals."

With a last ringing slap, Chiun finished his work. "Stand up," he ordered. Remo rose, feeling like the pavement during the Indianapolis 500. He blinked his eyes, breathed deeply a few times. And felt quite fine.

"Ecch," he said, noticing the stains of vomit on his shirt. "They must have had knockout drops in the food."

"It is lucky for you," lied Chiun, "that it was not a deadly poison. For if you thought you could survive poison, you would never end your foolish eating ways."

"It was deadly poison, then," Remo said smiling.

"It was not," Chiun insisted.

Remo smiled broadly, straightened his tie, and glanced around the room. "This the basement of the restaurant?"

"Why? Are you hungry?"

"We've got to find Mei Soong. If she's with the general, she might be trying to kill him right now. She's one of them, remember. And the general's in danger."

Chiun gave an abrupt snort, opened the door, and stepped over the two bodies lying outside in a hallway that smelled of musk. Remo noticed that the wooden door had been splintered away from its lock.

Chiun moved like silence in the dark, and Remo followed as he had been taught, in sideways steps along the corridor, in perfect rhythm with the old man before him.

Remo stopped when Chiun stopped. In electric fast movement, Chiun's hand snapped against a door which flung open, momentarily blinding Remo with the light from within. On a plain cot, the hard, yellow, muscled back of a man was on the rise. Two young legs wrapped around his waist. His black hair was crossed with white. Remo saw the soles of Mei Soong's feet.

"Quick, Chiun," he said. "Think of something philosophical."

The man's head spun around in shock. It was General Liu.

"Uh, hello," Remo said.

Chiun spoke, "Have you no shame? Get dressed."

General Liu unplugged with speed and lunged for a .45 caliber automatic on the plain wooden chair. Remo was at the chair in a flash, catching General Liu's arm at the wrist and righting him so he would not fall.

"We're friends," Remo said. "That woman has betrayed you. She is in league with those who captured you and held you prisoner."

Mei Soong rose on her arms, a look of surprise, then of terror on her face. "Untrue," she screamed.

Remo turned to her, and since the movement of the .45 automatic was not to him, he did not respond with automatic movement, but then heard the crack as he saw the top of her head blasted into the stone wall, splattering blood and gray matter, leaving her brain like a coddled egg about to be eaten from the shell of her skull.

He snatched the gun from General Liu.

"She betrayed me," said General Liu, trembling. Then he fell down and sobbed.

It would not be until he strolled a Peking street that Remo would realize that the general's tears were from relieved tension, and that indeed, Remo had been a very poor detective. He watched Liu fall to his knees and bring his hands to his face, heaving, sobbing.

"Poor bastard. All this and then his wife betraying him too," Remo whispered to Chiun.

Chiun responded with a phrase carrying a very special meaning. "Gonsa shmuck," he said.

"What?" said Remo, not really hearing.

"In English, that means very much a shmuck."

"Poor bastard," said Remo.

"Shmuck," said Chiun.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The President's heart was lighter as he watched the newscast. His closest advisor watched also, twisting an index finger through his kinky blond hair.