Warren Murphy: Bidding War

As Harold Smith took the first train downtown, he thought with a quiet satisfaction that he might have grown old, but he was still in some small ways the Gray Ghost.

Chapter Two

His name was Remo and, as he rode the red desert sands, he felt at peace.

He could not remember being so much at peace. Never. Oh, maybe once or twice in his life he had felt this way. There was a time he was going to be married and finally settle down. He had known contentment back then. But tragedy had struck, and those brief, happy days flew away forever.

At other times he had felt like this, but briefly. Always briefly. Remo was an orphan. Had been raised in an orphanage. There were politicians who talked about building orphanages across the country to house children whose parents couldn't support them. Remo had gotten a good upbringing in Saint Theresa's Orphanage and a solid education.

But it was no substitute for a warm home filled with loving parents and brothers and sisters.

Remo had no brothers or sisters. He knew that now. His father had told him so. His father had told him many things. His birthday, which he'd never known. His mother's name and other questions that had been unfathomable mysteries back when Remo was an orphan kid no one wanted and which had died to dull achings once he became a man.

After a lifetime of emptiness and wondering, Remo had found his true father and the truth had liberated him.

It was a new beginning. He was never going back to his old life. There was nothing to go back to. He had served America. He was through with CURE, the organization that he served, and with the life of a professional assassin.

Maybe, he thought as he rode his chestnut mare, it was time to think about settling down and raising a family, as Remo had once dreamed of doing. The old scars had all healed. A happy life was possible now. Anything was possible for a man who had found his father and the truth about himself.

As Remo rode, his dark eyes went to the biggest landmark on the Sun On Jo Indian Reservation. Red Ghost Butte. There the chiefs of the Sun On Jo tribe—his tribe, he now knew—going back for several centuries were mummified. The tribe had been founded by an exiled Korean, Kojong, whose name had come down to the Sun On Jos as Ko Jong Oh. However his name was spelled, Kojong had been Remo's ancestor, a Master of Sinanju. Like Remo. In a way, that made Remo a kind of prodigal son. And now he had come home.

It was funny how things had worked out, Remo thought as he watched the red Arizona sun dip toward Red Ghost Butte, reddening the sandstone hills and the rippling dunes as far as the eye could see. He was the first white man to learn Sinanju, the sun source of the Eastern martial arts. Now he knew that wasn't exactly true. He was white, true. But he also had Sun On Jo blood in him, which made him, technically, part Korean.

For years, under the tutelage of Chiun, the last pure-blooded Master of Sinanju, he had grown to feel more Korean than white. Now he knew why. It was the blood of his ancestors resurging in him.

It felt good. It felt right. For the first time in his life, all the pieces of his life fit.

Except, he thought with a sudden apprehension, one.

The one ill-fitting piece came riding across the reddening sands from Red Ghost Butte. Riding an Appaloosa pony and wearing his seamed visage like a yellowish papyrus mask, set and unhappy. Always unhappy.

The Master of Sinanju had seen every sun of the twentieth century and a fair sampling of the last. A century of living had puckered and seamed his wise face, denuded his shiny skull of hair except for puffy white clouds over each ear. Yet his hazel eyes were clear and unclouded by age.

Those eyes zeroed in on Remo and took in his buckskin clothes, beaded moccasins and the red hawk's feather drooping from his lengthening hair.

Remo prodded his mare. They met halfway, the two horses nuzzling each other in friendly greeting.

Remo and Chiun regarded each other warily. The Master of Sinanju, who had taught Remo the skills of correct breathing that unlocked the near-superhuman potentials of his mind and body, wore the tiger-striped kimono of the Sinanju Master. His long-nailed claws held the reins tight. He held his face tight, too.

"Been visiting Kojong?" Remo asked to break the silence.

"I have broken the bitter news to my ancestor," Chiun said in a grave voice. A dry, dusty breeze played with his wispy tendril of a beard.

"What bitter news is that?"

"That thanks to the stubborn intransigence of his two eldest male ancestors, he has been consigned to dwell in a lightless cave until the very sun turns to coal."

Remo kept his voice light. "I met Kojong in the Void. Remember? He's doing fine."

"His bones yearn for the sweet hills of Korea. I have explained this to your recalcitrant father, but the years of dwelling in this harsh land have evidently filled his heedless ears with sand and his uncaring heart with stones."

"This is Kojong's land. He came here years before Columbus. This is where he lived. This is where he died. I think his bones are pretty happy here."

"Pah. Spoken like a fork-tongued redskin."

"Now, cut that out. Besides, it was the white man who spoke with forked tongue."

"And you are part white. Your mother was white. The forking of your tongue must come from your mother."

"If you keep insulting my mother, this is going to be a short conversation," Remo warned.

"You are white. Do not deny this."

"White. Sun On Jo. Korean. Probably some Navajo, too. Sunny Joe tells me I have a few drops of Irish, Italian and Spanish blood. Maybe some others. We're not sure who all my mother's ancestors were."

"That is another way of saying 'mongrel.'"

"I like the way for years you've been trying to convince me I'm part Korean, and now that we know it's true, you're throwing my white genes back in my face."

"Dirty laundry is dirty laundry," Chiun sniffed.

"That's not what I meant by 'genes.' And wasn't the first Master of Sinanju supposed to have been Japanese?"

Chiun's cheeks puffed out in righteous indignation. "A canard. Told by ninjas to advance their trade."

Remo looked away. "Forget I brought it up."

Chiun dropped his voice. "It is time we left this treeless place, Remo."

"Not me. I'm staying."

"How long?"

"Don't know. I kinda like it here. It's open and clean, and there are hardly any telephones."

"Emperor Smith has work for us."

Remo eyed Chiun. "You been in touch with him?"

"No. But he always has work for the House. And the House is never idle. It cannot afford to be idle, for now there are two villages to support."

"Don't try that con on me. The tribe is doing fine. Sunny Joe has plenty of money. And they know how to grow their own food—which is more than I can say for the people of Sinanju."

Chiun sat up in his saddle. "There are no fish in a desert."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nor have I seen any ducks."

"Say it so I understand it," Remo promised.

"One cannot live on rice alone."

"I've been branching out."

Chiun started. "You have not eaten swine?"

"Of course not."

"Nor steer beef?"

"My beef days are long over. You know that."

"Then what?"

"That," Remo said, "is between me and my honored ancestors."

The Master of Sinanju regarded his pupil critically, as if measuring him. He leaned forward in his saddle. "Your color is different."

"I'm out in the sun more. I'm tanning."

"The whites of your eyes are no longer the good hue of rice."

"My eyes see fine."

"I detect a yellowing. Faint but discernible."

Remo pretended to be interested in a red-tailed hawk balancing itself on a low thermal.

And leaning forward even more, Chiun began to sniff the air delicately. "Corn!" he howled. "I smell corn upon your fetid breath! You have sunk into eating filth and swill. Next you will stoop to digging potatoes from the dirt and gnawing them raw."