Warren Murphy: The Color of Fear

Chiun gazed out the window, his face a parchment mask. "I do not recall," he said thinly.

"My butt!" Remo was silent a moment. "At least we didn't do Helen of Troy."

"Not that there were not offers," said Chiun. "Low ones."

They skirted Petersburg without incident, and all seemed calm, except for the helicopters overhead. Remo spotted state-police helicopters, a few Marine and Army ships, as well as those belonging to various news organizations, all headed in the same direction they were.

"So much for our going in unsuspected," complained Remo.

"What do you mean, we?" sniffed Chiun. "You are a guide and badger only."

"You mean gofer, don't you?"

"Just remember your place, burrowing one."

A mile before the entrance to the Petersburg National Battlefield off Interstate 95, there was a roadblock. Virginia State Troopers were stopping traffic. They were respectful to vehicles bearing Virginia license plates, as well as those belonging to North Carolina and adjacent Southern states. Vehicles with Northern plates were being turned back and in some instances detained.

At first they were polite when it was Remo's turn to pull up to the checkpoint. A solitary trooper in a gray Stetson sauntered up to Remo's side of the car.

"From around here?" he asked Remo. His uniform, Remo wasn't surprised to see, was Confederate gray with black trim.

Remo decided to bluff his way through.

"Why, shore," he said, hoping Virginians sounded like Andy Griffith, the first Southern voice that popped into his head.

"That's good to hear. We're conducting a little roadside eye test. Take but a minute." He held up a flash card. It read Portsmouth.

"Now, what's that say?" the trooper asked Remo.

"Portsmouth," said Remo.

"Nope. It's Porch Mouth," said the trooper.

"It says Portsmouth, not Porch Mouth."

"Try this next one, won't yew?"

"Isle of Wight," said Remo, reading the next card.

"Nope. It's Isle of White."

"It says Wight."

"It's pronounced white," said the trooper without humor.

"I don't see any h," Remo said.

"It's a Virginia h. Only Virginians can see it."

"Ah'm from Tennessee," said Remo, guessing at Andy Griffith's home state.

"Let's try one more, shall we?"

The trooper held up a card that clearly said Roanoke.

"Roan-oke," said Remo, pronouncing it the way it was spelled because that was the way Sister Mary Margaret used to pronounce it during American-history lessons back at the orphanage.

"Nope. Ro-noke."

"There's an a after the o, " Remo pointed out.

"And there's a bluebelly in the woodpile," the trooper retorted. He gestured to a nearby trooper. "Hey, Earl, we got us another carpetbagger come to make trouble here."

Two more troopers came up to join him, hands on side arms.

In the passenger seat the Master of Sinanju said, "Remo, I must not be delayed if I am to bind this nation together once more."

"What do you want me to do about it?" Remo asked out of the side of his mouth.

"I must save my strength, for I have a great task before me."

Remo sighed. "Oh, all right."

"Kindly step out of that car," the trooper with the flash cards said before the pain signals from his knees informed his brain that they had been ambushed by a suddenly opening car door.

The trooper let out a creditable rebel yell and doubled over to grab his throbbing kneecaps. While he was bent over, Remo removed his Stetson and threw it at the approaching Virginia troopers like a Frisbee.

It whizzed over their heads, spun in place and came back like a boomerang to slap the running troopers about their faces with the whipping chin strap.

Momentarily distracted, they failed to see Remo descend upon them. By the time they realized there was a problem, their fingers had been squeezed together in groups of five and expertly dislocated.

Remo stepped back as the troopers stood about shaking their numb but limp digits, which hung like fat, dead worms off their unfeeling hands.

"What'd yew do to us?" asked the flash-card trooper in a stupefied voice.

"It's called the Sinanju handshake," said Remo pleasantly. "It goes away if you hurry home and make love to your wife."

"What if we don't?"

"Your peckers fall off by sunset at the latest."

"Ah don't believe that for a goldurn moment."

"It's your pecker," said Remo, climbing back into his rental car and driving around the roadblock.

In the rearview mirror the stunned state troopers could be seen imploring motorists to drive them back to the city.

"I have never heard of this Sinanju handshake," sniffed Chiun, rearranging his kimono skirts.

"It's a new wrinkle. Invented it myself."

"I do not like these new wrinkles of yours."

"Then don't use them," said Remo.

"Rest assured, I will not."

WHEN THEY REACHED the entrance to the Petersburg National Battlefield, a bus came rolling up from the other direction. It veered off the road and came to a stop blocking Crater Road. When the doors opened, out poured two dozen fighting men wearing red fezzes, short blue jackets, baggy red pantaloons and carrying antique muskets.

They set themselves in a skirmish line, and a color banner went up.

"Which side are they on?" Remo wondered aloud.

"I do not know," admitted the Master of Sinanju. "Let us inquire."

They approached with open faces and empty hands, the better to put a potential enemy off guard.

A group of muskets swung in their direction, fixing them in their sights.

"Halt!" a man shouted. He might have been an officer. Then again, he might not. His colorful costume was no more or less ornate than anyone else's.

Remo and Chiun kept coming.

"We're unarmed," Remo called out.

"Which army?"

"Neither."

"You sound like a Northerner."

Remo and Chiun kept walking. Remo read the legend on the banner. It said Louisiana Costume Zouaves.

"Louisiana sided with the South," Remo undertoned to Chiun. "But what a Zouave is, I don't know."

"It is a French word," hissed Chiun.

"Big deal. So is souffle. Maybe they're the Louisiana Souffle Brigade, come up to feed the Confederate troops."

"It is French for clown soldier, " said Chiun.

"Guess that makes them the Bozo Brigade."

"I say again, halt and identify yourself," one of the Louisiana Zouaves ordered.

"Press," said Remo, reaching for his wallet, where he kept cover ID cards for all occasions.

"Then ya'll are spies!" a harsh voice snarled. "Shoot the damn Yank spies!"

And six muskets boomed forth lead balls and clouds of black-powder smoke.

Remo had been trained and trained by the Master of Sinanju until he had unlocked every cell in his brain. Modern science had always claimed that twentieth-century man had never learned to access his whole brain, only about ten percent of it. Scientists speculated that within that untapped ninety percent lay vast potential, powers man might command should he ever fully evolve, as well as skills he had long ago lost when he dropped down from the trees to walk upright and forage the savanna for food.

Centuries ago the Masters of Sinanju began to harness these powers. Their first halting steps planted the seeds for all the Eastern martial arts from defensive kung fu to paralyzing jujitsu. It fell to Wang the Greater, in the darkest hour in the history of the House of Sinanju--which served the thrones of antiquity-to achieve full perfection in mind and body. The Sinanju Master who had trained Wang died before Wang could be taught the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of those who had come before.

It should have been the end of the House of Sinanju. But Wang went out into the wilderness to fast, subsisting on rice hulls and grass, meditating on the fate of the village of Sinanju on the rock-bound coast of West Korea Bay, which for generations had survived only because the cream of its manhood went out into a hostile world to ply the trade of assassin and protector of thrones.