Warren Murphy - The Ultimate Death

The Taoist with one eyebrow kowtowed elaborately.

"I am called Won Sik Lung," he murmured. "Like you, I have ancestral obligations. Like you, I am a sworn enemy of the gyonshi, who were thought extinct."

Chiun returned the bow with a studied nod of his aged head. "You will tell me what I need to know that I may vanquish the vermin known as the Leader," he said coldly.

The single eyebrow crept upward in surprise.

"You must have seen him around here somewhere!" Remo was saying, his voice urgent.

"About this high? In a silver kimono? No? Damn!"

The Chinese girl skipped off, leaving Remo to prowl the byways of Chinatown. He had no idea where Chiun had gone off to. He had vanished.

It would be like Chiun to do something like this, just to teach Remo a lesson. With Chinese vampires popping out of every doorway, Chiun decides to pull a disappearing act.

"This had better be a stunt," Remo muttered to himself. "Please let it be a trick designed to teach me a lesson," he whispered.

With a shiver, Remo suddenly thought of the orange wisps of smoke that had slipped from the throats of the poor Chinese couple behind him. This was no lesson. Chiun was gone. And Remo was getting that cold feeling again. The one that reminded him that Chiun was now a hundred years old, and had not been quite the same since he had been brought back from the dead.

Remo crossed to the opposite side of Mott Street. Voices called out to him as he ran, but they were drowned out by the commotion coming from around the Neighborhood Improvement Association. The first cruiser to arrive must have seen the bodies in the foyer and called for backup. There were also two ambulances parked beyond the rim of squad cars.

Suddenly Remo remembered something. A voice. Master of Sinanju, behind you! it had shouted.

He had caught a glimpse of a man. A Chinese, dressed entirely in black, like a mortician out of some old Western. He was tall, but Remo had gotten no impression of his face. Not that it would have helped. Despite long years of association with the Master of Sinanju, Remo still thought all Orientals looked pretty much the same.

Great, he thought: Excuse me, have you seen an old Oriental gentleman in a kimono, about five feet tall, in the company of a slightly younger Oriental dressed entirely in black?

What did they look like? Like Orientals. What else?

He felt foolish thinking it. But it was his only lead.

The first person he asked was a middle-aged Italian woman, sitting in a lawn chair outside a corner store.

"Yeah, I seen 'em," she said casually, as if the pair were a couple of bankers out for a stroll during their lunch hour.

"You did?"

"You did say one was Korean, right?"

"How do you tell the difference?" Remo wanted to know.

The woman shrugged. "Same way I tell a Sicilian from a Neapolitan. Anyway, they went east on Canal. Say, whaddya doin'? Leggo my hand!"

Remo released her hand. "Just checking your fingernails," he said. He darted down the street.

"My ancestors know well of the gyonshi, O Master, for though Sinanju has faced them a handful of times in its glorious history, we have encountered them many, many times. For us it is an honor to sacrifice our lives to thwart this pestilence."

"Speak not to me of Chinese honor, Taoist," Chiun spat. "My ears bleed."

The gaunt embalmer's single eyebrow furrowed at its center, like a black caterpillar scrunching up on a leaf. He lowered his head in an informal bow. "I am confused, great Master. Did you not come to me for my knowledge of the gyonshi?"

"I came for a single answer, Chinaman," Chiun responded. "And for this I may forgive the impertinence of your last utterance. If it is the answer I seek. Otherwise . . ." He let the threat hang between them.

The Taoist seemed genuinely frightened. Good, Chiun thought. I have gotten the deformed creature's attention.

The Taoist cleared his throat. "You would defeat the Leader?" he asked, his tone making it clear that the question was unnecessary. Chiun merely stood in silence.

Like a nervous animal, the Taoist began glancing around the room. He stepped over a few scattered books and newspapers with Chinese printing, to a single door in the corner of the living room. It was tucked away behind a tattered easy chair. The door had once been painted green but the paint had long since peeled away, revealing a ghostly veneer of its original varnish.

"Come into my personal sanctum," he bid.

The Taoist pushed the door open. The room beyond was deeply shadowed. Lights from a hundred white ceremonial candles danced along its walls.

"I will tell you all I know, Master of Sinanju," he said, ushering Chiun inside.

"Then perhaps I will spare your life, Taoist with one eyebrow," Chiun responded as he passed inside.

In the flickering candlelight, unnoticed by Chiun, a sparkle of light danced on the quicksilver sheen of the Taoist's index fingernail.

On Canal Street, Remo found three others who had noticed the path taken by the pair of Orientals. All indicated the same general direction. As they pointed Remo inspected their fingernails for the telltale guillotine shape, but none of the other passersby bore the mark of a gyonshi.

Remo was accosting a roasted-peanut vendor when a police officer came into view amid the crowd of pedestrian traffic. For a moment the cop seemed startled, but then he drew his revolver and aimed it carefully at Remo. "Hold it right there," he ordered nervously.

"No time," Remo said absently. Chiun must be nearby. But there were a dozen possible doors. "Did you see them?" he asked the vendor urgently. "A Chinese and a Korean, together?"

"You better make time, pal," warned the cop, his voice growing threatening. "A guy fitting your description was seen up where the Scubiscis hang out, just after the mass murder."

"C'mon," Remo prompted the apron-clad man, "I don't have all day." He continued to ignore the cop, who stepped forward with increased belligerence.

The vendor swallowed, uncertain. He glanced from Remo to the cop, then back to Remo again. He gave a feeble shrug. "Sorry," he mumbled. "I don't know from Koreans. I'm still gettin' used to all these chinks."

The cop had his handcuffs out and was moving up on Remo. "You're coming with me."

"Sorry, pal," Remo said, turning. "You've become a distraction."

Remo's hands shot out, slapping the handcuffs away and plucking the weapon from the startled cop's outstretched hand. Simultaneously, Remo stabbed a pressure point at the side of the man's thick-muscled throat.

The young policeman's pistol clattered to the sidewalk as he himself slid to the pavement. Remo propped the unconscious man against the side of a parked car. He focused his attention back on the vendor.

"Oriental in kimono. Oriental in black. Which way?"

"Uh, there," the vendor said, pointing with a trembling hand. "They were heading for that building."

He pointed to a brick apartment building, with some kind of black-curtained storefront on the first floor. A sign over the glass read WON SIK LUNG-EMBALMING.

"Thanks!" Remo called after him. "And clean your fingernails!"

Upon entering the smaller room the Taoist had lit another of the many thick candles, his right hand hidden from view in the long sleeves of his midnight-black tunic.

"For you, Master of Sinanju," he said. His bow this time was more formal.

Chiun returned the bow with the slightest nod of his head.

The Taoist now stood at one end of a low wooden table that sat in the room's center. The flames from several dozen candles danced in the lazy air currents of the room, where a bowl of black blood had been positioned carefully between the candles. Several worn pillows were spread out on the floor around the taboret.