Warren Murphy: Last Rites

Somewhere out there was a document, a file, a newspaper account or even a human brain that held the secret of Remo Williams.

It was just a matter of finding it and recognizing it.

Chapter 4

Remo Williams walked the sands of Wollaston Beach thinking that all the important places in his life were by the water. Newark. Folcroft. Sinanju. And now Quincy, Massachusetts.

There was a spanking wind off Quincy Bay. White sea gulls hung in the air like kites, feet dangling, heads craning and twisting down to spy food scraps. Once in a while one would drop to catch a fish or root among discarded food on the curved smile of sand that was the beach.

Remo was walking north, toward the place where the sand became rock and then salt marsh. Beyond it was the Hummock, a hump of trees and brush that was also known as Arrowhead Hill. There the Moswetuset Indians had dwelt until the white man came, some say to despoil a vibrant culture. But the tribe that had given their name-if unwillingly-to the State of Massachusetts had left behind only a hill not much more prominent than a garbage dump. Beyond the Hummock the blue towers of Boston, a city not among the nation's largest by any means, reared gleaming to put the ancient seat of the Moswetusets to shame.

As he walked, Remo thought about another beach, more rock than sand, fronting the inhospitable slaty waters of the West Korea Bay, thousands of miles away.

On that beach a fishing village called Sinanju stood as it had for over five thousand years. Almost no one in the West knew of it. But it was from this village that the Masters of Sinanju-the premier assassins in human history-had ventured forth to serve the great thrones of the ancient world.

From Egyptian and Chinese dynasties history had long forgotten to the Roman Empire-which, by Sinanju standards, fell in the recent past-the House of Sinanju had been the preeminent historical power. Preeminent but unsuspected by historians and thus unrecorded. In their way, the Masters of Sinanju kept the peace. For when an emperor had an assassin at his disposal, he could crush his rivals, internal and external, thereby preserving his domain. Costly and ruinous wars were prevented this way. Lives were saved. Armies were not wasted on bloody combat. Kingdoms were made stable.

At least that was how the Master of Sinanju had explained it to Remo.

That village was old when the Moswetusets were learning to chip flint. It would still be standing when Boston had sunk into rubble. If Chiun had his way, Remo would one day take over the village as the first white Master of Sinanju.

It wasn't exactly how Remo had envisioned his life when he left the orphanage to seek his fortune. In those days his dreams had a different size. A policeman's salary, wife and kids and the traditional clapboard house with a white picket fence. Houses like that were all over America. Remo had never lived in one. Not for long, anyway. The simple dreams had always eluded him.

He couldn't see himself living in Sinanju. Ever. But the years had made him more part of Sinanju than America.

Newark, the city of his youth, was no more. Riots and neglect and the grinding passing of time had obliterated it.

This city was only the latest in a long string of places where Remo had lived since shedding his old life in that other place on the water, Folcroft Sanitarium. Remo might live here another year, or even ten. It would never be home. There was no home for an orphan who had never had a family. Not in the comfort of the past. Not in the uncertainty of the future.

Remo walked on. Having come from nowhere, he was not concerned that his path was aimless.

He became aware of the Master of Sinanju padding alongside him long after Chiun had joined him. Remo had been looking down at the sand, not up at the world and the sky.

"You are a duck that walks," Chiun squeaked.

"I'm a duck that walks," agreed Remo.

"A target for any who would do you harm."

"That's called a sitting duck."

"For a Master of Sinanju to walk along so oblivious to danger, you might as well be sitting."

"I'm in no danger."

"It is when you are most lulled that danger rears its water-buffalo skull."

"That's 'ugly head.'"

"There is no difference," Chiun said dismissively. "What troubles you, Remo?"

"I don't belong anywhere."

"You belong to me."

"And after you pass on?"

"Why this preoccupation with death?"

"It's my trade," said Remo bitterly. "I never wanted to be an assassin. I'm sick of death."

"This has troubled you these last few months. Something new troubles you today, my son."

Remo held his tongue for a full minute before speaking. "She came to me again last night," he said softly. "My mother."

"That hussy!" Chiun hissed.

"I thought you said she didn't exist."

"She is a fragment of your imagination, therefore she is a hussy. Because what other kind of woman would spring unbidden from your white mind?"

"She's real. She told me to keep looking for my father."

"And so, like an obedient son, you have stopped?"

"She showed me something else."

"What is that?"

"A vision."

"An hallucination," spat Chiun.

"You didn't say that when I saw the Great Wang that time years ago."

"Seeing the Great Wang was the last passage of a Master in training to full Masterhood."

"Yeah, well, it was good to get all those dippy rites of passage over with. The Night of the Salt. The Dream of Death. The Master's Trial. It was getting to be like puberty every three years."

"There is still one other rite you have not yet undergone."

"What is it? The Dance of the Dippy Duck?"

"No. The Rite of Attainment."

Remo regarded the Boston skyline. "Never heard of it."

"It is necessary to prepare a full Master for the final stage in his responsibilities to the House."

"What's that?" Remo asked without interest.

"It sanctifies a full Master so that upon the retirement of his teacher, he can assume the title of Reigning Master of Sinanju."

"You planning on retiring?"

"No."

Remo stopped suddenly. He turned to face the Master of Sinanju. He was rotating his thick wrists, something he did when agitated. They were as unalike as two men could be. Remo towered over the old Korean. His white T-shirt and gray chinos were casual while Chiun's riotous scarlet-and-lavender kimono belonged in a Chinese wedding party. One ageless, the other ancient. "Little Father," said Remo.

Chiun searched his pupil's troubled features. "Yes?"

"That vision she showed me. It was of you." Chiun brightened.

"Me. Really, Remo?"

Remo frowned darkly. "Why are you suddenly interested in a vision of a woman you say you don't believe in?" he asked tightly.

"Because the vision mentioned someone of importance. Namely, me. Continue, Remo. What did she say about me?"

"Nothing. She showed me a cave."

"What was in this cave?"

"You were."

"What was I doing?"

"Decomposing."

The Master of Sinanju stepped back as if struck by a blow. He narrowed his hazel eyes. "She lied!" he shrieked.

"She said I had to find my father and when I did, I would enter that cave and discover the truth about myself."

Chiun gathered up his wispy chin whiskers in a pout. "You'd been dead a while, Little Father. You were a mummy."

"How did you know it was me?" Chiun challenged.

"It was your face, your hair, your bone structure." The Master of Sinanju made a fist of his face, the deep seams and wrinkles gathering tighter and tighter like parchment wrinkling as it absorbed water.

"When did she say this evil day would come to pass?"

"She didn't. Exactly. Only that it would be soon if I kept looking for my father."

"You must not seek out that man, Remo!" Chiun said, waggling a stern finger in Remo's face.