Warren Murphy: An Old Fashioned War

In that training, he had become something else. He had become Sinanju, the sun source of all understanding of human power, the home of the Masters of Sinanju. In his spirit he was as much that small fishing village on the West Korea Bay as he was Remo Williams, ex-cop, American.

He thought about that as the special helicopter, camouflaged for night, landed at the base helipad. The pilot could be heard telling the commander of the pad that he was to pick someone up, and the commander was arguing back that he had not been told of any such person.

"We're at the tip of Cuba, buddy. No one gets in or out of here without identification," said the commander.

"I'm told he's going to be here."

"By whom?"

"Can't say."

"Yeah, well, you take those CIA or NSA or whatever letters you want to disguise your spies by and stuff 'em somewhere. This place is guarded by U.S. marines. No one gets through."

"Excuse me," said Remo, moving from behind the helipad commander and up into the chopper.

"Are you blue angel zebra?"

"Maybe. Something like that," said Remo. "I don't know."

"You're the one. They said you wouldn't know your code."

"Who's they?" screamed the helipad commander.

"They never say," yelled back the helicopter pilot, taking off into the night. Above, the lights of the fighters keeping protective cover over the fleet and the base competed weakly with the stars.

Remo edged back in his seat and folded his arms and his legs, and went into that quiet place that was his sleep now. He could smell the burning fuel, and even the new rivets in the helicopter, but he focused on the stars and the patches of clean air, and his own blood system. And they were good, all good.

When the helicopter landed, a blood-red dawn was breaking over the Caribbean, exposing the little stucco villas of the Puerto Rican resort Flora del Mar. Remo could make out the golf courses and tennis courts and swimming pools. He guided the pilot toward one small villa set on a canal. Sportfishing boats with their high captain's nests bobbed along the canal like large white fat gulls grounded in the water.

Remo was out of the helicopter before it fully landed. He walked toward what sounded like a wounded bird squealing softly in a pitch so high that some of the local dogs, dogs looking more like large rodents than canines, were wandering around in a quiet frenzy looking for the source.

Remo knew where it was coming from. He even knew the words. The call was a greeting to the sun, and as he entered the villa, the sounds became louder and then stopped.

"Did you bring the rice?" came the squeaky voice.

"I forgot, Little Father," said Remo. "I was working out this electronics problem."

"Better you should learn Sinanju than wires and bulbs. Leave that for whites and Japanese."

"I am white. Besides, Koreans are getting into electronics now too."

In the living room a wisp of a man with patches of white hair hanging over his ears sadly shook his head. He sat facing the sun in a glorious golden kimono of the dawn, with the precious yellow threads creating designs of splendid mornings over the Korean hills around Sinanju.

"To do one thing well makes a man special. To do one thing better than all others makes one Sinanju. But to be Sinanju means to be in a constant state of becoming, for that which is not moving toward something moves away from it." Thus spoke Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju, to Remo, who had once been his pupil but was now a Master too.

"I'm not going to read the histories of Sinanju again," said Remo.

"And why not, may I ask?"

"Because I have made the last passage. I'm a Master now. I love you, Little Father. You are the greatest teacher in the world, but I am not reading that nonsense about how Sinanju saved the world from one aeon to the next just because we were paid killers."

"Not killers. Assassins. A bad virus is a killer. An auto accident is a killer. A soldier firing a gun is a killer. But an assassin to a monach is a force for peace and justice."

"How are we a force for justice, Little Father?"

"We get paid and we support the village of Sinanju, full of base ingrates to be sure, but those are our people."

"How is that justice? We go to the higher bidder."

"Would going to the lower bidder be more just?" asked Chiun with a delicious cackle.

"That's what I said. Killers for hire."

"That," said Chiun, "is a dirty lie. If you would read the histories of Sinanju you would see that. But no. You learn the ways of things, but you don't learn the reason of things."

"You think Ivan the Terrible of Russia did justice? He killed people for wearing the wrong clothes."

"Slanderers of his name in your West destroyed his beautiful reputation. He was a most just czar."

"Yeah? How?"

"He paid on time, and paid in good gold. No one in Sinanju ever starved because Ivan the just failed to pay his Sinanju assassin."

"No one ever starved anyhow. You never used the tributes. They just piled up in that big funny-looking building on the hill. That was just an excuse to hoard more wealth."

"The treasure of Sinanju, hoarding?" Chiun let out a pained cry to the very heavens above this new-world sky. A Master of Sinanju, the white man he had trained, had called the sacred treasure of Sinanju, the earnings of four millennia, a hoard. "Besides," said Chiun, "it has all been stolen."

"Don't bring up that again. America has more than tripled its gold tribute just to make it up to you."

"It can never be made up to me or the House of Sinanju. While you were out saving the world, a world which has never done anything for you, you let me search alone for the treasure."

"Yeah, well, where would Sinanju be if the world went?" said Remo.

"The world is always coming to an end from one thing or another, so you say. But it always goes on," said Chiun.

"And so does Sinanju," snapped Remo.

"Because we do things right. We honor the treasure. Lost were coins and jewels from Alexander-a white man but definitely great-statues of such fine porcelain, such exquisite craftsmanship that the Ming emperors only gave them to their sons, and of course to us, Sinanju, their house of assassins; gems from the great pharaoh worth entire countries; tributes from all the ages. Gone."

"And what about the American gold that pays for my services to my country?" said Remo.

"Yes. Gold. That is all America can offer. More. Never better. That is all it knows. More, and more, but never that which makes a civilization wonderful."

"It gave me to Sinanju, Little Father."

"I gave you to Sinanju," said Chiun.

In that point, Chiun was largely correct. They had both given Remo to Sinanju, but to admit to truths in an argument was like fighting while holding one's breath. One lost all power. So Remo ignored the remark, and went out to get the rice, and when he returned he found Harold W. Smith was waiting for him with Chiun.

"I could have sworn I got it right down in Cuba," said Remo.

"No problem there," said Smith. He sat on a couch in the small living room as Remo prepared the rice in the open kitchen near the entrance of the apartment. The doors were shut, but Remo knew that Smith carried enough modern sophisticated electronics to tell them if anyone were listening in. As Remo once said, Smith could probably tell if someone were thinking of listening in. Chiun remained in a lotus position, his long fingernails delicately resting on his lap, his back straight, his body at one with itself, so that he looked more in place in the air-conditioned living room than any of the furniture.

"Koreans are very good with electronics," said Chiun. "I trained him."

Remo ignored the remark.

"We have a strange situation developing in Oklahoma. Well, actually throughout America," said Smith. "A band of Ojupa Indians has gone on the warpath."