Warren Murphy - The Last Alchemist

"Only if you find someone who would bet with you," said Remo. "Are you sure he is in Brazil?"

"Yes," said Consuelo. She loosened the top button of her blouse. Her clothes felt like wet sacks stuck to her body. Street urchins seemed to grow out of the sidewalks. None of the travel brochures ever showed so many unwashed young people. They featured the beaches. Nor did they mention the smells of garbage. They gave you twilight photos of the city skyline. Maybe they could build high-rises in Rio but they could not collect garbage.

And the people. So many people. And it seemed that half of them were tour guides; most of them wanted to take them to nightclubs.

"We want the Amazon. We are looking for someone who has gone up the Amazon."

"To Brasilia?" asked each guide. That was the name of the new capital that the government wanted people to populate. There were state-paid bonuses for moving there. Consuela was sure that there were also bonuses for taking tourists there.

"No. Into the jungle."

"There is much jungle in Brazil. Most of it is jungle. I have yet to have anyone ask to visit it."

"I am looking for someone who has."

"No esta here, beautiful young woman."

Consuela waited for either Remo or Chiun to say they would never find the right guide, that the trail was lost, that she was a fool, that she was incapable of making a right decision because she was a woman. But by noon when Consuelo was hot, tired, and disappointed that neither of her companions accused her of feminine frailty, she gave up and headed right for the name she had taken down back in the States.

The guide was in a hotel. And he remembered a James Brewster. The man seemed nervous. He left the day before on a trip up the Amazon. The guide pointed to a map of Brazil. It was like a large peculiarly shaped pear. The green represented jungle. The dots represented civilization. The pear had very few dots. A thin dark line ran hundreds of miles into the green. That was the Amazon.

"He took our main boat but we can get another," said the guide. He spoke English. Much business was done in English, though the main language of the country was Portuguese.

Consuelo reserved the boat.

"Even if you find him," asked Remo, "why should he tell you anything?"

"Because I'll promise not to follow him anymore if he tells me who paid him. You and I are after the same thing," she said.

"No we're not," said Remo.

"What are you after?" she asked.

"Honestly, I don't know. I just keep doing my job, and hoping someday I'll figure it out."

"I have already figured it out," said Chiun. "Your purpose in life is to make mine miserable."

"You don't have to stay. You don't have to come with me."

"It is always nice to feel welcome," said Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju did not like South America. Not only did it bear little resemblance to the modern travel brochures but it was unrecognizable from the accounts given in Chiun's histories. The Masters of Sinanju had been here before. They had served both of the great South American empires, the Mayan and Incan, and were paid well for their services. But since the Spanish and Portuguese had moved into the neighborhood, nothing was the same.

What had been great cities were now slums or areas overgrown by the jungle that had reclaimed terraces and parapets. Where gold-clad emperors had walked, monkeys now chirped in trees that grew from crevices in what had once been royal walkways.

The place, as Chiun commented on the way up to the Amazon, had become a jungle.

Consuelo, who was part Spanish, wanted to know the history of South America. Her mother's family had come from Chile.

"The tales of the Masters are only for other Masters," said Chiun.

"You should be grateful for that," said Remo.

"What can one do with a son who despises the family history?"

"Is he your son? He doesn't look Oriental," said Consuelo.

Their boat chugged through swarms of flies hovering around the mud-brown river that seemed to go on forever. The flies landed only on the guide, Consuelo, and the sailors.

Remo and Chiun seemed immune.

"He denies any possibility of Oriental blood," said Chiun. "I have to live with that."

"That's awful," said Consuelo. "You shouldn't be ashamed of what you are."

"I'm not," said Remo.

"Then why do you hide your Koreanness?" she asked. "I don't hide that I am part Hispanic. No one should be ashamed of who he is."

"He's ashamed that I'm white," said Remo, "if you want to know the truth."

"Oh," said Consuelo.

"Oh," said Remo.

"I'm sorry," said Consuelo.

The boat turned into a tributary, and the crew became nervous. The guide did not. Remo picked up little comments about something called the "Giri."

The guide said it was nothing to worry about. There were no more Giri near here. They were less than fifty miles from Rio. Would poor pitiful savages remain near Rio?

Remo checked the map. On the map, everything outlying Rio was built up but the dark green patch and the brown line they were traveling on. All it said was "Giri."

"What is Giri?" Consuelo asked a crew member when the guide had gone into the cabin to briefly escape the bugs. The Amazon and tributaries had bugs that feasted on normal insect repellent.

"Bad," said a crew member.

"What's bad about it?"

"Them," said the crew member. And then, as though even the sky might be listening, he whispered, fearful even to mention the name.

"Giri all around here. Bad. Bad." He made a motion with his hands about the size of a very large cantaloupe; then he made his hands smaller, to the size of a lemon. "Heads. Take heads. Small."

"Headhunters. The Giri are headhunters," said Consuelo.

"Shhh," said the man. He looked to the thick foliage on the banks and crossed himself. Consuelo went directly to Remo and Chiun to warn them.

"Not Giri," said Chiun. "Anxitlgiri."

''You know them?" asked Consuelo.

"Those who know their past respect the past of others," said Chiun. The warm winds rustled his pale yellow kimono. He looked to Remo. Remo did not look back. He was watching the bugs. Any kind of bugs. Intently.

"He knows them," said Consuelo. "Will you listen to him?"

"You don't understand," said Remo. "He doesn't know them. What Sinanju remembers is who pays the bills. We probably did a hit for them, a half-dozen centuries ago or so. Don't even ask. He doesn't know."

"My own son," said Chiun.

"You poor man. What a beast he is."

"That's all right," said Chiun.

"I am sorry. I misjudged you at first because you made a sexist remark. I'm sorry. I think you are a wonderful person. And I think your son is an ingrate."

"They're still headhunters," said Remo, now looking at the riverbank. He had seen them. And they were following the boat. He was just waiting for the first arrow as Chiun described the Anxitlgiri: they were a happy people, decent, honest, and loving, with perhaps some tribal customs that would not seem familiar to whites.

Francisco Braun knew them only as Giri. He had bought heads from them before. They were dishonest and deceitful as well as vicious. But they loved gold. They loved to melt it and then pour it over favorite things, for decoration. Some of those favorite things happened to be captives whom they made slaves.

The Giri welcomed missionaries. They liked to eat their livers. A road crew, with the Brazilian army there to protect them, tried to build a highway through Giri territory. Their whitened bones ended up as hair ornaments for the Giri women.

Francisco Braun knew that one day he'd find a use for people this vicious and untrustworthy. That day in La Jolla, California, when he found that the pair could not be surprised from even a great distance out at sea, was the day he found the Giri's niche.