Warren Murphy: The Seventh Stone

But his cousins protested. A machine gun might hit neighboring estates. A machine gun might carry shells to a hospital a mile down the road. A machine gun could do damage anywhere. Why did Juan wish to use machine guns in an American suburb?

"Because I couldn't lay my hands on an automic bomb, estupido," he said and personally supervised the setting up of the fifty-caliber machine guns.

The deadly spray chewed up his lawn, pulverized his beloved Berserka and left the man unscathed. He was unscathed, Juan was sure, because he wasn't there anymore. Like a mist that suddenly goes when the sun arrives, he was gone. And then he was at the window, without a mark on him.

Juan Valdez would never trust the Lord again. The Almighty deserved all those windows' mites he kept asking for. If Juan lived through this day, he would take back the gold candlesticks from the churches in Bogota and Popayan.

His stupid cousins were still firing the machine guns into the expensive lawn when the man spoke.

"I've come to see Juan Valdez," said Remo. Juan pointed to his stupid cousins.

"Which one is Juan Valdez?" Remo asked.

"They both are. Take them with my blessings and go," said Juan.

"I think you are."

"You're right," said Juan. He had not expected that to work. What could he say to a man who had killed his gate guard, destroyed his two favorite dogs personally and the third practically, and was now cracking the bones of his cousins as if they were lobsters? New words came easily to Juan Valdez and they were sincere.

"Stranger, I don't know who you are but you're hired."

"I don't work for dead men," said Remo and grabbed Valdez by the back of his neck, pressing the thick greasy hair into the skin. Juan saw darkness and felt pain and when the gringo asked for his children, he heard himself to his own surprise answering.

Valdez was dragged like a sack of coffee beans into the children's room, where the German governess was dismissed.

There were Chico and Paco and Napoleon. "Children," said the gringo. "This is your father. He has helped to bring a new form of death to America's shores. Your father doesn't believe in just killing witnesses; he kills their wives and children. That is how your father kills." Even as he said this, Remo felt the same rage he had felt when he heard that ten children and their mothers were slain in New York City in a dispute between drug dealers. Remo had seen killing in the world, but not like this. Children had died in wars, but to use them as precise targets made his blood run cold and when he got this assignment, he knew exactly what he was going to do.

"Do you believe that children should be killed in these drug wars?"

Their little dark eyes grew larger with fear. They shook their heads.

"Don't you think that people who kill children are mierda?" Remo asked, using the Spanish word for excrement.

They all nodded.

"Your daddy kills children. What do you think he is?" And even as the first frightened hesitant answers came from their lips, Remo finished off Valdez, wiping his hands clean on the man's shirt. And there were the children looking at their father, whose last vision on earth had been that of his children saying he was less than dirt.

And Remo felt unclean. Why had he done it like that? He was just supposed to eliminate Valdez and he felt unclean now.

He looked at the children and said, "I'm sorry." What was he sorry about? His country and the world were infinitely better off with this man's death. Valdez, by his brutality, his slaughtering of the families of witnesses, had remained free from the law. And this was Remo's job. When the nation was threatened by those who could not be contained within the law, then the organization he worked for took care of things outside the law. And he had done it. Almost as ordered. But no one had ordered him to kill a man in front of his children. And there was something worse: he had unleashed all the old feelings he had grown up with, all the feelings he had been trained out of. "I'm sorry," Remo repeated.

"Hey," said the oldest boy, the one called Napoleon. "That's the business, baby. At least you didn't kill the children. Let's hear it for the handsome gringo."

The two other boys started to applaud.

"And on your way out, kind gringo, would you please take Daddy? They tend to smell up the place after a while."

"Sure," said Remo.

The kid had a nice way of looking at things. Maybe Remo's feelings were just a brief throwback to his days before training. This anger surprised him, though. He wasn't supposed to feel anger anymore, just a unity with all the forces that made him work correctly.

Then why was he worried? He had nothing to worry about. Just a feeling, and feelings didn't kill people. Of course, other people weren't so finely tuned that even their emotions were expected to be synchronized with their movements and their breathing and their being. It was almost like a golfer who, if he finished in a wrong position, knew-even without looking-that he had hit the ball wrong.

But, Remo told himself, nothing had gone wrong. Therefore, nothing was wrong.

And besides, only he had to know about it. Nothing was wrong.

Halfway across the country, the last Master of Sinanju, sun source of all the martial arts and defender of the Korean village of Sinanju, knew something was wrong, and he waited for Remo to return.

Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, was in the American city of Dayton in the state of Ohio. Dayton looked to Chiun just like all other American cities with green signs and fine highways, just like Rome in the time of the Great Wang, the greatest of all Masters of Sinanju. Chiun had often told Remo about the similarities between serving Rome, as did the Great Wang, and serving America.

Of course, in the histories of Sinanju, nothing was quite so strange as this country which had given birth to Remo.

As Master, it was Chiun's responsibility to pass on the history of his masterhood, just as it would someday be Remo's responsibility.

Chiun would not lie in writing the history of his reign because that would be dangerous to other Masters who would follow and carry out the work as great assassins to the world. But he did not necessarily, when writing his histories, include all the facts. Such as the fact that Remo was not only not born in Sinanju, and was not only not Korean, but he was not even Oriental. He was a white and therein was the problem. Remo had been raised white, taught white and lived among whites until Chiun had gotten him with more then twenty-five years of bad habits ingrained in him.

In the many centuries of the assassins of Sinanju, each Master faced an occasional time in which all that he had been trained to be would recede, only to blossom fully again. A Master who had been raised in the village of Sinanju could deal with this because, as a Korean child, he had been taught the game of hide.

All the children of Sinanju knew that every so often a Master would return to his house and not again cross the threshold for a long time. He would stay there and it was the task of the village to tell everyone he had left and was off serving some other emperor or king.

It was the game called hide. And every Sinanju-trained Master knew that when his powers were less and he had descended from peak, he must hide and remove himself from service until it passed.

But what would Remo know? What would he remember? What white games were there to tell him what to do? Would he remember where he was raised in that white Catholic orphanage? What games could the Church of Rome teach Remo that would prepare him for the moment of coming down from his peak?

How could he know that in feeling again old feelings that he had thought were buried he was being given a signal to hide, to retreat like a wounded animal until he was well again?