Warren Murphy: Master's Challenge

H'si T'ang nodded. "And the Master's Trial is an unnecessary annoyance for you.''

"I just don't see why I have to murder a bunch of total strangers."

"I see. You feel that the other participants pose no challenge to you?"

"Well, I don't want to seem conceited, but-"

With a motion so swift that Remo never saw it coming, the old man pinned him to the floor by his neck, pressing on nerves that made it impossible for Remo to move his arms and legs. Remo stared up, terrified, at the sightless eyes. Then, as quickly as he had attacked, H'si T'ang released Remo and helped him up.

"Forgive me, but I felt it necessary to demonstrate my point. You see, I too, looked with disdain upon the ancient peoples until I met with them during my Master's Trial."

Remo rubbed the place on his neck where the old man's hands had gripped it. "So? You won."

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"Not without great difficulty. Not one of your opponents would have missed my attack."

Remo looked at the floor.

"These are not primitive humans. They are highly advanced in their ways, and are to be respected. You will see that for yourself if you go. But if you continue to refuse, the warriors of these lands will be greatly insulted, and will make war on us. They will destroy the village as a point of honor."

"You mean they'll kill me if I don't fight them?"

"Perhaps not you, but all the innocent people of Sinanju who have relied for so many centuries on the Master to protect them. They themselves have never learned how to fight." The old man took his hand. "Chiun is still too young and proud to beg, even for his people. But I am not. Remo-"

"Don't," Remo said. "I'll go. I didn't understand."

"The Ritual of Parting will be tomorrow," H'si T'ang said.

By the light of dawn, the two Masters led Remo from the cave to a small wooden boat bobbing near the shore. Chiun was dressed in a red silk kimono with a small black hat that looked like a series of boxes stacked on his head. For the procession, he carried a strange-looking musical instrument with sixteen bronze bells, which he struck with a wooden mallet. The music it made was supposed to be the essence of peace and beauty, but Remo thought it sounded like loose change clinking in a pocket. H'si T'ang dressed in black. On his head he wore the high, spiky crown of gold that the Masters of Sinanju had worn since the Middle Ages.

Chiun gave Remo a polished jade inscribed with three Korean characters. "Your opponents all have similar stones,

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except for Ancion," he said. "They will find you through it."

Remo read the characters. "The Brotherhood," he read. "I thought these guys were supposed to be my enemies."

"Perhaps you will learn something of enmity and friendship on this journey," Chiun said as Remo got into the boat.

"There's just one thing before I go. In the scroll you sent me, it said something-"

"The Other," H'si T'ang said. He sniffed the ocean air. "He is coming. Beware."

Chiun looked at H'si T'ang. "Who is he, my teacher?"

"I cannot see. But someone close, very close. His spirit is near. We are deceived. The Other is of two beings. Yin and yang . . ." His words drifted off, and H'si T'ang shook his head rapidly. "The vision is gone."

"The Other," Remo mused. "A fifth opponent?"

"I do not know who he is, only that he comes."

"For me?" Remo asked.

"He is coming for us all." With a quick swat of his right hand, the old man's long fingernails sliced through the rope that bound the boat to shore, and Remo drifted out to sea. The last thing he heard was the music of Chiun's ancient instrument, and this time it sounded sad and forlorn.

Chapter Four

Two weeks had gone by and he couldn't reach Remo.

For the first time in all his years running the organization, Harold W. Smith felt his sparse breakfast come up in his throat. A nightmare. But worse.

With a nightmare, Smith would have awakened next to his wife of more than thirty years, Irma, and then gone back to sleep.

With a nightmare, he would sleep it off, then come to the office in the morning, say good morning to his secretary, who believed that he was Dr. Harold W. Smith, head of Folcroft Sanitarium, and then he would quietly close the soundproof, rayproof doors of his office overlooking Long Island Sound in Rye, New York, and get about his real business.

He would boot up that special bank of four computers from which he watched the inner workings of the world through a vast network that did not know exactly who it was working for.

Then if he saw special trouble, he would dial his special numbers and reach Remo and send him in. That was

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reality, the way his life worked, and that was the way the morning had begun, with the world working the way it should, and the lemony-faced man in the three-piece gray suit observing the bowels of the world, ready to do for his nation what it could not legally do itself.

That was his mission, and he had served it all his life, from the early days in the OSS, and then to the CIA, and then keeping his promise to Irma, staying home. She did not know he was also keeping his promise to a long-dead president that he would not let America be overthrown by its enemies. He ran the secret agency CURE, and no one knew save Smith, the president, Remo and Chiun. No one else, because to know was to die.

In the days before computers were common, CURE had them. And when others had them, CURE had models that outstripped them. Through the computers, the Folcroft Four, Smith could jump any message sent anywhere and have it captured, analyzed, and reported to him in minutes.

He had served his country for more than forty years, and he had never thought he would see the awesome power of his farflung network looking back at him through a monitor screen, telling him he was helpless. But that was the reality of the nightmare he was now living.

It had been a normal day on the screen, starting out with a report of the most recent events, and then moving on to analyze the primary dangers. This day, on the screen, there appeared a new method of importing cocaine into America. Instead of small shipments by plane or briefcase, it was now massive shipments to a point in Los Angeles. He dismissed that. The narcotics bureau could handle that, probably with the Coast Guard's help.

Smith moved on.

A judge in Minneapolis was taking bribes. A job for the FBI. He moved on.

A cabinet member in a crucial decision-making position

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was investing in certain defense industries, using his insider's knowledge. Smith thought about that for a moment, then moved on. The Internal Revenue Service would get the cabinet member, either soon or later.

And then another message. A plot to kill the president of the United States.

He was about to direct the computer to slip that information into the hands of the Secret Service when he was caught short by a curious reference contained in the message.

"Group here confident 'B' will arrange intro. B assures target will be available. B assures Secret Service no problem. B as close to target as his pompadour. Target assured."

Harold Smith froze the message on the screen. The people planning to kill the president had an inside person. Someone was going to set up the president of the United States to be murdered, and it was going to be an inside job.

Quickly, he tried to scan from other sources whether the Secret Service had picked this up.

They hadn't. The hit group was somewhere in Virginia and waiting for word. The word was 1 P.M. Smith looked at his watch.

It was 12:30 P.M.

He forced the computers to bust into the Secret Service system and made sure the message was intercepted.

It was 12:40 when the secreen blinked. The Secret Service had picked up the message that Smith had fed into their computers. And there was a new message from the Folcroft computers. In twenty minutes, at 1 P.M., the president of the United States would be dead.