Warren Murphy: Next Of Kin

Remo sloshed back toward shore in the calf-high water, his abdomen glowing a bright crimson.

Chiun folded his arms across his chest and shook his head, making his beard and the wispy tuft of white hair on his crown dance in the breeze like a banner. "Disgraceful," he said, pointing with a long fingernail to Remo's red belly. "You are soaked. You enter the water like a rock."

"Tell that to my stomach. It feels like a ripe tomato that's just been fired out of a cannon. That water's only a foot deep."

"Nine inches more than you need," said the old Oriental, his hazel eyes narrowing into slits above his parchment cheekbones. "The Flying Wall must be performed lightly, like a seagull skimming the waters. The dive was developed in my village of Sinanju in Korea. Perhaps the teachings of Sinanju are too rigorous for soft white men," he said with a tight smile.

"Chiun, I live for Sinanju. But I can't help it. I'm not you. My stomach turns red when I hit a coral reef at a hundred miles an hour. Besides, this is supposed to be our vacation."

"If you are so in need of rest that you cannot perform your exercises, I suggest that you remain abed." He sniffed. "This island sun cannot be good for one's health. Too warm."

Remo's night-dark eyes pinched in sudden understanding. "That's it. You're just ticked 'cause Smitty sent us here for vacation when we could have been lolling on the rocky, frozen shores of Sinanju. Right? Right?"

Chiun shrugged. "What can be expected from a white man? Perhaps Emperor Smith felt you were not sufficiently excellent on our last assignment to merit a stay in Sinanju. Perhaps this desolate, sun-filled place is a fitting punishment for your laziness in performing the exercises recommended by the Master of Sinanju."

"Sint Maarten's one of the most beautiful islands in the world," Remo said stubbornly. "It sure beats the hell out of that back-stabbing rock quarry you call home."

Chiun bristled, the white cloud of hair on his head whipping back and forth. "How dare you insult the name of my village?" he sputtered.

"The last time we set foot in that godforsaken dump, the local clowns tried to murder me," Remo yelled.

"Perhaps they had seen you attempt the Flying Wall. Heh, heh." He pointed to the cliff from which Remo had been diving. "Heh, heh. Flying Wall. More like Flying-Pile-of-Garbage. Heh, heh." He rubbed his stomach in painful reminder.

"Well, they didn't exactly roll out the welcome mat for you, either. After all the gold you've sent them, they all sided with Nuihc, against you. He was calling himself the Master of Sinanju, and they believed him."

Chiun winced with the memory.

The Master of Sinanju was obliged by a thousand-year-old custom to support his village through his earnings as an assassin— the best assassin in history— for the House of Sinanju was the sun source of all the martial arts. Chiun had honored that custom for most of his eighty-odd years. But Nuihc, his nephew, would not. Despite his lofty speeches to the villagers of Sinanju, Nuihc was a greedy, evil man who had lived in dishonor all his life, and planned to sell out the village to the Communist North Koreans as soon as he usurped Chiun's position as Master. Death was too good for him, but death had claimed him anyway.

"That is all past now," Chiun said quietly. "Still, my village of Sinanju is lovely in the springtime. Come, Remo. I will show you the Flying Wall."

Remo walked him to the edge of the water and watched as the little man scaled the sheer face of the cliff like a gaily striped spider. He loved the old man who still, in his eighth decade, toiled at the work of death to keep his ungrateful village alive. To Remo, Chiun was Sinanju, and all of the greatness of the training of Sinanju was embodied in him. Remo watched. He wanted to learn the Flying Wall.

The tiny figure on top of the cliff shot off the edge without hesitation. He continued like a projectile almost straight out for some 50 feet before descending. He looked like a colorful bearded bird as he shifted his arms to catch the thermal air pockets in the wind. He descended in a curve toward shore, and landed in the shallowest water without a splash. The momentum of his flight kept him skimming over the corals until he was within inches of Remo. Then he stood up, revealing only a slender band of wetness down the front of his body. Even the backs of his legs were dry.

"That was beautiful, Chiun," Remo said.

The Oriental's eyes sparkled but he said only, "It was adequate to demonstrate the proper shifting of weight." He wrapped himself in a red silk kimono with a dragon embroidered on the back. "I will go back to the house now for dry clothing and a cup of tea," he said.

"Okay. I want to try the Flying Wall a couple of times."

"You will perform the exercise ten times, slothful one," Chiun said.

"Ten? That's the hardest dive I've ever seen. Nobody can do that ten times without getting killed."

"Oh? In that case, we shall meet next in paradise. Do not fail to breathe during the curved descent."

"Ten times," Remo muttered as Chiun padded off toward the villa their employer had rented for them.

It was odd that Smith had sent them to Sint Maarten. Smitty had to be the most tight-fisted man in the United States government. Springing for a villa, complete with private beach and housekeeper, was as alien to Harold W. Smith as eating octopus.

Remo shrugged off the thought as he neared the top of the cliff, his fingertips pulling him in toward the wall of stone as his feet slid smoothly upward. At the top, he cleared his mind of all distractions but the memory of Chiun's powerful dive, and took off. His body, more finely tuned than any athlete's, was on automatic now. He glided out toward the sea on the instincts developed through years of training. His arms moved reflexively, feeling for the air pockets, and windmilled slowly backward as he began the slow curve downward. The water touched him softly as he saw, inches below him, a school of angel fish swimming between the craggy reefs of coral that would rip a normal diver to shreds. Like a speedboat he skimmed toward shore, emerging nearly dry.

"I did it! I did it!" Remo exulted.

"Nine more times," came a high, squeaky voice from inside the villa.

* * *

Remo lay in the sun, his eyes closed, the heat of midday warming his muscles. The ten dives had been exhausting enough, but he had performed the exercise four extra times for good measure. Now all he wanted to do was sleep.

His past came back to him in snatches, as it often did when he was on the brink of sleep. His years in the orphanage, his training as a policeman in Newark, the incredible frame-up that caused his arrest for killing a dope pusher he didn't kill, the sensational kangaroo court trial that touted him as an example of police brutality, his days on Death Row...

It had been a lousy life. And then another frame-up, perpetrated by Harold W. Smith, who had masterminded the whole false arrest mess in the first place: the electric chair didn't work. That made it complete. A fake death for a fake crime. Only nobody knew the death was a fraud except for Harold W. Smith, who pulled his weighty strings from a computer console hidden in the recesses of Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York; another man who conveniently died shortly after Remo's electrocution; and, after several days of unconsciousness, Remo himself.

All very neat. The President of the United States had wanted a one-man enforcement arm for an illegal organization, CURE, dedicated to fighting crime outside the Constitution, and Smith had delivered Remo: a man with no family ties who was officially dead.

Smitty had chosen Chiun, the Master of the ancient House of Sinanju, to transform Remo from an easy-going cop into a smooth, perfect killing machine. All the pieces fit into place. There was little room for error, because error would mean the instantaneous destruction of CURE. If Smith failed to keep CURE secret, his death was sealed in a vial of poison in the basement of Folcroft. If Remo failed, Chiun was instructed to kill him at the moment of Smith's order. If the President failed, he was to pass along the information about CURE's existence to his successor in the White House.