"I understand, sir."
"You keep saying that, Smith, but somehow I don't find it as reassuring as I used to. I expect to be hearing from you."
"Yes, sir," Smith said. He replaced the special phone and tried, for the hundredth time in the hours since he had learned of Hubert Millis' brush with death, to call Chiun at his hotel.
As he held the telephone he wondered if he would ever again begin a working day reading the Constitution of the United States from a computer terminal.
In the honeymoon suite of the Detroit Plaza Hotel, in the early-dawn light, Chiun, reigning Master of Sinanju, watched the sun ascend in glory.
He sat before the glass doors of the balcony which gave the clearest view of the sunrise. He rested on a straw mat, a single taper illuminating the room behind him with a smoky, angry light. As the sun rose, the light of the taper faded before it, like the glory of old empires fading before new ones.
Many Masters of Sinanju had preceded Chiun. They were all of the same blood. Chiun's blood. But there was more than a blood link connecting Chiun with his ancestors. They were all of the sun source and one with the sun source-the awesome power that enabled the Masters of Sinanju to tap the godlike power that lay within all men.
But only those could come to the sun source who had trained under a Master already possessing the sun source and only after a lifetime of training. Sinanju had been handed down to each generation of Chiun's ancestors from the time of the first great Master, Wang, who legend said had received the source from a ring of fire that descended from the stars.
It had been a proud, unbroken tradition until the day of Chiun. Chiun, whose wife bore him no heir. Chiun, who then took a white man from the outer world because there were no worthy Koreans left in Sinanju. Chiun, whose pupil was so ungrateful that when asked to choose between the gift that was the sun source and a white meat-eater who had so little use for him that he left him on a doorstep as a child, had made the wrong choice.
And now it had come to this.
Chiun hung his tired old head in sadness and seemed to hear the voices of his ancestors speaking in the stillness:
-Oh, woe, that Sinanju should come to this.
-It is the end. The greatest line of assassins in the universe will soon be no more.
-Gone, gone. All gone. Our honor besmirched and there is none to carry on our line.
-Shame. Shame to Chiun, trainer of whites, who chose a non-Korean. Shame to him who let the future of Sinanju slip through his fingers while he lived in luxury in a corrupt land.
-All we were, you are now. When you are gone, the glory of Sinanju will be no more.
-And we will be voices in the void, nothing more. Voices without hope, without one of our blood to carry on Sinanju.
-And you will be one of us, Chiun.
-A voice.
-In the void.
-Without a son.
-Without hope.
-That will be your destiny, Chiun, final Master of Sinanju.
-And your shame.
-0h, woe, that Sinanju should come to this.
Chiun lifted his head at the sound of the ringing telephone, then turned away. But the ringing continued, insistent, and finally he rose from his lotus position and glided to the phone. He picked it up but spoke no greetings.
After a pause, Smith asked, "Chiun?"
"I am he," said the Master of Sinanju.
"I've been trying to reach you, Chiun. What happened? Millis is in a coma."
"I have no answer for you," Chiun said.
Smith noticed the old Korean's voice was empty of feeling. He said, "Remo never arrived. He wasn't on the plane. "
"I know. He is lost to us, lost to Sinanju."
"Lost?" Smith demanded. "What do you mean lost?"
"He is with the one of white skin who is his father," Chiun said.
Smith said, "But he's alive, right? He's not dead."
"No," said the Master of Sinanju as he hung up the receiver quietly, pain in his hazel eyes. "He is dead."
Chapter 17
If he could only take care of that lunatic gunman, things would be perfect for Lyle Lavallette. He considered that as he sat in his office, first trying, then rejecting a pair of elevator shoes that his cobbler in Italy had just sent him. They were guaranteed to make him a full inch taller than his even six feet, but when he tried them on, they wrinkled his socks and so he tossed them in the wastepaper basket. Maybe if he were only five-feet-eleven, but he was six feet tall already, and the extra inch wasn't worth wrinkled hose.
He had expected more competition from the Big Three when he unveiled the Dynacar. But with Mangan's killing, the board of directors National Autos seemed prepared to offer Lavallette the opportunity to head the company. And he had already heard from two board members at American Autos, whose president Hubert Millis lay near death in a hospital. Only Revell's company, General Autos, seemed to be holding firm, but Lavallette figured that Revell was shaky and with a good pension offer, could probably be persuaded to take early retirement. That would clear the way for Lavallette to take over General Autos too.
No one had ever done it before. He would head the entire car industry in the United States. It had been his dream since he was a little boy playing with matchstick cars and trucks. And it was coming true.
"Miss Blaze, things are looking up," he said as his secretary entered the office.
"I don't know, Mr. Lavallette. What about that awful man who tried to kill you? I won't rest easy until that man is in jail."
"I'm not afraid of him," Lavallette said, tapping his bulletproof Kevlar suit. Even his tie was bulletproof. It was not technically necessary but he had had a set made, for a thousand dollars, because he liked his ties to match his suits. At any rate, his public relations firm told him they could probably get him a page in People magazine with that tie: "LYLE LAVALLETTE, THE MAVERICK AUTO GENIUS WHO WEARS METAL TIES."
Lavallette like the idea. He liked it all a lot and after this was all over, he might just keep wearing bulletproof ties. He checked his tie knot in one of the three full-length mirrors in his office. They were strategically placed so that, no matter how Lavallette faced visitors from behind his desk, he had at least one unobstructed view of himself. That way he knew whenever his tie was crooked or his hair not precisely combed, or if any similar near-catastrophe threatened.
Lavallette smiled at his own image now in the mirror facing his desk, and thought he was showing a little too much gum. He tightened his face. Yes, that was it. Too much gum was bad. It took away from the brilliance of his shiny ceramic teeth and he wondered if there was such a thing as gum-reduction surgery. It might be easier to submit to surgery than to have to keep adjusting one's smile. He made a mental note to look into it.
"I think you're very brave," Miss Blaze said. Lavallette popped out of his self-absorbed mood.
"What's that you say?"
"I said I think you're very brave. I know if I were in your shoes, I'd be petrified." Miss Blaze's body shook at the thought. Her breasts shook especially, and Lavallette decided that she was at her most appealing when she shuddered in fear. Maybe he would arrange for the experience to happen often.
"I survived one attempt. I'm not afraid of another," he said.
"But when I think of poor Mr. Millis, lying in a coma-"
"That moron," Lavallette snapped. "Do you know he fired me in 1975?"
"Yes. You've told me twenty times. I think it still bothers you."
"They all did. They all fired me. But I swore I'd be back on top again. And now I am. And look where they are. Mangan's dead; Millis is going to be a vegetable . . ."
"You shouldn't speak that way about him." Miss Blaze pouted. "The past is the past. You should let bygones be bygones."
"Miss Blaze, do you know what a bygone is?"