With a chamois cloth, he polished up the rich blackness of the leather, then folded the cloth and put in on the oak desk by the window. He placed the leather case beside the cloth. The afternoon sun made white flashes on the leather. Guerner placed a hand on either side of the case, and with a snap, it opened, revealing a Monte Carlo stock made of highly glossed walnut, and a black metal rifle barrel two feet long.
They rested on purple velvet, like machined jewels for the elegance of death.
"Hello, darling," whispered Guerner. "We work again. Do you wish to? Have you rested too long?"
He stroked the barrel with the tips of his right fingers.
"You are magnificent," he said. "You have never been readier."
"You still talk to your weapon?" Maria was laughing.
"Of course. Do you think a weapon is purely mechanical? Yes, you would. You think people are mechanical. But it is not. They are not."
"I only asked. It seemed… somehow… strange."
"It is stranger, my dear, that I have never missed. Never. Is that not strange?"
"It is training and skill."
Blood rushed to Guerner's aristocratic face, filling the cheeks like a child's coloring book.
"No," he said angrily. "It is feeling. One must feel his weapon and his bullet and his target. He must feel it is correct to shoot. And then the path of the bullet is correct. Those who miss do not feel their shots, do not carefully insert them into then: target. I do not miss, because I feel my shots into my victim. Nothing else is important. The wind, the light, the distance. All are meaningless. You would more easily miss picking your cigarette up from the ashtray than I would miss my target."
Guerner then began his ritual, leaving the weapon unassembled in the case. He sat at the desk and rang for his butler by pulling a cloth cord that hung from the high beamed ceiling.
He hummed softly as he waited, not looking at Maria. She could never understand. She could not feel. And not feeling, she could not learn how to live.
The door opened and the butler entered.
"Thank you, Oswald. Please bring me my supplies." Only seconds later, the butler reentered bearing another black leather case, similar to a doctor's bag.
As he carefully emptied the bag onto the desk, Guerner spoke. "Those who buy ammunition and expect uniformity are incredibly foolish. They buy approximation and therefore attain approximation. The expert must know each bullet."
He picked up a dullish gray slug from the desk and rubbed it between his fingers, feeling his finger oil coat the projectile. He stared at the bullet, absorbing its feel and its shape and weight and temperature. He placed it before him at the right of the desk. He picked up dozens of slugs, one at a time, putting most of them back into the black leather bag, and finally choosing four more which he placed with the first.
From a small wooden box on the desk, he selected a cartridge casing, held it momentarily, then replaced it. He took another, held it, rolled it between his fingers, and smiled.
"Yes," he murmured, and placed it with the slugs. He continued until he had five. "Perfect," he said. "Created to be joined together. Like man and woman. Like life and death."
With a small silver spoon, he began to ladle a white powder carefully into each cartridge. It swished in silently, a few grains at a time, giving each shell its explosive charge. When he had finished, he delicately placed a slug into the open end of each shell, and then placed them one at a time into a chrome plated device, which sealed them with a faint click.
"Now the cartridge, the bullet, the powder are one. Along with the maker. We will soon be ready."
Lifting the rifle barrel carefully from the case, he held it silently before him, peered through it, then put it down. He lifted out the stock, hefting it, holding it in firing position at his shoulder. With a soft murmur of approval, he placed the barrel on top of the stock and with a specially-tooled wrench began joining the two.
He stood up, extending his weapon from him in one hand. "We are done," he said, and inserted a bullet into the chamber, and pushed forward the bolt with a click.
"Only five bullets? Will that be enough for this job?"
"There are only two targets. Two bullets are enough for this job. The other three are for practice. My weapon and I have been inactive for so long. Get the binoculars. Behind you. On the shelf."
Guerner moved to the window, looking out over his valley, rolling lawns in front, the last blooming garden off to his right. The autumn sun was dying red over the Hudson beyond, bathing the valley in blood.
Maria picked up the 7x35 Zeiss Ikon binoculars from the shelf and noticed there was dust on the lenses. Strange. He worshipped that rifle as if a woman, and let a fine pair of binoculars gather dust. Well, he had once been very good.
She walked to the open window by him and felt the late afternoon chill. A bird sang harshly off in the distance. She wiped the binocular lenses clean on her sleeve and did not notice that this drew a glance of contempt from Guerner.
He looked forward out the window. "Two hundred yards from here," he said,-pointing, "there is a small furry animal. I cannot see it too clearly."
She raised the binoculars to her eyes. "Where?"
"About ten yards to the left of the corner of the stone wall."
She focused on the wall and was surprised that through the lenses, the wall appeared better lit than to her naked eyes. She remembered this was characteristic of good binoculars.
"I can't see it," she said.
"It's moving. Now it's still."
Maria scanned the wall, and there perched on its hind legs, its forelegs tucked in front as though begging, was a chipmunk. She could barely make it out.
"I know what you're doing," she said, still looking. "You know little animals are always on that wall and when you shoot it will hide and you will say you shot it."
Maria felt the crack of the rifle at her left ear, just before she saw the chipmunk spin over as though slapped in the head with a paddle, a ball of orange fur bouncing backwards, rolling out of sight behind the wall, then rolling into sight again, the legs just as they had been, but without a head. The legs quivered. The white patch on the stomach still pulsated.
"That bird," said Guerner quietly and Maria again heard the painful crack of the rifle, and suddenly in a flock of dark birds far in the distance, perhaps 300 yards, one dropped. And she did not lift her binoculars because she knew its head was gone too.
"Another chipmunk," Guerner said, and the rifle cracked, and Maria saw nothing, partly because she had, stopped looking.
"It is only possible if the target is alive," Guerner said. "That is the secret. One must sense the life of the target. One must feel it move into the orbit of your life. And then, there can be no miss."
He clutched his rifle to his chest, as though thanking the instrument.
"When do we perform against this fool this Remo who uses only his hands?" he asked.
"Tomorrow morning," Maria said.
"Good. My weapon can hardly wait." He squeezed it tenderly in his two large hands. "The target, the living target, gives itself to you. We want the living target to do it with. The secret is that you do it with the victim." His voice was smooth and deep and vibrant. As it had been 30 years before, Maria remembered, when they had made love.
CHAPTER TEN
Seventy thousand dollars. How did they arrive at that price? Remo hung up the phone in the booth and walked out to Adams Street.
The sun made Boston alive, a very dead city from the time the first settler designed the dirty, gloomy metropolis, to this September noon when the air was warm with just a hint of growing coolness.
He had done his morning exercises behind the wheel of the rented automobile, driving all night from Montreal to the din of Chiun and the young Mrs. Liu. At one point, while he was reinforcing his breathing, Mrs. Liu surrendered to angry tears. Chiun leaned forward and whispered in Remo's ear: "They don't like that. Heh, heh."