They did not come to offer assistance. They came to make people uncomfortable. Two of them immediately stopped making Chiun uncomfortable, because they had to attend to their lungs. Their lungs needed attention because they had been punctured by their ribs.
Patrons screamed and huddled against the formica walls of dining booths, as one man came racing at Chiun waving a cleaver over his head. He kept going. So did the cleaver. So did his head. His head rolled. His body gushed blood all the way to the crowd that suddenly was not a crowd. The cleaver landed onto a table next to a tureen of won ton soup. The head rolled to a stop at the feet of the vice president of the Mamaroneck Hadassah.
And into the din, beyond all voices, spoke Chiun:
"I am the Master of Sinanju, fools. How dare you?"
"No," screamed the waiter and huddled fearfully into a corner of the booth.
"Where is my child that you have taken from me?"
"What child, oh, Master of Sinanju?" said the cowering waiter.
"The white man."
"He is dead of fatal essences."
"Fool. Do you think Ms body would entertain them? Where is he?"
With his good arm, the waiter pointed to a wall with a large relief of the city of Canton.
"Wait here and speak to no one," Chiun ordered. "You are my slave."
"Yes, Master of Sinanju."
To the bas relief went Chiun, and through its interlocking mechanism went the terrible swift hand, ignited in all the fury of its art. But there was no one left in the restaurant to see him. Only the terrified slave who sobbed in a corner. And he, of course would wait for his master. The Master of Sinanju.
General Liu saw his loved one coming down the passageway in the dank hallway with the rest of the group, the old Chinese man and two waiters bearing the impossible one.
He had been waiting, hearing the minute by minute reports of the message given, the poison served, the poison eaten, and then an eternity before the impossible one passed out.
Now it was all worth it. He was captured and would soon be dead. And she was here. The delicate, fragrant blossom. The one sweet joy of his hard and bitter life.
"Mei Soong," he said, and brushed past the scurrying water waiters and past the old man. "It's been so long, darling."
Her lips were moist with American lip paste, her dress was of frail material which clung more luxuriously to her young vibrant body. General Liu clutched her to his chest and whispered, "Come with me. It has been so long."
The old Chinese man, seeing the general trundle off with his wife, called out: "What shall we do with this one, comrade general?" and rubbed his hands nervously. The air was very hot in the passageway. He could scarcely breathe.
"He's hall dead already. Finish him off." And the general disappeared into his little room, tugging Mei Soong along behind him.
Then the old Chinese man was in the hall way with the white man held up by the two waiters. He nodded to an adjacent door, and drew from his pocket a ring of many keys. Finding one special key, he inserted it in the lock of the wooden door.
It opened easily, revealing a small chamber and an altar lit by flickering candles. A pale porcelain Buddha sat content at the apex of the altar. The room smelled of incense, burned in the memory of years of incense and daily devotions.
"On the floor," said the old man. Put him on the floor. And say nothing of this room to anyone. Do you understand? Say nothing."
When the waiters had left, shutting the door tightly behind them, the old man went to the altar and bowed once.
There were always new philosophies in China but always there was China, and if the new regime looked scornfully upon devotions to gods other than material dialectics, still it would accept the other gods one day, just as all the new regimes eventually accepted all the old gods of China.
Mao was China today. But so was Buddha. And so were the ancestors of the old man.
From his suit pocket, he removed a small dagger and returned to where the white man lay. Perhaps the night tigers of Sinanju were of gods no more, and the master gone with them, and Shiva, the white Destroyer, come and gone where all had gone before.
It was a fine knife, of steel from the black forests of Germany, sold by a German major for many times its worth in jade when the Germans and the Americans and the Russians and the British and the Japanese buried their differences to press the face of China further into the mud.
The major had given the knife. Now, the old man would return it to the white race blade first. The black wooden handle was wet in his palm as the old man pressed the point to the white throat. He would plunge it straight in, then rip to one side, then rip to the other, and then step away to watch the blood flow.
The face seemed strangely strong in its sleep, the eyes deep behind their closed lids, the lips thin and well-defined. Was this the face of Shiva?
Of course not. He was about to die.
"Father and grandfather, and for your fathers and their fathers before them," the old man intoned. "For the indignities upon indignities suffered from these barbarians."
The old man knelt so that he would bring the full force of his shoulder behind the blade. The floor was hard and cold. But the face of the white man was growing pink, then red, as though filled with blood before blood was spilled. A brownish line formed between the thin lips. The old man looked closer. Was it his imagination? He seemed to feel the heat of the body about to die. The line became a dark brown dot on the lower lip, then an elongated puddle that flowed to the sides, then a stream, and then a gush as the face turned red and the body heaved, and out, coming out on the floor, out of the body's system was the oyster sauce and the beef and with it, the poison essences, mixed with the body's fluid and smelling like oysters and vinegar. The man should have been dead. He should have been dead. But his body was rejecting the poison.
"Aiee," screamed the old man," it is Shiva the destroyer."
With a last desperate effort, he raised the knife for the most forceful plunge he could effect. A last chance was better than none at all. But at the knife's apex, a voice filled the basement in thunder.
"I am the Master of Sinanju, fools. How dare you? Where is my child whom I have made with my heart and with my mind and with my will? I have come for my child. How will you die? Now you shall fear death because it is the death brought by the Master of Sinanju."
Outside the door to the little room, servants were screaming directions. "There, there. He is in there."
The old man did not wait.
The dagger came down swiftly and hard, with all his strength. But it did not plunge straight down. Instead, it created an arc to his own heart. It was pain and hot and shocking to his essence. But it was true to its mark and of all his pain, all the pain would not be so bad as punishment from the Master of Sinanju. He tried to twist the knife further into his own heart as his body trembled. But he could not. And it was not necessary. He saw the cold stone floor coming toward him and he prepared to greet his ancestors.
Remo came to with a bony knee in his back. He was facing the floor. Someone had vomited on the floor. Someone had also bled on the floor. A hand was slapping his neck sharply. He attempted to spin, cracking the slapper in the groin to render him harmless. When he was unable to do this, he knew it was Chiun slapping him.
"Eat, eat. Gobble like a pig. You should have died, it would have taught you a most lasting lesson."
"Where am I?" said Remo.
Slap. Slap. "Why should one who eats like a white man care?"
Slap. Slap.
"I am a white man."
Slap. Slap. "Do not remind me, fool. I have already been made painfully aware of that. Do not eat slowly. Do not taste your food. Gobble. Gobble like a buzzard. Stick your long beak into the food and inhale." Slap. Slap.
"I'm okay now."
Slap. Slap. "I give you the best years of my life and what do you do?"