"I have never enjoyed any dish like this before," he told Mei Soong.
Mei Soong sat across the white table cloth from him, at last silent. She had denied everything of course. She had not received any messages from Liu's captors. She didn't know where the little red book in her room had come from. She denied being told to lure Remo to the karate school.
She denied this while walking to the restaurant. She denied it while on her way to the ladies room in the restaurant, where she received her instructions from an old Chinese woman. She denied all this even as she placed her order for beef in oyster sauce, and she denied it as she suddenly lost her appetite and let Remo eat the entire dish.
Remo kept eating, just waiting for whatever would come out of the walls. They had gone through four major assaults and now, whoever held General Liu captive, must strike openly. The poor old bastard. Probably in a dungeon someplace, and now betrayed by his wife. Perhaps it was his age that had turned the girl against him. Or perhaps, it as Chiun had said:
"Treachery is the basic nature of a woman."
Remo's answer had been typically thoughtful. "You're full of crap. What about mothers? Many women aren't treacherous."
"And there are cobras that will not bite. I will tell you why women are treacherous. They are of the same species as men. Heh, heh."
He had chuckled the way he had just chuckled when leaving the table for the kitchen to make sure his food did not contain cats, dogs, Chinese and other vermin.
"The beef in oyster sauce is especially nice, isn't it?" Mei Soong said, as Remo finished up the last morsel.
A sense of warmth overcame him, then a deep feeling of well being and an extreme relaxation of his muscles. The air bloomed with cool smells and Mei Soong's delicate beauty entranced his entire body. The imitation leather seats became pillows of air, and the dark green walls with white pictures became dancing lights, and all was well with the world because Remo had been poisoned.
Before it became too dark, Remo reached out to say goodbye to Mei Soong, a little gesture like putting his left forefinger into her eyesocket to take her with him. He was not sure that he reached her however, because suddenly he was going into a very deep and dark place which spun people around and never let them go. And the oyster sauce was rising back up through his throat into his mouth. That delicious oyster sauce. He would have to get the recipe some day.
The cook, of course, was giving Chiun lip. Answering back heatedly about the quality of his food until he was made reasonable and responsible and polite, by a pan of hot grease which had, by some mysterious force, sent hot steaming droplets at the cook's arrogant face.
But no one responded to investigate the cook's frenzied yelling. Chiun decided to investigate this. Where was everyone?
He moved from the kitchen, testing the hinges on the swinging doors by seeing how fast the doors could give way to a tray-laden waiter going through them. They gave way very fast, and Chiun pretended to be even more aged than he was when he stepped over the pile of broken dishes out into the main dining hall of the Imperial Gardens. Remo and Mei Soong were gone.
Would Remo leave him like this?
Of course, he would. The child liked to do things like this and often did inexplicable things. Then again, he might have recieved a message which he knew would be Chiun's signal to terminate him. What fools the white men. To have Chiun terminate what was undoubtedly the finest Caucasian on the earth. Would they ask him to terminate Adrian Kantrowitz or Cardinal Cook or Billy Graham or Leontyne Price? People of no value at all?
No. They would ask him to terminate Remo. The fools. But that was the nature of white men. Why, in just thirty or forty years, Remo probably could come close to Chiun, and if he discovered some locked-up hidden power, might even surpass him.
But would the white man wait thirty years? Oh, no. Thirty years was forever to a white man.
A waiter walked up and stood between Chiun and Remo's table. Chiun removed the waiter from his vision, by putting him in a seat. With a broken shoulder. Then Chiun saw the brownish spit on the side of the tablecloth where Remo had been sitting. He asked the waiter where Remo had gone. The waiter said he did not know.
In the mirrors over the front entrance door, Chiun saw a group of men in Chinese waiters' garb spill out of a side door into the main dining area, heading for him.
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.