"Please, Mona!"
The pleading voice behind Remo distracted him from his dilemma. He glanced back.
Huey Janner was lying in a fetal position on the earthen floor. Mona loomed above him, bruised face enraged.
"I...told...you...to...use...cash." Each word was punctuated by a fresh kick to the ribs. "Okay, that's it, Punch and Judy," Remo announced. Stepping over, he coaxed Mona out of the way with one hand, lifting a grateful Huey to his feet with the other. "I need to think without distractions."
Over the objections of both animal-rights activists, he shooed the Janners out of the stall. He propelled them into the main barn.
A sturdy toolshed was set into one wall. He tossed Huey inside, where he landed on a pile of pitchforks and hoes.
"Serves you right," Mona snapped at her husband. But when Remo reached for her as well, she balked. Desperate to avoid confinement, she struck up a seductive pose. "Hey, baby," Mona said, using her best sexy voice. "I'm in HETA." Her tooth gap whistled.
"Take a cold shower," Remo suggested. He tossed her in atop her husband.
Slamming the door shut, Remo piled a few hundred-pound sacks of organic gardening compost in front of it. The sounds of Mona Janner pounding on her husband anew were issuing from the shed as he returned to the stalls.
In his absence, Chiun had led the BBQ from its stall. The creature looked exhausted. It wasn't the effort of walking that made the animal seem bone tired. It was the wearying burden of life itself. Its fat tongue lolled.
"Damn, these things are hideous," Remo commented. He pulled his eyes away from the sullen BBQ. "I'm gonna call Smith. He can figure out how to get these eyesores back."
But as he turned, the Master of Sinanju rose from his post next to the sad animal. "Hold," he commanded.
Remo turned. "What?"
"It is time," China. intoned. His expression was somber.
Remo's face scrunched. "Time for what?"
"Time to prove that you are not Smith's lapdog. You may demonstrate your independence and give the gift you failed to give me on my return." He cast a knowing eye down on the dismal form of the BBQ.
Remo followed Chiun's gaze. The BBQ stared at him with guileless brown eyes. When he looked back up to Chiun, the old man's hazel orbs were filled with sly hopefulness.
"Oh, no," Remo said with quiet dread.
"Prove to me, Remo, that you are better than a Japanese zealot," Chiun encouraged.
"Chiun, you already talked to Smith about this back at the lab, didn't you?" Remo said slowly.
"Smith," Chiun spit. "Do not invoke the name of the American Hirohito. Especially not at this time of your great liberation." He held aloft a fist of bone. "Remember Pearl Harbor!"
"You can't take one, Little Father," Remo stressed.
Chiun's face hardened to stone. "And why not?" His tone was ice.
"For one thing, what would we do with it?"
"We would bring it back to Sinanju, of course. My triumph of discovery would forever eclipse that of Na-Kup the Fraud and his diseased camel." There was passion in his singsong voice.
Remo raised an eyebrow. There was something more to this than just the BBQs.
"What's with you and Na-Kup?" he asked.
The old man's jaw tightened. His thread of beard quivered. "You never met him?" he asked tightly.
"Since he died about three thousand years before I was born, no," Remo replied.
"Consider yourself blessed. He is an arrogant braggart, even in death. He and that anthrax-laden beast of his."
"But you couldn't have met-" Remo stopped dead, the light finally dawning. "The Sinanju Rite of Attainment," he said. "The last rite of passage before full masterhood. You went through that mess when you were visited by the spirits of past Masters, just like me. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say you met Na-Kup."
The dark storm cloud that passed over Chiun's silent face spoke volumes.
"History remembers the camel, but it doesn't remember the Master." Remo nodded, understanding at last. "Someone had something up someone's kimono sleeve that someone else didn't expect, huh?"
"Someone is an idiot," Chiun snapped. "And wipe that smug expression off your stupid, fat face. My reasons are my own. Besides, I only want one of these animals. Perhaps two. Five at most."
"I'm sorry, Chiun," Remo said, shaking his head.
"You would not do this simple thing for me?" Chiun demanded hotly.
"You know I'd do anything for you. But there's only a limited number of these. They'd miss one."
"It could have escaped," Chiun suggested.
"Chiun," Remo said, reasonable of tone, "Smith has been to Sinanju before, remember? We don't know that he'll never come back. What's he going to say when he sees that moaning lump of DNA schlepping down Main Street?" He nodded to the BBQ. It burped.
"He would say 'What joy and pride you must have felt, O great Master of Sinanju, that your son did honor you by granting you the single boon you desired during the five hundred years in which he abused you.'"
"First off, Smith doesn't say 'boon.' Second, I doubt he'd take the theft of a phenomenally expensive animal that we're supposed to be returning to its rightful owners so lightly. Third, I don't know where you've been, but you've asked for a lot since I've known you. Fourth, it has not been five hundred years."
"You have a facility for compressing much abuse into a short amount of time," Chiun said coldly. "You will not help me?"
"I can't, Chiun," Remo said helplessly. "I wish you could see that."
"I see nothing but ingratitude," Chiun retorted, delivering his final word on the subject. Spinning, he offered his back to Remo. He squatted down beside his BBQ.
Remo stared for a long moment at the back of Chiun's ornate silk kimono. The old man's mood had soured so rapidly in the past four hours it would be a miracle if he didn't lock himself back in his bedroom for the next fifty years.
It made Remo feel terrible to deny his father in spirit one of the pathetic animals. But he had a job to do. If Chiun didn't understand that, it was his problem.
But as he looked down on the tiny Korean, Remo felt as if the problem were his own. Chiun had that knack. And it made Remo feel miserable.
Turning away from the wizened form of the man who had given him so much in life, Remo quietly left the Janner barn.
Chapter 21
"Smith." The CURE director's voice was anxious.
"We got them all, Smitty," Remo announced.
"At the Janner farm, presumably," Smith said, relieved.
"They are-I'm not," Remo explained. "Those dopes don't believe in phones or lights or motorcars. They're like the Amish without the crack. I'm on a pay phone at a gas station down the street."
He glanced around the grimy black yard of the all-night station. Half-built cars-some with their hoods open-littered the area around the pay phone.
Smith's tone became concerned once more. "Where is Chiun?" he asked.
"Back at the farm," Remo answered, quickly adding, "and don't worry, I know he wants one of them and I told him no dice."
"Good," Smith said, exhaling.
"For you, maybe," Remo griped. "He made me feel like mountain-beast droppings."
"Neither your feelings nor Chiun's desires are important now."
"What else is new?" Remo replied caustically.
"I meant no offense," Smith said quickly. "But there has been another death in Boston."
Remo's back straightened. "Like the others?"
"Yes," Smith said. "An unidentified woman. The stomach cavity was consumed as in the previous attacks."
"Unless they were cross-pollinated with Houdini, it wasn't any of the BBQs," Remo said. "The two at the lab aren't going anywhere, and the six here were too far away."