"Pillow biter."
"I didn't mean it like that!"
"Hah!"
It was the only fly in the ointment of Remo's current life. He had finally solved the stewardess problem only to find himself with a housekeeper problem.
Remo still couldn't figure out why Chiun had hired a housekeeper in the first place. This one was old, cranky and she sometimes smoked Robusto cigars-always outdoors.
Taking the steps to the bell-tower meditation room, Remo discovered it was empty except for the round tatami mat Chiun often meditated on. He stepped out of one shoe and touched the mat with a bare toe. Cool. Chiun hadn't been here in at least a half hour.
Descending, Remo scoured the third floor. No dice. There was no sign of the old Korean in any of his usual rooms. Not the room where he kept all his steamer trunks. Not the rice room, which was stacked with enough varieties of exotic and domestic rice for all of them to survive to the year 2099.
The room given over to Chiun's infatuation of the decade was padlocked, but Remo's highly attuned senses told him the Master of Sinanju's heartbeat and rice-paper personal scent were not coming from behind the door. Remo wondered why the door was padlocked. Chiun hadn't had an infatuation since he had grown sick of the news anchor named Cheeta Ching. Before that, he had been smitten by Barbra Streisand. He hoped Chiun hadn't fallen for the First Lady or someone equally inconvenient.
Finally, Remo found the Master of Sinanju in the fish cellar. It had only recently become the fish cellar, since Chiun had grown concerned over the dwindling fish resources of the planet Earth. Sinanju diet was restricted primarily to fish and duck and rice in vast quantities. Without all three of the allowed Sinanju food groups, their lives would be unlivable.
As Chiun once explained it to Remo, "We derive our powers of mind from the goodness of fish. Copious mounds of rice sustain our souls."
"What is duck good for?" Remo asked.
"Duck teaches us that no matter how monotonous fish and rice become, it could be worse. We could be limited to duck alone. Heh-heh-heh."
Remo wasn't sure how much of Chiun's remark was intentional humor, but he personally only looked forward to duck when he got tired of fish.
The fish cellar had been turned into a private aquarium. The walls were set with row upon row of fresh- and salt-water tanks. It looked like one of those multimedia banks of TV monitors all turned to a remote from the New England Aquarium. Except these fish were real. They were brought in from the seven seas, and delivered every month so that Remo and Chiun had their own private food stock. Chiun had won this concession at the last contract negotiation with Harold Smith.
At the far end of the cellar were the ice boxes and smoke rooms where iced and smoked fish waited for their glorious destiny, as Chiun once put it.
Chiun stood in profile before the stainless-steel door.
He seemed oblivious to Remo. In this view, Chiun's face was something made of papier-mache and peeled off an ancient wizard's desiccated skull.
Chiun stood not much taller than five feet. His bony, frail-seeming body was cloaked in a traditional kimono of raw, neutral-hued silk. Its sleeves hung down over the Master of Sinanju's cupped hands, which rested on his tight little belly.
His head was down. He might have been praying. Shifting light from one of the fish tanks played on his wrinkled, impassive features.
At Remo's approach, the Master of Sinanju didn't react.
Instead, he said, "You wear a face I do not care for."
"It's about that freaking housekeeper of yours."
"Who?"
"What's her name?"
"I do not know to whom you refer," said Chiun, gaze not lifting from the fish in the tank.
"I don't know her name. She won't tell me."
"Perhaps it is Grandmother Mulberry."
"Is that who she is?"
"It is possible she is Grandmother Mulberry," said Chiun, nodding. The simple nod made his wispy beard curl in the still air like paper being consumed by an unseen flame. Over his tiny ears, clouds of white hair gathered like storm clouds guarding a mountain.
"Well, if you don't freaking know, who does?"
Chiun said nothing. Remo joined him, and found himself looking at a trio of silver-blue fish zipping back and forth. They looked too small to eat, and Remo said so.
"Perhaps you would prefer suck-fish," returned Chiun.
"Not from the sound of them."
From his sleeve, a bony talon of a hand emerged to tap the screen with a long fingernail that was fully an inch longer than the others, which were very long.
"Isn't it about time you clipped that one?" asked Remo.
"I am enjoying the resurgence of this nail, which was formerly concealed from sight." And he tapped the glass with a metallic click. "There."
The fish was black, as long as a man's palm, and it was attached to the side of the tank with its open suckerlike mouth.
"That's a suck-fish?"
"It is edible."
"If you say so," said Remo.
"But tonight we will enjoy Arctic char."
"Sounds better."
Chiun's eyes were hooded as they remained on the tank.
"You are troubled, my son."
"I am an assassin."
"Yes?"
"You trained me to kill."
"Yes."
"You showed me how to insert my fingers into the intercostal spaces in a target's ribs and nudge his heart into going to sleep."
Chiun nodded. "You learned that technique well."
"You taught me how to pulverize the human pelvis with the heel of my foot."
"A remonstrance, not a killing."
"You taught me the techniques for short-circuiting the spinal cord, bruising the brain and lacerating the liver without breaking the target's skin."
"These subtle arts you also embraced in time."
"But there's one thing you forgot to teach me."
For the first time, the Master of Sinanju's eyes looked up at Remo, meeting them. They held an unspoken question in their clear hazel depths.
"You forgot to teach me how to strangle annoying housekeepers."
"You would not!"
"She's worse than a fishwife, Chiun!" Remo exploded. "What the hell is she doing here?"
"She performs certain services."
"I'll cook every meal forever if you get rid of her."
"She does laundry."
"All the laundry. I'll do it. Gladly."
"She mops floors. You do not mop floors. It is beneath you. I have heard you say this."
"Buy me a mop. You'll have the cleanest floors in town."
"You do not do windows. You have insisted upon this for years."
"I'm a new man. Windows are my business. I'll lick them clean if I have to."
"No," said the Master of Sinanju.
"What do you mean, no?"
"There are other duties she performs that you cannot."
"Like what? Stinking up the back wing with cigar smoke. How come you tolerate it?"
"It is a harmless habit."
"She might set the house on fire."
"Thus far, she has not. If she does, I will reconsider your request."
"I don't get it," said Remo.
"You are too young to get it." And with that, the Master of Sinanju reached out in the wavery light and touched the side of the fish tank he had been contemplating.
It winked out like a TV.
Remo gaped at the tiny white dot in the center of the abruptly black rectangle. "Huh?"
"The Fish Channel," said Chiun. "It is very soothing. Especially when considering complaints of no merit."
With that, the Master of Sinanju padded from the fish cellar, saying, "We will have Arctic char this evening. With jasmine rice. In celebration of the successful completion of your assignment in extinguishing the wicked general so that no one sees our hands."
"I ripped his freaking head off."
"Good. No one would suspect the hand of Sinanju behind such a clumsy and barbaric act. You did well."