Remo's face brightened. "Then you're coming?"
"Only to see if Smith is in truth dead. It is a minor fact, but necessary if I am to finish the scrolls pertaining to my service in America."
"Whatever," Remo said nonchalantly. He pretended to examine a Persian wall hanging so that Chiun could not see his relieved expression.
"But I have another, more important, reason."
"Yeah? What's that?" Remo asked.
"You are an orphan."
"What kind of cockamammie reason is that?"
"The best kind. Who else is there to bury your miserable carcass after you have squandered your life?"
"Oh," said Remo: After a pause he said, "I'd like to leave as soon as possible."
"What is stopping you?"
"Don't you have to pack?"
"I have been packed for the last year, in anticipation of your decision. You will find my steamer trunks in the storage room. Be so good as to carry them to the edge of the village. A helicopter from Pyongyang is already on its way to transport us to the airport. I have purchased the airline tickets with my own money. First class for me and coach for you."
"Bull!" said Remo. "Even you couldn't be that sure of yourself." Then he heard the whut-whut-whut of a helicopter in flight. Remo subsided.
"You had best hurry," suggested Chiun, blotting the writing on his scroll. "I have chartered the helicopter by the hour. "
The village came out to watch the Master of Sinanju depart. The lazy whirl of the helicopter blades fanned their stricken faces.
"Do not fear, my people," Chiun called from the helicopter's side. "For I will return sooner than you think. Until then, faithful Pullyang will head the village."
Remo loaded the last steamer trunk into a hatch on the helicopter's skin. Then he looked around for Jilda. She stood a little off from the villagers, holding Freya's tiny hand. The helicopter blades picked up speed.
"Come, Remo," Chiun said, climbing aboard.
"Hold your horses," said Remo, walking toward Jilda. "I have to go," Remo told her. "But I'll be back. Will you wait for me?"
"Where do you go, Remo?"
"America. I'm going to end the Dutchman's threat once and for all."
"Remo, hurry," Chiun called querulously. "The meter is running."
Remo ignored him. "I have to go. Please wait for me."
"I do not think so, Remo. I do not think you will return. "
"Look, I promise to come back."
"I do not belong here. Neither do you, I think."
"Remo!" Chiun's voice was strident.
"I'm coming," Remo snapped. The backwash of the helicopter blew Jilda's green cloak open. "Look, if you won't wait for me here, come with me. Now."
"That I will not do."
"Then meet me in America. We can talk there."
"Are you going, Daddy?" asked Freya.
Remo picked her up. "I have to, little girl."
Freya started to cry. "I wanted you to meet my pony," she cried. "I don't want you to go. Mommy, don't let Daddy go. He may never come back. "
"It can't hurt to meet me in America," Remo pleaded. "You don't have to decide anything just yet."
"I will consider it," said Jilda.
"That's something," said Remo. "Here, stop crying, Freya."
"I can't. I'm scared."
Remo set Freya down and knelt in front of her. He brushed a tear aside with his finger. "Let Daddy show you how never to be scared."
"How?" Freya asked petulantly.
"By breathing. Take a deep breath. That's right, hold it in. Now, pretend this finger is a candle. Quick, exhale!" Freya blew on Remo's upraised finger.
"Okay," said Remo, touching her heart. "That was breathing from the chest. But you want to breathe from down here," he said, tapping her round stomach. "Try it again."
Freya inhaled. This time, at Remo's instruction, she let it out slowly.
"Didn't that feel better?" Remo asked tenderly.
"Oh, yes! I feel all tingly. Not scared at all."
"That's Sinanju. A little hunk of it anyway. Keep practicing that way," Remo said, getting to his feet, "and you'll grow up to be big and strong. Like your mother."
Jilda smiled. She kissed Remo slowly, awkwardly, her bandaged arms held away from her body.
"In America," Remo said, and he whispered the where and when in her ear.
"Perhaps," said Jilda.
"Good-bye, Daddy. Can I have the hug you can't give Mommy? I'll give it to her later for you."
"You sure can," Remo said, squeezing her tight.
Then, walking backward because he wanted to hold their image in his mind as long as possible, Remo returned to the helicopter. It lifted off before his feet left the ground.
Remo settled in beside Chiun. He waved out the open door. Jilda and Freya waved back until long after they had become dots that disappeared under the helicopter's wheels.
"What were you doing with that child?" Chiun asked, pulling his unfinished scroll from his kimono.
"I was just showing Freya how not to be afraid."
"You were showing her early Sinanju breathing. You were wasting your time."
"How do you know that?"
"Because women do not know how to breathe. And never will," said Chiun, untying the scroll's blue ribbon.
"What's that?"
"You tell me, trainer of females."
"Looks like a scroll. Blue ribbon. A birth announcement?"
"You have the mind of a grasshopper," said Chiun, starting to write.
"Quick, and leaps high?"
"All over the forest," said Chiun. "And seldom landing in the correct place."
Chapter 32
He maintained his control until he came to a little fishing village. He did not know the name of the village, only that it lay below the thirty-eighth parallel and therefore was in South Korea.
The village reminded him of Sinanju, and because he had kept it penned in too long, the beast burst free.
The village caught fire, every hut at once. The people screamed as they fled their homes. Then they too caught fire. The flames were blue. Pretty flames. The flesh that burned under the flames was pretty. Then it shriveled and blackened and slid off the bone as the helpless screaming peasants rolled in the dirt in a futile attempt to put out their roasting bodies.
The beast satiated again, the Dutchman continued his slow march to Seoul.
In the South Korean capital he bought a pair of wraparound sunglasses and a Sony Walkman headset. He also purchased a brush and jar of flat black enamel paint. And a cassette of the loudest rock music he could find.
He paid for the airplane ticket with a credit card that was an illusion and went through customs with a passport that was a product of his imagination. Everyone saw him as a portly American businessman in a cable-knit gray suit.
In the airport men's room he painted the inside of the sunglasses with the black paint.
The Dutchman put on the glasses immediately after takeoff. And although it was against airline rules, he donned the Walkman. He hoped the sounds of the overproduced music and the fact that he could not see past the painted-over sunglasses would keep the beast in check. Just long enough. Just until he was safe in America.
Where he could kill again.
Because there was nothing left for him.
Chapter 33
The President of the United States had never felt more helpless.
The ornate walls of the Oval Office seemed to press in on him. As commander-in-chief of America's armed forces and vast intelligence apparatus, he should have been able to find the answers he so desperately needed.
The CIA had assured him that they had no special operative detailed to guard the Vice-President. So did the DIA, and the FBI, and even though it hurt him to have to ask, he inquired of his National Security Council. And the Secret Service.
He was assured that only normal Secret Service agents guard the Vice-President. Not fancy martial-arts practitioners.
Not even the Secret Service could say that they were guarding Governor Michael Princippi. He still refused protection. In fact, for a man who had escaped one assault on his life, he seemed serene.