“I wouldn't mind being caught by him,” Beatrice laughed. She tickled the bodyguard's thigh. He was at the wheel.
“Yes you would,” said Rubin. “He obviously works for the President.”
“That bastard,” said Beatrice.
“Just wait. Let him get into the house. Turn off the motor and let the trap work.”
Remo slowed his walk to keep pace with Daphne. It was a good half-mile from the gate to the mansion and they had only gone a hundred and fifty yards when they passed the gate attendant named Bruno lying very still on the rolling lawns of the grand estate.
“You sure you can identify him? You sure he doesn't look like any of his pictures?” asked Remo.
“Yes. It was his inner light that remained constant. He could have stayed younger than I am, but he chose to allow himself to experience the suffering of aging. However, he is going to start getting younger when he chooses.”
“Do you believe that?”
“Do you believe Sinanju?”
“Sinanju works,” said Remo.
“Before Poweressence I was a desperate young woman seeking any solution that would work. But now I have found what works, what I have been looking for. You should try it. You wouldn't have to be so negative.”
“Have you ever heard of being able to make people forget things?”
“No,” said Daphne. “You have to remember your hurts and past life injuries so that you can deal with them, and release your problems into the universe instead of harboring them.”
“I like to harbor,” said Remo. “And I feel fine.”
“Why do you argue with your sweet father?”
“Because he's argumentative,” said Remo. He looked up at the house. It had that sense of defense, that quietness of danger, of the moment before things would spring out. With the vast green lawns, the sun sparkling off windows, the air so filled with warm life, it reminded Remo most of all of some especially beautiful and deadly insect. The deadly ones, Chiun had said, advertised their power by having attractive colors.
When he thought of Chiun, he was sad. He did not know why the President might have to die, but he trusted Smith. Over the years he had learned that the one thing that could not be questioned was Smith's loyalty to the country. Remo was loyal to the country. He could never explain to Chiun what that meant. More and more as he became Sinanju he understood why. Yet even though he understood how Chiun felt, he did not feel the same way. He was caught between two worlds, and both of them were inside him.
He knew that quite soon he might be leaving the country he loved and had served so long. He wondered if he could ever adjust to serving some dictator or tyrant. He needed to serve what he felt was right. Chiun felt only Sinanju was right, and in the sense of how the human body worked, he was right. But not for governments. Not for people.
“A penny for your thoughts,” said Daphne.
Remo pushed her to the side of the road. Metallic objects were secreted under the pathway. The soft green lawn was safer.
“I was thinking about Sinanju,” said Remo.
“Does it give you the absolute freedom of power that Poweressence does?”
“No. Frankly, little lady, it confuses me,” said Remo.
“If it confuses you, how can it work?” asked Daphne.
She found herself in the air turning over and over, seeing Remo beneath her, way beneath her, perhaps twenty feet beneath her. Then she started coming down again. Apparently he had flipped her like he had the man at the gate, but she had hardly felt it, and most certainly did not see his hands. She only realized they were touching her when she was already in the air. Now she was coming down again. She screamed.
But the hands caught her again, quite softly. She landed with no more force than if she had just taken another step.
“That's how Sinanju works,” said Remo.
“It's beautiful,” said Daphne. “It's what I've been looking for all my life. It's dynamic. It's forceful. It's alive.”
“It's a pain in the neck,” said Remo. “Don't step there!”
“Where?”
“Just move over to the right a bit.”
“Why?”
“There was something that could go off under the ground.”
“You knew it was there?”
“It's not a big thing.”
“It's magnificent. Teach me.”
“You'd have to change your whole life.”
“I'd love to,” said Daphne Bloom. “I've been doing that all my life. I changed from est to Scientology, to Sedona, to Universal Reunification. My father was a Reform Jew.”
“How long did you give Judaism?”
“A half-hour,” said Daphne. “I found it wanting. I want Sinanju. I think it's what I need. What I've been missing. What does it cost to join?”
“You don't join, it joins you.”
“That's beautiful.”
Remo realized that Daphne probably joined these organizations to find people to listen to her life. He found it extremely tiring after a few minutes. He also found that if he just said “uh-huh” every few minutes she would keep on talking happily. By the time they reached the entrance to the mansion Remo had said “uh-huh” seventy-three times and Daphne was sure that he was the wisest man in the world.
“You have an understanding that surpasses even my first five therapists,” said Daphne, ringing the doorbell. “You have a—”
Remo found himself suddenly enjoying Daphne's silence. She was smiling. Then she collapsed by the door, but she was uninjured. She curled up into a ball on the doorstep, at first cooing and then stopping completely. Her eyes shut, and she looked as though she were floating somewhere.
Daphne Bloom had returned to the womb.
And Remo had found the substance. He looked at the doorbell. There was a thin coating of an oily substance. He could always take the doorbell, but if they could smear it on the bell, there probably was a larger amount inside.
Remo focused on the door, sensing the wood and brass as much as seeing it. Nothing there. He pushed it open. As he did, a spray mist filled the room. He backed out, letting it settle, and walked to the corner. As Chiun had said, never enter a building through the front. He couldn't dodge the mist, but he wouldn't have had to. If it were the same substance, he could keep it on his outer layer of skin until it could be removed.
The skin breathed like every other part of the body, and since he had controlled his breathing through lungs, he naturally could move it to the outer layer also. It was not something that was done but something that came about through the proper breathing in the first place.
But it was that breathing, the refinement of it up to Sinanju standards, that he was still having some trouble bringing into correctness.
And the second floor had to be safer. He put one foot on the windowsill and propelled himself easily to the second floor, where the window was locked and reinforced. He pressured the frame to crumbs and entered. The room looked like a child had thrown a fit, with glass scattered about and fine furniture broken.
Clothes had been thrown on the bed as though someone were hastily packing.
He heard voices downstairs, strange voices. They were grown-up voices but saying baby things, crying out for their parents. There was desperation in those voices. Remo moved downstairs quickly and found that off the main entranceway was a series of rooms. One man in a diaper was drowning inside a large white tub.
It was not water that filled the tub, but an oil substance. He had found it. The man was wriggling like a sperm and not bothering to breathe. Remo had to reach in to save him.
He let the air become one with his breathing, let his breathing try to find itself and its own center, then quickly plunged his hands into the solution, lifting the man in the diaper out of the tub and then pressing the substance from the man's lungs, pressing down, trying to get the breathing apparatus to work. But strangely, it didn't. The eyes didn't focus. The body did not respond; it was dead. And not from drowning.