"Pierre," the voice called. It sounded oddly cheerful.
"Here! I'm here!" He tried to run forward, but his legs had grown stiff and numb, and he tumbled onto his stomach. Oh, so tired. He tried to push himself up from the ground. His fingers popped at the knuckles. The skin on his hands cracked. The blood froze into brown crystals. "Over here," he rasped. The man was running. He would find him.
Pierre closed his eyes to the wind. He would never open them again.
"Pierre?" Remo said, feeling for a pulse in the black man's neck. There was none. He turned over the body. It was soaked with perspiration. Pierre must have been running for some time in the sweltering afternoon heat. Maybe his heart had given out.
He picked up one of Pierre's hands. The skin had been bleeding, and the knuckles were snapped. Was he tortured? Then he saw the fingernails. That was funny. The skin beneath them was blue.
Blue? He looked over Pierre's corpse again, noticing the dry, cracked skin, the sores around the eyes, the blue flesh beneath the fingernails. It was insane.
It was ninety degrees out here. The palms drooped sullenly from the heat. The wispy grass was dry and patched with brown.
And Pierre LeFevre had frozen to death.
?Twelve
Inside the castle, the Dutchman bowed low to his visitor. Chiun returned the bow.
"I am honored with your presence," the young man said. "All my life have I waited to meet you."
"It saddens me to meet you," the old Oriental said. "Your work is most promising. This meeting brings me no joy."
"Why?"
"You know why. I have come to kill you," Chiun said.
"And I was born to kill you, Master of Sinanju."
The two men nodded again to each other, and the Dutchman led Chiun to an airy, well-furnished room bounded on three sides by immense French windows that led to wide balconies where orchids of every color grew. "This is the only comfortable room in the castle," the Dutchman said. "I thought perhaps we could talk for a moment before beginning. I have wanted to ask you many questions over the years." The pale eyes were searching and humble.
"You may ask, but I cannot in a few moments teach you the true way. Not after you have spent a lifetime embracing falsehood," Chiun said simply.
"The Master Nuihc was not false!" The Dutchman rose angrily, his cheeks aflame. "He saved me from disaster."
"So he could lead you into a dark tunnel from which there is no escape, and even more certain disaster."
"That's enough!" In a high corner of the room, a painted lamp exploded into sparkles of glass. Chiun watched it break and splinter, untouched. He looked at the Dutchman.
"You were wise to come alone," the young man said.
"This concerns me and you. Not my son."
The Dutchman's face was dark with fury. "Your son! In the same way that Remo is your son, so was Nuihc a father to me. You destroyed that father."
"He was an evil force that sought only personal gain. Nuihc cared nothing..."
There was an agitated knock on the door. Sanchez burst in, gesturing wildly.
"What?" the Dutchman growled. "He is here?"
The mute pointed toward an eastern-facing window. Chiun stepped over to it. On the path below, Remo was climbing up Devil's Mountain.
"No," Chiun called. "Go back, Remo!"
Remo looked up, making no acknowledgment that he had seen Chiun, then continued his march up the hill.
The Dutchman's jaw worked nervously. "He has come to help you," he said, amazed.
"Go away. I don't want you. I told you I was finished with you, white thing."
Remo didn't answer.
"Do not open the gates to him. Send him away," Chiun pleaded. "He has no part in this. Leave him alone."
"He is a true son," the Dutchman said, his voice heavy with sadness. "Clearly you have tried to turn him from you to keep him from danger. But he would die for you. And so he will."
The drawbridge lowered over the fetid, murky green water of the moat. As the enormous oak doors opened, Remo glimpsed a double file of beautiful women standing at attention inside.
"Hello, ladies," he said pleasantly. The girls devoured him with their eyes.
At the end of the line, the mute came forward and led him up a long, curving staircase to the room where Chiun waited with the Dutchman. Remo and the Dutchman stood looking at each other.
"I'm Remo."
"I am Jeremiah Purcell." Neither offered a handshake.
"Why have you come?" Chiun asked in anguish.
Remo looked at the old man for a moment before speaking. "I thought you might need me," he said.
The Dutchman flushed again. "We were just having a chat. Would you care for some tea? I know you don't drink."
Remo started to shake his head, but Chiun said, "I would like some tea."
"Very well." He gestured to Sanchez, who stood by the door, and the mute disappeared. In a few moments he reappeared with a lacquer tray bearing three Korean porcelain cups and a teapot made of red clay. Remo sat down.
"That is from Sinanju," Chiun said, eyeing the teapot.
"It was a gift from my father," the Dutchman answered. He added quietly, "That is, I found it here."
"Was that Nuihc?"
"You seem surprised. Did you think you were the only person in the world to inherit the teachings of Sinanju?"
"Yeah," Remo said. "That's what I was told. I was told a lot of things. But that wasn't what surprised me. You called him Father. Nuihc didn't strike me as the fatherly kind, that's all."
The Dutchman poured the tea and passed the tiny unhandled cups to Remo and Chiun. "He was not, perhaps, the image of a father one would hold. He was a... stern man."
Remo and Chiun exchanged glances.
"But he saved me from a life of imprisonment and scrutiny. You see, I am no ordinary assassin."
"No," Remo said, "Nuihc was a baboon, so you're the son of a baboon."
Purcell sipped his tea. At the moment when he lowered his eyes, Chiun hurled his teacup, still full of steaming liquid, toward him. The Dutchman reached up lazily and caught it just in front of his face, careful not to spill a drop.
"As I was saying, I am no ordinary assassin. And not a baboon. You will not defeat me by surprise, Chiun." He handed the cup back to him gently with both hands.
Chiun said calmly, "Apologies for the rudeness."
"Quite all right. I would have done the same myself if I were not certain you would catch the cup."
"This is so sweet," Remo said, "that you're both making me sick."
"How old are you, my son?" Chiun asked the Dutchman. Remo flinched at the words.
"I am twenty-four years old. I was not to do battle with you until my twenty-fifth year, but circumstances..." He shrugged.
"You are not ready," Chiun said.
The Dutchman set his teacup down. "I am ready. The Master's will has brought you to me, and I will avenge him."
"Hi ho, Silver," Remo said. "You forget, pal. There are two of us."
The Dutchman smiled. "But you don't count," he said. "I may come to this confrontation a year before my time, but Chiun is many ages past his. He is a has-been. You, on the other hand, are a never-was."
Remo stood up.
"Stop, stop," Chiun said. "We have no time for insults, and no energy to spare. There is no need for any of us to die sweaty. I wish to know about you, Jeremiah."
Remo walked to the windows and gazed out at the balconies and the terraced lawns below as the Dutchman told Chiun about the farm, his parents, the incident with the pig, the day on the train. Remo agreed enviously that it had been an extraordinary life. Maybe springing full-grown into the training of Sinanju, as Remo had done after years of dissipation, couldn't stand up to the kind of training the Dutchman had had— year after year of strict study since childhood. And Chiun, for all his nagging perfectionism, had allowed Remo to make mistakes. His bent elbow, for one. Nuihc would have allowed no mistakes.