Remo felt the mountains and knew this. He was who he was, and he realized now he had always known this. It was the mountain that Chiun had told him he must find, the mountain of his own identity.
Over the decade the Master of Sinanju had shown through training, through pain, through fear, through despair, just what Remo could be, and now that he understood it, he knew that what he could be, of course, was just what he had always been.
Done. Then he knew. So this was it. As Chiun had said, the truth is a common thing. Only fairy tales glitter like rubies in a crystal universe.
"Hey, gringo. What you looking at, eh, gringo?"
The voice came from behind a parked car. There were eight of them, none taller than Remo. Cigarette butts gleamed in the black, moonless night. Down the street a traffic light became green and nothing moved.
"Hey, gringo, I talking to you. You Chicano or gringo?"
"I was thinking and you interrupted me."
"Hey, Chico, he thinking. The gringo is thinking. Everybody shut up, the big gringo, he thinking. What you thinking, gringo?"
"I'm thinking how lucky I am to be upwind from you."
"Hey, the gringo, he smart. The gringo he real smart. Heavy, man. Gringo, no one tell you this is Chicano territory? This is a Chicano street. I Caesar Ramirez. You need my okay to go thinking on my street, gringo."
Remo turned and walked back toward the hotel. He heard one of the youths yell something else. Then they were following him. When one got so close Remo could feel the hot breath on his neck, Remo caught him by the lips and yanked forward, pulling the arching body over in front of him, before walking into the young man's descending spinal column. Pop, crack, that was it; the body was a lifeless bag of flesh. When the sanitation men found it the next day, the hips and shoulders would not be connected by bone.
Immediately knives were thrust at Remo's back. In a little dance step, without changing direction or stopping, Remo continued moving toward the hotel.
One knife wielder came close and Remo took his wrist and fenced off another knife. He did this in a very simple way. He popped blade into brain and suddenly the second blade no longer faced his stomach.
Remo kept walking toward the hotel, still carrying the first knife wielder's wrist. Then one more came at him and made the mistake of getting between Remo and his hotel. It was Caesar and he saw Remo's face and decided to get out of Remo's way, but he changed his mind a moment too late.
While the city of Denver would pay for Caesar's funeral as it had paid for his birth, his house, his food, and his schooling (where he had learned to call all this sustenance oppression, though he did not feel oppressed enough to get a job), somehow the city of Denver had deserted him now in his moment of need. Caesar found himself within arm's length of the crazy gringo. Alone. Without even a social worker to help. And that was all.
No more Caesar.
Chico, whose wrist had been borrowed for the fight, bawled and demanded it back. Without looking, Remo casually tossed it over his shoulder. It landed at the young man's knees.
Back at the hotel, he knocked on the door that had not answered for the last few days.
"Little Father," he called. "I have found the mountain. I always was what I am now. The ignorance has been removed."
And now there was an answer.
"Good. Then we are ready and we will be found." Chiun had been saying the same thing for weeks and Remo had not understood it. But now he did. He knew what Chiun meant by saying that they would be found, and he knew by whom.
"I understand, Little Father," he called.
And from another nearby room came an angry growl.
"Hey, you out there, shut up or I'll come out and close your mouth for good." And since Remo had nothing more to say, he went back to his own room and back to sleep, realizing that a mountain was a thing you climbed or fell from, but not a place where you rested.
CHAPTER THREE
The first thing Dr. Ravelstein noticed about the badges was that they were upside down. If the two men in the neat gray suits were really from the FBI, wouldn't their badges be right side up in their billfolds? Then again, Dr. Ravelstein had once met an FBI man while getting a security clearance, and didn't he use an identification card instead of a badge? Oh well, no matter.
"I can't make out your badges," said Dr. Ravelstein. He was tired. It was 3:30 A.M. and since 9:00 A.M., the day before, he had been looking at greenish printouts from the terminal connected to one of the University of Michigan computers. With his tired fifty-year-old eyes, he probably couldn't have made out whether the agents had shown him badges or sliced salami, he thought. Thinking about his tired eyes, Dr. Marvin Ravelstein, professor of engineering, suddenly realized that his eyeglasses were not in front of his eyes. He had put them somewhere when he had heard the door in the laboratory open.
"If you put on your glasses, you might make out our identification a little better," said the larger agent.
"Yes. The glasses. Where are they?"
"On your head."
"Oh, yes. Yes, of course. Who are you? Ah, yes, Special Agent Paul Mobley and Special Agent Martin Philbin. I see. Yes. Very good. Very good. Very good. Well, thank you for dropping by. It's been nice having you."
"Sir, we've come to discuss something very important. You may be the man who can save the world."
Dr. Ravelstein sighed and nodded, indicating stools near his laboratory bench. Outside, the unseasonable spring heat made the Michigan campus a muggy sock of a night. In here, his own cigarettes combined with the air conditioning to turn the air into a bitter environment, especially if it had to be endured for more than six hours at a stretch. Dr. Ravelstein nodded to himself again. What the FBI men had said was correct. He not only could save industrialized society from bankruptcy, he had done it. And the amusing part was that the numbers had told him he was a success, not the tangible products in the other room. Those could be touched by anyone and anyone could say this is fine crude oil over here and this is a marvelous new building material over there, but not until the computer digested massive marketing facts, did he know that he was successful. His months-old suspicions had been borne out just twenty-five minutes ago. Twenty-five minutes, and it had taken the government bureaucrats no longer than that to get their sticky fingers into the pie.
"Can save the world?" said Ravelstein. "I have, if you must know. At least, I've given it a twenty-year reprieve. I suppose I'm in for some sort of a prize if that means anything at all. Actually, gentlemen, I'd rather have a good night's sleep. What can I do for you? Please make it brief. I'm very tired."
"We have reason to believe, Dr. Ravelstein, that your life is in danger."
"Nonsense. Who would want to harm me?"
"The same people who killed Dr. Johnson of Rensellaer Polytechnic Institute."
"Erik is dead? No," said Ravelstein, sinking softly into Ms chair. "No. I don't believe it. I don't believe it."
"Late yesterday. His back was broken in a fall. It looked like an accident, but it wasn't. It was as accidental as a sniper shot. One of his assistants saw the two men push him down an elevator shaft," said Special Agent Mobley, the larger one.
"Yeah, it was said that he put up a real struggle for a man his age," said Philbin, his thin, pinched face apparently mournful.
Was the agent laughing at him from behind that mournful face? Did that agent think there was something funny about Dr. Johnson's death? No. Impossible. It must be the hour. It was so very late.
"I'd like to call the Johnson family."
"At this hour, Dr. Ravelstein? Perhaps they have just gotten Mrs. Johnson under sedation. You don't know, do you?"
"Are you sure he was ... he was killed?"
"Yes. He made a tragic mistake. His work in hydrocarbons came too close to providing a substitute for gasoline," said Mobley.