Remo started slowly toward the spot in the trees where the sound had come from.
"Brave?" he called out. "What do you know of brave, you worthless chip of carrion who kills only those with their backs to you?"
The assassin stopped. For a moment, he considered going back after this insolent white, but he had other things to do. He called out again.
"You will pay for that, white man. You will pay dearly for your insolence. I only regret I cannot extract that payment right now."
Again he moved away from the sound of his own voice.
Remo recognized that the voice had moved from the first time it had sounded and realized what the assassin was doing. There was no point in following him.
"You extract nothing," Remo taunted. "Your people were always cowards and traitors, attacking at night from behind, turning like rats on the only man ever to take pity on them."
The assassin stopped again.
"Pity?" he called. "The Wa need no pity."
"My ancestor, the Master of Sinanju, took pity on you centuries ago," Remo called. "As he did, so I will not. When we meet, Wa, you die."
A chill ran down the assassin's body when he heard "Master of Sinanju." Surely that had been nothing more than a family legend. But why would this... this white man know of it?
"Who are you?" he called.
"I am a Master of Sinanju, peanut," Remo called. And he forced his anger inward, until his rage had spent, and then slowly pronounced the words he had spoken so often before.
"I am created Shiva, the Destroyer; death, the shatterer of worlds; the dead night tiger made whole by the Master of Sinanju. Flee, dog meat, for when we meet, there will be no flight for you."
The assassin paused. Remo was not moving. His voice still came from the same spot.
Pride in his art and in his tradition and family almost forced him to return, to cut down this prideful white man with the overactive imagination. A Master of Sinanju indeed? The Wa would teach him of Masters of Sinanju.
"When we meet again," the assassin called, "I will have time for you. It will be my pleasure."
He turned and moved softly away through the woods, and behind him he heard Remo's laugh echoing over the wide river.
And in that prideful laugh, welling out of his throat like the pulsing of the blood in his veins, Remo felt at one and at peace with his ancestors, that generation after generation of assassins who had refined the magic of Sinanju and handed it down through the ages as their legacy to him.
He turned and looked back at Muckley's body.
"That's the biz, sweetheart," he said coldly. "But don't worry. When I meet him, I'm canceling his return ticket."
As soon as Remo entered the room, Chiun knew.
"You have met the Wa," he said.
Remo nodded.
"He got away," Remo said. "He left his calling card."
Remo held the red-leather handled knife toward Chiun, just as Theodosia burst into the room.
"I just heard on the television," she said. "Muckley's dead. Knifed."
She saw the knife in Remo's hand and uttered a muffled "oooh."
Her eyes fixed on him, all questions, which Remo did not answer.
Chiun took the knife and looked at the engraved horse on the Hade.
"You said you were just going to talk to him," Theodosia told Remo accusingly.
"Easy," he said. "I didn't kill him."
"On television, they're blaming Wesley and his people. That means you. Us. All of us."
"They can blame who they want," Remo said. "He was dead when I got there."
Theodosia nodded, but it was not a convincing statement of agreement.
Before either could speak, the telephone rang and from the first syllable, Remo recognized the annoyed voice of Harold W. Smith.
"I didn't do it," he said.
Remo listened a while, then said, "We'll keep him alive." He hung up, without any pretense of a cordial goodbye.
"Who was that?" Theodosia asked.
"My junior high school gym teacher," Remo said. "He promised to check with me from time to time to see if I was making a success out of my life."
Chiun was carefully examining the knife. Rachmed ran into the room.
"I just heard," he said to Theodosia. "Missss, I do not mind telling you that I do not like all this killing and violenccccce."
"No," Remo said. "I guess pickpocketing is as violent as you like to get."
Rachmed glared at him. "It was all a mistake, sssir," he said. His face flushed.
"And the whorehouse for little girls? Is that a missssssstake, too?"
Baya Bam ran from the room. Theodosia looked at Remo with suspicion in her eyes. "Just who the hell are you?" she said.
"Your friendly neighborhood bodyguard," Remo said. Chiun put down the knife. Remo said, "Pruiss is all right?"
Chiun nodded toward the wall separating his room from Pruiss's.
"You can hear him breathing, can you not?"
Remo listened and caught the sound of Pruiss's breath. He nodded. Theodosia strained to hear but could hear nothing.
"If it wasn't you, who was it?" she asked Remo. She paused, then answered her own question to her own total satisfaction. "Those oil people. Bobbin," she said. She swore.
She wheeled. Remo and Chiun heard her entering Pruiss's room.
Chiun looked at Remo.
"The game is almost played out, my son," he said.
Remo nodded.
"Be careful," Chiun said.
Chapter twelve
"I didn't know that was going to happen."
Flamma was shoving clothes into a bag. Judging by the size of the red satin garment she was wearing, Remo gauged that the bag a small model's hat box would hold enough changes of clothes for an around-the-world trip. Twice. On foot.
"What'd you think was going to happen?" Remo said. He lounged on the bed as Flamma breezed about the small motel room showing him lots of flesh and very little interest.
"I thought they were going to yell at Wesley and embarrass him and that would be that and I'd be even because he wasn't going to make my movie."
"Sheep Dip, wasn't it?" Remo asked.
"Animal Instincts," Flamma corrected. "But I didn't expect anybody to get killed. Even if the Reverend Muckley wasan old pervert."
"Who hired you?" asked Remo. He had gotten into her room by showing an old card he carried, one of many, which announced that Remo McElaney was an investigator for the United States Senate Select Subcommittee on Grain Purchases and Natural Resources. He could just as easily have shown her a card listing himself as an FBI agent, a CIA man, a Treasury man, a Jersey City cop, or a field representative for the International Fish and Game Commission. But Grain Purchases and Natural Resources was the first one that had come out of his pocket. Flamma was so nervous she hadn't bothered to look at it closely. People never did.
"Will Bobbin," she answered. "Well, he didn't exactly hire me but he paid my way out here and he promised me a screen test."
"If you run now, you'll blow the screen test," said Remo.
"It's all right. I'm getting two pages in the National Star. That'll get me all the screen tests I want," Flamma said. "Anyway, where the hell is Bobbin when I need him? I need protection," she said.
"Why?" asked Remo. "Somebody after you?"
"Who the fuck knows?" she said. Without any seeming regard for Remo's presence, she took off her red satin top and, barebreasted, began to root in a drawer for a thin halter top that she began to put on.
"Who the hell was after Muckley, that twerp?" she asked. "If Wesley's involved, I don't know. That man just may go crazy. He may want us all killed and that dyke with him is just the bitch to do it."
"Theodosia?" asked Remo.
"Right. Theodore," said Flamma.
She had her top on and now she peeled off her red satin G-string. Bottomless and blase, she rooted around in the drawer for slacks to wear.