The apology seemed to anger Winch all the more. Marching over, he slapped the small killer hard across the face. The stinging blow echoed like a rifle crack against the high warehouse ceiling.
"You favor your hands," Winch snapped. "You will use only your feet for the next exercises."
"Yes, Master."
Turning, Winch gathered up Dino Vercotti's body. Although the dead man outweighed him by a good eighty pounds, Winch carried him easily. He hung the corpse from a crooked nail that jutted from one of the supporting roof columns.
"You are a pathetic disgrace against living targets," Winch sneered. "Practice on this dead one." With that, he turned and walked away, leaving the bleeding murderer alone with the two corpses.
The killer, a boy of no more than fourteen, squeezed the spot where Dino Vercotti's bullet had torn his frail flesh. Warm blood oozed between his slender fingers.
As hot tears burned his pale blue eyes, the child walked slowly over to the hanging dead man.
Chapter 9
When Chiun returned to his Folcroft quarters, Remo was still rolling in agony on the floor.
The Master of Sinanju released the young man from his pain with a soft touch on the neck. Instead of expressing the proper thanks for the lesson in politeness that had been thoughtfully bestowed on him by the Master, the loathsome white beast expressed typical unpleasantness.
"You son of a bitch," Remo panted. Sweat dripped from his forehead, rolling down his face.
Despite the residual pain that still sparked every nerve ending, Remo didn't say what he really wanted to say. The previous day he had made the mistake of calling Chiun a gook and wound up doubled up on the floor in pain for an hour.
"You do that to me one more time and the next time I shoot you it's gonna be for keeps," Remo threatened.
"Now that I have some idea the depths of your stupidity, I pray that next time you truly do forget which direction to aim the little hole," Chiun sighed. "But since your granite forehead would likely stop the bullet from penetrating whatever it is that fills the space where your brain should be, I fear we will still be stuck with each other for the foreseeable future."
Chiun made Remo sit cross-legged on the floor. It was hard for Remo to pull his legs into the lotus position.
"What's with you getting all turned on over floors? Why can't we sit on chairs like people?" Remo griped.
"Civilized men sit on the floor," Chiun said.
"Og the freaking caveman sits on the floor. Even Borneo headhunters have stools."
Chiun gave him a baleful look. "You have an option-" He stopped. "What is your name again?"
"Remo," Remo said with a sigh.
Chiun crinkled his nose as if smelling something unpleasant. "Are you certain that's right?"
"I think I know my own name."
"I suppose." Chiun didn't sound certain. "You have an option, Remo. You may listen to instruction while in pain or you may listen while not. But either way you will listen."
Remo had had his fill of pain for the day. "All right," he muttered. "I won't bitch about sitting on the floor till my ass goes numb like some dirt-eating aborigine. Happy?"
"No," Chiun replied. "But I fear I am as close as I will get with you as a pupil."
Some of his trunks were piled in the corner. Chiun went over to the black-lacquered one with the silver inlay. Digging inside, he removed a plain black metronome, which he brought over and sat on the floor near Remo's folded knees.
Remo looked at the metronome. With hooded eyes he looked around the room. Finally, he looked at Chiun.
"Someone swipe your piano?" Remo asked thinly.
"This is going to help you to breathe," Chiun said. He sank like a dropped rose petal to the floor across from Remo.
Remo sighed. "Again with the breathing? Look, Pops, you say I'm not breathing, but I'm pretty sure I am. Can't we just split the difference and say air's getting in me by some act of divine intervention and be done with it?"
"I did not say you didn't breathe," said Chiun. "It is obvious something is reaching your lungs in those brief respites your tongue enjoys between words. After all, if there was not some breath, you would not be able to propel your gorging, oafish body from one greasy hamburger stand to the next. What I said was that you do not breathe right."
With the tip of one long fingernail he set the metronome to clicking.
"The work of the metronome is twofold," Chiun explained. "I have noticed that you are like most whites in the way in which you are easily distracted. The repetitive movement and clicking sound should occupy your infantile mind."
Remo, who had already been tracking the hypnotic bounce of the metronome, looked up with a frown. "What's the second reason?" he asked, annoyed.
"To show you how you should breathe. Two beats inhale, two beats hold breath, two beats exhale. Pull the air down into the pit of your stomach. Begin." Remo thought this entire exercise was stupid and pointless. But he had already been victim one too many times of the old Korean's flashing hands. Rather than risk more punishment, he decided to humor the codger.
He followed the course of breathing. Chiun's bony index finger kept time with the metronome's movement. As Remo found himself reluctantly tracking the old man's hand, he felt something odd trip in his chest.
It was strange. For a moment he thought his heart was fluttering. He had heard that some people's did that every once in a while. But he soon realized it was more than that.
It was as if something had always been there. Lurking inside him but never used. Chiun's special breathing seemed to flip some dormant inner switch.
Following the prescribed two beats, he drew the air in deep. Holding it for two more, he allowed it to slip out.
His lungs responded deeply to the breathing. His heart seemed to take up the rhythm. And for the first time in his life, Remo felt the blood coursing through him.
It was some kind of hypnotism. Had to be. After all, breathing was just breathing. But there definitely seemed to be something more to it than that. It was like a feeling, a dream. Something once known, long forgotten.
For the first time in his life Remo felt... alive. "Wow," he said, "that's weird."
Closing his eyes lightly, he breathed in deep, as he was told, down into the pit of his stomach. There was something about this simple act of measured breathing that was impossible for him to describe. It was a sense of awakening. As if the farthest, smallest parts of his body had been sleepwalking for his entire adulthood. For an instant Remo felt a sense of oneness with life itself.
So enthralled was he with the strange sensation, Remo didn't notice the odd expression that had blossomed on the face of the Master of Sinanju.
Chiun was watching his pupil intently, his hazel eyes narrowed to razor slits as he studied the young man performing his earliest breathing exercises.
In Sinanju, breath was all. So important was it that all Masters began their training with it. But it was a known fact that the lessons had to begin early in life. A baby was always preferable to a grown child, since after a certain age it became difficult to unlearn incorrect habits. As a person aged, it became impossible to overcome the damage wrought by a lifetime of improper breathing. This was why so few Masters in Sinanju history dared waste precious time attempting to train pupils any older than ten years of age.
But, as he watched the white man before him, Chiun almost began to question his own senses.
This Remo-this white thing with the stench of charred beef emanating from his every pore-appeared to have mastered in an instant the special breathing that generally took a new trainee many months to learn. What's more, as the proper breath took hold, Remo had instantly aligned his spine.
It was impossible. Yet here it was.
For a moment the Master of Sinanju's heart soared as he felt a strange stirring of amazement. And of hope.