The New York Don was a little worried the first time he'd seen the fair-haired teenager. He figured he'd hired himself a gook bodyguard with a thing for young boys. He quickly learned that the perversions Winch was committing against that kid had nothing to do with sex.
The boy was terrified of Winch and idolized him at the same time. He had that same confident walk and that same killer's stillness as Winch. It was eerie enough coming from a grown man, but doubly so coming from a fourteen-year-old kid. The boy never talked to Carmine or his men. Only to Winch and only in that fruity gook language.
Whatever the kid's purpose, he wasn't a distraction to Mr. Winch. Winch proved himself useful in dealing with the waves of government men who were breathing down Don Carmine's neck. Whenever one of them got close, Mr. Winch removed him. Zip, bang, boom, just like that.
The bodies were remanded to Don Carmine's regular enforcer for disposal. Norman Felton had some untraceable method of disposing bodies. Felton never told his Don how the bodies were made to vanish, and Don Carmine never asked.
Every once in a while Mr. Winch got a little too exuberant and took out a couple of Don Carmine's own men. For training purposes, he said. Carmine wasn't terribly happy when this happened, but he kept his mouth shut.
For Carmine Viaselli, the idiosyncrasies of Winch and whatever he was doing with that kid of his didn't matter. He now had a weapon in his arsenal like no other Mafia leader.
Winch was so effective against the piddling government agents who came against Carmine, the Don eventually decided to use his weapon for a greater purpose.
Carmine decided that he would do precisely what he had said to Pietro Scubisci all those months ago. He would take his weapon and use it against the U.S. government. He would bring the war to them and force them to leave him in peace.
He would make them bleed. And the baptism of hot blood would bring permanent peace to Don Carmine Viaselli.
BLOOD WAS on Carmine Viaselli's mind this night. He was lounging on the sofa in his luxury apartment, sipping bourbon as he watched the evening newscast. On the screen, Walter Cronkite was wearing the serious face he put on when reporting the most dire news. He looked like a constipated buzzard. In somber tones he reported on the heart attack that had killed Senator Bianco.
"Shit," Don Carmine grunted. "Heart attack." His mocking words were answered from the shadows.
"Your media does have a habit of reporting inaccuracies as absolute truths," said the thin voice. Carmine jumped so high he spilled his drink. He glanced to his right. Mr. Winch stood next to the sofa.
"Dammit, I wish you'd stop doing that," Carmine snarled, wiping bourbon from his pajama bottoms. "And what's with this heart-attack bullshit? You were supposed to kill him in a way that sent a message. What message is a heart attack, except maybe cut down on the linguine?"
"Do not worry," Winch assured him. "In spite of what they are saying, your message has been sent."
"Yeah?" Carmine mumbled. "It better have been. I mean, three more agents last week. They just don't back off."
"Nor, I suspect, will they now," Winch said.
"What do you mean?" Carmine asked. "If they know we aren't afraid to take out a senator, they'll back off."
Winch raised a condescending brow. "Hardly," he said. "If you truly do have enemies, they are sure to retaliate. This was a message, but a weak one. You must do more."
"Then I'll kill a hundred senators," Don Carmine said. "I'll kill the goddamned President if I have to." He heard a gasp beyond the closed living-room door, followed by a muttered prayer in Spanish.
It was his maid. She was polishing the woodwork in the next room. Carmine was too indulgent of her, but she'd been working for him for almost twenty years. He'd have to speak to her again about listening in on his private conversations.
"That is possible," Winch conceded. His voice in these meetings was always so soft it didn't carry beyond Viaselli's ears. "However, the last time I did that, I recruited an agent to perform the actual deed. With certain techniques of concentration he performed admirably. For a white."
Don Carmine didn't know whether or not Winch was joking. The look on the Oriental's flat face indicated he was not.
"As I have told you," Mr. Winch said blandly, "I do not seek notoriety."
"Then we'll stick with the Senate. Kill enough of them to deliver a message. Any left when that special committee on crime comes to New York, you take them out then."
"As you wish," Mr. Winch said. He melted back into the shadows and was gone.
Don Carmine looked back to the flickering TV. "Let 'em send the biggest guns they got. By the time I'm through with that committee, they'll need a sponge to mop up the puddle."
Smiling wickedly, he took a deep swig of bourbon.
Chapter 14
On the morning of their tenth day in the desert, Remo Williams looked up at his teacher, Chiun, the Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju.
"I'm thirsty," said the Master's pupil.
As he spoke, he climbed the rope. As he had the previous hour. And the hour before that. The cool early-morning breeze tossed his short dark hair.
"What did you do with the water you drank back at the motel?" replied the Master.
In his reply, the student was typically coarse. "What do you think? I pissed it out."
Chiun shrugged. "I won't be blamed for your lack of control." Sitting cross-legged, he studied the desert sun as it burned up like a lake of red fire over the flat horizon.
Remo had made it to the top of the rope. At eye level with Chiun now, he stopped.
"What lack of control? Water runs through me. I don't know about you-I know you're perfect and all-but even you must have to tap a kidney every once in a while."
Chiun's brow lowered. "Yes, I am perfect. And I might add that it is high time you noticed. As for the rest, tell me, Remo, are all the subjects of this barbarian land as crude and insolent as you?"
"Pretty much," Remo grumbled. "Welcome to America."
Frowning deeply, he slid back down the rope. The Master considered the sheer awfulness of what his pupil's words might entail. Shuddering, the Master returned his gaze to the pretty sunrise.
His abusive pupil refused to give him a moment's peace.
"I'd like some water," Remo pressed from the bottom of the rope. His hands gripped the fat knot before he began scampering back up again.
"And I would like a proper emperor. Even one of the lesser Caesars would suffice. I would like to be somewhere other than this nation of bloated hedonists. I would like a good pupil to teach Sinanju and not some white thing who would learn a few karate tricks."
Remo paused. "Wait, I thought I was learning Sinanju."
Chiun's gaze had been far off. Blinking away the cobwebs of sad memory, he looked down at his pupil. The desert sky tinted red his cotton-white tufts of hair.
"There is the Master and there is the pupil. I am Master. But you, Remo, are not the pupil." His voice was filled with soft regret.
"What the hell am I, then, chopped liver?" Remo asked testily. He still clung to the rope, unmoving. There was no strain on his face. The effort such a feat of strength would cause another man was no longer present. It had been weaned weeks ago from this amazing white thing.
"It is not your fault," Chiun said. "Tradition dictates that the Master take a pupil from the village of Sinanju. Such has it been, such will it always be."
"Why?"
There was no sarcasm in Remo's tone. Just interest. By the look on Chiun's face, it was clear he couldn't believe Remo thought it necessary to even ask such a question.
"Because Koreans are, by temperament and breeding, naturally better suited to the difficult task of learning," Chiun replied matter-of-factly. "Some Japanese might be able to absorb some. A random Chinaman could, perhaps, pick up a move or two, if he wasn't too busy picking the pockets of other thieving Chinamen. The other, lesser Asian peoples are hopeless to a man. The Vietnamese eat dogs, Philippinos smell funny. And do not even get me started on the Thais. The races are all downhill after that. Indians and Arabs are a waste of the land they breed over and the air they breathe. Blacks are merely burned whites except angrier, and whites are bleached blacks with more television sets. Why would we go to inferior outside races for a pupil when we have perfection in our own backyard?" His voice dropped low. "Although, truth be told, most Koreans I could take or leave."