Remo was ushered uncomfortably through the multitude to the edge of the village. Men and women who had spent the past four months bad-mouthing him wore phony smiles as they sang him on his way.
"Hail, Master of Sinanju, who sustains the village and keeps the code faithfully," they shouted, their voices raised as one. "Our hearts cry with joy and pain at your departure. Joy that you undertake this journey for the sake of we, the unworthy beneficiaries of your generosity. And pain that your toils take your beauteous aspect from our midst. May the spirits of your ancestors journey safe with you who graciously throttles the universe."
Remo was tapping his toe impatiently on the wellworn path as they recited. When they were finished, he pointed at several random villagers.
"Up yours, yours, yours and yours," he said in English. He said it with a smile, as if conferring a blessing.
There were happy smiles all around.
"And I think I hate you most of all," Remo added, pointing to a woman with a particularly nasty tongue and only three teeth. She seemed delighted to have been singled out by the new young Reigning Master.
She sneered through her jack-o'-lantern dental work at the rest of the villagers.
"Now beat it," Remo said, motioning with both hands like a farmer scattering chickens. "If I have to look at your ugly faces for two more seconds, I'll have to start drinking again." As the villagers turned back to the center of town to resume their longstanding tradition of doing absolutely nothing, Remo wandered over to Chiun. "Can we go now?"
The old Korean was conversing with an elderly woman who had stood separate from the other villagers. She was nodding intently as she listened to his instructions.
"In case of emergency, you may use the telephone in the Master's House to reach the Emperor of America," the old man was saying. "He will locate me."
"I understand," the woman replied.
"She already knows about the phone, Little Father," Remo said. Kye Pun waited near him. "Let's shake a leg."
Chiun ignored him. "And the burner in the basement," he told the woman. "It must be checked every day."
"As you wish, I will do," she said.
"Little Father?" Remo insisted, touching the old man on the elbow. "She knows the drill. It's time to go."
The old man's frown lines deepened. At last he nodded. He offered the crone a bow. She gave one to both Chiun and Remo in turn before turning back for the village.
General Kye Pun hurried up the weed-lined path before the two men.
"You don't have to worry. Hyunsil will do fine," Remo said as they walked along behind the North Korean general. "She already knew most of the stuff from Pullyang."
Chiun nodded. "Her father taught her many of his duties before he passed on. However, it is important that she make no mistakes, for she is the first female entrusted with the duties of caretaker."
"Gotta break that glass ceiling sometime," Remo said.
The long path led to a wide, four-lane highway. The strip of blacktop seemed as out of place in the Korean countryside as a yellow racing stripe up a pig's back.
A car waited for them on the road. Kye Pun held the door, ushering the two Sinanju Masters into the back before sliding in behind the wheel. In another minute they were speeding down the empty highway.
When they got to the airport in Pyongyang, Remo was surprised by the crowds. There were soldiers lined up as if for review, as well as many government officials.
Remo assumed they had driven into the middle of some big Commie block party commemorating the invention of the airplane by Karl Marx. His eyes grew flat when he saw Leader-for-Life Kim Jong-Il on the reviewing stand in the middle of the crowd. The North Korean leader was smiling nervously as Remo's car drove through the parting throng.
"Holy cripes," Remo complained. "It's for me."
"Take it while you can," Chiun advised from the seat beside his pupil. "As the new Reigning Master this is likely the only time you will be heralded on your way like this."
"New Reigning Master, my foot. Kim is just happy to get me out of the country. This is his party, not mine."
The car stopped between the reviewing stand and the waiting North Korean plane. It was the premier's own plane, not the Iraqi jet on which Remo had flown to Korea four months earlier. His stolen plane was still being repaired. From what he'd seen of the technical skills of the North Korean people, he'd give them another million years to fix the broken jet engine, give or take a hundred thousand.
Kye Pun raced around to open Remo's door. Schoolchildren threw flower petals from woven baskets onto the red velvet carpet at Remo's feet.
"I'm surprised they don't have a goddamn brass band," Remo groused to Chiun as they stepped up the carpet.
The minute the words were out, a brass band marched around the side of the terminal playing something that sounded like John Philip Sousa being sucked up a tin whistle.
On the platform, Kim Jong-Il's anxious smile stretched wider. The shock of hair bestowed on him by cruel nature and crueler genetics stuck straight up in the air. Sweat beaded on his broad forehead. He waved a frantic pudgy hand for the band to cut the music. The reedy tootling petered out.
"Your unworthy cousins bid farewell to the new Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju," Kim Jong-Il announced. "Would that you could stay with us forever, but we understand that your awesome responsibilities must take you from our midst. Any words that the Reigning Master would bestow on us in departure would be drops of honey on our unworthy ears."
Remo looked up at the Korean leader. His eyes settled blandly on the fat man's standing-up hair. "Buy an effing comb," Remo said.
He made a beeline for his plane.
Kye Pun's worried eyes darted wide apology to the North Korean premier as he ushered Chiun to the waiting jet.
Their flight to the South had already been cleared. It was a short hop across the thirty-eighth parallel. At the airport in Seoul, General Kye Pun got them to the gate of their commercial flight and waved them gladly on their way.
From the plane's window, Remo saw the general weeping tears of joy as the plane taxied from the terminal.
When they were airborne, the Korean peninsula slipping in the wake of the rising plane, Remo snapped his fingers.
"I should have told them to make sure they keep my Iraqi jet hangared for me," he said. "Just because I'm not in town anymore doesn't mean I want them stripping it for spare parts or boiling the seats for soup."
"They will not damage your plane," Chiun replied. "They would not dare. You are the Reigning Master of Sinanju."
This time, almost for the first time, he said it without sarcasm. Chiun was sitting by the window, careful eyes trained on the gently shuddering left wing. Remo smiled at the back of his teacher's age-speckled head.
He felt good. Here he was, sitting beside his teacher on a plane while Chiun studied the wing to make sure it didn't fall off during takeoff. It was business as usual. He had spent the past four months worrying for nothing. Things hadn't changed as much as he had feared.
When the plane leveled off at cruising altitude, Chiun turned from the window.
"Move your feet," he insisted. The old man scampered around his pupil, forcing Remo to vacate his seat.
They switched places, Remo settling in by the window, Chiun taking the aisle seat. It was a familiar drill that Remo normally found annoying. This day it made him smile.
"What are you grinning at, imbecile?"
"Nothing. This is just nice is all, Little Father."
Chiun's hazel eyes narrowed. "What is?"
"Me, you. Together again. Just like old times."
"When you are my age you may think wistfully of old times. Only dying insects wax nostalgic for last week."
"Don't rain on my parade. Which, by the by, Kim Jong-Il nearly threw for me back there. Everything's coming up Remo. I feel so good I don't even care about whatever's up with Smitty and you and that contract stuff you won't tell me about." He raised a brow. "You want to tell me about it?"