“Hey, you, leave my kid alone.”

  His massive weight balanced evenly on size fourteen shoes. He stuck out an arm confidently as if it were a wall against this thin fellow following his son. His eyes teared just slightly as his rib cage collapsed into his lower intestines. His sphincters released his digested breakfast into his pants. He decided standing was too much for what was left of his body so he collapsed to the light maroon carpeting of the hallway.

  Remo was into the apartment proper after Alvin. A bleached blonde, with hair in silver curlers, tried to shut the door. The door bounced back into her face.

  Alvin made it to the bathroom, locking it behind him. He saw the lock pop out in a halo of splinters onto the white tile floor.

  “Hello, Alvin,” said Remo, cornering him in the bathtub. He wanted, at least, just to slap the kid but the hand that could become a shatterer of molecule chains could not move. So Remo looked menacing. In all his training, he had never learned to look fearsome. Everything was aimed at appearing harmless, even through the hit. He even stood with great quiet. His body was quiet. He menaced with his voice. It worked, and the shattered lock on the floor didn’t hurt any either.

  “You’re in trouble.”

  “Dad!” yelled Alvin.

  “He’s not going to help.”

  “Mom,” yelled Alvin.

  “She’s not going to help.”

  “Ms. Kaufperson.”

  “Coming, Alvin. Don’t be afraid,” yelled Sashur.

  “Be afraid,” said Remo.

  “You can’t hurt me,” said Alvin.

  “What makes you think so?”

  “There are laws,” said Alvin.

  “Alvin, you have two seconds to tell me who gave you the order to hit Pell. Or your head goes like this.” Remo put his hand on a round polished edge of an aquamarine sink and squeezed off a piece like a chunk of bread.

  “There, Alvin, imagine it’s your head,” said Remo, bluffing.

  “Ms. Kaufperson,” cried Alvin, terror widening his eyes as Sashur came into the bathroom.

  “Ms. Kaufperson isn’t going to help you,” said Remo.

  “Alvin, you’re in big legal trouble,” said Ms. Kaufperson.

  “Let me handle this,” said Remo.

  “No comment,” said Alvin.

  “I’m going to bring him to the police station,” said Ms. Kaufperson.

  “Who gave you the gun, Alvin?”

  “We ought to let the police do this, Remo. So they’ll have a case.”

  Ms. Kaufperson took Alvin firmly by the wrist, reaching in past Remo, who blocked the doorway. She yanked Alvin with her. Remo followed them out of the apartment and out of the building, and when he saw her enter the police station, with the surly tyke, he let them go. Fine. She would tell the police to check him out in the killing of Warner Pell, the youngster would put the police onto who had trained him and paid him so well, the cops would round up the other kids—there had to be others with simultaneous killings—and with the new killers gone, Smitty’s program of protected witnesses would pick up again.

  The air tasted of the soot and filth of millions of people living close, burning things to heat themselves, discarding garbage, and rushing. You could feel people rush. And Remo didn’t care whether the Constitution worked or Smith’s operation worked or about anything to do with why he had accepted that offer to join so many years before. Then why was he doing it? Why did he continue?

  On this hot night, the buildings seemed to sweat black faces from open windows. A white man walking through this neighborhood alone attracted chuckles. A few glistening fat women called out that whitey ought to start running and that if he didn’t run now he would be running mighty soon, heh, heh.

  Why did he continue? Why? And the only answer was as true as it was confusing. He did it because it was what he did.

  Governments came and went, civilizations rose and then left their buried droppings for later civilizations to try to figure out, but Sinanju, this better use of the human mind and body, continued. That was eternal because it was rooted in the best of what man could be. New governments only promised the best, like some hope that always ended with a new dictator replacing the one before him. What Smith was fighting was not chaos or disorder or elements that prevented good, honest government. He was fighting human nature. And Remo, serving him, was using that same human nature to the fullest. Was he becoming too much like Chiun? Would he end up thinking of himself as the world’s only human being, with a bunch of lessers running around polluting the landscape?

  “Good evening, honkey,” said a thin black face atop a muscular body. Several people lounging on stoops chuckled.

  “Speedy’s got the honkey,” laughed a woman. “Come see Speedy. He gone do the job on the honkey. Run, honkey. Honkey ain’t runnin’.”

  Perhaps Chiun was right. Yet sometimes Remo felt that Chiun’s personality ran alongside the wisdom of Sinanju. Chiun was Chiun and Sinanju was Sinanju, and while Sinanju was most of him, it was not all of him. Chiun might have been a kvetch in any age.

  “You run?” said the thin black face.

  And yet who was Remo? How much of him was Sinanju?

  “You need a stickin’, honkey.”

  A small glistening knife caught the glint of an overhead street light. It was coming toward Remo. He took the hand on the knife and put it into the right eye of the thin black face. And left it there, neat, in the brain.

  Was Remo running alongside Sinanju also? Was he a visitor in his own body?

  A lumbering hulk, with a large two-by-four swinging around him like a baseball bat looking to connect with Remo’s head, plodded into Remo’s path. Now here was a perfect example. Remo saw the man slower than he was actually moving. He saw the two-by-four moving so slowly he could have carved his initials on it.

  Sinanju controlled his eyesight. He didn’t. He breathed this way, he saw that way, he heard this way. Who was he anymore?

  Remo split the big board precisely and let the mocha-colored man go whoomphing into a stoop.

  He couldn’t even slap a kid who was going to kill him. Now if it were up to him, he would have slapped. And he wanted to. But his body wouldn’t do It. Sinanju wouldn’t let his body.

  A pistol cocked across the street. Now here was another good case. He heard this small sound clearly. It was distinguished from the car engines and the shouts and the footsteps and the windows opening down the block. It was clear and his mind picked it up, separated it, and labeled it “menace” without his even trying. Even without his consent.

  The sound came from behind a stoop fifteen yards up to the right. Two bodies, heavy, probably male, came puffing up behind him. Remo lowered slightly, moving back and taking his two arms as scythes upended two men in blue jean jackets with the words “Spade Stones” sewn across the shoulders.

  “He bruised a Stone,” yelled someone.

  The pistol, like a silver jewel in a fat black hand, appeared from behind the stoop. Remo pushed it backward into a mouth that finally opened to the pressure on it.

  And another good case. This man couldn’t control the reflex action of his trigger finger. It closed. The bullet came out his right ear with waxy sediment, tiny hairs and a spray of brain. Now this man’s reflexes were reflexes. Remo’s were a tradition. He didn’t even have control of his reflexes. They were Sinanju.

  It was a question of soul. His body and his mind belonged to Sinanju. His soul belonged to him, and just as Chiun would have been a carper in any age, Remo would be a questioner, and the question would always be: Why am I doing this? And the answer would always be: Because this is what I do.

  In terror, a Spade Stone trying to flee Remo got himself trapped between Remo and a corner of the stoop.

  “Leave me alone,” said Remo. “I’ve got problems to work out.”

  The man was agreeable. He fell over himself agreeing. He made a whooping dash across the sidewalk, over a fire hydrant, and skittered around a white Eldorado pimpmobile, where he hid.

  It occurred to Remo on his thoughtful walk down the block that if people could just express themselves, this whole racial problem in America could be solved. All he had said was he had problems and would the man leave him alone. And the man had. One human being responding to another. It was good to get mutual concern back in America.

  When he reached the motel, Chiun’s daytime TV soaps were ending, and Remo waited quietly as Warner Hemper explained to Dr. Theresa Lawson Cook, for the sixth time in the day’s episode, that an ecological abortion could not save Mrs. Cortina Woolets in her religious revival backed by the Mafia, even though the father of the unborn child was a Vietnamese refugee.

  “Trash,” said Chiun, when the commercial ended.

  “Trash,” he said again and set the taping machine atop the television to begin its recording of the other two network channels the next day.

  “Then why don’t you stop watching them?” Remo asked.

  Chiun looked loftily at Remo.

  “How dare you begrudge an old and gentle creature his brief moments of joy? You are troubled.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been thinking. Something strange happened today.”

  “With a child,” said Chiun.

  “You know,” Remo said.

  “I knew.”

  “Why did it happen like that? I was powerless, and this kid was going to kill me.”

  “Not powerless,” said Chiun. “Are you not alive?”

  “Well, I am alive, yes.”

  “That is the most necessary power. The ability to bring harm to others is secondary.”

  “What if I had been in a position where my only out was hitting the kid was who holding the gun on me?”

  Chiun nodded and thought a moment. His longer fingernails slid together like the joining of delicately polished curved ivory needles.

  “But that did not happen, did it?”

  “No, it didn’t,” said Remo. He looked at a clock on the wall. It was a minute and a half late. In seventeen minutes, the line to Smith would be open.

  “There are many explanations for what happened to you, all of them true,” said Chiun. “As you know, Sinanju is a poor village.”

  “I know, I know, I know, I know. You had to rent out your services to the emperors of the world so the children of Sinanju wouldn’t starve. I know.”

  “And the babies during time of famine had to be put into the cold waters of the bay. Therefore any failure of a mission is really killing the children we serve. This has been so, lo, these many years, lo, these many generations, lo, even unto centuries.”

  “I know, I know, I know.”

  “He who thinks he knows before he hears does not know.”

  “I know,” said Remo.

  “Listen.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You are not.”

  “All right. I’m listening.”

  “Now you are,” Chiun said. “Children are promises of greatness, in all manners possible. They have all been made holy in your eyes, not just the babes of Sinanju but all children.”

  “So?” said Remo. He tried to slump into a chair but it came out as a delicate, precise placement of his body with the chair.

  “So you cannot kill hope. And this is a good thing. What has been given us is a power that we achieve by giving ourselves.”

  “That’s right. And I don’t exist anymore. That framed killing has finally worked. Patrolman Remo Williams is dead. I don’t know who I am now.”

  “You are a better you. Why, sometimes,” Chiun said solemnly, “you remind me of myself. But do not think this is all the time. You had much to overcome.”

  “I liked what it was I overcame.”

  “You liked living with your mind and body asleep?”

  “Sometimes, all I want to do is go into a bar and get a hamburger—yes, meat—and a beer, and get fat and maybe marry Kathy Gilhooly.”

  “What is a Kooly Gilloolly?”

  “Kathy Gilhooly. A girl I once knew in Newark.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Ten years at least. No. Twelve. Twelve years, I think.”

  “She is dead twice. Do not think you can ever find her. Every five years, a white person changes. If you see her, you will kill her in your eyes, that last remembrance of what you once loved. Wrinkles and fat will bury it, tiredness in the eyes will smother it, and in her place will be a woman. The girl dies when the woman emerges.”

  It was still six minutes until the call to Smith and Remo got up without answering and walked toward the kitchen.

  “What rudeness is this that you inflict silence between us?” said Chiun.

  “I’m sorry, I…”

  But Chiun now turned in silence and went triumphantly into the kitchen. If someone was to not speak to the other, it would be the Master of Sinanju not speaking to his pupil, not the reverse. Besides, Remo would soon resolve his problems. In his new life, Remo was really only at puberty. A difficult time for anyone.

  “Arrogant,” said the pupil in American.

  Chiun chose not to be offended, since the silence was his and he was not about to give it up for a minor rebuke.

  At the precisely proper time, Smitty picked up the telephone and Remo told him everything was being resolved legally. There was this group that was using kids to kill which explained why no one had seen the killers. Grownups ignored children, especially at a murder scene.

  “I know all about it,” Smith said. “I think you’ve got everything solved but the problem.”

  “The Chicago police have a kid. He’s one of them. He’ll spill his little head open and the whole system will go down constitutionally. You ought to like that.”

  “Except for one thing, Remo.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve already heard from Chicago. Little Alvin Dewar admits that he shot Warner Pell. He said Pell was sexually assaulting him and he grabbed the gun from Pell’s desk to defend himself.”

  “He’s lying. Get the cops to beat it out of him.”

  “Good thought, except our little Alvin Dewar has a bank account of $50,000 waiting for him. You know what the law is. He’ll be out in no more than twenty-four months. He’ll be a rich kid on his way to becoming a rich man.”

  “That’s not my problem. Change the legal system,” Remo said.

  “And another thing,” Smith said. “We still don’t know how they get the locations of the hidden witnesses for their hits. There’s still a leak someplace in the government. And another thing. Why did you go after Pell when I told you to wait?”

  “I wanted to wrap this up,” said Remo.

  “Yes,” said Smith drily. “And now Pell, our only real lead, is dead.”

  “Maybe what Alvin said is true. Maybe Pell was trying to mash him. Sure, that’s probably what happened. Pell was the boss and now he’s dead. And as long as we’re complaining, how was it that the Chicago cops recognized me today and tried to arrest me?”

  “Were you hurt?” asked Smith.

  “No. Just a bullet in the back,” said Remo with a grim satisfaction. “How about how that happened?”

  “I’m afraid the Justice Department put out a wire on you and Chiun regarding forged credentials. It happened before I could stop it.”

  “Yeah,” said Remo. “See. Nobody’s perfect.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Smith calmly. “At any rate, I hope you don’t have any more such trouble. But the problem still remains. We don’t know—and I mean know, not guess—who’s been behind the kids, and we don’t know who the leak is in the government, and we don’t know anything about the organization of the kids, and until you put that all together, this job is still going on. Goodbye.”

  The phone went dead and Remo hurriedly dialed to tell Smith he couldn’t do the job; he couldn’t go up against kids. But all he got was a busy signal.

  “Little Father,” he said to Chiun. “I need your help.”

  There was silence from the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry. All right? Are you happy? I’ve got to find an answer to this kid thing. Help me, please.”

  Chiun returned to the living room of the motel suite. He nodded softly.

  “What did you mean by arrogant?” he said.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MAJOR GENERAL WILLIAM TASSIDY HAUPT was on the move. His forces were rolling and he knew one word: “Attack.”

  “We’ll hit those fuckers with everything we’ve got. They’ll think they’ve run into a battery of Horlands.”

  “Howitzers,” said a young lieutenant, just out of the Point, who had actually fired one during training-a fact that prompted Haupt’s chief of staff to ask if they sounded as loud as they looked in the movies.

  “Louder,” said the lieutenant.

  “Will you two shut up? This is a strategy session,” said General Haupt. “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing, sir. The audio effect of a Howitzer.”

  “This is a strategy meeting of an American Army command, Lieutenant, I do not wish to hear one word out of you about Horlands, tanks, pistols, grenades, rockets and all the folderol they like to talk about at the Point. Here we separate the men from the boys. You want to play games, you go to some combat outfit and stay a second lieutenant all your life. You want to dig in and be real Army, you guts it up with everyone else and prepare for the press conference.”

  “Press conference,” gasped the chief of staff.

  “No choice,” said General Haupt coldly. “Our backs are to the wall. We win or die. Options limited. Therefore, at eighteen hundred hours I have summoned the three networks, Associated Press, and United Press International to be here.”

  Men checked their watches. Haupt’s chief of staff exhaled a large gust of air. “The balloon is up,” he whispered to the lieutenant.

  “The problem is this,” Haupt said, going to a large chart at the back of the briefing room. “One: A Martin Kaufmann has been killed while on our post. Two: While his safety was the responsibility of Fort Dix personnel, and so publicly acknowledged, I have received a call indicating some effort will be made to hold us responsible. Three: The caller had access to personal information about my life, leading me to believe it is either the Justice Department or the Central Intelligence Agency. I recommend at the press conference we announce that it is a major government agency and allow the press to assume it is the CIA.”

 

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