No Contest

Remo scowled. “Before you bust a gut, remember I didn’t promise to wait for eighty. I could be walking down the street tomorrow and spot some Korean kindergartner with fast reflexes.”

“So, you’re a traditionalist,” Smith observed. “Chiun took an atypical protégé, while you’re thinking of going with the standard Korean child.”

Remo shook his head. “I never thought of it like that. Me the Master who sticks to the Sinanju tradition while Chiun’s the one who breaks all the rules of Sinanju protocol.”

Smith looked at him hard. “You are of Sinanju village.”

“Hey, not me.”

‘You are. Remo, don’t you get it?”

“Get what?”

Harold W. Smith smiled. “You, too, came from the gene pool that spawned Master Chiun. You have the disposition to prove it.”

Remo Williams never thought of it in those terms, never so clearly. Now it was perfectly, obviously true.

“Wow. That’s amazing. That’s incredible. Christ, how’d I miss that all these years? I really am a Sinanju Master, even so far as being—what are they? Obstinate? Argumentative? Cantankerous?”

Smith nodded. “Those are all pretty good.”

Remo chuckled. “Me. Remo. A village elder. What a kick in the pants. What a revelation.”

“Maybe, for you, that revelation was the final step,” Smith suggested. “Maybe at this moment you have become completely the Reigning Master of Sinanju—master of the tradition, of the village, of the heritage.”

Remo nodded. “Yes. Yes, Smitty. That’s one of the wisest things you’ve ever said to me. It’s exactly right.” Remo could feel the new understanding roiling around his brain. Maybe he’d never get a handle on it, but just knowing it was enlightening. He had the personality traits of the Sinanju bloodline.

“Think I’ll enjoy being obstinate and argumentative and cantankerous to the end of my days?”

“Haven’t you always enjoyed it?” Smith asked half-seriously.

Epilogue

“He is awake.”

Remo opened his eyes and found the bird standing on the floor near his mat, looking right at him.

“He is awake,” the bird said again.

“That’s a self-fulfilling statement, bird. Saying it makes it true.”

“He is awake.”

“Try saying this—he is asleep. Night.” Remo attempted to make the words a reality, but the parrot didn’t cooperate. Remo heard it shifting nervously from good foot to bandaged foot and he looked at it again.

“What are you worried about?”

“He is awake.”

“You want a cracker or something?”

The bird launched into another limerick.

There once were some nasty, loud boys

Who spent their time playing with toys

The worst of the pack

Was a scoundrel named Jack

Who woke HIM with all of his noise.

Remo thought about it “I know it’s dirty, but I still don’t get it.”

Chiun emerged from his room with trouble lines engraved in his flesh, and he strode right up to the hyacinth macaw.

“Say it again, bird.”

“There once were some nasty loud boys…” The bird recited the limerick again.

Chiun’s jaw trembled, like the face of a very old man.

“Little Father?” Remo asked.

“Him. He is awake. It is the warning the bird came to deliver, Remo. In his ancient city beneath the pacific seas he is no longer dreaming. Remo, he is awake!”

Remo’s alarm heightened. Chiun might be easy to irritate, but not to frighten, and right now he looked frightened. “Who is awake?”

“Him,” the bird squawked.

“Him.” Chiun nodded.

“Does this have something to do with Jack Fast?”

“The worst of the pack,” the parrot repeated.

“We never should have left him there,” Chiun said. “I knew what that place was when I read the markings on the stone with my fingers.”

Remo struggled to catch up. “You mean the underground river mouth where Jack Fast went in? Is that the place we’re talking about?”

“One of the communication channels. A speaking tube, transversing the crust of the earth.”

A speaking tube doing something through the earth. The concept collided unpleasantly with the concept of an ancient city under the Pacific Ocean where something was no longer asleep. Remo had dived the Pacific various times, but the memory of one dive haunted him still.

“Chiun, during my Rite of Attainment—”

The old man and the purple bird cocked their heads at him, wordlessly scolding him to silence.

“Yes, my son,” Chiun said. “It is him, but at that time he was sleeping. Now that he is awake, who knows what he might compel us to do.”

About the Authors

Warren Murphy’s books and stories have sold fifty million copies worldwide and won a dozen national awards. He has created a number of book series, including the Trace series and the long-running satiric adventure, The Destroyer.

Richard Ben Sapir worked as an editor and in public relations before creating the Destroyer series with Warren Murphy. Before his untimely death in 1987, Sapir penned a number of thriller and historical mainstream novels.