Chapter 10
The tall man in the orange-and-black T-shirt tapped on the wall beside the warehouse's interior door. Something metallic clacked, the door opened and the security guard vanished through it.
Before the door closed, Chiun was up and moving. His one and only pupil sensed the opportunity, too. But sadly, after so many years of diligent instruction, a fraction of an instant later. The Reigning Master of Sinanju glided across the concrete loading dock like he was on roller skates. Behind him, he could hear the huffing of Remo's breath and the thundering clump of his huge feet.
Chiun heaved a sigh. Just when he thought his student had finally achieved a level of masterly perfection came the disappointment. The inevitable disappointment.
It wasn't the teaching that wore a man down, he thought.
It was the reteaching.
Three decades of experience with this pupil had confirmed his belief that whites could not retain knowledge for more than a few days. Of course, they could remember their Social Security numbers, their last names and the necessary procedure for opening a tube of toothpaste. The important things, the subtle things, were beyond their ability. Like breathing. And running. Perhaps it was time to once again drag out the long sheets of rice paper for poor Remo. First, he would have to relearn to walk barefoot over the flimsy stuff without tearing it. Then to run over it. And finally, to run in the ridiculous, stiff-soled Italian shoes he chose to wear.
Being the world's only teacher of Sinanju was a job requiring infinite patience, complete dedication and daredevil aplomb. In other words, Chiun thought, it was right up his alley. The problem was, and had always been, the pay.
There was never so much as a nugget of extra gold for all the overtime his student's limitless shortcomings forced upon him. No, it never counted when negotiations came up for a new contract and the payment in gold. They always divided the amount Chiun wrangled from Smith. Not an equal division, of course-what need did Remo have for gold when he enjoyed the honor of working with the Reigning Master of Sinanju? Also, Chiun had a greater responsibility-his birthplace, the entire village of Sinanju.
Years and years ago, at the start of Remo's training, the Master had tried to talk his employer into discarding the idea of his taking on a pupil. Chiun had argued that a pupil was redundant, that for the right price the Master himself could do all the assassinations. But Emperor Smith had foreseen a problem with Chiun's moving unnoticed through a society of whites-something an assassin had to do in order to succeed. Today the Emperor's wisdom had proved itself once again. It was because of Remo's overwhelming, all-reflective whiteness that Chiun had blended in so well with the reporters out front.
It was said that an acceptance of one's fate was the first step on the road to serenity. Though Remo had completed the rites that prepared him to be a master, he had lapses. Clearly, the fate of Chiun was to be joined at the hip to a perpetual student. Such a thing was not unheard-of in Korean culture. In the celebrated Pansori novels of his homeland, every noble hero was balanced by a comic footman, a Chongr-wook.
That was Remo. His Chong-wook.
With all due haste, the Master closed the distance between himself and the door that led from the warehouse to the training center proper. To the right of the door, set at chest height in the wall, was a ten-key touch pad that controlled the lock. It was very much like the keypad of his treasured Star Trek Next Generation Phaser TV remote control. Above the rows of numbers was an LED readout. Chiun held his palm close to, but didn't touch the keys. He moved his hand back and forth slightly, as if heating it over a candle flame.
"What are you doing?" Remo asked as he finally arrived behind the Master. "You couldn't have seen the code that guy used."
Chiun didn't waste time on a reply. The razor tip of his crooked fingernail clicked on the plastic pad. He tapped on three of the keys.
The warm ones.
"This could take all day," Remo complained as the words "No admit" blinked on the LED screen. Chiun tapped in the same three numbers, but in a different sequence.
"No admit. No admit. No admit."
"We don't have all day, Little Father." On the fourth try, the lock shot back.
"Dumb luck," Remo snorted.
Chiun shook his head. "Luck had nothing to do with it."
"Then how did you open it?"
"It would take me ten years to explain it to you, and a week later you would have forgotten it all. Instead of wasting time on lessons too complex for the simple whiteness of your brain, let us proceed to do as the Emperor has commanded."
Inside the training center, the halls were wide and low ceilinged. There were no windows to the outside, only doors leading to interior rooms. Some of the doors were made of glass. On the trot, Remo and Chiun passed a small surgery and an extensively equipped X-ray room. Beyond that was a hydrotherapy center. Remo looked through the porthole in the door. Two of the half-dozen stainless-steel tubs were occupied, but the player they sought was not there.
As they moved by an open office door, the man inside glanced up from the pile of papers on his desk. He wore the white uniform of a physical therapist. He looked startled to see them. They were already forty feet down the hall when they heard the sound of a chair scraping back. The therapist stuck his head out the door for a second, then ducked back in his office.
When Chiun saw the three big men in orange-and-black T-shirts charging down the hall toward them, he knew the man in white had called for help. The security guards filled the corridor as they lumbered, shoulder to shoulder. When they stopped a few feet away, the one in the middle raised a small black object to the side of his face and spoke into it.
"Yeah, we got 'em. Nah, we can handle it."
The security guard in charge was, even by the standards of his hirsute race, notably hairy. His pale face, except for a patch of forehead and the area under the eyes, was covered by a curly black beard, trimmed close. The hair on his head was long on the sides and in back, after the fashion of the new-country-music stars of the glorious Nashville Network. The hair on his forearms looked like his beard, but was untrimmed.
"What do you and Kung Fu there think you're doing?" the large hair-covered man demanded of Remo. The question immediately put Chiun's back up. "What does he mean by 'Gung Fu'?" the horrified Master asked his pupil. "Does he mistake me for a Chinese? Is he blind? How could he mistake this for the wide-nosed face of a barbarian?"
"I mistake you for a dumb shit," the security guard informed him. "About to be a dead shit."
"Kung fu's a Chinese martial art," Remo explained. "My friend here's Korean. To him, it's a big deal. Something to do with a thousand years of invading armies, domination, rape and pillage. Go figure..."
"Put a lid on the double-talk," the head guard said. "You two are trespassing on private property of the L.A. Riots. A crime punishable by the kicking of your butts."
"Look," Remo said, "we just want a word with one of the players. Two minutes and we're out."
"Buddy, you're already out."
At a silent signal, the other two security men closed in on Remo, a pincer move calculated to sandwich and overpower him. They didn't bother protecting themselves in a serious way, as they outweighed their target by a hundred pounds each. Because of the size differential, they were willing to absorb a punch or two in order to get their big hands on him.
Giving Remo first crack was their mistake.
And they only got one.
At the same moment, both guards lunged. It looked like a football play they had practiced thousands of times. Only they ran it at what seemed to be one-quarter speed. When the guards' fingers closed, they snatched only thin air. For an instant, the two men stood frozen, unable to grasp why they hadn't grasped the intruder's neck. With their arms extended straight out from the shoulder, the lengths of their torsos, from armpit to waist, were open to attack.
Ribs snapped like bread sticks, dry and crisp. Both guards dropped to their knees. As they clutched their sides, foreheads pressed to the floor, they wheezed and gasped for breath.
"Too slow," Chiun commented. He wasn't referring to the fallen guards, whose fighting skills were laughably childlike. The comment was directed at his pupil, Chong-wook, the ironic footman. Then the Master unleashed what might have been his ultimate insult. "If they had been Gung Fu," he told Remo, "they would have caught you."
"Hey, now, that isn't fair...."
The big hairy guy leaped, glomming onto Remo's back. Using all his weight, the security guard tried to drive the dangerous trespasser into the orange-and-black Congoleum.
"Whoop!" Remo said, twisting at the waist. Not a power twist. A timing twist.
The hairy guard flew over his shoulder and slammed headfirst into the wall with a mighty thunk. As the man's body slipped to the floor, it revealed a face-shaped indentation in the Sheetrock.
Chiun didn't give the remarkable depth of the concavity so much as a glance. "We've wasted enough time here," he said, stepping over the unconscious body.
"The weight room must be just up ahead," Remo said to the Master's slender back. "Hear the iron plates clanking? And the rap music?"
Chiun stopped short.
"What's wrong?" Remo asked him.
"An evil smell." Chiun fanned a hand in front of his slender nose. "It is the stink of a fatty-red-meat-eating urine-dribbler."