"I am Jeremiah Purcell." Neither offered a handshake.
"Why have you come?" Chiun asked in anguish.
Remo looked at the old man for a moment before speaking. "I thought you might need me," he said.
The Dutchman flushed again. "We were just having a chat. Would you care for some tea? I know you don't drink."
Remo started to shake his head, but Chiun said, "I would like some tea."
"Very well." He gestured to Sanchez, who stood by the door, and the mute disappeared. In a few moments he reappeared with a lacquer tray bearing three Korean porcelain cups and a teapot made of red clay. Remo sat down.
"That is from Sinanju," Chiun said, eyeing the teapot.
"It was a gift from my father," the Dutchman answered. He added quietly, "That is, I found it here."
"Was that Nuihc?"
"You seem surprised. Did you think you were the only person in the world to inherit the teachings of Sinanju?"
"Yeah," Remo said. "That's what I was told. I was told a lot of things. But that wasn't what surprised me. You called him Father. Nuihc didn't strike me as the fatherly kind, that's all."
The Dutchman poured the tea and passed the tiny unhandled cups to Remo and Chiun. "He was not, perhaps, the image of a father one would hold. He was a... stern man."
Remo and Chiun exchanged glances.
"But he saved me from a life of imprisonment and scrutiny. You see, I am no ordinary assassin."
"No," Remo said, "Nuihc was a baboon, so you're the son of a baboon."
Purcell sipped his tea. At the moment when he lowered his eyes, Chiun hurled his teacup, still full of steaming liquid, toward him. The Dutchman reached up lazily and caught it just in front of his face, careful not to spill a drop.
"As I was saying, I am no ordinary assassin. And not a baboon. You will not defeat me by surprise, Chiun." He handed the cup back to him gently with both hands.
Chiun said calmly, "Apologies for the rudeness."
"Quite all right. I would have done the same myself if I were not certain you would catch the cup."
"This is so sweet," Remo said, "that you're both making me sick."
"How old are you, my son?" Chiun asked the Dutchman. Remo flinched at the words.
"I am twenty-four years old. I was not to do battle with you until my twenty-fifth year, but circumstances..." He shrugged.
"You are not ready," Chiun said.
The Dutchman set his teacup down. "I am ready. The Master's will has brought you to me, and I will avenge him."
"Hi ho, Silver," Remo said. "You forget, pal. There are two of us."
The Dutchman smiled. "But you don't count," he said. "I may come to this confrontation a year before my time, but Chiun is many ages past his. He is a has-been. You, on the other hand, are a never-was."
Remo stood up.
"Stop, stop," Chiun said. "We have no time for insults, and no energy to spare. There is no need for any of us to die sweaty. I wish to know about you, Jeremiah."
Remo walked to the windows and gazed out at the balconies and the terraced lawns below as the Dutchman told Chiun about the farm, his parents, the incident with the pig, the day on the train. Remo agreed enviously that it had been an extraordinary life. Maybe springing full-grown into the training of Sinanju, as Remo had done after years of dissipation, couldn't stand up to the kind of training the Dutchman had had— year after year of strict study since childhood. And Chiun, for all his nagging perfectionism, had allowed Remo to make mistakes. His bent elbow, for one. Nuihc would have allowed no mistakes.
No wonder Chiun thought the Dutchman was such a prize. He was perfect, the prick. Remo began to feel the loose stirrings of self-doubt.
"He sent me to school in Switzerland," the Dutchman was saying. "I was good in languages. At times I thought I might graduate like any other student and work as a translator. I think I might have liked that." For a moment, the icy eyes thawed, remembering a time long gone when hope was still something that belonged to everyone, even the Dutchman.
"And?" Chiun asked.
The eyes retreated behind their glacial façade again. "It was not my destiny," he said. "The school found out about my unusual abilities."
"The exploding lamp?" Chiun asked.
He nodded.
"What about Pierre?" Remo asked from the windows. "He froze to death. In this weather."
"Sometimes it's hard for me to control this...this thing." Purcell looked apologetically at the old man. "I won't use it with you, though. We'll fight fairly."
"Let Pierre tell you how fair he is," Remo said.
The Dutchman pretended not to hear. "When the school found out, they put me in a special room with no exits, and they brought in a team of doctors and scientists to poke and probe at me. They never let me rest, always sticking me with needles and trying drugs on me."
"Poor little stinkums," Remo said. "They just wouldn't let you kill people in peace, like all the other homicidal maniacs."
The Dutchman colored deeply, but continued. "After six months, I managed to escape during one of my supervised outings. I ran for the communications office and signaled Nuihc in Lisbon. Two days later he arrived and demolished the place. There's no trace of the school now. Then he brought me here, to train. And wait for you. He hated and feared you, you know. I never saw him again."
Chiun put down his teacup with a silvery tinkle. "I never knew Nuihc had adopted an heir. And why? He held no ties to anyone, as far as I knew."
The Dutchman stooped slightly. "I don't think I was his heir. You see, he never expected to die. But he wanted a partner with my mental abilities. That was why he trained me. In the end, he wasn't able to use me."
"I suppose you know what Nuihc would have done to you once your usefulness got in his way," Remo said.
"You swine!" The Dutchman moved his arm in a sweeping arc. Remo felt a hundred knives come crashing in on his bad leg where the python had crushed it. He buckled, gasping, to the floor.
"You gave your word," Chiun spat, rushing over to Remo.
"To you. To you alone. Not to untrained vermin like him."
"Our talk is finished," the old man said. He cradled Remo's head in his hands.
"I'm all right," Remo said between clenched teeth. "Don't fight him without me."