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his ancestors for guidance.
"And I'd still like some water," brayed the pupil.
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"When you are done your exercises," Chiun said.
"When's that gonna be? You've had me dangling out here like a fish on a line
for the past three hours." With his chin he pointed up the length of rope. The
thick braided line ended at an ancient chunk of corroded metal. To Remo it
looked like something that had been left in the desert since the gold rush
days. Chiun had found it on the desert floor near where they had parked their
Jeep. Right now, if Remo twisted just right as he hung from the rope, he could
just make out their Jeep. It was parked on a lonely, rutted desert path a
thousand feet below where he dangled out in open air.
They had come to Arizona after leaving Texas. At first there was something
that felt right about the Arizona desert. Remo had no idea why. It was a
feeling of something old and instinctive that made his bones ache for family.
A strange thought for an orphan from Newark, New Jersey. Especially given the
company he was with.
For the days since their arrival here, Chiun had been putting Remo through his
paces. There was a lot of climbing and jumping and scampering from rock to
rock.
Remo had been forced repeatedly to pull his hand from the darting fangs of a
flashing rattlesnake. This, he was told, to increase his hand-eye
coordination. "Incentive," was the word Chiun used as justification for this
exercise.
Hours of running in bare feet on sand had caused Remo's soles to blister, then
callus. He was repeatedly scolded for doing it wrong. The right way, he
learned, was when he did not leave "those mammoth churned-up hoofprints" in
his wake. The one time Remo managed to run through the soft desert dust
without leaving a single discernible mark, he thought he heard the Master of
Sinanju utter a solitary word of praise. He knew he was mistaken, however, for
when he looked the old man was wearing his usual nasty scowl.
Still, all in all it was better than Folcroft. At least he was outside. But
this latest exercise was ridiculous. They had climbed up to the top of the
butte in the wee hours of the night, without aid of rope or piton or any
climbing gear whatsoever. Once they were at the top, Chiun drove the metal
post deep into the rock. Even though he'd been watching at the time, Remo
still had no idea how the old man had done it. It looked as if he'd just
jammed it in, like sticking a straw into a thick milkshake. Remo was sure the
post would give. But somehow the metal was secure.
The post hung out over desert. Remo was given a length of rope and told to go
and secure it to the far end. Once he had done so, Chiun sat to await the
sunrise while Remo was forced to climb up and down the rope endlessly.
Just a few short months ago Remo would not have thought it possible to do
something like this even once. But he was in his third hour now and had not
yet broken a sweat.
"So what are you saying, if I was Korean you'd let me have a drink of water?"
Remo groused as he climbed and slid, climbed and slid. His hands were beyond
rope burns.
"If you were Korean, you would know enough to be grateful to me for all I have
done for you," Chiun replied.
The old man had stopped watching the sun to turn his attention back to Remo.
Chiun was careful to keep his face bland as his pupil continued to perform his
exercises flawlessly. It was an amazing thing. Most Korean boys would have
given up after the first half hour. In the light of a new day, Chiun noted
that the pupil's wrists were coming along nicely.
"Yeah? Well, I'm not a freaking camel, for Christ's sake."
Seated at the edge of the butte, Chiun frowned. "Do not invoke that name in my
presence," he sniffed.
At the top of the rope now, Remo stopped. "What name?"
"That Nazarene carpenter," Chiun replied. "I assume you are a Christian of
some sort. You people usually are."
"I'm Catholic," Remo replied. A gust of desert sand pelted his face. He
gritted his teeth against it. Still stationary on the rope, he rocked back and
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forth in the wind.
"Worse," said Chiun.
"What do you mean worse? What's wrong with Catholics?"
"What isn't wrong with Catholics? You may start with that busybody carpenter.
Did you know that he ruined the reigns of not one but two King Herods? Of
course you didn't. Because it wasn't written down in your precious white
Bible. By his birth alone he forced poor Herod the Elder into the tragic and
rash act of executing the firstborn son of every family in Egypt. Does your
Bible tell of the sleepless nights that plagued Herod for days after
initiating that unfortunate social policy? No. It was a week before his
appetite returned, but was that recorded? Of course not. Here was a poor,
sensitive man going through terrible emotional upheaval, but does anyone care?
No, they don't. It is always Jesus this and Jesus that."
"My heart bleeds for good King Herod," Remo said dryly.
"As it should."
"I was being sarcastic."
"Of course you were."
"I like Jesus," Remo said.
"You would," Chiun replied.
There was a long moment during which the only sound was the wind that sang
between them. "Okay," Remo said finally. "Here's the deal. I'm done with
hanging around out here. My arms are like rubber and I'm halfway to total
dehydration, so I'm coming in and if you want to stop me you can push me off
this cliff. At this point it'd come as a welcome relief."
Reaching up, he grabbed the bar. Hand over hand he climbed to the flat top of
the butte. He dropped to the soles of his feet next to the seated Master of
Sinanju.
"It is about time," Chiun said. He rose to his feet like a swirling desert
dust devil.
"What's about what?" Remo asked warily. He rubbed gingerly at his shoulders.
They were far beyond ordinary pain. His arms felt as if they'd just been
plugged into his sockets from someone else's body.
"I was wondering how long it would take for you to realize the pointlessness
of this exercise. Most Korean boys have sense enough to see it for what it is
at the outset." He marched to the edge of the butte. "We have wasted enough
time playing games. Recess is over. It is time to start the day's training."
His pronouncement made, the old man slipped over the mesa's edge and was
gone.
Remo stood alone for a moment. The desert morning was clear and beautiful.
"Look on the bright side," he muttered to himself. "Maybe on the way down I'll
fall and break my neck."
Cradling both sore arms, he trudged reluctantly to the edge of the mountain.
Chapter 15
MacCleary brought the manila envelope Smith had given him back to his quarters
at Folcroft.
During the four months of planning that culminated in Remo's staged execution,
Smith had overseen the remodel of Folcroft's old, abandoned psychiatric
isolation wing. In the 1920s, the closed-off basement corridor had been home
to Folcroft's most dangerous patients. It was now CURE's security wing. This
was where Remo was brought after his execution, where the plastic surgery was
performed and where CURE's enforcement arm had recovered.
Conn had taken over another room in the otherwise empty hall. Once Remo had
sufficiently healed and was remanded to Chiun's care, MacCleary had the run of
the special wing.
Alone in his small room, floor cluttered with empty liquor bottles, MacCleary
studied the data Smith had collected. There wasn't much. They already knew
that the new Mob enforcer was somebody named Maxwell. Somehow this Maxwell was
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