"Crossword puzzles are hard," Remo observed, shattering Wycopf's brief moment of terrified solitude. "I remember the nuns used to make us do them sometimes back in grade-school English class. They did it at the very end of the year, just before summer vacation. It was supposed to be fun. Most of the year wasn't fun, and I guess crossword puzzles were their way of letting us let our hair down. Some of the kids seemed to like it. The ones like me in the back of the class would rather have been pounding erasers out in the recess yard than doing crossword puzzles. Hey, there's another one. Eraser. Does that have an o or an e?"
By now Wycopf had regained composure enough to speak. "That's an e," the traitor said.
"So you're certain eraser has an e but you're not sure how to spell traitor?" Remo said. "That's funny. You'd think you of all people would be able to spell traitor."
Alex Wycopf couldn't believe it. He had held out some hope that this was all a bizarre fluke. That he hadn't really been found out. He wanted to leap out of his seat. He wanted to run for the exit, kick it open and take his chances jumping out over the Gulf of Mexico.
But his seatmate was no longer paying attention.
Remo was engrossed once more in his crossword puzzle.
Maybe Alex was getting worked up over nothing. Maybe this was an innocent mistake after all. Maybe the guy sitting next to him was just someone doing a crossword puzzle who happened to be stuck on the word traitor. Maybe he didn't know anything at all about the treasonous acts Alex Wycopf had performed in the past and was about to perform again. Maybe his world wasn't about to come crashing down.
All at once, his seatmate looked up from his newspaper.
"I know," Remo said firmly.
And as he looked into those deep-set brown eyes, Alex Wycopf knew with cold certainty that he was staring into the very eyes of his own death.
"'Mother on The Brady Bunch,'" Remo said, reading another clue from the puzzle. "Do they mean her real name, or her name on the show? And what about those of us who've never seen an episode? Who writes this stuff?"
He scribbled something on the page, thought better of it, then erased it.
Alex Wycopf gripped the arms of his seat. His knuckles ached from clutching so hard. The whine of the propellers was so loud he thought he'd go deaf.
"Gee whiz, you sure sweat a lot, don't you?" Remo said.
Beside him, Alex Wycopf's face had gone from white to red. He was panting now, his heart thudding madly in his chest. It was as if he were suffocating. There was plenty of air. He was pulling it into his lungs, but it wasn't doing any good. Hyperventilating, Wycopf was on the verge of passing out when Remo tsked unhappily.
"Now, now," Remo warned. "This isn't the time for anxiety attacks. I need you around a little longer." Remo stuck his hand behind Wycopf's back, manipulating a cluster of nerves at the base of the man's spine. Alex felt the breath return to him. He filled his lungs with air. The deafening propeller noise receded to its normal hum.
Alex Wycopf was himself again. Alive, breathing and terrified out of his mind. He moaned pathetically. "How do you know?" Wycopf whispered sickly.
"Hmm?" Remo asked, looking up from his puzzle. "You mean how do I know you've betrayed not only your country but the entire Western world? That's a long story."
This was the God's honest truth. It was a long story. It had started a couple of decades before when an innocent beat cop named Remo Williams was sentenced to die in the electric chair for a murder he didn't commit. The chair hadn't worked, and Remo awoke in Folcroft Sanitarium with a new face and a new life. He was to be the enforcement arm for CURE, America's extralegal last line of defense.
At Folcroft, Remo was remanded to the custody of the Master of Sinanju, a Korean martial artist whose wizened form was the perfect camouflage for the most dangerous man on the face of the planet. The skills he imparted to his young student changed Remo Williams, heart, mind and soul.
With Sinanju a man could perform seemingly impossible feats of strength, speed and skill. For those blessed to view life through the prism of Sinanju, it was as if the normal world were slowed down and slightly warped.
Remo had learned and learned well, eventually attaining full Masterhood himself. At the moment his official title was Transitional Reigning Master. It was only a matter of time-a short time if his teacher could be believed-when Remo would become the Reigning Master of Sinanju. The one man in a generation permitted to accept that proud mantle.
Surprisingly, Chiun-Remo's mentor and the current Reigning Master of Sinanju-was okay with surrendering his title to his pupil. Remo was okay with it. Everyone who mattered was okay with it, and all was right with the world.
Until two days ago.
For the past few months Chiun had been writing and mailing some sort of mysterious letters. Every time Remo had asked what they were all about, he was told by his teacher to mind his own business. Remo knew in his gut it was going to be bad news for him. Everything was always bad news for him. And Chiun certainly hadn't been skulking around these past months planning a surprise party.
Of course Remo was right.
Two days ago he had seen one of Chiun's shiny silver envelopes on the table of an assassin in Switzerland.
There was no mistaking it. This killer-for-hire who Remo had never met before had for some reason received a note in the mail from the Master of Sinanju.
Chiun confiscated the letter and killed the killer before Remo had a chance to find out what was going on.
On their way out of the country, Chiun mailed five more envelopes, said they were the last, told Remo not to ask again or else and then lapsed into some kind of weird melancholic funk. It was almost as if he had decided his work on Earth was done. Now that he had an heir apparent in Remo, there were no more challenges for the old man to face.
On one level Remo felt guilty. After all, in a way it was his fault that Chiun was feeling his productive days were over. Of course it was silly to think such a thing. Remo couldn't very well stagnate, locked in a state of perpetual apprenticeship for the sake of his teacher's ego.
Whatever Chiun was feeling right now would pass. After he and Chiun landed back in the States, Remo phoned his employer for another assignment. It didn't have to be big, just something to get him out of Chiun's hair for a little while. Maybe alone the Master of Sinanju would be able to sort through whatever baggage he needed to.
Remo's boss had been strangely terse on the phone. Almost as if he were afraid to talk, even on a secure line. Something about some piddling little crisis. He had given Remo the Wycopf assignment and hung up quickly.
And so Chiun returned to Folcroft Sanitarium by taxi while Remo boarded a plane for Mexico. Although he felt selfish admitting it even to himself, Remo was grateful for this side trip. It gave him a chance to recharge his batteries and escape the funereal air that had descended on his teacher of late. Beside Remo, Alex Wycopf had fallen into frightened silence. He remained mute for the rest of the-trip to Mexico. When the plane was ready to descend over Cancun, he had to be told three times to buckle his seat belt. He heard the stewardess talk, but the words didn't seem to register.
Alex Wycopf prayed for a bumpy landing. If they crashed, maybe he could escape in the confusion.
It was a picture-perfect landing on a sunny Cancun day.
When the plane stopped and the door was sprung, Remo tapped Alex Wycopf on the knee.
"Time to depart."
"Don't you mean deplane?" Wycopf asked hopefully.
This time it wasn't a crossword question, and this time Remo wasn't smiling. He folded his newspaper under his arm and ushered a weak-kneed Alex Wycopf up the aisle.
Off the plane and through the terminal, Remo hailed a cab outside.
"You're giving directions," Remo said to Wycopf. He pushed the traitor into the back seat.
As the cab pulled away from the curb, Remo let the newspaper fly out the window. The crossword puzzle that didn't contain any clues about six letter words for "one who
commits treason" landed facedown in the dirty Mexican gutter.
GENERAL ZHII ZAW of the People's Liberation Army sat in a big, comfortable chair in the living room of the elegantly furnished Mexican hotel suite.
A pall of choking cigarette smoke filled the room. The sun blazed hot and white over Cancun. Had the balcony doors been open, a delicate breeze off the ocean would have refreshed the stale air of the room. But the sliding glass doors were closed, the drapes tightly drawn. The air conditioner worked overtime to remove the smoke and human odors from the sprawling suite of rooms.
General Zhii Zaw was not alone. A dozen other men were in the suite with him.
Most were Chinese security forces, although there were one or two scientists thrown in the mix. They had arrived singly or, at most, in groups of two over the past three days. They had come to Mexico via South America and they had assembled in these rooms. To wait.
The scientists were there to make certain they were getting what they paid for. The security personnel were there to see to it that the data got back to China safely.
The general's mission was absolutely critical. He had been told by no less than the director of state security that China's entire future was at stake. Thanks to a program of stunningly successful espionage, for a few years America's secrets had been wide open to the People's Republic of China. Spies in Washington and in the American nuclear program had been more than willing to betray their country, their loved ones and the security of the entire free world for thirty pieces of silver.
But that was all over now. These past few years it had become next to impossible to procure new technology. And China needed American technology.
China couldn't produce anything of value on its own. Everything it possessed had to be procured elsewhere. Without its ability to steal and reverse engineer, China was little more than a clumsy, overpopulated Third World power. The premier knew it, the leaders in the National People's Congress knew it and General Zhii Zaw knew it.
The general stabbed out his cigarette in a candy dish that sat on the end table next to his chair. "What time is it?" he demanded.
"Eight forty-two," an aide replied. Like the other Chinese agents, he wore a plain blue suit. "The plane landed twenty-five minutes ago. I called the airport to confirm."
"He should be here soon. Radio to our man in the lobby. I want to know the instant the American arrives."
"There is a problem with communications, General," the aide said nervously. "I tried to call down stairs a moment ago and there was no response. His radio must be broken."
The general's waxy face normally sagged like melting bags of flesh at his big jowls. The jowls sank even deeper as he frowned.
"Must I do everything?" he demanded. "Send a man down with a replacement."
"Yes, General."
The man in the lobby wasn't really necessary. Even without his early warning, General Zaw wasn't worried that anyone other than the American traitor, Alex Wycopf, would get through. In the hallway just outside the hotel room door stood General Zaw's personal bodyguard, Luo Pong.
Luo Pong was only five feet tall and nearly as wide, all muscle. In the name of state security, Luo Pong had been known to dismember uncooperative prisoners with his bare hands and, on occasion, eat the remains. Anyone in his or her right mind steered clear of that squat, terrifying man with hands like catcher's mitts and a taste for human flesh.
The general's aide had scraped up a replacement walkie-talkie for the lookout in the lobby. He was reaching for the doorknob when the hotel-room door suddenly sprang open.
Startled, the aide jumped back as something big and round rolled into the room.
The rolling round something had eyes.
When Luo Pong's severed head came to a stop at the toes of his shoes, General Zhii Zaw was already leaping to his feet. At the same instant, Alex Wycopf came stumbling into the room, propelled forward by a thick-wristed hand.
"What's a four-letter word for 'what you're all about to be'?" Remo announced to the gathered Chinese agents.
The agent near the door pulled a gun on Remo. Remo planted the man's own barrel so deep in his face loose brain matter dribbled out the back of his head like gray oatmeal.
"That's right," Remo said to the security officer with the revolver in his face and the gun-barrel blossom out the back of his head. "The correct answer is 'dead.'"
The reaction of the others in the suite had been slow until now. But when their comrade with a gun instead of a nose fell to the floor, nine hands flew to holsters.
Before a single weapon could aim for the man at the door, Remo was whirling into the crowd of Chinese agents.
"How about a four-letter word for 'how Chinese spies who steal American secrets will wind up from now on'?" Remo asked.
A pair of guns drew a bead on him. Remo ducked as the men squeezed their triggers. The two Chinese agents inadvertently blew each other's face off.
"That's right," Remo said. "Same answer. Dead." He was up in the air. His heel caught the top of a Chinese agent's head and with a twist he sent the man's chin cracking down through his own sternum. Even as brittle bones compressed, Remo was launching himself from the collapsing man. Two toes took out the throats of a pair of Chinese soldiers while simultaneous flashing hands reduced the beating hearts of another pair of soldiers to gurgling paste.
The final two security agents didn't even have time to process the sudden, brutal deaths of their comrades before Remo was on them. They saw black. Then they saw red. Then they saw nothing at all.
Remo turned from the last dead security agents. All that remained was General Zaw and the pair of scientists. The latter had been brought along to confirm as genuine the schematics and other data Alex Wycopf had stolen from his job as undersecretary in the U.S. Department of Energy. For good measure Remo mashed the heads of the two Chinese scientists through a wall. Their skulls cracked the porcelain tub in the adjacent bathroom in two.
In a matter of seconds, General Zhii Zaw of the People's Liberation Army saw his entire entourage of highly trained agents reduced to a pile of bloodied, twitching limbs.
The American who moved faster than the general's eye could follow turned his level gaze on General Zaw.
"You General Seesaw?" Remo asked.
The general pulled himself up tall. No American-no matter how fast-could make him surrender his pride.
"I am General Zhii Zaw," the general said, sneering. His jowls waggled with proud defiance.
"I kind of figured. Why is it all you big Chinese commie mucky-mucks look like you've taken the slow boat from Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum?"
"Your insults are nothing to me," the general insisted. "Do what you came to do, and let it be done." The old man puffed out his chest, awaiting the end.
Remo shook his head. "It's not gonna be that easy," he said. "I've got a little mission for you."
The general laughed. "You are mad if you think I will do anything for you, imperialist running dog."
At that, Remo smiled. It was a cold, evil smile. "Here is the message you will deliver. Tell those thieving rice herders in Beijing the next time they screw with America-" He thought carefully, trying to remember the exact phrase he'd been told to use. "'The Yangtze flows red with their blood.' Yeah, that's it. And tell them this isn't a threat. Tell them it's a promise. To them from me, personally."
General Zaw scowled derisively. "I will do no such thing," he mocked. "Who are you that you make such demands?"
And for Remo Williams, the words came, easier now than they had in the past. They were filled with pride of history and humility of responsibility.
"I am the soon-to-be Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju, duck droppings," Remo said. "And you live this day only because Sinanju requires a messenger."
The general's jaw dropped lower than his jowls. Eyes of brown grew very wide, stretching the big pouches that sagged beneath them.
"Sinanju," the general hissed. "You are legend." His voice trembled with the beg
innings of fear. Remo fixed him with an icy stare.
Alex Wycopf was shivering in fright on the floor where Remo had first tossed him. China's top nuclear spy in the United States cringed as Remo dragged him up off the floor. Remo stood Wycopf before the People's Republic general.
"Here's a little visual aid," Remo said. "Paint this picture for those pajama-wearing Mr. Magoos you work for."
Remo placed his hand on Alex Wycopf's face, fingertips fanned out and pressed lightly to flesh. Wycopf inhaled fearfully.
Remo's hand remained still for a moment, so that the general could get a good clear mental image. With a sudden spin of his fingers, Remo proceeded to scramble Alex Wycopf's face.
Bones broke swiftly and cleanly, allowing Remo to shift them with delicate nudges. Thumb and fingertips kneaded flesh, shifting soft muscle beneath.
When Remo was through seconds later, General Zaw gasped in horror.
The general had no idea how the American had done it, but the traitor's nose was now on his chin, bracketed by a pair of misplaced ears. An eye was on the forehead, while the other eye butted up against the mouth, which was now where the nose had been. Remo had rearranged the features without even breaking skin. Wycopf looked like a living Picasso painting.
Alex Wycopf's misplaced lips puckered. Only one of his eyes still possessed the ability to blink. It did so, to freakish effect.
"Picture the entire Commie leadership in Beijing singing 'Nearer My Mao To Thee' from their kneecaps," Remo said.
He finished Alex Wycopf with a slap to the forehead so hard it made the traitor's entire brain splat like a wrinkled gray snowball against the balcony windows.
As the shell of Alex Wycopf dropped to the floor, General Zhii Zaw joined him.
"Master of Sinanju, forgive me!" the general cried. As he crawled on his knees, his hands encircled Remo's ankles. His dry tongue tried to lick the toes of Remo's loafers.
Remo kicked him away.
"A Master," Remo said. "Not the Master. Not yet. Consider yourselves warned. Next time, no Mr. Nice Guy."
His last word delivered, Remo slipped out of the hotel room and was gone.
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