At a small coffee shop, he phoned the sports store under the Quirinal Palace. There was no answer. He wanted to inform Denia that Ivan had become totally uncontrollable, and that he was going to make Ivan safe for the team.
Back at the apartment, Ivan was nibbling at the side of beef, taking handfuls. He watched Italian television. Ivan did not understand Italian. He was still working on Russian. He liked the pictures. It had taken him three years to recognize that English was not some fancy form of the Russian language.
Better than Italian television, he liked American cartoons. He had cried when a KGB officer translated Bambi for him. Shrewdly, the officer had told him the hunters were Americans and the deer communists. Ever since then, Ivan had wanted to kill Americans. His only trouble was that he could not tell them from Russians. Everyone looked alike to Ivan, except Chinese. He could tell Chinese from Europeans, and very often he could distinguish Africans, although when they were cleaning up the Sunflower team and taking out an American black, Ivan thought they were at war with Africa.
Vassilivich hacked off a twenty eight pound piece of beef. He added five pounds of butter and three shopping bags of garlic. He baked it for five hours, then made a whipped rat poison sauce.
Ivan snacked it away by midnight. Lying on the couch, he closed his eyes. Vassilivich was overcome with relief. He discarded his small gun and holster in the closet, careful to wipe off fingerprints. He changed his clothes for the spares in the apartment. He burned his old recognizable garments in the bathtub and let the air out of the bathroom. He shaved off a small mustache.
He glanced at his watch. It had been an hour since Ivan had consumed the fourteen cans of rat poison. Just to make sure, he checked Ivan's pulse. When his hand touched the giant wrist, Ivan jumped up, blinking.
"Well," he said, "another day, another ruble." He laughed and complained of a mild headache.
Vassilivich took Ivan with him to the sports shop. No one answered the knock. The door was open. Ivan followed Vassilivich into the shop. Vassilivich whispered caution. He called out three different code signals in three different languages. When he used English, a voice answered.
"Hiya, sweetheart. Welcome to the first team."
A thin American ambled out from the back room. He had thick wrists. He wore a black turtleneck shirt and gray slacks and handmade Italian black loafers. He looked at Ivan, and instead of showing terror, he smiled. He also yawned.
"Who are you?" asked Vassilivich.
"The spirit of detente," said the American.
Vassilivich's shrewd eye saw no weapons in the American's tight fitting clothes. He heard Ivan behind him gurgle with excitement.
"Chinamens, Chinamens," said Ivan, pointing to what had appeared like a golden cloth in the back room. It was a delicate aged Oriental with a white wisp of a beard.
Vassilivich knew that this time he could not keep Ivan from keeping the head.
CHAPTER FOUR
Remo could tell by the weight, by the strong balance on oaken thighs, that the second man through the door brandished immense animal power. Iron-bending arms and tendon-thick neck. A skull armored like battleship plating.
Remo could also smell the meat heavy on his breath, and his body reeked of grape wine. Remo put a table between them. The man cracked it with a thundering fist. Remo danced back.
"Who called me Chinaman?" said Chiun. "What idiot called me Chinaman?" He shuffled into the showroom of the sports shop, his hands hidden like delicate buds in the folds of his kimono. The other man stepped back against a counter laden with running shoes.
The other man looked at Chiun as if observing a corpse. Chiun asked his name.
"Vassily Vassilivich," said the man.
"And the big idiot?"
"Ivan Mikhailov," said Vassilivich.
Ivan grabbed a long racing ski and swung it like a sword. Vassilivich was sure it would drive into the thin American like a spike. But the American, with strangely slow movements, somehow avoided the ski. Ivan lowered a fist down to the American's skull but the force of the fist only lurched Ivan forward and the American was behind him.
"Are you in charge?" asked Remo.
"Yes," said Vassilivich.
"Then we don't need Ivan," Remo said.
Vassilivich blinked. What was he talking about?
Chiun had a point to make. People in charge of things had special responsibility for people under them. And those sorts of people shouldn't let other people who were under them call other people Chinese, especially when they were so obviously and magnificently Korean. Chiun said this in Russian.
"What?" said Vassilivich.
"You are irresponsible to let that animal called Ivan run around loose."
How did this Oriental know? Vassilivich would have wondered about this if he were not witnessing a bloody horror before him.
As soon as the thin American had been told that Ivan was not in charge of them, he caught one of the big fists. With a floating flick of his fingers, he briefly jammed a wrist. An elbow uncoiled from the American's waist and drove up with a hollow thud into the rib trunk of Ivan. Ivan came forward as though smothering the American beneath him, and the American's right hand was above the American's shoulder as if he were begging for mercy. The hand was under Ivan's chin. Ivan's mouth opened. There were two fingers sticking out of his throat. The American's fingers.
The American's foot went out so quickly, Vassilivich only saw it come back. Ivan's immense skull was caved, as if a knuckle had rammed risen dough.
Ivan landed on the polished floor, heaved once, and was still. The American wiped his hands clean on Ivan's shirt.
"Garbage," said Remo.
"My god, who are you?" gasped Vassilivich.
"That is not important," said Chiun. "He is nobody. What is important is the barbarism in the world today when innocent Koreans can be called Chinese."
"Are you Americans?" asked Vassilivich.
"No wonder it went around insulting people," Chiun said. "First I am called Chinese. And now American. Do I look white? Do I have a stupid pale expression about me? Are my eyes sickeningly round? Why would you call me white?"
"Look, Vassilivich," said Remo, "we can make this easy or we can make this hard. But no matter, we're going to make it. Now I know you're Treska or you wouldn't be here."
"I am part of a cultural exchange," said Vassilivich, using the first cover that came to mind.
"All right," said Remo, shrugging. "We go hard."
And Vassilivich felt hands grab his ribs and move him like a store mannequin to the back room. Chiun turned out the lights in the display area and locked the door. Vassilivich felt his ribs go blistering, as if touched by a hot iron. And so strong was the incredible pain that he did not notice there was no smell of burning flesh.
He was asked his rank, his position, and the names and locations of his men. With each lying answer came the pain, and it became so regular that his body seized control of his mind to stop the pain, and he was giving everything code names of the teams, descriptions, zones, layoffs, contacts and still the pain was there and he was whimpering on the floor of the back room where just the other night he had refused champagne. He saw the cork under a small couch where it had rolled and he wondered if Marshal Denia had made his escape.
He heard shuffling behind his ear.
"Now for the important question," said Chiun. "Why do you feel free to slander Koreans? What has prompted you to such blasphemy? What drives your crazed mind to utter such obscenities as am I an American? What?"
"I thought you were American of Korean descent," moaned Vassilivich. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
"Heartily sorry," corrected Chiun.
"Heartily sorry," corrected Vassilivich.
"For having offended thee."
"For having offended thee," said Vassilivich, and as the American lifted him and cradled him out of the room over Ivan's wrecked body, Vassilivich heard the Korean warn:
"Next time, no
more Mister Nice Guy."
What had taken so many years to hone and refine, what had been drawn from an Empire that stretched from Berlin to the Bering Straights, what had fused the best of an indestructible people with an inexhaustible supply of facilities and money, now went in a week. And Vassilivich bore grieving witness to it all.
The auxiliary Treska unit in Rome itself, on Via Plebiscito, a half mile from the Coliseum, was first.
Remo remarked that Chiun had told him that his ancestors had worked in Rome once.
"When there was good work to be done," Chiun said.
"Ever fight in the Coliseum?"
"We are assassins, not entertainers," Chiun answered. "Strange people, the Romans. Anything they found, they would put into that arena. Anything. Animals. People. Anything. I guess they just liked rodeos."
Vassilivich shuddered, and then he felt the American's hands go up his spine and there was a great relief. Vassilivich realized he had been going into shock and by some manipulation of nerves in the spine, the American had prevented this.
He could hear the night revelry of the auxiliary group from the street. Giggles of women, glasses tinkling. Who said nothing succeeded like success? Nothing destroys like success was more like it, thought Vassilivich.
It surprised him that he did not even want to warn his auxiliary team. He felt he should at least want to do this one thing. But he didn't care. All his training seemed to have dissolved in that back room of the sports shop. All caring seemed to dissolve. What did a general of twenty years' service in the KGB want now? He wanted a cool drink and nothing more.
The Korean stayed in the street with him as the American went up alone. A small police station near a closed and shuttered coffee shop was on their right. Behind them, a recent gargantuan marble obscenity built by a modern king. It had wide marble steps and highlighted some Italian on a marble horse. Floodlights showed the passersby that this was supposed to be important. The trouble with statues and monuments was that when you had them on every other block they became as common as trees in the forest, and if you didn't have a guide to tell you that this one or that one was important, you wouldn't even bother to look.
The laughter stopped upstairs. Just stopped as if someone had turned off a switch. The Korean seem as casual as if he were waiting for a bus.
"Sir," said Vassilivich, and then, on some survival instinct he was unaware he had, he added: "Gracious and noble sir. Gentle wise flower of our delight, oh, gracious sir, please bestow upon your unworthy servant thy awesome name."
The Korean named Chiun, with the wisp of a beard, nodded.
"I am Chiun, Master of Sinanju."
"Pray tell, oh magnificent one, do you work with the Americans? Are you part of what is called Sunflower?"
"I am part of nothing. I am Chiun."
"Then you are not working with Americans?"
"I receive tribute for my skills," said Chiun.
"And they are what, oh, gracious master? What skills?"
"My wisdom and beauty," said Chiun, so glad he was finally being asked by someone.
"Do you teach killing?" Vassilivich pressed on.
"I teach what has to be done and what people can do if they can learn. Not everyone can learn."
In a few minutes, Remo returned with a handful of passports. In that few minutes, the confused and brain-strained Vassily Vassilivich, general, had learned that the Oriental was a lover of beauty, a poet, a wise man, an innocent cast into the cruel world, and that he was not appreciated by his pupil. Chiun also was a few other things which he would not talk about.
Remo showed the passports to Vassilivich who gave the rank and real name for each one. He just had to look into the American's eyes once to decide not to try to throw out a cover story.
Remo gave the passports to Chiun, asking him to hold them. Chiun had many folds in his flowing kimono and could store an office there if he wanted to.
"I am now transformed into a porter for your garbage. Thus am I treated," said Chiun.
"Five passports. What's the big deal?" Remo asked.
"It is not the weight of the paper but the heavy and grievous disregard you show for a gentle poet."
Remo looked around. He hadn't seen anyone else. Vassilivich was a KGB officer. Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, was the last of the line of the most deadly assassins the world had ever known. So where was the poet Chiun was talking about? Remo shrugged.
In Naples, they came upon the Alpha Team almost by accident. Vassilivich spotted one of the members and made a fast calculation. He felt better this noon than the night before, and with a light meal and a small nap in the car which Remo, the American, drove, his calculating mind was working again. The Alpha Team was useless anyway. He had lost contact with it days before, and only Marshal Denia's desire to keep the good reports flowing to Moscow had prevented him from administering discipline. So when he saw one of the members, the explosives man, he pointed him out. Remo parked the car and ambled up behind the man. It looked as if he were greeting an old friend with a hand clasp around the shoulder. Only if you noticed that the old friend didn't have his feet on the ground might you suspect that something could be wrong.
Had Vassilivich not had more than two decades in the Treska, with the constant training of the assassination teams, the sets, the picks, the rolling sets, so many variations of killing another person quickly and surely, he knew he would not have been able to appreciate the instrument called Remo.
This American was better than anything the Treska had ever seen or imagined.
The munitions expert was dead by the time his feet reached the ground, and the American was walking him across the street as if he were still alive.
"What skill!" said Vassilivich, his voice weakened by the admiration.
"Adequate," said Chiun.
"I didn't see his hands move," said Vassilivich.
"You are not supposed to," said Chiun. "Watch his feet."
"And then I'll see him move?"
"No," said Chiun. "Then you'll see nothing."
"Why is that?"
"Because I have devoted my life to training that ingrate, instead of spending it on a nice boy like you."
"Thank you, oh, gracious master."
"I live in America now, but I am sorely tried by its misdeeds," Chiun said, and Vassilivich's cunning mind grasped the opportunity. He commiserated with Chiun over Chiun's problems.
"Do not feel sorry for me," said Chiun. "The gentlest flowers are always those stamped on the most. The delicate is crushed before the gross and unseemly. This is life."
And Chiun told of the horrors of American television, what had been done to the beauteous dramas of "As the Planet Revolves" and "Search for Yesterday." Chiun, as poet, appreciated them. But now there was such a thing as "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," and they had people exposing themselves, and killings, and hospital scenes in which the doctors did not save people but injured them. Not what sort of dramatic doctor did more damage than good? Chiun asked that.
Vassilivich avered that no good drama should have a bad doctor.
"Correct," said Chiun. "If one wishes to see doctors mangle people, one should go to a hospital, not a television set. If I wanted to see stupid and careless and incompetent doctors, I have only to drop in on a local practitioner, and my chances are very good. Especially in your country, you should know that."
Vassilivich gulped but agreed. What, he wanted to know, did Chiun teach this ungrateful Remo?
"Decency," Chiun said. "Love, decency, and beauty."
Meanwhile, across town in a luxurious villa overlooking the Bay of Naples, blue in the midday sun of the Italian coast, Remo was putting his love, decency, and beauty to work.
He had gotten the number and the location of the other operatives from the explosives man in the street, whom he decently dumped afterwards into a big vat of garbage in an alley where no one would notice him until the body started to stink.
He made his way to the beautiful villa. It wa
s noon and everyone appeared groggy from the night's revelry. One man, his belly already going to paunch, looked up from his morning vodka and orange juice. He pointed a short British sten gun at Remo while he nibbled on a grape.
"Buon giorno," he said sleepily.
"Good morning," said Remo.
"What brings you here?" asked the Russian. The others still did not go for their guns but continued on into their boozy morning. One unarmed man was not enough to cause excitement.
"Work," said Remo.
"What is your work?"
"I'm an assassin. Right now, I'm working on the Treska. Is that how you pronounce it? Treska?" Remo glanced outside at the glistening bay and felt the cool spring breeze come through the green trees and the open windows bright with sun. It was a good land. He smelled the salt water.
"How do you know about Treska?" said the man.
"Oh, yeah," said Remo as an afterthought. "It's complicated, you know, government politics and everything, but basically I'm replacing the Daisy or is it the Sunflower, I forget these stupid names. In any case, I'm here to kill you if you're Treska. You're Alpha Team, right?"
"We happen to be Alpha Team, yes, but aren't you overlooking this?" said the man and jiggled the short British gun.
"Nah," said Remo. "By the way, what does this rent for a month?"
"I don't know. It's in lire. You keep filling baskets to the top and when the landlord starts to smile you stop filling. Lire. A virtually worthless currency."
"Anybody outside from Alpha?"
"We're all here except Fyodor."
"Well built guy, blondish, with a funny smile?" asked Remo.
"That's him. But he doesn't have a funny smile."
"He does now," Remo said. By the time the man fired the Sten gun, his arm was broken. He did not feel the pain of the broken arm because one needs a spinal column to transmit pain impulses. The man had lost a piece of his about the same time the pain would have reached his brain.
The Alpha Team, sluggish with days of drinking, moved with surprising speed to their weapons. Training overcame the boozy blood of their systems and adrenalin ignited their bodies. But they fought as though they had a target who moved no faster than an athlete, an ordinary athlete who did not know the rhythms of his body, whose hands were the same as a skillful soldiers' hands.
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