The Seventh Stone td-62

by Warren Murphy

  Outside, someone was knocking at the door and he ignored it. He wanted to think about the meaning of the stone's message.

  Remo had a wonderful way to detect when he was being ignored. No one was answering. No one answered when he picked up the phone and pushed all the extension buttons. No one answered when he hit the courtesy buzzer that promised instant service. The sign had said: "We're here before your finger leaves the buzzer."

  His finger had left the buzzer, then buzzed again. The comfort coordinator wasn't there, the headwaiter wasn't there, the assistant headwaiter wasn't there, maintenance wasn't there, nor was someone called the "fun facilitator."

  So Remo used a little trick that always seemed to work for room service and should work at the "full-service condominium-the only way it's not a first-class hotel is that you own it."

  He took out part of a wall and hurled a desk through it. The desk landed on a grove of aloe plants in bloom. Papers once securely filed in the desk now fluttered down to the beach. Then he took out a window. It was already loose: Most of the wall surrounding it was already in the aloe bed outside.

  Three people in white with red sashes around their waists came running.

  "Good. Are you room service?" Remo asked. The three looked nervously at the inside of the office, unobstructed now by a wall or a window.

  It was a wonderful view. They didn't see any tools he had used to take it out. He must have done it with his hands, they realized, and in unison, all said: "You rang, sir?"

  "Right," said Remo. "I would like some fresh water and some rice."

  "We have the Del Ray Bahamas Breakfast which consists of corn muffins, bacon, eggs and toast, with sweet rolls to taste."

  "I want fresh water and I want rice," Remo said.

  "We can make you rice."

  "No, you can't make me rice. You can't make rice. You don't know how to make rice."

  "Our rice is delicate, each grain a separate morsel."

  "Right," Remo said. "You don't know how to make rice. You've got to be able to clump it. That's how you make rice. Good and clumpy."

  They all glanced at the missing wall. They wondered what the new owner would say about the wall, but they knew what they would say about the rice.

  "Clumpy is right."

  "Like delicious mush," said the headwaiter.

  "Right," said Remo. He followed them into the main kitchen, past burning pig meat and rancid sugared rolls, their poisonous sugared raisins rotting in the morning heat. He made sure he got a sealed bag of rice because an open one might pick up the stench. In his days before training, he had longed for a strip of bacon and had been told that someday he would consider it as unpleasant as any other dead body of any other animal.

  Now he couldn't remember how he had ever liked it.

  He got the rice and said thank you. One of the cooks wanted to prepare it but was told Remo liked it sticky.

  "He like it that way?"

  "Nobody's asking you to eat it," Remo said to the cook, and to the waiter smiling for instructions, he said, "Get out of the way."

  Someone had planted a palm tree the day before that was supposed to give shade to the entrance to his and Chiun's condo. Remo didn't like it there so he crushed its trunk. He didn't like the concrete stairs either so he turned the bottom one to sand and gravel to see how it would look. Inside, Chiun was making brush strokes on a historic parchment for Sinanju.

  "Did Smith call?" Remo asked.

  "Not today, not yesterday, not the day before."

  "Okay," said Remo.

  "Isn't this vacation fun?" Chiun said. "There is so much of history I must catch up on."

  "You like it," Remo said. "I'm making the rice."

  "This is your vacation," Chiun said. "Let them make the rice." He made the brush strokes for Sinanju. The brush itself seemed to make these sacred marks. For several years of the history he was writing, he did not mention that the new master he was training was white. Now he faced the problem of putting that fact into the history without making it look as if he had intentionally withheld it earlier.

  He had once toyed with the idea of just never mentioning that Chiun, hopefully one day to be called the Great Chiun, would have passed on the secrets of Sinanju to a white. Nowhere else was the race of each Master of Sinanju mentioned. Was it mentioned that the Great Wang was Oriental? Or that he was Korean or from Sinanju? And what of Pak or We or Deyu? Was it mentioned that these Masters were all from Sinanju in Korea?

  Therefore, would Chiun be to blame for not mentioning that Remo was not from the Orient or Korea or Sinanju? Chiun asked himself this question forthrightly. Unfortunately, he was interrupted before he had a chance to tell himself forthrightly that he could not be blamed for anything.

  "Little Father," said Remo. "I am angry and I don't know what I am angry about. I knock down walls for no reason. I want to do something but I don't know what I want to do. I feel I am losing something."

  Chiun thought silently for a moment.

  "Little Father, I'm going insane. I'm losing myself."

  Chiun nodded slowly. The answer was clear.

  While he would understand it as natural for him and blameless of him not to mention that Remo was white, what would Remo do when he wrote the history of his Masterhood? Would Remo tell that he was white, thus indicating that for years, the Great Chiun had lied? Would Chiun then cease to be the Great Chiun? These things had to be considered.

  "So what do you say?" asked Remo.

  "About what," said Chiun.

  "Am I going crazy?"

  "No," said Chiun. "I trained you."

  Chiun pressed in a few more brush strokes. Perhaps there might be hints of Remo's whiteness, then a feeling of how Remo became Sinanju and then Korean and, of course, from the village. It could appear that Chiun had found under that ugly white exterior a true Korean, proud and noble.

  It could appear that way, but would Remo let it be? He knew Remo. He never felt any shame in his being white. He would never hide it.

  "Chiun, I feel strange almost all the time, as if things are out of order in me. Is it my training? Did you ever go through this?"

  Chiun put down the brush. "Everything is a cycle. Some things happen so quickly that people do not see them, and others happen so slowly that people do not see them. But when you are Sinanju, you are aware of cycles. You are aware that slow and fast are both invisible. You are aware of anger in yourself that others, in their sloth and their meat-eating and their crude breathing, do not see."

  "I took out a wall because I couldn't get room service fast enough, Little Father."

  "Did you get it?"

  "Yes," Remo said.

  "Then you are the first person in the Caribbean ever to get something when he wanted it." Chiun added to the parchment another sign for great teaching. He had many of them in his history.

  "I want to do something, anything. This rest is making everything worse," Remo said. He looked out onto the beach. Pure white, stretching miles. Turquoise-blue water. White-bellied gulls with dip and pivot, moving on the sun breezes of the morning. "This place is driving me crazy."

  "If you need something, we will study the histories," Chiun said.

  "I studied them," said Remo, reeling off the facts of the lineage of the House of Sinanju, starting with the first who had to feed the village and moving on through the centuries to the feats of the Great Wang, the lesser Wang, what each had learned and each had taught and what someday Remo would teach.

  "You've never learned tributes," Chiun said. "The very lifeblood of the village of Sinanju has never been learned."

  "I don't want to learn tributes, Little Father. I'm not in this for the money. I'm an American. I love my country."

  "Eeeeeyah," wailed Chiun, a delicate hand clutching his breast. "Words that stab this bosom. Lo, that I should still hear such ignorance. Where, O great Masters before me, have I gone wrong? That after all these years, a professional assassin should still utter such words?"

&n
bsp; "You always knew that," Remo said. "I never cared about the money. If Sinanju needed the money, I would supply it. But you've still got gold statues from Alexander the Great in that mudhole in Korea and they're never going to starve. So we don't have to kill for some make-believe-poor villagers to live."

  "Betrayal," said Chiun.

  "Nothing new," Remo said. He looked out at that stinking white beach again. He and Chiun had been here for days. Maybe three of them.

  "I've got to do something," said Remo. He wondered if he could break a beach. But a beach was already broken. Broken rock or coral in small parts. He wondered if he could put a beach back together again, since it was broken to start with.

  "Then let us learn tribute. Or, as an American merchant might say, billing and accounts receivable."

  "I am so jumpy, even that. Okay. Let's go through tribute. You don't have to use English. You taught me Korean."

  "True, but I am beginning to mention in my histories that sometimes the language of English was used in my training of you."

  "Only now? Why now, when now I'm learning only in Korean and at first I learned only in English?"

  "Get the scroll," said Chiun.

  The scroll was in one of the fourteen steamer trunks Chiun always had moved from residence to residence. Only two were needed for his clothing and the rest carried mostly bric-a-brac but also many of Sinanju's scrolls. Chiun had tried putting the scrolls on a computer once but the computer had erased a page with his name on it and Chiun had erased the computer salesman.

  Remo found the first scroll of tribute which included geese and goslings, barley and millet and a copper statue of a god now dead.

  By the time they were into Cathay kings and gold bullion, Remo's mind was wandering. When they got to a point that Chiun said was the most important of all so far, Remo got up to cook the rice.

  "Sit. This is most important." And Chiun told about a prince who was willing to pay, but not publicly.

  "Is that the last?" Remo said.

  "For today, yes," Chiun said.

  "Okay. Go ahead," said Remo. He wondered if gulls thought. And if they thought, what did they think? Did sand think? Was the rice really fresh? Should he wear sandals that day? All these things he thought while Chiun explained that it must never be thought that an assassin was not paid, because then others would try not to pay. This had happened once and it was why this one prince had to be chased throughout the known world.

  "One defense after another, until six of his defenses were shown to be useless; from one land to another, thus showing Rome and China and Crete and the Scythians that Sinanju was not to be dishonored."

  "So where was he killed?" asked Remo.

  "He didn't have to be killed. The purpose was to defend the sacred immutable truth that an assassin must be paid. While you, you don't even care about tributes and then you complain to me that you are going crazy."

  "What happened to that prince who didn't pay?" Remo asked again.

  "He was shorn of kingdom and safe place to sleep, shorn of glory and honor, sent like a thief into the night, cringing like the lowest vermin."

  "Did we miss?" Remo asked. "Did Sinanju miss?"

  "Make the rice," said Chiun.

  "We missed, didn't we?" asked Remo, his face suddenly sparkling.

  "Now, you listen. With happiness on your face. If you could see your evil white grin, such shame you would feel."

  "I don't feel shame. I want to hear how the prince was finished. Show me his head. That was a popular one in Baghdad, hanging the head on a wall. I want to see that one."

  "He was humiliated," Chiun said.

  "We didn't get him, did we? What's this about only one world to hide in and we are in the same world so there is never a place to hide. No one can hide. Even we can't hide. Where did he hide, Little Father?"

  "The rice."

  "I am enjoying my vacation now," said Remo. "I want to know where he hid. Athens? Rome? Cathay?"

  "This," said Chiun, "is not a good vacation."

  "Was it the Great Wang who missed or who?"

  "Now, you listen," said Chiun and folded his robe and put the scroll away inside it. There was a reason Rerno had never wanted to study tributes to Sinanju. It was obvious. He wasn't ready for it and Chiun was not going to try to transform a pale piece of a pig's ear into a real Master of Sinanju. Some things were beyond even the Great Chiun.

  Warner Dabney hated two things. The first was failure and the second was admitting it, and now the two things he hated most he had to endure with a client who had more money than a gang of Arabs.

  He saw his commission go down the drain in the handful of bugging devices, some still covered with plaster, that were in his briefcase as he tried to explain to Mr. Woburn why the pair could not be bugged.

  Mr. Woburn had the coldest eyes that Dabney had ever seen in a human skull. His movements were strange, strange even for a really rich kid used to being waited on. Slow. Slow hands and face like stone. And because this rich Woburn kid wasn't talking, wasn't saying anything, like some damned king on some damned throne, Warner Dabney of Dabney Security Systems Inc. had to say more than he wanted.

  He went through descriptions of bug implants in the wall, beam riders that could hear on a focused beam, and what he finally had to tell Mr. Woburn was:

  "I failed. I friggin' failed, Mr. Woburn, and I'm sorry."

  "You say there is nothing you picked up from any of their conversations?"

  "Not exactly nothing. We got a word."

  "What's the word?"

  "Rice ... nothing else. It mean something?"

  "It means that Koreans frequently eat rice," Reginald Woburn III said.

  "I mean these guys picked up everything. Everything. Like it was spring housecleaning. You know. Like you and I could go into a room and see a cigarette in an ashtray and like pick it up, you know. They went into their place and like it was cleaning up, they got rid of all the bugs. I was outside during some of it and they didn't even discuss it. Here I am with my beam listeners and computer chips and I'm using my own ears to eavesdrop and these guys, it's the weirdest thing. They're not talking about the bugs, they're just unpacking, and out go the bugs with an empty box of Kleenex."

  "You will be paid in full," said Reggie.

  "Sir?"

  "Thank you. You may leave."

  "But you know I didn't get one sentence of what they said, Mr. Woburn."

  "We pay our bills for services rendered. We are reliable. We are paying you. You are excused," said Reggie.

  Wonderful, Reggie thought. Technology had failed because technology was only of one age. He knew now he was of the ages and that was why he used the ears that could hear beyond hearing, as the stone had said. Some little spy somewhere could not. Why was the man still standing there in his office with his mouth open?

  "Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. Woburn?"

  Hadn't he told him already he was excused? "Warner Dabney is here for your service. These guys were real, extra special tough. But the next time . . ." Dabney said.

  "What is your name again?" He would have to be shown that when he was excused, it meant excused.

  "Dabney, sir. Warner Dabney."

  "Warner, give me your hand," said Reggie. He reached into the desk. There was a pin inside the desk with a chemical to suppress the heartbeat. It had been created for surgery by one of Woburn's pharmaceutical firms, but it had yet to be tested on humans. The problem was diluting the powerful formula to make it safe. One part per million could kill.

  Warner Dabney hesitantly put forward his hand. When a rich client who paid even for failures asked for something silly, you didn't say no. Warner had never been paid for a failure before.

  "Thank you," said Reginald, taking the upraised palm and very gently stroking the pads of the man's fingertips. Then Reggie smiled and put the pin into the palm. Warner Dabney dropped like a stone. Bang. He was on the floor. Reginald put back the needle. The product had been tested on h
umans. It worked.

  The constabulary agreed on the telephone that the death was obviously a heart attack and that Del Ray Promotions could just go ahead and plant him.

  "His head still on his body?"

  "Yes, officer," said Reggie.

  "Den dat death be natural. In the Caribbean, we are most careful about investigating unnatural deaths. If that mon be dead with an arrow in his heart, no way we say that be a natural death, sir."

  "I agree with you, constable, and please convey our appreciation to Government House and your fine island people for this warm and most hospitable welcome we have received from you this day. "

  "As you wish, your Highness," said the constable, suddenly wondering why he had said that. And then he remembered. He had the same feeling speaking to Mr. Woburn that he did when he stood at parade rest before Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain. He apologized to Mr. Woburn for the slip of tongue.

  "We accept your apology," said Reggie.

  As Warner Dabney was leaving the office, heels first in the hands of two porters, Reginald Woburn III could not suppress the true exhilaration at having the first thrust at his enemies succeed.

  It was not his purpose to inform servants of his thinking. Warner Dabney had succeeded but had not even known he had succeeded. But seeing that these two routinely handled eavesdropping devices, he had discovered that the two had been exposed to this sort of thing before, undoubtedly often. It fit with the picture in Reggie's mind of a professional assassin. They would be used to that kind of things. And when one of the maintenance men explained that one of the condo share owners was the one who had ripped out a wall and said, "Would you believe he did it with his bare hands, sir?" Reginald answered, simply, "We do."

  He had found them, or more correctly, they had found him. Now to continue with the way of the seventh stone. Everything was working perfectly.

  "Do you wish to charge them for the broken wall, Mr. Woburn?"

  "No. We'll just speak to them."

  That afternoon, Chiun met the first really respectful white, an owner of the general property, who commiserated with him over ungrateful sons ... not that Chiun was complaining . . . and about the difficulty in working for a government.