On a panel next to the door twenty old-fashioned doorbells were lined up in neat rows of ten.
Remo waited for the floor to drop out from under him when the Master of Sinanju pressed a doorbell. He didn't know if he should be pleased or not when it didn't.
There was a distant ring somewhere in the depths of the creaky old building. It took a long time-forever, it seemed-for someone to answer. When a voice finally did sound from the speaker, it was guttural and low. Satan's voice rising up from the dark Pit.
"Kahk vaz zavoot?" the disembodied voice asked. Chiun said something in the same language. Whatever he said seemed to do the trick. The sepulchral voice grumbled something else that Remo couldn't understand.
"That wasn't French," Remo said as they were buzzed inside. "Hell, that didn't even sound human."
"You are right," said the Master of Sinanju as he swept through the door. "It was not French."
"What about the human part?"
Chiun tipped his head. "More or less," he mused. Turning on his heel, he marched for the stairs. The building smelled like damp wood and cat pee. Remo followed the Master of Sinanju to the top floor. There was only one door on this level. Chiun rapped a knuckle on the warped veneer.
A long moment passed. Finally, with rusty deliberation, the grimy brass doorknob turned. The ancient door creaked open on pained hinges.
Remo had not sensed anyone on the other side. He was certain Chiun hadn't done some trick to open the door. On cautious feet he followed the Master of Sinanju inside.
The apartment looked like the dusty storage room of a forgotten museum. Antiques crowding the foyer had been stacked against the walls. There were mirrors of solid gold, candelabra of ornately carved and rearing horses and footstools of silk that had long since turned to rot.
There was no one in the hall.
A strange and sickening mustiness filled the air. Remo set his breathing low, tuning out the smell. He trailed the Master of Sinanju through the apartment.
The rest of the rooms were like the hallway, all stacked with ancient bric-a-brac.
In one room Remo thought he saw a shadow move. But he sensed no life. Not even vermin. The dust didn't dance.
Keying up his senses, he followed Chiun to the far rear of the big apartment and into the main living room.
The big room was neater than the other rooms. The clutter extended in here, but there was more order to it. Unlike the rest of the apartment, it looked as if someone cleaned in here from time to time.
Sitting in the middle of the room was a chair.
It was made of dark, carved wood and plush cloth. The material was a little threadbare, but the wood retained a deep, just-polished finish. Remo realized it was more than a chair. Although it had nothing on the throne he had seen back in Buckingham Palace, it had that same regal feel as the seat from which the queen of England ruled.
Seated atop this plain throne of wood was a young boy.
The boy couldn't have been much more than thirteen or fourteen. His clothes had been rich at one time, but had seen better days. A few small holes peppered his shirtfront. Where the fabric was torn, Remo saw sparkling jewels.
The teenager didn't appear to be surprised at their appearance. With eyes that seemed lost in the dream of another age, he watched the two men approach.
Remo was about to question the Master of Sinanju, but the old Korean shot him a silencing glare.
With great reverence the old man approached the tawdry throne. He offered a deep, formal bow.
In a foreign tongue Remo now thought he recognized, the Master of Sinanju addressed the child. They spoke for a brief time, Chiun showing the boy the sort of respect Sinanju usually reserved for leaders of powerful nations. When the teenager spoke, his words were very slow coming. Even Remo with his supersensitive ears had to strain to hear them.
The boy's voice was not the same one that had growled at them from the downstairs speaker.
The audience was brief. Chiun offered another formal bow before backing from the throne. The boy watched him go with the same dreamlike eyes. He seemed like a lost and flickering memory, projected from another time.
Remo fell in step with his teacher on the way out of the big upstairs chamber.
"That sounded like Russian," Remo whispered as they made their way back through the maze of rooms. "Of course," the Master of Sinanju replied. "What else would you expect Russian to sound like?"
"So the kid's a Russian. Well, I know he's not their latest president, 'cause the kid's taller. So who the hell is he?"
"That was the czarevitch," Chiun explained. "He is the son of the last czar and crown prince of Russia."
Remo frowned. "Can't be," he insisted. "Didn't the Commies murder the last Russian czar and his entire family a hundred years ago?"
"That is what the world thought and is made to think to this day. However, two of his children escaped thanks in part to the intervention of my father. The rumors that they had fled to safety are well-known."
Remo only felt his confusion growing. "So what are you saying, that was his grandson?"
"No," Chiun said darkly. "I told you, that is Czar Alexis Romanov, youngest child and only son of the murdered Czar Nicholas II. Heir to the Russian throne."
Remo stopped dead. "Okay, you lost me. How can that be Czar Nickelodeon's kid if the czar was shot back at the end of the nineteenth century?"
"July 16, 1918," the Master of Sinanju corrected.
"Okay, twentieth. It doesn't matter. He'd still be, what, a hundred about now?"
"He is close to that venerable age."
"Right. There's where you lose me. That kid's barely out of junior-high school. How-?"
He didn't have time to finish his question.
There was a sudden compression of air behind him. It shouldn't have been there. Couldn't have been there. It was not mechanical. Nothing had launched from the wall. There were no panels popping or springs firing. This was a human stroke, yet Remo's senses had warned him of no human threat. All his instincts told him that all behind was air even as the knife lunged at him from the darkness.
Remo dodged just in time. He pivoted on his right foot, twisting out of the knife's path. The thrusting blade that had been aimed for his lower back slipped by harmlessly.
When Remo glimpsed his attacker, his first instinct was to call Universal Studios to see if any of their 1930s movie monsters had escaped.
The man wore a black robe with a cowl that encircled his head. His skin looked as if it had been drained of fluid. The face was sunken and pale, the deep creases filled with grime. His strings of ancient black beard were gnarled grease. The nails on the hand that clutched the dagger were long and twisted and caked with filth. He seemed shorter than he should have been, hunched as he was inside his robes.
But worst of all-the thing that would have sent children diving for cover under their beds and made otherwise sensible villagers form torch-wielding mobs to storm the local castle-were the man's eyes.
His eyes seemed twice as large as those of a normal man's. Pupils swam in seas of bloodshot whites. They never blinked. They just stared from the black depths of the man's cowl.
Remo had barely reacted to the first attack, barely got a glimpse of the demented man, before the stranger attacked again. Fingers clutching more tightly around the handle, the man jabbed hard at Remo's exposed belly.
This time Remo was prepared. When the knife was an inch away from slicing open his abdomen, he simply slapped the underside of the man's wrist.
The blade launched up and buried deep in the man's throat. The eyes bugged even wider, and the wretched creature dropped like a stone to the dusty floor.
Remo whirled on the Master of Sinanju. "What the hell was that?" he demanded.
The old Korean stood near a pile of ancient Russian knick-knacks, a bland expression on his face.
"The best old Russia has to offer. Pitiful," he tsked.
Remo sniffed the air.
"Pee-yew,
" he groused. "I thought the eyes were the worst, but the stink's got them beat by a country mile. It's not the building that reeks, it's him."
He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the corpse. Or, rather, where the corpse had been.
The body was no longer there.
"What the hell?" Remo asked, just as the knife jammed hard toward his back.
He jumped and spun.
The weird-eyed man was back on his feet, standing silently behind Remo, thrusting with his dagger. Remo strained his ears even as he dodged the blade.
There was not a standard heartbeat. Just a momentary fluttering. A faint gurgle of life deep in the man's chest.
Slapping the knife back again, Remo buried the dagger where the gurgle gurgled. It stopped gurgling. His clawlike hand fleeing the knife handle, the man fell to the floor once more, the dagger buried deep in his chest.
As his black robes settled, he grew very still. "All right," Remo insisted to the Master of Sinanju. "I killed that guy the first time."
"Probably," Chiun admitted glumly.
Remo opened his mouth to say more. Before the words could even come, he heard a faint squeak. His face growing shocked, he looked for the source.
On the floor, the dead man had taken hold of the knife handle once more. Metal squeaked on flesh as he slowly withdrew it from his lifeless heart. Once the blade was removed, the faint gurgle began again.
Remo wheeled on Chiun, his eyes wide. "What is this guy, freaking Freddy Krueger?"
"He is a monk," Chiun explained.
Warily, Remo glanced at the man on the floor. The man who, by all rights, should have been dead was slowly pushing himself up to a sitting position. So silent was he it was as if he existed in a soundless vacuum. This coupled with his near-nonexistent life signs accounted for why Remo hadn't heard him to begin with.
Remo appraised the cowl and the robe. The man did indeed look something like a monk.
"Monks are supposed to be nice. They aren't supposed to try to kill you."
"I did not say he was a very good monk."
"And maybe I'm a little rusty on my Baltimore Catechism, but aren't they supposed to die when you kill them?"
Chiun rolled his eyes. "Not this one," he said. "Believe me, we have tried. My father did, some Russian royals tried. I believe my grandfather might have killed him a few times. He has been poisoned, stabbed, shot and drowned. Yet he keeps coming back again."
Something about his teacher's words tickled a memory far back in Remo's brain.
The monk was standing again. He offered Remo a smile that was little more than bared teeth and bugging eyes. The dagger was up and out again, ready to slash.
"What do I do to kill him?" Remo asked, anxious for any tip, any weakness, any pointers that could help him stop this wild-eyed, unstoppable, knife-wielding Russian.
Chiun's hands were tucked deep in his kimono sleeves. "You already killed him twice," the old man said with a shrug. "You have bested Russia's champion in mortal combat. If he's still pestering you, take his knife away."
Surging forward, the monk swung the knife at Remo's throat, a mad glint in his wide eyes.
Remo wasn't sure what else to do. As the knife whizzed by, he plucked the dagger from the Russian's filthy hand.
The monk stopped dead.
Remo moved the knife left and right. The monk's unblinking eyes followed the silver blade. Remo tossed the knife into the dark recesses of the nearest junk-packed room. It landed with a distant, muted clatter.
As soon as the knife was gone, the monk faded back into the shadows beside the door. The darkness swallowed cloak and cowl until all that remained was a Cheshire cat vision, with naked eyeballs instead of smiling teeth.
Remo raised a suspicious brow. "That's it?" he asked.
Chiun nodded. "This is an unusual exception in the Time of Succession," the Master of Sinanju explained. "The monk was charged with protecting the life of the czarevitch by the boy's mother many years ago. For nearly a century, by spells and magic, he has kept them both safe for the time when he can return the child to the Russian throne."
Remo glanced skeptically at the eyeballs in the shadows. His own eyes were generally able to draw in ambient light, illuminating darkness. But light formed differently around the monk. It was difficult to make out the dark robes among the deep shadows.
"So he's just going to stand there until, what, my pupil and I come here in another forty years?"
"I think he is also paid to do the cleaning up," Chiun said, uninterested. "Not that he has touched a dust rag in eighty years. Typical Russian. And the Romanovs paid him in advance. Czar Nicholas must be spinning in his grave." He touched Remo's arm. "Come. We have dawdled long enough."
"Wait a sec." Remo was peering at the monk. The monk peered back. "What's up with his eyes?"
"He does that for the tourists," Chiun explained, clicking his tongue impatiently. "He is a hypnotist."
Remo jumped back. "Whoa," he said, slapping one hand like a blinder beside his eyes.
"We met a Russian hypnotist years ago. He anything like that?"
"This one is nothing to worry about," Chiun assured him. "That other one we met had full and terrible control of his dread powers. Whatever this one had he has squandered on dissolute living. He cannot affect the minds of those from Sinanju, for we are not weak-willed dullards." Squinting, he looked Remo up and down. "Maybe you should keep your eyes covered just in case," he suggested. He spun to go.
"Cram it," Remo suggested, lowering his hand cautiously. "There was a monk that hung out with the Russian royal family, wasn't there? I seem to remember hearing he was unkillable. Raspberry, Rasmussen, something like that?"
It was not Chiun, but a voice from the shadows that answered.
"Rasputin," growled the monk. It was the same funereal voice that had come from the downstairs speaker.
"Yeah, that's it. You him?" The eyes bespoke the truth.
The monk didn't respond to Remo. His words were directed at Chiun's retreating back.
"The night," Rasputin called to the Master of Sinanju. "Beware the night. Beware the false day. Beware the hand that reaches from the grave. Beware, Masters of Sinanju."
Chiun had been headed for the hall. When he heard the monk's words, he froze in his tracks.
"He ain't exactly Little Mary Sunshine, is he?" Remo asked, glancing over his shoulder.
He was surprised to see that a strange look had descended on his teacher's face. It was a look he had seen only rarely in all the many years they had been together.
It was a look of fear.
"Chiun?" Remo asked, suddenly worried.
But the Master of Sinanju wasn't listening to his pupil. He took a few cautious steps back across the room.
"Speak, monk," the old Korean demanded.
"What is it?" Remo questioned. "What's wrong?"
"Hush," Chiun commanded.
The monk's disembodied eyes floated in the black shadows. "The night draws near for you both," Rasputin warned. "Darkness comes from the cold sea."
"And the splendor falls on castle walls," Remo said, beginning to lose patience. "Can I kill him again, please?"
But Chiun was peering intently at the shabby Russian.
"What do you see, monk?" he demanded.
"What do you mean what does he see?"
"He is a healer, a hypnotist and a mystic," Chiun hissed impatiently. "The monk sees more than other mortals. He predicted the murders of the Romanov family."
"Fat lot of good it did them. Don't let him spook you, Little Father."
But Chiun would not budge. "Tell me more, monk."
The wide eyes remained fixed within the shadows. "You are stalked by death," Rasputin warned, his voice a croaking dirge. "Two from your order. Two will die. One will take your place. Another is dead already. Another lives who was dead. When comes the end, two Masters of Sinanju will die. Master and student, father and son."
Remo felt his own blood run cold. He shot a g
lance at his teacher. Chiun's eyes were as unblinking as the monk's. He stared in rapt attention at the man in the shadows.
Rasputin's voice was growing fainter.
"Two will die.... Two will die.... Two will die...."
The eyes faded. Flickering candles. "Two will die...."
The oversized orbs winked out.
Remo felt an emptiness swell in the darkness. He passed his hand through the shadow. There was no substance to it. Rasputin was gone.
"What the hell was that all about?" he asked. But when Remo turned a questioning eye to the Master of Sinanju, he found that he was alone. Chiun was gone.
Far off the apartment door clicked quietly shut.
Chapter 14
"Merci," Benson Dilkes said into the telephone. The word was a grunt in the dark of his Florida apartment. His own voice sounded odd to his ears. The foreign words sat heavy and out-of-place on his fat Virginian tongue. Nothing was right any longer. The entire world was out of alignment. Spinning out of control. Dilkes replaced the phone. Carefully.
With equal care he picked another red tack from the plastic case. The lid was open now. The way things were already going, he saw no reason to close it.
He stepped over to the corkboard map of Europe. The new thumbtack went in, this time in Paris. Jean-Pierre Sevigne.
The assassin had been good. A freelancer who split his time between government and the private sector. Sevigne didn't discriminate. He went wherever the money was.
He also knew of Sinanju. Dilkes had hosted him several times in the 1990s when work brought the French assassin to Africa. Talk inevitably turned to the reason Dilkes had left the United States years before. They talked of Sinanju.
The Frenchman was disdainful of most in his profession, but, like Dilkes, he held the House of Sinanju in high regard. He had heard of what was to come. Unlike Dilkes, the Frenchman looked forward to this time. Hoped he lived long enough to see it. Sevigne saw it as the ultimate challenge. He knew that he could not hope to best the greatest assassins in the world with weapons or brawn. He insisted that it would be cleverness, trickery, not guns or gadgets, that would finally overcome the vaunted assassins from the East.
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