“Hey, old man. Don’t feel sorry for no honkey. He our enemy,” said the man of the ebony face.
Remo listened to the interchange, yawned. Chiun’s dramatics did not impress him. He had seen Chiun play humbled before. Now Chiun was setting them up for him, although from their swaggering they appeared not to need setting up.
“Move over,” said the leader to Chiun, “or we’ll move on over you.”
“I beg a boon,” implored Chiun. “I know this poor man who is about to die. I wish to say goodbye to him.”
“Don’t let him, he’ll pass him a gun or something,” yelled one of the blacks.
“I have no weapon. I am a man of peace and solitude, a frail flower cast upon the harsh rocky soil of conflict.”
“Hey, what he talk?” came the voice of the man with the largest Afro, a spray of coiled black weeds exploding in all directions from his tan head.
“He say he ain’t carrying,” said the leader.
“He look funny for a gook.”
“Don’t say gook. He third world,” said the leader. “Yes, old man. Say goodbye to the honkey. The revolution is here.”
Remo watched the crowd raise their fists to the ceiling of fluorescent lights and wondered how much he would reduce New York City’s welfare bill. Unless, of course, they were somewhat competent, in which case he would reduce the crime rate.
The group was now giving each other fancy handshakes, saying “Pass the power, brother.”
Remo looked at Chiun and shrugged. Chiun beckoned Remo’s head to lower. “You do not know how important this is. It is very important. I know personally Kyoto’s father. You have some bad habits which inhibit grace when you become excited. I have not corrected them because they will work themselves out and to change them now would inhibit your attack. But what you must avoid at all costs is a full energy attack, because these habits will surely show, and Kyoto’s father will hear about your lack of grace. A companion of mine lacking grace.”
“Gosh, you have problems,” Remo said.
“Do not joke. This is important to me. Perhaps you do not have pride in yourself, but I have pride in myself. I do not wish to be embarrassed. It is not like white or black men were watching but a yellow man of red belt whose father knows me personally.”
“And it’s not like I’m going against Amos and Andy,” Remo whispered. “These guys look tough.”
Chiun peered briefly around Remo’s shoulder at the group, some of whom were taking off their shirts to show their muscles, for Mei Soong’s benefit.
“Amos and Andy,” Chiun said, “whoever they are. Now please, I ask this favor of you now.”
“Will you give me a favor in return?”
“All right. All right. But remember. The most important thing is not to embarrass my instructional methods.”
Chiun bowed and even pretended to brush away a tear. He stepped back, signalling Mei Soong and Kyoto to join him. One of the men who had removed his shirt showed fine round muscled shoulders and a good rippling stomach stacked with rows of muscles like a washboard. A weight lifter, thought Remo. Nothing.
The man swaggered to Chiun, Kyoto and Mei Soong, signalling they should go no further.
“He is my pupil of a few days,” Chiun confided openly to Kyoto, while pointing to Remo.
“You stay where you is. All of you,” said the well muscled man. “Ah don’t wants to hurt no brother of the third world.”
Remo heard Kyoto snort laughter.
“I take it,” Chiun said, “that these are the students of your honorable house.”
“They have walked in,” came Kyoto’s voice.
“Walk in?” Remo heard the guard behind him say. “We been working out here for years.”
“Thank you,” said Chiun. “Now we will see what years of Kyoto instruction does in comparison with just a few humble words from the house of Sinanju. Begin if you will.”
Remo heard Kyoto groan. “Why must my ancestors be forced to witness this?”
“Don’t worry,” came the black guard’s voice. “We’ll do you up proud. Real proud. Black power proud.”
“My heart trembles before your black power,” said Chiun, “and my respect for the House of Kyoto knows no bounds. Woe is me and my friend.”
The seven black men moved wide for the kill. Remo set for the attack, his weight centered for instant movement in any direction.
It was funny. Here Chiun was warning him about performance, and Remo needed no warning. It was the first time Chiun would see his pupil in action and Remo wanted, as he wanted few things, to win praise from the little father.
One should not concern oneself with appearances but results. That is how Remo’s training differed from karate, but now he was worried about appearances. And that could be deadly.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
THERE WERE SEVEN AND REMO PREPARED to work right, slant in left, pick up two, then come back across, pick up one, and work it from there. It wasn’t necessary.
The biggest one, with the ebony face, stepped into the circle. His Afro was manicured like a well-tended hedge, and he stood with his forearms held forward, wrists limp. One of the blacks behind him, who did not practice the Praying Mantis attack of the school of Kung Fu, laughed.
Large, strong men rarely used the Praying Mantis. It was an attack small men used to compensate. If the big man with the flaming Afro should slip past Remo’s attack, Remo would be dead with one blow.
“Hey, Piggy,” said the black who had laughed. “You look faggy.”
Piggy moved fast for a big man, extending one leg, then moving a stroke towards Remo’s head. Remo was under the stroke, driving fingers into the solar plexus, then back up to catch the sirloin roll neck with a down stroke, knee up to smash the face and set it up for a follow through with the fingers extended into the temple. The body hit the mat almost silently, the face still surprised. The left hand remained curved.
Then there were six, six stunned black faces, eyes widening. Then someone had the correct idea to attack en masse. It looked like a race riot in martial arts robes. “Get the honkey bastard. Kill whitey. Get whitey.”
Their screams echoed in the hall. Remo glanced to Chiun to see if there was approval. Mistake. A black hand came into his face and he saw darkness and stars, but as he felt himself going down, he saw the white of the mat, and saw the arms and legs and black hands with lighter palms, and felt a foot come up toward his groin.
He brought one hand up behind the kneecap, and using his fall flipped the body attached to the knee over his head. He brought a foot up into a groin and rolled. As he did so, he moved to his feet, caught an Afro and cracked down into it, smashing a skull.
A voiceless body hit the mat. A black belt launched an attack with a foot shot. Remo grabbed the ankle and kept it going behind his head and brought his thumb up sharply into the man’s back, damaging a kidney and flinging him to the side, shrieking in pain. Now there were four, and they weren’t as anxious to get whitey. One was downright brotherly as he nursed his broken knee. Three black belts surrounded Remo in a semi-circle.
“All at once. Attack. On three,” said one, making sense. He was very dark, black as night and his beard was scraggly. His eyes had no whites, just black fires of hate. Perspiration beaded his forehead. By showing his hate so openly, he had blown his cool.
“Ain’t like the movie Shaft, is it, Sambo?” said Remo. And he laughed.
“Mother,” said the black belt to Remo’s left.
“Is that a plea? Or half a word?” Remo asked.
“One,” called out the man with hate.
“Two,” called out the man with hate.
“Three,” called out the man with hate, and he went with a foot, the other two with straight ahead punches.
Remo was down beneath them, slipping behind the man who hated. He spun around, snatched his foot and kept spinning him to the bean box where students and instructors toughened their fingertips by ramming them into eight inches of beans. Remo
rammed his hand into the box very quickly, but it did not reach the bottom.
It did not reach the bottom of the box because under his hand was the hate-filled face. It no longer hated because jammed into the box at that speed, it was no longer a face. It was a pulp. Beans had been driven into the eyes. From above, it looked as if the black belt who had weakened to hate under the pressure of fear was drinking from the box deeply, the beans covering his head. Blood seeped up through the beans, swelling them.
Remo did a waltz skip to a pile of tiles with the other two black belts swinging about his head and toward his back. He scooped up two curved gray tiles from the pile and began to whistle, and as he dodged blows and kicks, he began clacking the curved bricks in rhythm to the melody.
He spun around one blow and brought the two bricks, one in each hand, together, with an Afro between them. Directly in the middle of the Afro was a head. The two bricks made valiant effort to meet. But they cracked. So did the head in the Afro between them.
The Afro with the open-mouthed head went to the mat. The remnants of the tiles went into the air. The last black standing threw an elbow that missed and then said, eloquently:
“Sheeit.”
He stood there, his arms hanging, his forehead perspiring. “Ah don’t know what you got, man, but Ah can’t take it.”
“Yeah,” said Remo. “Sorry.”
“Up yours, honkey,” said the man, breathing heavily.
“That’s the business, sweetheart,” said Remo and as the man made one last desperate lunge, Remo shattered his throat with a back slash.
He untied the black belts as the corpse staggered by and walked over to the man with the broken knee who was trying to crawl to the door. He dangled the belt in front of his face.
“Want to win another one fast?”
“No man, I don’t want nuthin’.”
“Don’t you want to wipe out whitey?”
“No, man,” cried the crawling black belt.
“Ah, c’mon. Don’t tell me you’re one of those who save his militancy for deserted subways and classrooms?”
“Man, Ah don’t want no trouble. Ah ain’t done nuthin’. You brutalizing.”
“You mean when you mug someone, that’s revolution. But when you get mugged, that’s brutality.”
“No, man.” The black covered his head, awaiting some sort of blow. Remo shrugged.
“Give him the black belt of the dojo of Kyoto,” sang out Chiun. Remo saw anger flood the face of Kyoto, but it was quickly controlled.
“Unless, of course,” Chiun said sweetly to Kyoto, “you of years of experience would care to teach the martial arts to my humble student of just a few moments?”
“That is not a humble student,” said Kyoto. “And you did not teach him art, but the methods of Sinanju.”
“All the house of Sinanju had to work with was a white man. But in our small way, we attempt to do the best we can with whatever is given us.” The black belt with the broken knee was now scurrying into a dressing room out a side door, which slammed shut behind him. Kyoto’s eyes followed the sound and Chiun said, “That man has the instincts of a champion. I will tell your honorable father how successful you are in teaching track and field. He will be happy that you have deserted dangerous sports.”
Remo folded the black belt in his hands carefully, walked over and flipped it to Kyoto. “Maybe you can sell it to somebody else.”
The dojo looked as if it had just surfaced from a whirlpool that had struck in the middle of a class. Chiun looked happy, but he said, “Pitiful. Your left hand still fails to extend properly.”
Mei Soong was ashen-faced.
“I thought… I thought… Americans were soft.”
“They are,” snickered Chiun.
“Thanks for bringing me here,” Remo said. “Any other places you wish to visit?”
Mei Soong paused. “Yes,” she finally said. “I’m hungry.”
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
IN THE LONG MARCH, THERE HAD been nothing like it. In the days of hiding in the caves of Yenan there had been nothing like it. And there was no answer in the thoughts of Mao Tse Tung. Even in the spirit of Mao, there was no answer.
General Liu forced himself to accept with politeness the news from the messenger. In the decadent monarchist regimes of the past, the evil of the news would have fallen on the head of its bearer. But this was a new age, and General Liu simply said: “You may go and thank you, comrade.”
There had been nothing like it before. He watched the messenger salute and depart, shutting the door behind him, leaving General Liu in the windowless room which smelled of oil on metal and had but one chair and a bed, and very poor ventilation.
Other generals might live in splendor, but a people’s general could never aggrandize himself. Other generals might live in palace houses like warlords, but not him. Not a real people’s general who had buried his brothers in mountains and left a sister in a winter’s snow, who had at 13 been requisitioned for service in the Mandarin’s fields, just as his sister had been requisitioned for service in the Mandarin’s bed.
General Liu was a great general of the people, not in his pride but in his experience. He could smell the quality of a division 10 miles away. He had seen armies rape and pillage, and he had seen armies build towns and school-houses. He had seen a lone man annihilate a platoon. But he had never seen what he was seeing now. And in comfort-loving America, of all places.
He looked down again at the note in his hands, as he had looked at other notes during the three days he had been in hiding.
First, there were the hired gangsters in Puerto Rico. Not revolutionaries, but competent. And they had failed.
Then there was Ricardo de Estrana y Montaldo y Ruiz Guerner, of personal experience a man who had never failed. And he had failed.
And there was the Wah Ching street gang. And it had failed.
And when guns and gangs had failed, there were the great hands of the karate black belt.
He looked down at the note in his hands. And now that too had failed. They had all failed in both their missions: to eliminate those who were trying to find the general and to bring to him his bride of only one year.
And if General Liu and his men continued to fail, his people would cast themselves at the feet of the peacemakers in Peking, ready to forget the years of hardship and to end the revolution before it was complete.
Did they not know that Mao was just a man? A great man, but just a man and men grow old and weary and wish to die in peace?
Did they not see that this step backwards, making peace with imperialism, was a retreat, just when the battle was being won? With victory in their mouths, would they now succumb to the son of a mandarin, the premier, and sit at the same table with the dying beast of capitalism?
Not if General Liu could stop it. General Liu would not have peace. The premier had misjudged his cunning, misjudged even his motives.
He had been careful not to let himself be seen in China as a leader of the war faction. He was just a people’s general, until chosen by the premier to arrange safe journey for his trip to see the swine American President. He had quietly arranged for the deaths on the transport plane, and when that did not halt plans for the premier’s visit, he volunteered to go to America himself. And then after changing to western garb, he had shot his own guards and slipped alone, unnoticed onto the train which had brought him here.
It should have been easy to stay hidden during the seven days of grace the premier had given the Americans. But this impossible American could not be denied, and even now was probably closing in on General Liu. When his followers heard of the escape from the karate dojo, they would lose heart. They must be firmed up.
General Liu sat down on his hard cot. He would go through his plans three times, thinking over the details from three angles. Then he would speak to his people.
And then, when he was ready, he would act with thoroughness, and when the plan proved successful, he would hold in his arm
s once more Mei Soong, the beautiful flower, the only pleasure of his life outside duty.
This plan must not fail. Not even before this impossible American who had once again revived the ancient fairy tales of an ancient China. Yes. He must first discredit the fairy tales.
General Liu rose from his cot and banged on the heavy steel door. A man in drab army type clothing opened it. “I will meet with the leaders immediately,” General Liu said. Then he shut the door with a clang and heard the lock fall into place.
Within minutes, all had gathered, standing in the little airless room. The early arrivals were fidgeting for want of fresh air. Some perspired and General Liu noticed how fat some faces were, how flaccid, how pale. They were not like the people of the long march. They were like the people of Chiang Kai Shek and his soft running dogs.
Well, General Liu had often led unfit men into combat. He talked now to them… of the long struggle and of the dark hours and how these had been overcome. He talked of hunger and cold and how these had been overcome. He spoke to the pride in the hearts of the people before him and when they no longer suffered from the heat or the air but were overcome by revolutionary fervor, he hit his target where he wished to hit his target.
“Comrades,” he said in the outlawed Cantonese dialect, looking around the room and meeting their eyes, “we who have accomplished so much, how can we now fall prey to a child’s fairy tale? Was not the winter in the caves of Yenan fiercer than a fairy tale? Were not the armies of Chiang and his running dogs fiercer than a fairy tale? Are not the armaments of modern times fiercer than a fairy tale?”
“Yes, yes,” came the voices. “True. How true.”
“Then why,” asked General Liu, “should we fear the fairy tales of Sinanju?”
One young man said triumphantly, “Never fear suffering. Never fear death. Never fear, least of all, fairy tales.”
But an old man, in what were once the clothes of the mainland, said, “He kills like the night tigers of Sinanju. This he does.”
Chinese Puzzle Page 14
