tones were professionally sweet, her eyes even more innocent than the time she played a saint in an Easter television production.
“I know that I am in jail because I believe people are good. I wish no harm to come to any innocent person. But is the President innocent when he quarantines the blameless nation of Alarkin because they dare to think people are good? Is the President innocent when powerful American aircraft daily fly over the tiny island, when nuclear warships patrol its beaches? Who is the President that he thinks he has a right to stop goodness with his nuclear evil?”
No one mentioned Ms. Bowen was in jail on a charge of conspiracy to murder, that she had been caught just the week before in an announcement of the President's death even before his plane went down, and that she undoubtedly was implicated in the murder of an American Air Force colonel and everyone on the plane.
And alligators in swimming pools were considered past history and not worth mentioning as the story became American arms in support of intolerance.
One network and newspaper did a combined poll.
The question was: Should American nuclear weapons support religious intolerance?
When the answer came in negative, everyone announced the President was slipping.
One of the hijacked passengers who had been elected spokesman told Americans on breakfast and supper news programs that many of the hostages had developed “a profound sense of empathy with the Poweressence cause.”
The President called a press conference and outlined the petty and major crimes of the Dolomos, exactly how Poweressence extracted money from people under false pretenses.
The press conference was followed immediately by commentators pointing out that calling names never helped anyone. The President was labeled reckless and irresponsible, especially when he said the Dolomos were not going to get away with it.
“I certainly would not want him as my negotiator,” said one commentator who had been released from the cow pens of Harbor Island, now called Alarkin.
He was the one who led the others in calling Beatrice Dolomo “your Majesty,” saying America had to get over the arrogance of thinking it could decide how people would live.
“I personally find Poweressence spiritually and emotionally uplifting in ways that Christianity has never been.”
There were also many interviews at Poweressence temples to explain how Poweressence devotees were suffering for the handful of actions of a few faithful.
“I do not support hijacking. I support freedom of religion,” said one franchise owner, who also slyly warned that as long as America kept persecuting its religious minorities it should become used to hijackings and oil spills like the Bayonne disaster.
“Yes, I do believe the Bayonne disaster just as much as the hijacking was the result of America's persecution of religion.”
In the Oval Office the President gave a single order to Smith.
“I want your two specialists. I don't care how you go about getting them. Get them.”
“The organization's system located them in Newark, sir, but after that I don't know where they're going to be. I believe that Remo was the one who kept both of them here, but we can't count on that now.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I don't know if he knows anymore that he's working for us.”
* * *
Remo felt it was great to finally meet the image that had been talking to him.
“All I wanted to do, Little Father, was to go home, but I never knew where that was. Now I know. Sinanju, right?”
“The most perfect village in the world, where your ancestors came from,” said Chiun.
They were in an airline terminal, and Chiun had placed his long fingernails under Remo's shirt just under the breastbone to synchronize his breathing, to make his lungs and the pores of his body work in unison so that his bloodstream would reverse the process of absorbing substances and now eject them.
But Chiun did not think of it in terms of bloodstream, rather as the poetry of the body, as he had learned from the Master before him and as the Master learned from the Master before him, from those first days when Sinanju learned the true powers of the human body and became the sun source of all the martial arts, only to be copied by others over the centuries.
Remo felt the fingernails and tried to concentrate, but the clank of coin machines and the smell of passing perfumes bothered him. It was then that he realized the coin machines were at the other end of the airport and his hearing was coming back. The perfumes were faint scents, which meant his smell was coming back.
His memory came only in pieces, though. He remembered looking at the star, and then he realized it was at that moment in the universe when it was decided what he would become, and his mind remembered it even if he couldn't.
He remembered Chiun. He remembered the lessons. He remembered thinking so many times that he would die. He remembered hating Chiun, and remembered learning respect, and later knowing and loving the man as the father he never knew.
He remembered Sinanju, the muddy little village from which came the greatest house of assassins of all time. He remembered to breathe. He tasted the onion-and-garlic essence of the liquid he had touched back in California. He remembered reaching into a tub to save a grown man, acting like a child, who was drowning. He remembered losing control of his skin.
He was not up to peak. And this had set him back a little farther.
Some things were still spotty. He knew Sinanju was the village, but his home was not in the place itself but in its teaching. He was raised in the orphanage in Newark. He got that right.
“Yes, you are Sinanju, Remo,” said Chiun, who was now not a vision anymore. And Remo knew why he could see him when he had forgotten everything else. He could see him because Chiun was within him like any good teacher. And Remo thought Chiun was the greatest teacher the world had ever known.
“I remember. I am not Korean at all,” said Remo.
Chiun's fingers stopped. “Don't go that far. You are. Your father was Korean.”
“Really? I didn't know that. How did you know that?”
“I will explain it later, but you will see the histories of Sinanju, our histories, and you will understand how you have been able to know so much.”
“It's because of your great teaching, Little Father. I think you are the greatest teacher the world has ever known,” Remo said.
“That too,” said Chiun.
“Hey, I forgot. I've got to check in. The people I was after got away.”
“Everyone gets away in America. We don't belong here.”
“I do, Little Father. That's the problem,” said Remo, who still remembered the contact number for Smith.
Chapter 15
Remo was apologetic and Chiun was outraged.
“Never admit to an emperor you have done wrong,” Chiun said in Korean. But Remo ignored him.
“What are we all doing in the White House? Isn't this the worst possible contact point? Talk of risking exposure.”
“Somehow the Dolomos have gotten through to the President. I am afraid they will again. If the President turns into a hostile three-year-old, the whole world can go up. I brought Chiun here for that reason.”
