Chinese Puzzle

CHAPTER ELEVEN

In the other room, Chiun was amusing himself, reading a detailed analysis proving how little the New York Times understood of the turmoil inside China. The Page One article talked of militaristic elements anxious to stop the premier's visit to America and of the desire among China 's "more stable leadership"-Chiun snorted at that-to solidify relations with the United States.

In Washington, the President was still planning for the Premier's trip, the Times said, but there were rumors that he was fearful the Chinese would cancel it.

Chiun put the paper down. The press was slowly beginning to learn of the disappearance of General Liu. That could be serious.

But cancel the trip? Not if the Chinese thought there was any way of milking even one dollar from the fools who ran the United States.

His attention was distracted by noise from inside Mei Soong's room, and he cocked an ear to listen.

Inside, Remo had pinned her knees with his body and with his left hand manacled her wrists together above her head. Her soft, smooth face was twisted now, the teeth clenched tight, the lips drawn thin, the eyes narrowed, a mask of pure hate. "Beast, beast, beast," she yelled and Remo smiled down at her to let her see his calm and to understand it, to know that his need did not make him weak and that he was in full control.

Her body would be his instrument. Her hate and violent struggle would be used to his ends, not hers, because in fighting, she had surrendered her control and all he had to do was exploit it.

His right hand moved beneath her smooth buttocks, and neatly tore the coarse cloth panties. With his fingers, he began to work the muscles of her buttocks, while he kept his face impassive. His hand worked to the small of her back, and then down again to the other cheek, reinforcing the tension of the lower body.

He entertained the thought to kiss her on the lips, but that would be wrong now. He was not doing this for fun. Chiun had taken even that away from him. He had done the impossible. He had made sex boring.

It was on an early training session, this one a month's long regimen at PlensikofPs Gymnasium in Norfolk, Va., a small building off Granby Street that only a handful of people knew was not an abandoned warehouse.

It had started with the lectures, the dry riddles and Remo asking, "Okay, when do I get laid?"

Chiun had talked about the orgasm, which was a major requirement for a relationship only when nothing else held it together. Chiun was sitting on the gymnasium floor in a robin's egg blue kimono with yellow birds sewn on.

"When do I get laid?" Remo asked again.

"I see we have exceeded your usual attention span of two minutes. Could it hold your attention if a naked woman were to walk in here?"

"It might," Remo said. "But she's got to have big jugs."

"The American mind," said Chiun. "You should be distilled and bottled as the American mind. Now. Imagine the woman standing here."

"I knew it was too good to be true," Remo said. The wooden gymnasium floor was hard and making his duff numb. He shifted his weight and saw Chiun cast a disapproving look at him. Afternoon sunlight came through the dust-lathered windows of the gymnasium and Remo could follow a fly In its light, until it disappeared between the windows, then reappeared again in light.

"Are you concentrating?"

"Yes," said Remo.

"You're lying," said Chiun.

"All right. All right. What do you want me to do?"

"See a woman standing naked before you. Create her outline. See her breasts. Her hips, the juncture of her legs. Do you see?"

Remo indulged the old man. "Yeah, I see her."

"You do," Chiun commanded.

Remo did.

"But you are looking wrong. What does her face look like?"

"I can't see her face."

"Ah, very good. You cannot see her face because that is the way you see women. Faceless. Now try to see her face. I wUl draw it for you. Simply. And I will tell you what she is feeling standing there undraped. What do you think she is feeling?"

"Cold."

"No. She is feeling exactly what she has been taught to feel since childhood. It could be embarrassment, or excitement, or fear. Maybe power. But her feelings about sex are social. And that is the key to awakening a woman's body. Through her social upbringing. You see, we must. "

Remo counted two more flies in a dogfight. The overhead lights were one, but they were weak, doing little but shining out the information that they were there.

Then he felt the slap across the face.

"This is important," said the old man.

"Shit," said Remo, his cheek stinging. He stayed with the lecture as long as the cheek stung, which was approximately a half hour, and he learned how to unleash the woman's senses, the proper time, control of himself, and how to use his body as a weapon against hers.

The next time he had sex, the woman was ecstatic and Remo less than pleased. He tried again with someone else. This time, it was like an exercise for him, albeit delirious enjoyment for his partner. One more try convinced him that Chiun had managed to rob him of his enjoyment of sex, and to transform it into just another weapon.

And now, in a Boston hotel room, he was using that weapon to assault the mind and body of a young Chinese woman with small but exquisitely symmetrical young breasts.

He allowed her to writhe beneath him until perspiration formed on her forehead and her breath came quickly, and all the while, he kneaded the base of her spine. When Remo felt her warm, lush body give less to each movement, accepting the fact that he was irresistibly atop her, accepting at least his presence because she could not fight it, the presence of an imperialist Caucasian about to commit rape, a man she hated, he stopped massaging the base of her spine and her cheeks, and slowly moved his fingertips down her right thigh to her kneecap, very slowly so she would not think it a deliberate move.

She stared up at him resignedly, dull eyes and set mouth, saying nothing, but all her muscles finally alive and warmed from use.

He stared into her eyes, and let his right hand rest on the kneecap as though it would not move again, as if they would stay like this for day upon tedious day. She smelled of freshness, something beyond bottling, the healthy fresh aliveness of youth. Her skin was golden and soft, her face eggshell round and amooth, her eyes deep black. And then Remo saw it in the- eyes, that small slight desire that his hand move up again across her thigh.

And he did so, but hesitantly, and even slower than before. But coming down to the knee again, he brought it down faster and slightly harder, then to the inside of the thigh, steady smooth warm strokes always stopping short of her essence. The dark rims capping her golden mounds formed sharper edges and Remo lowered his mouth to their concentric circles, then drew a tongue line down to her navel, while never ceasing the slow rhythmic force on the tender inner thigh.

He saw her mouth relax. She would allow herself to be taken, even though she did not like it. This is what she would be telling herself. But she was lying to herself. She wanted him.

Remo still held her small wrists above her head. He had broken the pattern of taking her by force. If he let go she would be obliged by her upbringing to try to fight her way free. So he held them. But easily.

With his right hand, he worked her breasts, then her navel, her upper arms, her inner thighs before finally reaching her moistened essence. She was moaning, "You white bastard. You white bastard."

Then, the penetration, but not fully, holding out, waiting for her to demand. And she demanded. "Damn you, I want it," she groaned, her dark eyes almost disappearing beneath her upper lids.

He released her wrists now and with both hands began kneading her buttocks again, increasing pressure, increasing penetration, bringing maximum pressure on her sensory organ, willing her into orgasm, holding only for a bare moment of peak, then relaxing to the usual, ho-hum, hysterical shrieks of the woman.

"Ah," yelled Mei Soong, her eyes shut in ecstasy, "Fuck Mao. Fuck Mao," and Remo suddenly withdrew fully and stood up. Under different circumstances, he would have stayed, but now he needed her to follow him, to be unsure that he would ever want her again. So he left her exhausted on the couch, and zipped up his trousers, having performed fully clothed.

And then he saw Chiun standing in the doorway, shaking his head.

"Mechanical," he said.

"What the hell do you want?" Remo said, angrily. "You give me 25 exact steps to follow and then you call it mechanical."

"There is always room for artistry."

"Why not show me how it's done?"

Chiun ignored him. "Besides, I think to do it in front of another person is disgusting. But you Americans and Chinese are pigs anyway."

"You're some piece of work," said Remo who had enjoyed less passion in his sex, than a man across the street intended to enjoy in Remo's death.