Chapter 12

Breck Kasle and his brother, Jeremy, waved goodbye to their new best friends. As soon as the old Asian and the mean-eyed Gloomy Gus drove off, Breck scrambled for the phone and rang up Trina over at the Bank and Trust.

“Is that money really there?” he demanded.

“Yeah, Breck, ’course it’s there.”

“I mean, they can’t cancel the payment or anything, right?”

“Naw, Breck, it’s not like they charged a purchase, see. They actually got cash from their credit card and had it put in your account, see? So they can’t be taking it back.” She whistled appreciatively. “Mother of pearl, Breck, what’re you two crazy bachelors gonna do with that kind of money?”

Breck was all smiles as he thumbs-upped his brother, who showed all his teeth. “I’ll tell you what we’re gonna do—Jer’s gonna build the solidest vintage recreation vehicle that ever was or ever will be.”

“Sure, but what’re you gonna do when you’re not making the RV? Like tonight, for instance? A celebration is in order when you come into cash like that.”

“Well, now, Trina, you got a good point.”

“My sis and I are free if’n you boys would want to have a little party an’ celebrate your newfound wealth. You know my sister, Sophie? Sophie’s always saying what a cutie Jeremy is.”

They made a date for dinner and dancing at the Four Corners Restaurant. So what if them girls was going after him and his brother for their money? It was just Sophie’s bad luck that she wasn’t in the right place at the right time to take this opportunity. Then she’d have been the one to get stuck with the ugly brother. But Breck did know Trina and Sophie well enough to be sure they weren’t gonna let a money-grubbing opportunity such as this one slip away, even if poor Sophie got stuck with gross old Jeremy.

Trina was a lucky gal, Breck thought, seeing as how he had the cleaner fingers and the more complete set of teeth and even some culture under his belt.

That was why he was the one who dealt with the public and did the RV selling, except for today. It was an unspoken understanding that Jeremy was, well, not a people person. Repulsive, in fact, but also an artist. Still, Jeremy’s skills would have never seen the light of day if it weren’t for his handsome, smooth-talking brother selling his creations.

Everybody he knew, Breck Kasle thought, was lucky to have Breck Kasle in their lives.

Remo tried finding out what exactly Chiun had contracted the grease monkey to do. It cost a lot of cash. Not that Chiun couldn’t afford it, and not that it mattered at all anyway since the entire sum was electronically transferred from the credit card account of one Bucky Chang, a sixty-seven-year-old podiatrist from Madeira Beach, Florida, who did not exist. CURE would pay the bill, but Remo wanted to know what the money was actually for.

“I have a feeling I’m gonna be living in it, whether I want to or not,” Remo complained. “I have a right to know, don’t I?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Keep your eyes on the road.”

“I keep getting distracted by all that yummy-looking corn they grow around here.”

“Don’t bother trying to raise up my goat.” Chiun turned to his iBlogger for the next twenty miles.

“Hey, Chiun,” Remo said then, “you think Smith was on to something about these mine shaft killings?”

“You mean about them being possibly the work of the earth-drilling German from New Mexico?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Chiun looked up. “Remo, it was you who disabled the tunneling machine. Do you doubt that you did so effectively?”

Remo had been worrying about that very fact, but had also come to a conclusion. “No. It was broken.”

“Then you have your answer.”

“Not only did I break the hydraulic earth flattener, but I locked it up so bad it froze the engine. Then we buried him under sixty feet of soil.”

“Exactly.”

“He might have, maybe, been able to dig his way out of the hatch and then clear enough dirt to work on the hydraulics, but I don’t see him having a lot of spare parts. It would have been nearly impossible to make the thing run without the smasher to compact the earth he dug up. And anyway, there’s no way he was going to rebuild the engine on the driller, even if he did have access from the interior of the thing. Right?”

“Precisely.” Chiun wasn’t paying attention.

“So what if he was rescued.”

“By whom?”

“Whiteslaw?”

“Herbert Whiteslaw is a manipulator. He is in government because he is skilled in the art of influence - and because he has hot the desire or ambition to achieve his own goals. I do not believe he would take the initiative to rescue his trapped coconspirator, even, if he did know what had become of the man.”

“He could hire someone to do it,” Remo suggested. Chiun waved the idea away.

“He had help from somebody else, right? Whoever was handling the operation in D.C.”

Chiun shut down the iBlogger with a sigh. “The one on the airplane went into the ocean.”

“So the Air Force claims. Did you see it happen?”

“No.”

Remo Williams was thinking about Chiun’s reaction. Had he just stumbled across something? “What’s with the weird vibes. Little Father?”

“It is the effect of the corn pollen, intoxicating you and dulling your senses.”

“No,” Remo said, “that’s not it. It’s coming from you.”

“Corn pollen?” Chiun demanded.

“You know what I mean. You’ve been, well, not quite right.”

“You believe you have the exclusive right to be the one who is always behaving improperly?”

“See, even that insult was halfhearted. And in the office with Smith, I was causing all kinds of bad trouble and you were just letting it roll off you.”

“I controlled my temper in the presence of the Emperor. This is a skill you would do well to learn. It is foolish to become hysterical in the presence of the king who provides our gold.”

“You usually don’t let me get away with it, either,” Remo said. “Are you becoming more tolerant?”

“I am weary.”

“Bulldookey. Are you giving me less grief because you’ve accepted the fact that I’m supposed to be the one calling the shots anyway?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what?”

Chiun tamed on his iBlogger again.

“Fine,” Remo said. “Forget I brought it up. Keep acting weird. It’s kind of a novelty, you know, having a slightly new kind of weird. Not that’s it is better than your old weird. Just different. Sort of a lateral change in the quality of your weirdness. I’ll just keep talking like this all the way to the mine because I’ve got nobody else to talk to, and if I don’t talk then I start thinking about sweet, luscious, beautiful yellow corn.”

But Remo couldn’t keep it up and the filibuster faded to an uncomfortable silence until the iBlogger was turned off again.

“Remo,” Chiun said, “I am sorry.”

“For what?”

“For the incident in the city of the puppet President.”

“What incident? You mean when I got knocked out?”

“Yes.”

“No biggie.”

Chiun turned his head and Remo glanced over, seeing a concerned expression. “What?”

“It was a biggie,” Chiun said solemnly.

Remo and Chiun had been patrolling the White House grounds when the attack came, as expected. It was Ironhand, a mechanical man that was more than a hundred years old and now upgraded with the best military automation and stealth technology the U.S. had devised. Under the remote control of the German engineer Jacob Fastbinder, Ironhand had already stolen extensive military technology, worth millions on the open market.

His bold and successful operations caused panic among the research labs in the U.S. military infrastructure. The most highly prized research projects were moved to new locations—except for the highly autonomous, obscenely expensive miniature robotic defensive units deployed on the grounds of the White House.

The President had expected the FEMbots to use their own capabilities to not be stolen. CURE knew better. The FEMbots were just overpriced toys. They were no more dangerous than a radio-controlled poodle to the Masters of Sinanju.

Ironhand, when he came to take the FEMbots, was another story.

Hidden inside Ironhand and his companion, a ridiculous vintage-TV-show robot named Clockwork, were devices intended to spin up the robot’s internal generator turbines. Unknown to Fastbinder, the proton emitters were deadly to the Masters of Sinanju. Remo had ripped the device out of Ironhand, and the act of actually touching the emitter had sucked his senses dry, leaving him in a state of deep unconsciousness for many long minutes as Chiun spirited him away from the White House grounds—also bringing the copper robot Clockwork. Chiun intended to present the spherical robot to Dr. Smith, to have it dismantled and analyzed, to identify how it affected the enhanced senses of a Sinanju Master while another human being felt nothing.

In a Washington, D.C., alley a few blocks from the White House, Remo regained consciousness, only to find himself in the presence of Clockwork, who fired up his generator turbines again and sent Remo into a deep sensory deprivation spiral—but not before Remo saved Chiun from the danger.

Afterward, Remo couldn’t be revived.

“But I snapped out of it,” Remo said as the Hyundai strained to keep going at highway speed on an shallow grade.

“You did not snap out of it, Remo. You were gone for many days.”

Remo shrugged. What was Chiun getting so morbid about? “But I’m all better now. See? Eyes open, jaws flappin’.”

Chiun looked more worried than ever. “Remo, you were beyond my ability to reach or to save. You were beyond the Void.”

“Huh? How can anything be beyond the Void?”

“There is a place of nothingness…”

“That’s what the Void is.”

“In the Void there is darkness, and the voices of the Masters Who Came Before,” Chiun said impatiently. “I believe that you went to where there was no sound. Nothing to see.”

“Chiun—” Remo felt suddenly ill, physically ill.

“Nothingness beyond darkness and silence.”

“Chiun!” Remo croaked, and he was there again.