Chapter 6

Being in Palermo when the crowds came into the streets was a big ego boost for a guy who was already feeling pretty good about himself.

Any other man would have been relieved to escape with his life. Remo Williams had gone into the don’s penthouse without concern. He had faced truly dangerous enemies in the past, but the don’s thug club wasn’t one of them. Actually, it was kind of a fun outing.

Now it was even more fun. There was laughing and cheering and kissing going on. Every house was awake and celebrating. The Sicilians knew how to throw a party, and the ouster of the don was the best reason of all. The man had slaughtered an amazing number of civilians. Lord knew how many more people would have died if the don had held on to control for another month, or even another week. Hell, just one more day. All the thanks, Remo thought happily, goes to me.

“First you go to the United Kingdom. Then you can go to Sicily and France.”

This was the directive given by Harold W. Smith, Remo’s boss.

Remo stood in the dingy office and carefully made his decision. “Not this time, Smitty. I’m calling for a change in priority. I go to Sicily first.”

The old man Smith considered it and nodded. “Understood. We’ll change your flights to get you to the island soonest.”

“Really?” Remo almost couldn’t believe it was that easy. “Then Basque.”

Smith considered this. Remo felt the need to defend his decision. “See, there are people dying in Sicily and there are people dying in the Basque region. In England, nobody’s dying yet and you don’t even know if there’s a real danger.”

The younger man at the second desk nodded as if he agreed with Remo.

“I see. You called it. You get it,” Smith said. He added, “I fully intend to honor our new agreement, Remo. Arguing at this point would accomplish nothing for either of us.”

The old man was suspiciously agreeable, but Remo took him at his word. Smith’s, word was good. Remo went to Palermo first.

He was glad he did. A twelve-hour stop in England would have given the bloodthirsty don time to butcher another hundred “traitorous” men, women and children.

Instead, they were dancing in the streets, shooting off fireworks, whooping and honking their car horns at three in the morning. Nobody paid attention to the American in the T-shirt, and none of them knew he was the one who had freed them from the bloodthirsty don. It didn’t matter. Remo Williams felt like the man of the hour.

He didn’t need a parade or accolades, but he did need to know he was doing some good. He had worked long and hard to get the right to make at least some of his own decisions, and this was his first taste of it.

The taxi crawled to the airport, but Remo told the cabbie to stop apologizing—the streets were full of music, dancing and impromptu anti-Mafia demonstrations. It was gratifying just to be there in the middle of it. It was okay that he wasn’t out dancing in the ring of Sicilian lovelies with the long, flying black hair. He wasn’t a party kind of guy.

Remo Williams was a totally different kind of guy.

Right now, there was only one human being on the planet who was anything like Remo Williams. That man was an elderly Korean who had remained back in New York, interrogating a parrot.

Remo and the old Korean were the only two living Masters of Sinanju. Sinanju was the name of their art, and Sinanju was the name of a tiny Korean fishing village. For five millennia, the muddy little village had spawned the greatest assassins the world had ever known.

The men of Sinanju became assassins out of necessity. The bay on which they lived offered poor fishing. Assassin work became a way for the men to support the village.

For hundreds of years the village was supported by several assassins at any given time, under the leadership of one Master. Then came a time of change, when the greatest of all Sinanju masters discovered a new body of knowledge. The art of Sinanju was the original, and the greatest, martial art. The art made the Master so effective that from that point on, only one assassin was required to provide income for the entire village.

The Masters used their bodies, minds and breath more fully than other men could. This gave them great abilities. They moved with the swiftness of flickering shadows. They fought with the strength of great beasts. They killed with extraordinary ease.

Other martial arts came in time, but they were murky reflections of the shining light that was Sinanju.

When this new knowledge was bestowed upon the great Master named Wang, he slew the other assassins of Sinanju, who were warring among themselves. Wang then started the tradition of one Master and one student. A Master would train a boy of the village as his successor. The old Master might retire when his protégé became a full-fledged Master in his own right, or the old master might surrender his title as Reigning Master to his successor and retain his active status until his successor took on a trainee of his own.

Rarely, if the retired Master lived long enough in his retirement and his protégé trained a successor of his own, there could in fact be three Masters living at one time, but the lineage remained distinct. There was no confusion over the transition of authority down the line.

The tradition had been violated in the naming of Remo Williams as the Reigning Master of Sinanju. He was a white man, where for five thousand years all other Masters were Sinanju Koreans.

Not that Remo had any say in the matter. He was drafted. There he was, happy as a clam, living his mundane life as a New Jersey beat cop. He spent his time arresting lowlifes, drinking beer with the boys and smoking his way to lung cancer. What more could you ask for? Then his life turned upside down. He was framed for murder. He was tried and convicted with unprecedented speed. He was sentenced to death in the New Jersey electric chair. He was fried and he died.

But the death didn’t take. Next thing he knew, he was being trained for government work.

The government work happened to be for the same people who arranged for his convenient death sentence, which made Remo disinclined to work for them, but it was either work for CURE or they’d kill him again. They’d do it right this time.

So Remo Williams went to work for CURE, a secret branch of the federal government that had a mandate to use any means, legal and illegal, to protect the stability of the U.S. He was trained to be CURE’S enforcement arm. He was trained to be an assassin.

One of Remo’s trainers was the old man from Korea. He was named Chiun, and he had been lured to the United States by a generous offer and by an old Sinanju prophecy.

Could Remo Williams be the white man of the prophecy, the one who would become a great Sinanju master?

Unlikely. Remo was a buffoon who ate cow flesh, drank distilled spirits and inhaled the fumes of burning tobacco. He was an adult where all previous masters began training as children. Still, Chiun began to train Remo.

And Remo learned. He absorbed Sinanju as if he was born to be Master. He and Chiun became inseparable, and Remo one day attained the rank of Master of Sinanju.

Years later, he succeeded Chiun himself as Reigning Master of Sinanju.

A white guy from Jersey—who’d have thunk it?

One benefit was that he had seen more of the world than other guys from Jersey, even the enlisted men. Remo had even been to the Basque region of France before.

By afternoon, he was in an infamous Pyrenees mountain town named Duero. Once it had been a safe haven and a tourists’ mecca, where the slightly adventuresome travel and art aficionados would come to experience the best of Basque’s artistic talents. Duero was an artists’ colony devoted to nonviolent separatist activities, with poetry cafés, small shops selling handmade crafts and tiny studios selling the most sensitive inspirational paintings.

The unofficial mayor of Duero was the man known as the Poet of Peace, Martin Copa. He held court at a small, smoky cafe, where he and the other poets would read their heartfelt pleas for freedom for his people. They called him the Martin Luther King of the Basque separatist movement. Like King, his gently confrontational style made him popular—and made it difficult for the government to rationalize any measures against him. His avowal of nonviolence made him politically untouchable in Spain or France.

Up until a week ago, his critics had called him weak, or effeminate, or worse. They didn’t call him that anymore.

The Poet of Peace was now known as the Basque Burner.

Martin Copa had transformed overnight, and it seemed as if half the town had transformed with him. One day they were reading free-form lyrics to the finger-snapping crowd, the next they were calling for armed violence. After a day-long demonstration in the streets of Duero, the mob was agitated and bloodthirsty—most of all Martin Copa.

He personally set fire to the mosque in Toulouse as his mob nailed the doors shut. TV cameras recorded every second of it.

A cleric and a band of Muslim men charged Copa’s mob. They begged for the doors to be opened. They offered themselves up to the mob in exchange for the lives of those inside the burning building. The mob kicked and pummeled the fathers while their wives and daughters burned up inside the mosque.

That was on Monday.

The manhunt was unprecedented in its scale, and yet Copa could not be found in the vast Pyrenees Mountains. On Tuesday, his mob struck a second time, setting fire to a government building and another mosque in a town on the River Garonne. The police guard on the mosque could only hold off the suicidal poets and painters for so long.

Wednesday saw France in a state of martial law in all regions west of Paris and Lyon. The Basque Burner remained at large, but thank God he had not struck again.

On Thursday night, the manhunt abated as the government called for negotiations with Copa and faced criticism for roughing up innocent Basques. Martial law remained in effect.

Duero’s tourist business had died down considerably. In fact, on Thursday, there was just one traveler—an American journalist, with an American attitude.

“I’m sure some of you people are legitimate freedom fighters, whatever that is,” Remo told the man behind the counter at the cafe. “But some of you are just murderers with a rationale.”

“And what are you to judge who is right and wrong, American?” asked a local who was hunched over a wooden table with a metal cup.

“I wouldn’t know right if it came and spit in my face,” Remo admitted. “But when something’s really and truly wrong, that I know. Terrorists who set fires and burn kids at church? That’s definitely wrong.”

“Some people do not see it that way,” the drinker said. “Some people think it is wrong for us to be forced to endure the tyranny of France and Spain.”

“Maybe that is wrong. I don’t know. But burning up the mayor of that little snotty hamlet on the river, just because he’s a part of the same country you have a problem with? Definitely wrong. Absolutely one hundred percent wrong—only stupid people think it’s not wrong.”

“If the message is heard, then it is right,” the drinker insisted.

“No, sorry, definitely wrong.”

“What of the foreigners. We do not want them here. We do not like foreigners.”

“That I don’t even understand. They weren’t in your town and why do you care if they’re in your country when you want out of the country? But, okay, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Foreigners are bad. Fine. Even so, killing families of foreigners at the mosque is definitely wrong. If you don’t think it is wrong, you’re a dope. An imbecile.”

The drunk muttered into his metal cup, and a silent figure at the bar spoke up. “You wouldn’t say that to Martin Copa if he were here.”

“Sure, I would. Who is Martin Copa?”

“He is the leader of the freedom fighters. He is the one called Basque Burner.”

“You mean the loser who torched those innocent people? I’d tell him to his face that he’s a loser and the stupidest piece of trash in these here hills.”

The tavern owner stepped in nervously. “American, you go home now. You drink too much.” He snatched Remo’s beer mug, only to find it was still full.

“You really want to meet Copa?” asked the quiet man at the bar.

“Yeah, sure, but I heard he’s a puss-boy who hides in the mountains. Only comes out to burn up little girls and old ladies.”

“Maybe I could put you in touch with him,” the man taunted.

Remo shrugged, attempting to look as if he was trying to look tough. “I’m game.”

That was how he ended up strolling alone on a dirt road in the foothills of the Pyrenees at dusk. If he were anyone else, he would have been walking to his death.

When the sun set behind the mountains, dark closed in quickly and Remo was in the cool stillness of night. The forests around him were still, and before long, he was miles away from anywhere.

Any other man would have been afraid for his life and rightly so. Remo wasn’t. What concerned him was his acting ability. Had he been convincing? Would he really make contact with the Basque Burner, Martin Copa? If his blind date stood him up, he might end up wandering the hills for days looking for Copa. France, even this part of France, wasn’t Remo’s favorite place.

“Thank goodness,” Remo said when someone shot at him.

It was a single round from a big rifle, and it was a shot intended to provoke, not kill. Remo didn’t even flinch.

“That’s just what I expected from Martin Copa and his band of pansy-asses,” Remo said, projecting his voice so that it carried into the hills. “If you don’t have the balls to show your face when you incinerate women and children, there’s no way you’d expose yourself to an unarmed American.”

More rifle shots echoed among the hills, and they pocked the crust of the earth around him. Only one was on target. Remo felt the approaching pressure waves of the bullet and dodged it by rotating his body just enough so that the round missed. Then he announced to the Pyrenees foothills that Martin Copa was a female cat.

“Does that mean the same thing here as in America?” Remo called.

He heard someone uphill reloading urgently, then begin firing again. Remo slipped aside of a few on- target rounds.

“Yawn. You’ve proved your point, Martin. You’re a coward. Everybody sees that now.”

Vehicles and men began coming down the hill and Remo’s spirits improved as gunmen closed in around him.

“Man, if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s pushing buttons. Which one of you is Copa?”

There was a flurry of conversation. Remo didn’t catch much of it.

“Who are you, American? Why did you come out here all alone?”

‘I’m traveling with my crippled grandmother, and I knew if I brought her with me then you all would be too afraid to show your faces.”

“What did you say?” the English-speaking man demanded threateningly.

“Hey, back off,” Remo said. “Pee-yew. You sure you people aren’t French? ’Cause you smell French.”

The English speaker swore and moved in close, delivering his rifle muzzle into Remo’s stomach. He was wearing only a beige T-shirt, and the rifle muzzle should have bruised his guts, maybe even done some internal damage.

“Oops. You slipped.” Remo was now holding the rifle by the muzzle in two fingers, as if it were a ripe fish. “Jeez, even your gun has BO.”

The English speaker snatched it back and rammed it at Remo’s gut again, only this time he threw all his weight into it. Somehow, the English speaker’s feet were flying out from under him. He landed flat on his face in the dirt.

“Oops. I can see you’re an amateur with firearms,” Remo said, offering the man a hand, which spurred laughter from the others.

The English speaker jumped to his feet in a red rage, raised his rifle and fired as his companions shouted for him to stop.

Too late. The rifle boomed—but it blew back into him, removing the flesh from his chest and throat down to the bone. The wounded man crawled around the dirt making horrible noises out of the hole where his esophagus had been, then died with a rattling breath.

“Now that’s funny!” Remo said. “Who am I?” He pretended to be crawling around on all fours, wheezing noisily. “Aw, come on, guys, you gotta admit, it’s funny. Stupid man go boom?”

The others were amazed, not amused. One of them inspected the exploded gun and quickly found the crimped end of the barrel. They looked at Remo suspiciously, then herded him up the road.

“Guess that wasn’t Marty Copa,” he commented.

Nobody answered him.

They reached a dark farmhouse after a two-mile walk. Even in the dim forested foothills, Remo easily made out the scorch marks around the windows. Remo read volumes in it. Martin Copa found an ideal base of operations and convinced the previous owners that living here was no longer a good idea.

They found an authority figure in the basement at the end of a rough-hewn wooden table.

“I hope you’re really Martin Copa,” Remo said, “’cause I’m fed up with all these French ticklers he sends out to do his dirty work.”

Remo was ignored. The man at the table conversed anxiously with Remo’s captors, and stood up to briefly inspect the mutilated corpse, which had been carried with them.

“Wait, let me tell it,” Remo said. “It went like this—you’re gonna love it.” He growled and acted out the foot-stomping rage of the rifleman and pantomimed triggering the gun, then stretched the skin of his face back and did the crawling around and wheezing act again.

“These guys didn’t laugh, either,” Remo said. “Boy, you all need to lighten up.”

The leader took his seat again and stared at Remo from the blackness, agitated but trying hard to remain threateningly still. Remo stared back. What the leader didn’t know was that Remo Williams could pierce the blackness and see his consternation.

“Who are you?” the leader demanded at last.

“No, who are you? I’m done talking to peons. I want that chickenshit Copa to show his face for once. Or is he too—?”

“I am Copa.”

“You’re lying. Know how I know? Because I’m a grown man and everybody knows—and I mean everybody knows—that Martin Copa wouldn’t face a grown man even if he did have fifteen armed bodyguards. Hell, he wouldn’t face a grammar-school bully with only fifteen men to protect him.”

The ranks of gunmen understood enough English to get Remo’s drift. They muttered angrily.

“I am Martin Copa. Who are you and why do you wish me to kill you?”

“If you’re Martin Copa you won’t kill me. You’ll have one of your stinky petes do it for you.”

“Are you a fool?”

“You don’t know how often I get that.” Remo, smiled. “You sure you’re Martin Copa? The Martin Copa? The guy who murders innocent children?”

“I am Martin Copa and I slay the fascists who exert their will over the Basque people!”

“Those kiddies in the day-care wing at the Arab church were really being tyrannical, huh? If you’re Copa the Coward, then where’s the rest of your rank ranks?”

“Are you truly with a newspaper in New York?” Copa asked.

“No,” Remo sighed, finally tiring of this humorless bunch. The least they could do was provide a little amusement before being decimated. The Sicilian don, for instance, had been good for a song and dance.

Well, now he had Copa and he could wrap up the job. “This has to be a good cross section of your Basque Bastards or whatever the hell you fools call yourselves. I guess this will have to do.”

“Do what?” Copa demanded, also coming to the end of his patience. “What are you here to do, American? Surely you have some purpose.”

“I’ll show you my purpose,” Remo said, and he began moving.

Gliding steps carried him across the room to nudge one of his gun-toting escorts. The man’s head flew back, into a bolt in the wooden support girder for the house above. The bolt was so long it emerged between the gunman’s eyes.

The others were too stunned to react. Remo used the silence to push two more heads together. The crack was tremendous and the result was a fusion of brain and bone that didn’t separate as the bodies collapsed together on the long wooden table.

Then came the shouting and the firing and the mayhem—and the whistling. Remo was giving them his rendition of “As Time Goes By” as he slaughtered them.

They should have been able to locate him from the whistling after a gunshot shattered the lightbulb. Remo slithered among them, leading some of the tracking gunners to shoot their companions. Remo’s senses warned him when any bullets were homing in on him and he sidestepped them.

Bullets might sometimes travel faster than the sound of their shot, but they always tended to compact the atmosphere ahead of them and around them. These pressure waves were so subtle as to be undetectable to the vast majority of human beings. Remo didn’t fall into the category of “vast majority.” His superior senses felt those waves, although if asked he couldn’t have described accurately what he was feeling. His agile instincts caused him to analyze and react to the pressure waves. His magnificent capabilities of movement were more than up to the task of dodging bullets.

But, just for variety, he slithered under the table and jabbed his stiffened hand into assorted kneecaps, not so much cracking the bones as liquefying the entire joint. Bone and cartilage, tendon and muscle ligaments were pulped, and bodies fell face first on the tabletop and then rolled to the floor screaming in pain. Remo got to his feet again to take care of the lucky few who had sensed somehow that being near the table was a dangerous thing.

Remo ran his one extralong fingernail around the neck of a gunner, who lost his head, literally. A few more died when Remo’s fingers inserted themselves into their heads via the temple and whisked their brain matter into a kind of puree. The fallen screaming ones were silenced with quick kicks.

The battle was over a minute after it began.

Martin Copa, the Basque Burner, was the one left alive. He was trying to see into the blackness and figure out why the noise had stopped.

“That was something, huh?” Remo said.

Martin Copa triggered his handgun.

“You know what’s so funny, Marty? Half your guys shot each other.”

Martin Copa tried to find Remo by the sound of his voice and blasted into the blackness until the magazine was empty.

“Missed,” Remo said, inches from the man’s shoulder. Copa spun and brought the handgun butt down hard, but never hit anything. The gun was lifted from his fingers, and when it was replaced in his hand he could feel the extended barrel was curling like a pig’s tail.

“Who are you?” Copa demanded.

“I read some of your poetry on the wall at the café in Duero. You were an awful poet.”

“It translates into English not well,” he retorted, for want of something better to say.

“As bad as it was, you should have stuck with it. You’re a way better poet than child-murdering thug.” The voice seemed to be coming from all points in the blackness. Copa was twisting and turning to find it. “Listen for a second. What do you hear?”

“I hear nothing,” Copa said, voice shaking.

“Exactly. It’s the sound of your future,” Remo said. “You’re going to join your friends now.”

“No! Wait!”

Remo didn’t wait.