Remo The Adventure Begins by Warren Murphy Read Free Book Online

celebrating.”
    “That’s a little premature, isn’t it?” asked Smith.
    “I am celebrating the fact that Remo said yes and Chiun said yes.”
    “I still have my doubts. I don’t believe in the effectiveness of karate. A bullet travels much faster. And electronic devices travel a lot faster than that.”
    “But we can’t leave anything that would be traced. We need a hand killer.”
    “Yes,” said Smith. “That’s why I agreed. Agreed to everything.”
    “Don’t be so glum,” said McCleary. “The old man can dodge bullets.”
    “I’d have to see it to believe it.”
    “You’ll believe,” said McCleary. “Those assassins live in legends of the east for centuries, thousands of years. There are even references to them in western courts.. Did you know they stopped Alexander the Great because he killed a client of theirs, Darius, the Persian emperor?”
    “That’s history,” said Smith, returning to the computer.
    “History,” said McCleary, “is made up of lots of todays that just aren’t here anymore.”
    “Go back to your beer,” said Smith. “We’re committed, but not happily.”
    “But then again, you’re never happy,” said McCleary.
    But Smith was not listening to him. Something very strange was happening in an especially sensitive part of America’s defenses. The organization’s computers were sounding an alarm. They were having difficulty accessing areas they were normally supposed to monitor. It was as though entire crucial areas of America’s defense system were off limits to American scrutiny. At first, Smith thought this had to be some form of computer error.
    “First, show me how you do that thing with the bullets. You know, the dodging,” said Remo.
    He sat on a bare wood floor in a well-lit room stripped of anything but bamboo mats spread along the two farthest walls. Those were for sleeping, Remo was told. Next door was another room, with fourteen steamer trunks that seemed to have enough colored kimonos to furnish a decade of oriental fashion shows. Chiun seemed to have one appropriate for each moment of the day and for each purpose of each moment.
    “That is not first,” said Chiun.
    “Was it hypnotism?” said Remo.
    “Are you going to learn or are you going to talk?”
    “The best way to learn is to ask questions,” said Remo.
    The room was cold. But Chiun did not seem to mind cold. Nor did he react to the heat when the big iron radiators steamed up.
    “And how do you know the best way to learn?”
    “Well, we were taught that.”
    “Which is why you know nothing. The best way to learn is to listen to him who knows. I know. You do not know. Listen.”
    “What if I don’t understand something?”
    “Of course you don’t understand, that is why you are learning. You will learn better if I talk and you do not, because I know and you do not know.”
    Remo shrugged. His legs hurt, being tucked under one another as he sat in what Chiun had called the sitting-alert position, best for learning.
    “The first thing you must realize is that a gun is not the best weapon.”
    “Right. Your hands,” said Remo.
    “Your hands are not your greatest weapon, nor are your legs, or even, as you will learn, your breathing. The greatest weapon on this earth is your mind. The cheetah is faster. The gorilla stronger. And of course a bird can fly. But man rules because he has his mind.”
    Chiun paused. “Of the ten places of the mind, man uses less than one. This was discovered by the Great Master Go, the Elder, in your year of 1200 B.C. , dating from the emergence of your God.”
    “I’m not religious,” said Remo. “But you know I once read that modern scientists have discovered that we use only eight percent of our minds. Did you know that?”
    Chiun folded his gray morning kimono around his long fingers and sat down in the learning position. He was quiet.
    “I just wanted you to know that,” said Remo after a while. “I thought you might find it