The Destroyer - 69 - The Destroyer 069 - Blood Ties by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir [Murphy, Warren & Sapir, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Pulp Action
Publisher: PINNACLE BOOKS
Published: 2010-03-19T14:51:16+00:00

Chapter 11

The Mas­ter of Sinan­ju was not hun­gry. The Mas­ter of Sinan­ju would not be hun­gry for the fore­see­able fu­ture, at least so long as his un­grate­ful wretch of a pupil con­tin­ued to in­trude up­on his pri­va­cy.

“Well, I’m hun­gry and I in­tend to make some rice.”

“Good,” said the Mas­ter of Sinan­ju. “Make it in Mas­sachusetts,” he added, re­peat­ing a slo­gan he had once heard on tele­vi­sion.

Re­mo bit back an an­swer and went in­to the small kitch­enette of the ho­tel suite. On the counter, on a room-​ser­vice tray, were six pack­ages of whole-​grain brown rice, and as a con­ces­sion to va­ri­ety; one pack­age of white rice, which ac­cord­ing to Chi­un had less nu­tri­ent val­ue and an in­fe­ri­or taste. Not to men­tion be­ing im­prop­er­ly col­ored.

Re­mo opened the pack­age of white rice. “Yum, yum. White rice. My fa­vorite.”

He glanced in­to the liv­ing room and saw a dis­gust­ed ex­pres­sion wrin­kle Chi­un’s parch­ment fea­tures. But the old man did not move from his lo­tus po­si­tion in the cen­ter of the floor.

“I haven’t had white rice in so long, just the thought of a steam­ing bowl makes my mouth wa­ter.”

Chi­un sniffed dis­dain­ful­ly.

Re­mo put on a pot of wa­ter and mea­sured out a half-​cup of rice grains. While he wait­ed for the wa­ter to boil, he made pleas­ant con­ver­sa­tion al­though he was not in a pleas­ant mood. Still, af­ter a half-​day of ar­gu­ment and plead­ing had failed to move Chi­un, he had de­cid­ed on this ap­proach.

“Sure wish we had this rice in the desert, when my plane crashed. Do you know, Chi­un? I was the lead­er of all the sur­vivors. Sur­round­ed by sand. And I found my­self en­joy­ing it.”

“You would,” Chi­un said. “I will have Smith buy you a sand­box for Christ­mas.”

“I en­joyed be­ing ap­pre­ci­at­ed. There we were sur­round­ed by sand and these peo­ple I had nev­er met be­fore looked up to me. “

“So did the sand prob­ably,” said Chi­un.

The first bub­bles of wa­ter sur­faced in the pot and Re­mo looked for a wood­en spoon but had to set­tle for a plas­tic one.

“I think I may have helped save some lives,” Re­mo said. “That was the part that stays with me. I guess I can un­der­stand how im­por­tant you think it is to feed the vil­lagers of Sinan­ju.”

The rice swirled in the boil­ing wa­ter.

The Mas­ter of Sinan­ju opened his mouth to speak, a soft­er light in his hazel eyes, but he caught him­self be­fore the breath be­came a kind word and re­sumed star­ing in­to in­fin­ity.

Re­mo saw the mo­men­tary soft­en­ing and went on, as he put a lid on the pot: “I used to think those peo­ple in Sinan­ju were lazy un­grate­ful bas­tards. Ev­ery one of them. Liv­ing off the blood mon­ey of the Mas­ter. But I’ve changed now.”

Chi­un brushed a long-​nailed fin­ger against an eye. Was he brush­ing away a tear? Re­mo won­dered.

“I can un­der­stand now how it is a Mas­ter’s obli­ga­tion to feed the vil­lage.”

He wait­ed five min­utes then opened the pot. The rice was soft and fluffy.

“Maybe some­day, I’ll be the one to feed the peo­ple of Sinan­ju,” Re­mo said, putting the rice in­to two iden­ti­cal bowls.

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