Remo The Adventure Begins by Warren Murphy

hungry. I believe I am Patrolman Sam Makin. I believe I am Remo Williams. I believe. I believe.”
    “That is not belief, that is anger.”
    “You should be happy with anger. You’re a killer.”
    Chiun clutched a delicate hand to his bosom.
    “This is the second thing you must learn, almost as important as knowing the difference between Koreans and lesser peoples of the naturally colored race.
    “I do not train you to kill. A truck kills. Meat of cows kills. A professional assassin promotes harmony and brings about a more peaceful humor to the entire community.”
    “You make it sound like a public service.”
    “A professional assassin is the highest public servant,” said Chiun, who went on to tell him about the horrors of the last half-century, when governments spurned assassins for amateurs of their own kind.
    “Yes, it is true,” said Chiun. “Every government seems to have these crude imitations in great number, and what is the result? Mass murder. Killing. They are the killers. When the world returns to the proper assassins you will see grace and harmony.”
    “I’d like to see breakfast,” said Remo. Patrolman Sam Makin used to love breakfast. Sam Makin used to fry brown sausage, and cut onions and butter into steaming rich potatoes. Sam Makin used to spread sweet red jams on crisp rolls.
    Even the nuns at the orphanage had allowed Sam Makin to have as many rolls and as much jam as he liked, as well as a hot cereal during the winter that Sam Makin used to call warm cement.
    Remo Williams would have given cartilage for that cereal now.
    Chiun said Remo did not understand starvation. Starvation was when the body did not get what it needed. Remo did not need food. He needed to memorize the names of the first hundred Masters of Sinanju. He needed to learn how Sinanju came about, how selfless the Masters were. How the world was.
    “What do I care how castles are fortified?” asked Remo. “I am never going to crawl into a king’s bedroom.”
    “You think everything you see is new just because you see it for the first time. But everything has been here before. It has just had different names. And they too, in times so far ago no word remains today, thought they were new. But even then, they were not new.”
    Finally, after weeks and weeks of breathing and moving, and learning about more dead Koreans than Remo thought ever existed, Chiun said Remo was ready to go outside. But he had better leave Sam Makin in the past or he might not survive the day.
    Before dawn, Chiun had Remo walk outside with him. Now Chiun wore the dark kimono, which he explained was copied by the Ninja assassins of Japan.
    “A nation notorious for cheap imitations,” said Chiun. They walked several blocks with Chiun peering into the night sky, looking for something above them. They entered a building with an elevator. Chiun pointed to the elevator doors.
    “I like these. I rode in one yesterday,” said Chiun. “They’re called elevators.”
    “I know,” said Remo. “I was raised in this country.”
    “Shut your eyes,” said Chiun.
    Remo did so. They entered the elevator, and Remo called off the floors with his eyes shut, right up to forty, where the elevator stopped. Still with his eyes shut he followed Chiun up a flight of stairs.
    “You are now going to learn that one does not jump with his eyes,” said Chiun. “You are going to jump from one place to another with your eyes shut. You will sense me, sense where I land and then you will land there.”
    “Okay,” said Remo. He was smiling. It was fun. It could be fun. Without looking he knew where Chiun was. If he were to be asked in feet and inches he would say Chiun was eight feet, seven inches in front of him. He knew it. And he didn’t question it. All of this came from the knowing that was in the air in his lungs with his breath. He had captured the rhythms of the universe, and had joined them.
    The floor beneath him was somewhat soft to the footstep. He heard