After he had been recruited from the electric chair, Remo had been put in the hands of Chiun, an aged Korean, for training in the assassin's art. But not even Dr. Harold W. Smith of Folcroft could have anticipated the changes that the training would make. No computer could have projected what the human body could do, not even if they had fed in data calculated on the per gram strength of an ant times the balance of a cat

They had selected one man and his body to be a tool to serve a cause, and ten years later he found himself using the cause to serve the tool.

Remo felt the mountains and knew this. He was who he was, and he realized now he had always known this. It was the mountain that Chiun had told him he must find, the mountain of his own identity.

Over the decade the Master of Sinanju had shown through training, through pain, through fear, through despair, just what Remo could be, and now that he understood it, he knew that what he could be, of course, was just what he had always been.

Done. Then he knew. So this was it. As Chiun had said, the truth is a common thing. Only fairy tales glitter like rubies in a crystal universe.

"Hey, gringo. What you looking at, eh, gringo?"

The voice came from behind a parked car. There were eight of them, none taller than Remo. Cigarette butts gleamed in the black, moonless night. Down the street a traffic light became green and nothing moved.

"Hey, gringo, I talking to you. You Chicano or gringo?"

"I was thinking and you interrupted me."

"Hey, Chico, he thinking. The gringo is thinking. Everybody shut up, the big gringo, he thinking. What you thinking, gringo?"

"I'm thinking how lucky I am to be upwind from you."