No American in history had ever learned to kill the way Remo could kill. For Remo's extraordinary instruction, Smith had turned to the East, to a small village in North Korea, which had been producing assassins for hire since before the writing of history. In the village of Sinanju, one man existed who knew the secrets of the sun source of the martial arts— an eighty-year-old man who could create a killing machine from a dead man. His name was Chiun, Master of Sinanju, whose job it was to see to it that Remo was never normal again.

Through the years, Remo's body had changed, his digestive system simplified, his nervous system rendered more sensitive and complex than other humans'. But his mind had changed, too, adapted to the ways of his ancient master, so that Remo now was less a tool of the government than he was heir to the ancient House of Sinanju.

And so instead of killing people for the U.S. government, Remo was standing in the middle of the desert squeezing rocks for Chiun.

"Again," the old man said with exaggerated patience, the white wisps of hair on his head and chin sparkling in the spectacularly bright sunlight.

"There's no water in these rocks, Little Father," Remo groused. "From the looks of this place, there hasn't been water here since the dinosaurs. Where are we, anyway?"

They had come to this place via the northern route, meaning by way of the North Pole. Every six months Chiun led Remo on a training expedition into extremes of climate, where he would observe his protégé as Remo performed tasks so difficult that they were likely never to arise in the line of duty. He grilled Remo in mountain running, tree splitting, swimming beneath twenty-foot arctic ice floes, and now, for reasons obscure to Remo, he felt it necessary to watch his pupil extract water from a rock.

"It is unimportant where we are. The terrain is acceptable. That is all that matters. Again, Remo." He tossed Remo another rock.