"Destroyer - 025 - Sweet Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

It had been Chiun, the latest Master in centuries of masters from the small Korean village of Sinanju, who had changed Remo.

There had been ten years of prodding and probing, discipline, guidance, and technique and while Remo had long since stopped hating it all, he had never taken the time to determine if it was good.

He had climbed the mountain of his soul but forgotten to check whether he liked the view.

Remo stared at himself in the mirror. If he wanted right now, he could dilate or constrict the pupils of his eyes. He could raise the temperature of any part of his body six degrees. He could slow his heart beat to four a minute or speed it to 108 a minute, all without moving from this spot.

He wasn't even human anymore. He was just perfect.

Remo kicked open the bathroom door and walked quickly to the front door of the suite, past the frail-looking pile on the floor that was Chiun. Remo kicked open the front door too and since it was built to open inwards, most of the wood and plastic flew across the hall. The knob was later discovered by the manager, lodged in the soda machine three doors down.

A high squeaky voice stopped Remo halfway into the hall.

"You are troubled," Chiun said. "What is it?"

"I've just decided. I don't like being perfect."

Chiun laughed. "Perfect? Perfect? You? Heh, heh, heh. Do not waken me for any more jokes."

Remo gave Chiun's back a silent Bronx cheer, then went downstairs, through the red and brown tiled lobby of the hotel into the crisp April Boston morning.

Remo leaned against the outside front door of the hotel and started searching himself.

"Pardon me, sir," said a bellboy.

"Don't bother me," Remo said. "Can't you see I'm perfect?"

"But, sirЕ"

"One more word and you'll be blowing your nose from the back."

The bellboy left. Remo thought of the first time he had met Chiun. The old Oriental was shuffling toward him in a gymnasium at Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, the secret headquarters of the secret organization CURE. Chiun had at first looked like a skinny skeleton covered with yellow parchmentЕ

"Pardon me, sir," said the bell captain, who didn't particularly want anyone's pardon. He had been laying his bet on No Preservatives Added in the fifth at Suffolk Downs when the bellboy had made him aware of the man standing outside.

"Pardon me, sir," the bell captain repeated, "but what are you doing?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Remo asked.

The bell captain thought carefully. You never knew what might show up when you had a hotel this close to Huntington Avenue, Boston's answer to Dante's Eighth Circle.

"It looks, sir, like you're leaning against a building with just a towel on."

Remo looked down. The bell captain was right.

"So?"said Remo.

"Well." The bell captain paused. "It's our towel."