Last Rites

Remo tells Chiun that he is quitting CURE and is tired of killing. Chiun instead begins the Rite of Attainment, sending him through a globe-spanning set of trials tied to the labors of Hercules and dreams of past Masters. Remo runs with the bulls at Pamplona, cleans a fouled island with sponges, survives an Arctic ordeal inside a polar bear, encounters Lu and Kim among the dream visitors, and later wins a sumo contest with a feint. The narrative alternates these trials with Harold Smith’s investigation and a Stomique rebellion. Remo saves Anin’s daughters Eurydice and Omphale from the victorious revolutionaries’ planned cannibalistic feast; Chiun kills their colonel and compels arrangements for a gold shipment and departure.

A sea encounter with the legendary Sa Mangsang is framed through Chiun’s account and Remo’s dreamlike experience; Remo wakes wet and marked, so the text leaves its status unsettled. Sister Mary Margaret Morrow recognizes Remo by voice and recalls an unnamed tall, lean man who left him at St. Theresa’s; she dies after their visit. Remo’s search later brings him to Sunny Joe Roam, who is gravely ill. Chiun administers viper wine and prepares the disputed dragon-bone fragment; Remo gathers mice from the reservation. Two days later Roam has recuperated and credits the pair with saving him. Chiun identifies Roam as Remo’s father and as a descendant of Kojong, whom Roam calls Ko Jong Oh.

Roam’s own account confirms that he had a son, left the infant at an orphanage after his wife died within a week of childbirth, and derived the child’s name from his own stage name, William S. Rome. Remo recognizes a desert grave marker bearing Dawn Starr Roam’s name as his mother’s. Remo completes the Sun On Jo crossing and is invested as the next Sunny Joe. In the final chapter, Chiun calls Roam Remo’s father, says Smith would demand that Chiun kill Roam to conceal Remo’s survival, and bows to Remo as future Reigning Master of Sinanju after their final test; Remo is not shown taking that office.