In case you’re unfamiliar with the background of the Destroyer universe, here’s a precis:
In 1962, President Kennedy, sensing unprecedented challenges in his New Frontier, commissioned a secret organization known as CURE. Its job was to work outside the Constitution in order to defend it — to avoid the twin evils of anarchy and totalitarianism. To that end, he recruited two men: computer genius and brilliant intelligence analyst Dr. Harold Smith, and ex-soldier/enforcer Conn MacCleary. As time passed, Smith realized that he’d need a nearly unstoppable assassin to help him fight America’s enemies; in order to build one, he bought the services of an ancient martial arts master named Chiun.
Chiun, an irascible and intolerant master killer from the tiny North Korean coastal village of Sinanju, was the latest of a long line of deadly assassins. In the mists of time lost, the people of Sinanju, reduced to poverty and desperation, hired themselves out as killers, utilizing a mysterious martial art they named for themselves — a martial art so invincible, all others were but weak shadows of it; a martial art so sophisticated that its users seemed possessed of supernatural power. The seemingly amoral Chiun didn’t care who hired him, as long as they paid him in gold and showed the proper deference to his greatness; but he likewise had no loyalty to America. That’s where Remo Williams came in.
Dr. Smith needed the perfect, untraceable assassin, and who better than a dead man? In order to get one, Smith & MacCleary arranged for the frame-up of a New Jersey cop for a murder he didn’t commit. He was sent to the electric chair, but he only seemed to die; the policeman, who had no friends or family, emerged from a false death and was assigned as Chiun’s student. MacCleary didn’t live past their first mission, but the newly dubbed Remo Williams proved extraordinarily adept at the martial art of Sinanju, and, with the aid of Chiun, who began to think of him as his adopted son despite his unfortunate lack of Korean ancestry, he became CURE’s unstoppable super-assassin. Remo didn’t exactly have the most patriotic attitude towards his homeland — if anything, he proved to be even more cynical than his Korean master — but he always fought against any threat to its safety.
And there were always threats…