Dangerous Games td-40 Page 12

  "Too many police. So we'll do what we have to do. You plant your little gifts where we decided and I'll keep looking for the American. When you're done, we'll meet in the back of the big hall where they're holding the weight-lifting competition. Get on with you, now."

  The four men scurried off and Mullin turned to continue his search for Remo.

  So things were a little ahead of schedule, but so what. That was what made a good commander, Mullin knew, the ability to adapt plans to actual conditions. Plans were fine, but they could work to the letter only in a hermetically sealed world and he didn't live in one of those.

  He wondered where Remo might be. He had missed him at the running track. But he'd find him and kill him, and that would be that. He and his men

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  would be on their way back home, and if everything went the way it should, the Jimbobwu Mkombu revolution should get a big leg up on toppling the governments of Rhodesia and South Africa.

  And then Jack Mullin would topple Mkombu. Not too long now, h(r) thought. But first the American, Remo Black, and the old Oriental.

  The four bogus Baruban athletes were walking through the crowded village with their equipment bags of explosives.

  And then there were three.

  The African who had impersonated Sammy Wanenko, the Baruban boxer, felt a hand around the back of his neck. He wanted to call out to his companions to stop, but no sound would come. When the hand lightened its grip, he turned and saw standing before him a small, aged Oriental.

  "Where is your leader?" Chiun asked.

  "Who wants to know, old man?"

  Chiun explained who he was by slapping his right hand to the side of the African's cheek. Nothing he had felt that day in the ring while he was on his brief way to a first round knockout had felt like that. His face felt aflame; he could almost hear the skin bubbling and sputtering where the old man had slapped it.

  Then Chiun was in close to him, his left hand buried in the African's belly, and the African was babbling about Lieutenant Mullin, and what he looked like, and where he was going, and how his target was Remo Black, and how Ms three companions were on their way to set bombs in the American athletes' dormitories, and then the African died in a lump on the village pavement.

  Chiun walked away from the body. Should he go after the three Africans with the bombs? Or after Jack Mullin? He decided on Mullin. The athletes'

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  dormitories were empty now and would be for some time; there would be no danger for a while. But Mul-lin could be dangerous to Remo, particularly if Chiun's young disciple was still wandering around with his head in the clouds, mooning over that Indian woman.

  He saw Mullin outside the entrance to one of the gymnasium buildings and Chiun moved through the outskirts of the crowd, until he came to view in front of Mullin. He kept his back to the Englishman, so that the Englishman could think that he had found Chiun on his own.

  Mullin saw the brocaded robe on the tiny Oriental with his back to him.

  "Hey, old boy," he called.

  Chiun turned and stared at Mullin. His face was expressionless. Mullin slipped a knife from his pocket, held it to Chiun's belly, and said: "Move alongside the building." They were in an alley with large dump containers of garbage. Mullin herded Chiun along and the old man obeyed, still without expression. No wonder they called Orientals inscrutable, Mullin thought.

  When they were out of sight of the crowd, Mullin said, "Where's the American?"

  Chiun was silent.

  "C'mon, you blasted old chink, where is he?"

  Still no answer. Mullin sighed and slashed with his knife to take out the old man's throat.

  He missed.

  That was impossible.

  He slashed again.

  Again he missed.

  Bloody impossible. The old fool was standing right there. He hadn't even moved. How could he miss?

  Or had he moved?

  Mullin slashed at him again, but watched very closely. He caught just a faint whisper of a move-

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  ment, as if in a fraction of a second the old man had withdrawn from the path of the knife and then slid back to his original position.

  Mullin put the knife back into its pocket sheath and pulled his .45 out from under his bush jacket. Time to stop fooling around.

  "Okay, old man. One last time. Where is the American?"

  Silence.

  Mullin pulled the trigger. The shot exploded in the alley with a booming crack.

  And missed.

  "Damn it," Mullin snapped. How could he have missed? The old man couldn't duck a bullet. Could he?

  He fired another shot. The old man just stood there, unharmed.

  Mullin looked at his gun as if it were the gun's fault, then back at the old man.

  Inscrutable? No. Inhuman was more like it.

  Mullin felt a twinge of an emotion he was not used to: fear.

  He was not in control of himself as he backed away, slowly at first, then faster, until he was almost running, all the while hearing his mind berate him for running from a scrawny old man.

  But this was not a normal old man.

  Chiun smiled as he followed. He had succeeded in persuading Mullin to give up the search for Remo and to join the other terrorists. Now Chiun could round them up and hold them for Remo, who would want to ask questions and do many other silly things, but Chiun would forgive them all today because after all Remo was going to win him a gold medal.

  He hoped that Remo did not win his race by running at top speed. He wanted Remo to break the world's record bit by bit through the preliminaries

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  and then shatter it in the final race for the Olympic gold.

  Mullin ran at top speed. He was trying to think of some reasonable explanation for what had happened. He was also trying to regain control of his body, which was continuing to rush forward, even as his mind commanded it to slow down. This feeling, this panicky flight from a frail old Chinaman, was totally alien to Jack Mullin. Gradually, he got his body back under control, talking away the fear. Once I join up with my other jour men, he told himself, we'll take care of the Chink and the American.

  He checked his watch. The explosive charges should be set by now and his men should be waiting for him at the back of the main hall, where the weightlifting was being held.

  He was walking now and felt back in control . . . of everything but his neck.

  He could not quite get it to let his head turn around to take a look behind him.

  Remo pushed through the crowd in the village, hoping mostly that he could find Chiun and partially that he would never see him again so that he did not have to tell him about this afternoon's race which had eliminated Remo from Olympic competition.

  From the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of flashing blue disappearing into the main hall. He knew it was Chiun's brocaded blue robe.

  He followed.

  Alexi Vassilev put powder on the inside of his massive thighs as the Russian coach told him, "You are the greatest, Alexi. The greatest that ever was."

  Vassilev grunted. His grunt would be enough to knock some men over. He was six-foot-three and weighed 345 pounds, and for two successive Olym-

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  pics he had been the super heavyweight weightlifting champion of the world.

  But today he was worried. He was thirty-eight years old and the pulled muscles and the hyper-extended tendons and ligaments no longer healed as quickly as they once did, and also he felt on his neck the hot breath of a world of lifters who had come finally to realize that Vassilev was human and might, just might, be beaten.

  In the past he had disdained setting world's records. He owned every record in the world, but he never tried to lift for a record. He had always lifted only enough to win.

  But today, at thirty-eight and nervous, he was going to lift a record. He was going to set a mark that would intimidate generations of weight-lifters and would guarantee that even when his a
ging body gave out and he lost a competition, his government would not respond as they had with so many failed athletes in the past, by taking away their apartment and their car and shipping them off to live someplace where man could not live. They would continue to honor his record.

  There was a saying among the athletes on the Olympic Russian team, "Training is hard, but so is Siberian ice."

  His coach kept babbling. "You are the greatest, Alexi. The greatest." Vassilev nodded but he was not listening.

  His primary opponent today would be an American lifter who had won a television competition as "Mister Strongman," which title he earned by carrying a refrigerator up a hill. That this task was accomplished every day by dozens of moving men in the city of San Francisco seemed to have been lost on the judges.

  But despite Ms bogus credentials, the American was a good lifter, Vassilev realized.

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  "I must win," he mumbled aloud.

  "Of course you win," said his coach.

  "This will be my last Olympics," he said. "I crush that American today. I will show the glory of Soviet Socialist Republics."

  He looked at his coach carefully, making sure that the man had caught his words properly so he could report them back to the secret police which kept a close eye on an athlete's actions and words.

  "You will win for Mother Russia," his coach said.

  And for me, Vassilev thought.

  It was time.

  He walked out onto the platform to thunderous applause. His face was stolid, unmoving, and he characteristically ignored the audience, concentrating solely on the weight before him. It was loaded with 600 pounds and the crowd hummed with anticipation. Vassilev was going to try to jerk 600 pounds, for in excess of anything anyone had ever lifted before. It was the equivalent of a three-minute mile.

  Breathing deeply, rhythmically, Vassilev bent down and placed his hands on the cold bar, flexing his fingers around it for the right grip, finally grabbing it tightly. With one explosive gasp of air he brought the weight to his chest.

  He took a deep breath. He felt Ms hands sweating and he knew it was time to jerk the bar overhead before it slipped. He blew out the air, pushed the weight up over his head, but before he could lock his elbows to hold it in place, it slid from his damp hands and hit the wooden platform in front of him with a crashing thud.

  Vassilev cursed inwardly. He had failed on the first of three lifts.

  The relief that Mullin had felt when he spotted the mam hall had annoyed him. It was a disgrace, he thought, that a soldier who had been decorated in

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  Her Majesty's Air Force was running from an old man, trying to join up with four blackamoor toy soldiers, and feeling relief that he had almost reached them.

  He was ashamed of himself. It was all that Chinaman's fault.

  He stopped at the door to the hall and cursed out loud, wishing for a moment that something would will him to go back and take that Chinaman on alone, this time hand to hand, and cut him into bits. But no voice inside him said to do that and so he opened the door and walked inside the great hall, looking around in the back for his men. He did not see them.

  On the platform, he recognized the strongest man in the world, Alexi Vassilev. With his great potbelly, the center of gravity that was so valuable to weight-lifters, Vassilev had hoisted weights no other man was capable of, and yet, Mullin thought, I could defeat him hand to hand with no problem. And still ... a scrawny old Chinaman . . .

  He walked around the back of the hall, behind the crowd. Suddenly he heard the gasp and the sound of the weight hitting the platform. He looked up to see Vassilev with a look of pain on his face, after failing to hold the weight.

  That's okay, Alexi, he thought. We all have our bad days. You and I are the best but we're just having a bad day.

  He felt better suddenly. A bad. day, that's all it was. Maybe even just a bad moment.

  Sure.

  And with that thought, he was able to turn his neck and take a look behind him.

  What he saw made his blood go cold. That damned Chinaman. He was standing just inside the door, staring at Mullin with those cold hazel eyes.

  "Damn you," Mullin shouted, but nobody heard

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  because Vassilev was again approaching the weight. Mullin ran.

  Vassilev was going to try again. This was Ms last chance, his third attempt. His coach wanted him to rest before trying another lift, but he waved his handler away and simply walked around the weight and began to stare straight ahead, into space, over the heads of the audience.

  Get it over with, he told himself. Do it now. Win or lose now.

  His hands were sweating and for the first time in many years, he felt the pinch of nervousness in his stomach as he bent over and placed his hands around the cold textured steel of the bar.

  Mullin ran down the left side of the hall, toward the stage, and the back door leading outside. The crowd was dense and there was no way for Chiun to get through without hurting someone. He ran down the right side of the building. He saw Mullin slip through a back door to go outside.

  There was only one way to follow him: Across the weight-lifters' platform.

  Remo entered just as Chiun hopped up onto the platform. He watched as Chiun stopped before a thick television cable that crisscrossed back and forth, barring his path. Chiun grasped the cable in his two small hands and ripped the inch-thick strands cleanly in half.

  Sparks flew. TV technicians shouted. Chiun ignored them and started across the platform just as Alexi Vassilev hoisted the 600-pound barbell to his chest.

  Vassilev felt a rush of relief as he took a deep breath, exploded it outward, and hoisted the weight

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  overhead. He locked his elbows and held the weight.

  How foolish he had been to be nervous. Who but the great Vassilev could ever lift such a weight and hold it with such ease?

  The audience exploded with cheers, and Vassilev gave them a rare small smile, but he waited for the judges to signal that he had held the weight long enough for the lift to count. Then he saw the audience's eyes move off him. He looked toward his right, toward where all the people were looking, and saw a blue-robed Oriental running across the platform.

  Staggering under the weight, still awaiting the judges' signal, Vassilev stumbled two steps forward in the Oriental's path. How dare this little man detract from Alexi's great moment?

  He was standing right in the Oriental's way.

  "How dare you?" he bellowed in Russian.

  He could not believe what happened and the next day in the hospital he would not be able to explain.

  He heard the Oriental say in perfect Russian, "Out of my way, gross meat-eater," and then he was being lifted up-he and the great 600 pounds he held-they were being effortlessly lifted by this frail old Oriental, who tossed them both through the air toward the rear of the platform, and then continued to run off the stage, as the audience sat in shocked silence.

  Remo watched in amusement as Chiun hoisted the thousand pounds of Vassilev and steel and threw them out of his way as if they weighed no more than a child's slipper.

  The weight slipped from Vassilev's hands as he sailed through the air, so the two did not land together. Remo was hard put to figure out which of the two bounced higher, but Vassilev remained stationary and the weight hit and rolled.

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  Remo ran down the left side of the hall and met Chiun at the rear door.

  When Jack Mullin had run outside, he had found his men waiting for him. Only three, not four, and the fools as usual had misunderstood his instructions. He had told them to meet him in the back of the hall. They had interpreted that to mean they should meet him in back of the hall. He would skin them for that one day.

  They ran toward him as he came out into the bright sun. They were all armed with handguns.

  "The Oriental will be coming through that door in a moment," he explained. "Cut him down when he does. All the explosive
s are planted?"

  "Yes, Lieutenant."

  The four men aimed their automatics at the door. Mullin felt his palms sweaty and slick. Perspiration was also flowing down his forehead and dripping from his eyebrows.

  C'mon, Mullin mumbled toward the closed door. Get out here and get it over with.

  "They are probably outside waiting," Chiun told Remo.

  "So what?" Remo asked.

  "If they fire, the bullets might hit somebody in here. Smith would not like that," Chiun said.

  Remo thought of that for a moment, then nodded.

  "All right. Then up we go."

  He grabbed hold of a rope that led to a second-floor window and raced up it, like a trained monkey, climbing with just Ms hands, feeling behind him the speed of Chiun following him.

  "Where is he, Lieutenant?" one of Mullin's men asked.

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  "He's coming through that door," Mullin said. "There's no other way."

  "No?" said Remo from behind Mullin and as the Briton turned, Remo said, "Surprise. Surprise."

  When Mullin saw Chiun standing next to Remo, his control snapped.

  "Kill them. Kill them," he screamed.

  The four men leveled their automatics at Remo and Chiun, but before they could squeeze triggers, Remo and Chiun were among them and bullets could not be fired without risking hitting one of their own men. The four terrorists pulled their knives from their belts.

  Or three of them did. One had the knife in his hand and his hand on the way up, when his wrist collided with the side of Chiun's hand, flailing downward in the classical hand-ax position. The knife went clattering one way; the hand bounced off in another direction; and the terrorist, looking down at the bleeding stump of his wrist, fell backwards into a sitting position on the hard pavement.

  "How much did you win by?" Chiun called over his shoulder.

  "What?" Remo asked. He had moved inside one of the terrorist's knives, continued past him, then slammed back with his right elbow into the man's right kidney. Before the man could fall, Remo had the body under the armpits.

  Chiun said, "You heard my question. How much did you win by?"

  Remo lifted the body and swung it out at a third terrorist who slid back out of range.

  "Actually, Chiun, I didn't win," Remo said, moving forward on the third terrorist.