An Old Fashioned War td-68 Page 13

  "What we have here, Remo, and I have analyzed this thoroughly, is a person or system or something that cannot be stopped. The evidence so far indicates he has stopped of his own free will, not because you did anything."

  "Physically, I can't stop him yet. The answer may be in the Sinanju scrolls."

  "I'm not sure what answer you'll find. Are you aware of what truly worries your president and me?" Remo turned away from the baker's wife and faced out into the street. It was noon and the sun baked the cold slate waters of the West Korea Bay. Gulls dipped and winged, and landed on rocks and fishing boats, cawing insolently to the muddy little village.

  "There seems to be no rational motive behind what he is doing. It's like a rocket going every which way. The man has no purpose anyone can divine. First he helps the Indians in a war, then he turns the Idrans into soldiers attacking a U.S. aircraft carrier. Then he takes random units of the Irish Republican Army and turns them into one of the flnest fighting units ever to wage war in Europe. Then he leaves, and everything he has built falls apart and he starts again. What is this person or thing up to?"

  "He seems to have an old feud with the House of Sinanju. At least Chinn recognized him."

  "All right. You know Sinanju, Remo. How many feuds has Sinanju had?"

  "We don't. That's just it. Nowhere in the scrolls does it say we have a feud anywhere. But look, don't worry."

  "Why not?"

  "Chiun told me he'll show me how to deal with him."

  "I hope he's right, Remo. This morning someone kidnapped the pope. The Italian police, who cannot enter the Vatican, report that for the first time in centuries the Swiss Guards are ready to fight a war."

  "Good. Sounds like Mr. Arieson. Now we'll let Chiun show me how to handle this."

  For Rome, Chiun packed a black kimono with silver embroidery, a gift from the finest Italian family to the House of Sinanju several centuries before.

  There was a florid parchment in the folds which read:

  "To a house we have learned to appreciate-your good and faithful friends the Borgias."

  "We haven't used this kimono since we worked in Italy," said Chiun on the small hovercraft taking them to the waiting aircraft carrier where they would pick up their military flight to Rome. "A good family, the Borgias. Except they suffered from a do-it-yourself complex. They couldn't leave well enough alone. Lucretia Borgia used poison, and because she thought that the goodness of an assassination lay only in killing someone, the whole family ended up with a bad reputation in history. How many times have we seen a successful ruling family fall because they can't leave well enough alone? So many think they can do it themselves just because we make it look easy."

  "What are you going to do with Arieson?" asked Remo.

  "You'll see," said Chiun.

  "I'd feel a lot better if I knew."

  "I'd feel a lot better if you knew, too. But you don't, do you?"

  Before they went to the Vatican, Chiun insisted on walking the streets of Rome. Some of the ancient marblework had been preserved, the old Forum looking like a partial skeleton of marble, withered in the adjacent modern street. They passed the old home of the Vestal Virgins, pagan priestesses, on whose example modern convent life in the Catholic Church was modeled. And then, of course, the bitter little remnants of the old temples to the old gods that were no more.

  Before Christianity there were only these gods in what was called the civilized world. For every attribute-love, drinking, war, the sea-there was a special god. From Venus to Neptune these gods ruled the daily lives of the people and received their offerings.

  But with the advent of Christianity, with the promise of eternal life, with a god who had died for his people, an unseen God from the Hebrews, the great temples became empty, and the last priests lived alone without followers, without offerings, tending the statues of their cults.

  And when the priests were gone, when the coffers built up over hundreds and hundreds of years were finally empty, either Christians set up their churches in these pagan temples, or as Remo saw now, the buildings just decayed. Standing before the site of the Great Temple of jupiter, where once thousands would crowd in for feasts, Remo saw just a worn simple marble slab in the dirt of Rome with a bronze inscription saying there had been a huge temple here.

  "They were good cults," said Chiun. "You knew where they stood. It was clean. You gave a god something, he gave you something back. None of this suffering for love, and an affliction as some kind of reward. We never thought Christianity would catch on, but see, here we are, and it has."

  "I was raised by nuns in an orphanage. I'm going to feel funny in the Vatican."

  "Don't. Remember, the Borgias were once popes and we have worked there. Ah, Rome, who would have thought you would last so long," said Chiun, waving a hand at the city on the Tiber which had once ruled the world, and now was only bad traffic and picturesque marble remnants. And of course, the Vatican, the great Vatican, where once a fighting arena had stood.

  Outside the large columns, Italian police and soldiers had sealed off the entire state-within-a-state. From St. Peter's, little groups of men could be seen hacking away at each other. Some wore striped pantaloons and velvet hats. They were the Swiss Guards, who protected the post. Once they had actually fought other little armies, but now they were only ceremonial.

  Until, as Remo found out, the morning when they threw over their papal banners, shouted to hell with peace, and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a group of Turks brought in by a strange man with a muscled neck whose eves seemed to glow.

  This they learned from the carabinieri, who warned Remo and Chiun not to enter.

  "It's terrible, terrible what's happening in that holy site," said the carabinieri. "But we cannot enter."

  "Why not?" asked Remo.

  "The Vatican is another state. Someone has to invite us in. We have not been invited. And no one will do anything in there until the pope is free."

  "Is he a prisoner?"

  "We think so," said the carabinieri.

  A head went rolling along St. Peter's courtyard, lopped off by a Turkish scimitar.

  "Horrible," said Chiun.

  The carabinieri covered his eyes. "Horrible," he agreed.

  "Yes, amateurs making a mess of things. Well, that's to be expected with what's let loose. Come, Remo. This is not the way to enter the Vatican. You can just tell Mr. Arieson is inside. Look at that enthusiasm for a bad stroke."

  The way to enter the Vatican was the way Augustus Caesar would enter the arena. "Through tunnels, protected from his citizens in case they rioted. These tunnels later became part of the catacombs of Rome.

  The catacomb Remo and Chiun wanted was underneath a restaurant. Chum calculated where the entrance used to be according to his old lessons, to which, he stressed, he devoted himself as a child, unlike Remo, and sent a fingernail into old plaster. Vibrating it within the rhythms of the molecules, he collapsed the entire wall, to the despairing shouts of the restaurant owner, who had stored olives and garlic and fresh tomatoes down there in the basement. They were all ruined now.

  "We're in service of the pope," said Chiun. "Send your bill to the Vatican."

  Before them rising out of the rubble was a high entrance, larger than most modern doors. On either side of this entrance were frescoes of gods and goddesses making love, playing, and dancing. Remo noticed the clothes on the gods were quite skimpy. Chiun led the way, explaining the tale of the artist who painted these frescoes. In the palace of Augustus Caesar nearby, people were being killed. Everyone thought it was Augustus' wife, Livia, again with that great Italian attraction to poison. Actually, it was a minor assassin employing the artist as a conduit to the cooks.

  The assassin knew the artist could buy his freedom, and was in love with another slave whose freedom he wished to buy also. So he used the artist for access to the palace. The House of Sinanju came along in the employ of Augustus, discovered the plot, eliminated the competition with ease, and brought t
he artist before Augustus.

  Augustus, a wise ruler, understood the artist was only a slave, expected to be weak, and let him live. But the cook, a free man, he had crucified because more was expected of a free man than a slave.

  "It is a beautiful little story," said Chiun.

  "What's beautiful about a crucifixion?" asked Remo. The tunnels had a strange glaze from the underearth about them. It made Remo's skin crawl.

  Remo saw an old-style fresco with fine color tones but crude lines. It reminded him of one room of the treasures of Sinanju. He had seen that room on his first visit to Sinanju. There were statues and jewels and gold, and then Remo remembered, it was the room that had the indentation in the mahogany floor. He tried to remember what had made that indentation. But he couldn't. When one has taken on four thousand years of accumulated treasure in one afternoon, everything tends to blur. Besides, never having received tribute, he didn't care about it too much.

  They walked three miles under the Vatican and then Chiun turned into a doorway with stone steps leading steeply upward. Above them they could hear laughter, and screams and cries and the clashing of swords.

  "Disgraceful," said Chiun. "But you have to expect this now."

  They pushed through a wood-and-steel door at the top of the steps opening into a vast room where tapestries hung from the walls. Ornate furniture was placed a few feet from the walls and nothing stood in the center of the room where the inlaid pink and gold marble floor was covered now by the slime of blood.

  Swiss Guards swung their halberds in wide, deadly arcs against a group of Turks fighting with scimitars. Sometimes a big-bladed halberd would strike clean and a head would go rolling, or an arm would be neatly severed. More often than not it missed, striking only a glancing blow, spilling more blood. The scimitar, less useful for arm-length fighting than the long-poled halberd, was very effective at close range. It could disembowel the guards right through their velvet blouses.

  In the middle of this butchery Mr. Arieson sat, a big smile on his face, rubbing his hands.

  "I love it. I love it," he said. And seeing Remo and Chiun, added: "Welcome to the selfish bastards of Sinanju. See what you'd like to deprive your fellowman of? I hate you bastards, always have."

  "Okay, deal with him," said Remo.

  "Not now. We've got to save the pope," said Chiun.

  "Since when are you a Catholic?"

  "We have a sacred and binding obligation to the chair of St. Peter," said Chiun. "We have promised the Borgias."

  "Good folks, the Borgias," said Mr. Arieson.

  "Sometimes," said Chiun. "And never when you liked them," and pointing to Arieson Chiun told Remo: "That is a killer. Now you know the difference between a killer and a true assassin."

  Remo wanted to take one last try at Arieson's stomach, just on the chance that a blow would work this time, but Chiun pulled him along.

  "Is he from some other house of assassins, Little Father?"

  "Him? From another house? He has no respect for assassins."

  "Could you just tell me who he is, instead of beating around the bush?"

  "No. You don't deserve to know."

  "Well, I don't care who he is. Just show me how to deal with him when this is done."

  His Holiness was being held by a group of dark young men wearing fezzes with bright crescents on them. They called themselves the new Janissaries of Turkey.

  There were twenty of them around the pope, parading their new power. His Holiness sat quietly in dignity made more awesome by the fact of the noise and threats from the Turks.

  "We are the new Janissaries, and we are here to revenge the insult to our glorious fighters from battles past. We are here to revenge Mehmet Ali Agha, who stood his hand for us and our glory. In other words, pontiff, we will not miss this time."

  The words were spoken by the leader of the group as Remo and Chiun entered the small audience room where the pope now sat chained to a little dark wooden throne.

  "We never had much use for the old Janissaries," said Chiun. "Your Holiness, we are here. Glory to the Borgias, glory to their papacy, the House of Sinanju is here to honor its pledge."

  The pope, who had suffered through the nightmare of seeing his own normally docile Swiss Guards become raving maniacs, delighted at the prospect of battle with the attacking Turks, now saw an aged Oriental in a black kimono with silver embroidery and a thin white man in black T-shirt and gray trousers begin playing with the Turks.

  It was like a formal dance. A Turk would swing a scimitar and follow it into a wall, yet the elderly Oriental hardly moved. The white would skewer three men on their own swords and neatly lay them in a corner.

  It did not look like a battle so much as two chambermaids cleaning up a room, picking up bodies, laying them down. The younger one seemed to do more of the stacking, complaining in English that he was always the one who had to do this chore. The older one seemed to make flourishes of his kimono for the pope's pleasure.

  Finally the older one severed the steel chain on the pope's wrist as though it were tissue paper and bowed low. The younger one looked shocked at this.

  In a great and courtly bow, Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, kissed the pope's ring.

  Remo, the Catholic orphan from Newark raised by nuns, stood with his mouth open.

  "Your Holiness, we are here," said Chiun. His wisps of hair touched the floor as he reached the nadir of his bow, and then, using his kimono like wings, flourished it gloriously and stood up.

  "Who are you?" asked His Holiness in English.

  "A fulfiller of the wisest arrangement ever made by the throne of St. Peter."

  "Would you tell me the arrangement? This has been a most trying day." The white still stood with his mouth open, looking at the pope's ring.

  To Remo, an ex-Catholic who had never heard a Christian word from Chiun, this ornate sign of perfect obedience seemed to him as strange as a talking flounder. He couldn't believe it. But he had seen it. It was better than in St. Monica's back in Newark. The nuns could not have improved one whit on the way Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, had greeted His Holiness. It wasn't that Chiun even kissed the ring. It was the hearty way he went at it. Remo would have thought Chiun had just entered the priesthood.

  "Your Holiness, the accords between the Vatican and the House of Sinanju were established during the magnificent pontificate of the Borgia popes."

  The pope tilted his strong and kindly face.

  "Sir," he said. "One of the proofs of the divine inspiration of the Catholic Church is that we survived the likes of the Borgia popes. We survived and triumphed over that decadence and murder. We have been reaffirmed by His hand against our sins."

  "We have only fond memories of the Borgia popes."

  "I do not understand who you are."

  "We are the House of Sinanju, assassins to the finest of the world."

  The pope shook his head. "I want no accords with assassins," he said, and asked the date the supposed document had been drawn. Once given the date, he sent for an aide, and the aide sent for another aide, and that aide sent for a nun who found the parchment, sealed with the three-tiered crown of St. Peter.

  The pontiff read the document with wide eyes. The Borgias, that disgrace to the Catholic Church, had purchased the services of these Oriental assassins in perpetuity; for a set fee the House of Sinanju agreed never to serve an enemy of the pope.

  "No," said His Holiness. "We will not have this. You are free of your pledge."

  "Your Holiness, we have adopted some most Christian customs in honor of your saintliness. Like marriage," said Chiun. "We Masters do not believe in divorce. Marriage is a bond not to be broken. Remo, my son, raised a Catholic, seems not to understand this."

  The pope looked at his attackers, now stacked against the wall. In truth, these two had saved him. He asked the white man what should be so complicated about the marriage vow.

  "Fulfilling it," said Remo. He did not bow down to kiss the ring, any more than he wou
ld talk in flowery nonsense to Harold W. Smith.

  "One owes certain duties to one's spouse."

  "I know. But I didn't want to marry her in the first place. Not really. I only did it to get my father, Chiun, to help me figure something out, something that had to do with that maniac Arieson."

  "Then you did not enter this union of your own free will, my son?"

  "No, Holy Father," said Remo.

  "And Sinanju's customs regarding marriage are the same as those of the Holy Roman Catholic Church?"

  "They are, Holy Father," said Remo.

  "Then the marriage never took place. Only when someone enters a marriage freely and then consummates it is it a true marriage."

  "I certainly haven't consummated that thing," said Remo.

  "Then your marriage definitely does not exist, for two reasons."

  Remo jumped almost to the ceiling, then fell on his knees and with awesome gratitude kissed the ring of the pope even though he didn't believe anymore. He would have kissed the hem of this man's garment. He was free of Precious Poo. The marriage did not exist.

  "I'm free, Little Father, isn't that wonderful?" said Remo.

  Chiun, kissing the pope's ring with just as grand a flourish, muttered in Korean about the perfidy of Rome.

  Arieson was still in the large room with the tapestries, waiting for Remo and Chiun.

  "I hear you rescued your client, Chiun," said Arieson.

  "I have come to deal with you, Arieson," said Chiun, folding his arms and setting one foot forward in a posture of supreme arrogant bearing.

  "Sure, Chiun. What's the deal?" said Arieson, leaning back in the chair and sending encouragement to the last Turk to fight to the death.

  "We will stay out of Western Europe if you stay out of Asia," said Chiun.

  "I'm not giving up China and Japan. I've enjoyed those places immensely," said Arieson.

  "Japan is worthless now. It manufactures toys. What do you want with Japan?"

  "That's only in the last fifty years. You don't think they've changed totally in the last fifty years? I can't let you have Japan."