In Enemy Hands td-26 Page 13

  He nodded to Remo who nodded back before pulling Ludmilla toward the door. She was looking over the shoulder at Chiun and the pieces of knife in front of him.

  "What did he say?" she asked.

  "It was Korean," Remo said. " 'Even a knife may shatter; even a strong man may fall.' "

  Ludmilla was still looking over her shoulder, her eyes narrowed.

  "How did he do that with the knife?"

  "Who knows?" said Remo.

  "Can you do it?"

  "I don't know. Maybe. Chiun understands more about objects than I do. It has something to do with vibrations."

  They were at the door and Remo led the way out. Ludmilla kept staring at Chiun until the door closed behind them.

  The next day Marshal Denia arrived in Las Vegas.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Ludmilla had begged off the trip to the desert to see Remo's magic spring, pleading an upset stomach; Remo had gone out to walk around Las Vegas; and Chiun was alone in their room when a messenger came.

  "I must see you. L."

  Chiun crumpled the message and dropped it on the floor, then walked up to Ludmilla's room.

  When he entered, she was seated at her dressing table, her back to Chiun, wearing only a bluish robe that made her skin seem to glow a pale yellow. She smiled at Chiun in the mirror, a dropped eyes coy smile, then carefully closed her open robe before she spun on her chair and faced him.

  "I have asked you to come so I could apologize to you," she said. "I have treated you badly."

  "I am always treated badly," Chiun said.

  "I know how it must be. No one understands you; they ask much of you but give nothing in return."

  Chiun nodded. The faint tendrils of hair over his ears continued nodding after his head had stopped.

  "Well, I do not wish to be one of those ungrateful ones," said Ludmilla. She rose and walked to Chiun who stood just inside the door. She took his two hands in hers. "I am sorry," she said.

  "Why?" said Chiun.

  "I am sorry for my rudeness, but more for my stupidity. I realize all I could learn from your wisdom and your gentleness and like a fool I have rejected that gift of friendship you offered me."

  Chiun nodded again.

  She reached her right hand to touch the side of his face. As her left arm left her side, the front of her dressing gown slipped open. She moved even closer to Chiun, so close their bodies almost touched. "Can you forgive me?" she said.

  "Yes," said Chiun. He looked down at Ludmilla's flawless skin, shadowed yellow by the blue of the gown. "You are a lovely woman," he said.

  She smiled at him again and left her hand on the side of his face. "Thank you," she said. "But beauty is a gift of God; wisdom is an achievement of character."

  "That is true," Chiun said. "That is true. Most never see that truth."

  "Most never have their eyes fully open," she said. She leaned even closer to him.

  "And what of Remo?" Chiun said.

  Ludmilla shrugged. The movement almost, but not quite, released her breasts from her gown. "Who looks at the sapling when he stands on the edge of the forest?"

  And again Chiun nodded, and as he did, Ludmilla leaned forward and moved her face down to his, searching for his lips with hers. As she found them, she said softly, "I have never been made love to by a Master of Sinanju."

  And afterwards, she said-and meant it-"Never before like that."

  She lay next to Chiun in her bed, his body still clothed in his red kimono, hers covered by a sheet, and laughed.

  "To think of Remo telling me his power came from a magic spring."

  "The child likes to joke," Chiun said.

  "But the power is Sinanju, isn't it?" she said.

  "No, beauteous one. The power is within each person; Sinanju is the key that unlocks the power."

  "And you are the Master." She said it in a tone of reverential awe, as if she could not believe that Chiun was with her.

  Then she rolled on her side toward him, put her left hand on his face, and said, "Show me a trick. Do something for me."

  "Sinanju is not meant for tricks," he said.

  "But for me? Just once. Just let me see some of your awesome power. Please?"

  "Only for you," Chiun said.

  "Remo told me it was vibrations," she said.

  "Sometimes it is vibrations," Chiun said. "It is in knowing what you deal with that you make each thing a weapon. Each thing has its own vibrations, is its own central being, and to use it, you must first understand it, then become it."

  As he spoke, Chiun used a fingernail to bust open the pillow under his head. He sat up and pulled out two small feathers, each an inchlong piece of fluffy down.

  "What could be softer than the feather?" he said. "Yet, it is soft only because we use it for softness. We need not."

  Hands moving faster than eye could follow, Chiun raised the two feathers, one in each hand, to his eyes, and then splashed his hands forward toward the opposite wall of the room.

  The two small feathers left his fingertips like supersonic darts, hit the wooden wall with simultaneous "pings," and buried themselves into the wood panel where they stayed, vibrating, in the breeze of the overhead air conditioner, like miniature plumes.

  "Marvelous," Ludmilla said. "Can I do that? Can I learn?"

  "Only after much practice. Much time," said Chiun.

  "I have much time," she said, pulling him back onto the pillow next to her. "And I want to learn everything you can teach me."

  "And I will teach you," Chiun said. "Things you never even dreamed of before."

  Later, Ludmilla had a wonderful idea. Her upset stomach had vanished, so why didn't she and Chiun drive out into the desert and look for a spring, then tell Remo they had found his magic spring. It would be a joke. A wonderful joke, she thought. And if Chiun wanted to change, he could; she would arrange for a car and driver, and meet him in front of the hotel in fifteen minutes.

  Chiun looked at her and she could see in his eyes that he wanted to do this thing very much, so without even waiting for an answer, she patted his face again and walked with him to the door.

  He stopped in the doorway and looked up at her violet eyes.

  "You are a most beautiful woman," he said.

  Ludmilla blushed and then closed the door behind him. She had things to do and she didn't need Chiun around. No fool like an old fool, she thought, as she went to the telephone.

  Twenty minutes later, she and Chiun were sitting in the back of a Rolls Royce on its way out of Las Vegas on Boulder Highway. Chiun wore a thin black robe.

  In the front seat was their driver, a pudgy mustached man, and two other men who, Ludmilla explained, were guides to the desert around Las Vegas. Each had a neck as big as the average man's thigh. They wore hats and stared straight ahead. Ludmilla's eyes looked up and caught the eyes of the driver in the rearview mirror.

  Field Marshal Gregory Denia smiled at her. The courtesan had done her work well. First, they would finish this old man, and then even the score with the American, Remo. The courtesan had done very well.

  Remo lost $2,350 playing roulette but won $4.00 in nickels playing slot machines before getting back to the hotel, where the first thing he saw was the crumpled note Chiun had dropped on the floor.

  I must see you. L.

  He would talk to Chiun about that. Intercepting a note obviously meant for Remo, and then just throwing it away. He steamed on his way up the stairs to Ludmilla's room.

  There was no answer to his knock, but the door was open and inside, in an envelope, he found another note: this time for him.

  Remo. I do not wish to see you again. The old one has shown me what true love is. I am heart and body the woman of the Master of Sinanju. Goodbye. Ludmilla.

  Remo crumpled the note and dropped it. His brain whirling in confusion, he spun and looked at the room. The bed was unmade, and Remo could see that it had been used, but not for sleeping.

  "Chink bastard. Dirty two timing
conniving slant-eyed Korean fink," Remo shouted. He slammed his fist into the wall, splintering the wood panel, and then, the blood rising up in his temples, he walked from the room with a mission in his mind. He was going to find and kill Chiun. Search and destroy.

  It took him five minutes to learn that Chiun and Ludmilla had driven out into the desert in a rented Rolls Royce and only five seconds to steal a car to follow them.

  Minutes later, Remo was racing across the desert highway, his foot holding the gas pedal down to the floor, the stolen Ford a projectile, moving at 120 miles an hour down the straight as string two lane road.

  And ten minutes later he saw the big Rolls Royce parked alongside the highway, and he saw footprints through the sand leading toward a small hill seventy-five yards from the road.

  He turned off the key and skidded the car to a stop and was out, on the ground, before the car stopped rocking on its springs.

  There were a lot of footprints leading through the sand but Remo was interested only in one pair-those of Chiun's sandals, which scuffed along in the middle of all the other footprints.

  Remo took the hill in three giant strides. He was looking down into a natural depression, a bowl in the ground surrounded by an almost perfectly circular hill. Sitting in the sand, his black robe swirled about him, was Chiun. His arms were folded and he looked implacably ahead.

  "Dink bastard," Remo shouted and ran down the hill into the natural amphitheater, before it occured to him to wonder where Ludmilla was.

  "Rat bastard," Remo yelled again.

  Chiun looked up. "I have waited for you."

  "And so have we." The voice came from behind Remo. He turned and saw three men and

  Ludmilla coming down the hill toward him. The three men carried pistols in their hands.

  Remo looked from Ludmilla to Chiun, then back to the woman and the three men.

  Two of the men stopped behind Remo and trained their weapons on him, while the third man, Marshal Denia, and Ludmilla walked past Remo and stopped in front of Chiun.

  "Ludmilla," Remo called weakly. She did not respond. She did not even look at him. Denia did.

  "This is a better catch than I hoped for. First the old man, and then you, American. The spilled blood of the Treska will be avenged."

  "Go ahead," Remo said. "Kill the son of a bitch."

  Denia cocked his revolver and pointed it at Chiun, who sat still only six feet away from him, his arms still folded.

  "Chiun," Remo called. But Chiun did not answer, and Remo suddenly realized the truth. Chiun was going to let himself be killed.

  "Chiun," he yelled again.

  "Only one can save my life," Chiun said finally.

  "I'll save it," Remo said. "I'll save it. Just for the pleasure of killing you myself, you two-timing fraud."

  Chiun shut his eyes. "The House of Sinanju has lived on a frail thread for thousands of years," he said. "If it must be broken now by a Master I have chosen and I have trained, then these eyes will not see it. I welcome this Russian death."

  As if to oblige, Denia raised his pistol at arm's length before him, taking aim at Chiun's forehead. Remo saw Ludmilla reach into her handbag and remove her cigarette case and begin to light a cigarette.

  "I'll save it," Remo yelled. "I'm going to save it and then I'm going to wring your scrawny neck."

  He lashed back with both feet, kicking up and out. He felt the backs of his shoes crack into two gunbearing hands. His own hands hit the sand and Remo pulled his weight up and forward, then slammed back with the toes of his feet into two throats. He knew without turning that both men were dead, and he used their throats for a toehold to break across the sand toward Denia and Chiun and Ludmilla.

  "Gregory," Ludmilla said when she saw Remo coming toward them. Denia turned and pointed his pistol at Remo who stopped, ten feet away, apparently neutralized by Denia's gun.

  "So these are the tricks of Sinanju," Denia said with a smile. "In some other age, American, I would have liked to learn them." He sighed heavily. "But this is not the time or the place."

  He squeezed the trigger and fired a shot at Remo. At ten feet, it missed. Remo had slipped off to the left, and now he was standing motionless in a new spot. Denia fired again, and missed again, and now Remo was moving slowly across the sand toward him, high on his toes, scurrying, slipping, and sliding, and Denia fired again and again and again and… click! The revolver was empty, and Remo made one final move in, plucked the revolver from Denia's hand, and replaced it in the Russian spy's throat. It went in barrel first and Denia coughed, as if he had swallowed a piece of food down the wrong tube, and then he reached for his throat but the gun butt got in his way. His hand closed on it, and it looked as if he had just punctured his own throat with his own gun, and then he exhaled, a single loud hiss of air, and fell heavily onto his side in the sand.

  Chiun opened his eyes and saw Remo towering over him. Remo rocked back and forth on his feet as if building up enough inertial energy to strike.

  "You're dead, Chiun," he said. "You made love to her. My woman. How could you?"

  "It was easy," Chiun said mildly. "She asked me to. She would have asked anyone to, if she thought they could give her a way to kill you."

  Remo blinked, then looked from Chiun to Ludmilla. She shook her head at him. "He lies," she said. "He lies. He came to my room and took me by force. It was awful. Terrible."

  Remo looked back to Chiun who still sat motionless in the sand. "Ask yourself, Remo. What are these Russians doing here? Who were they sent to kill? Who led them to you and to me?"

  "Enough of this, Remo," Ludmilla said. "Kill this old fool and let us be off. In Russia, you can have a new life with me."

  Remo hesitated. His hands clenched and unclenched.

  "Do it now, or I leave," Ludmilla said. "I will not stand here burning in the hot sun waiting for a fool to make a decision." She flicked her gold lighter and raised it to the cigarette at her lips.

  Remo looked down at Chiun. His hands were folded in his lap; his eyes were closed, but his face was tilted upward, and his throat was a target as open as an Irish drunk's mouth. A toe shot would take him out for good. Rip out the throat and leave him in the sand.

  "I'm waiting, Remo," Ludmilla said. Remo still hesitated, and Ludmilla walked past him to the body of Marshal Denia. "If you won't do it, I'll do it myself." She picked up the empty revolver and turned to aim it at Chiun.

  His left arm flailed out around his body, and the side of his hand came up, hit into the end of Ludmilla's gold cigarette holder and slammed it back into her throat. She looked at Remo with large violet eyes, made larger by shock and surprise, then she smiled at him the smile of sudden joy-but she still didn't have it right, and she died.

  Remo dropped to his knees and buried his face on Ludmilla's body. He wept. Chiun rose to his feet and moved silently to Remo and patted him on the shoulder.

  "She wanted only to kill you, my son."

  With almost invisible pressure, his patting motion turned into a grasp that lifted Remo up from the sand and placed him on his feet.

  "Come," Chiun said. Still holding Remo's shoulder, he walked him away toward the cars behind the small hill.

  At the top of the hill, Remo looked down at the body of Ludmilla and his voice broke again.

  "I loved her, Little Father."

  "How long are you going to hold this against me?" Chiun asked. "Am I going to hear nothing but complaints for the rest of the afternoon?"

  A week later, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, which had given the Secretary of State and the CIA Director a tough going-over behind closed doors, was called to the office of the President of the United States.

  The President dumped out a manila envelope containing some two dozen passports. He looked around the room at the thirteen senators who sat in soft leather chairs facing his desk.

  "Those are the passports of twenty-four American agents who have been killed since you clowns began meddling with our intelligence setup.
"

  The chairman of the committee began to rise to protest. The President of the United States put a large sinewy hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into his chair.

  "Sit still and shut up."

  The President dumped out another envelope filled with passports.

  "Those are the fake cover passports of the Russian spies who killed our men. They're dead now, too."

  He looked slowly, around the room, meeting and holding every man's eyes in turn.

  "Now you can make something of this if you want to. It's your right to do that. But let me tell you something. Mess with this and I'm going to hang all your asses on a garage door. When I'm done telling the American people how you were responsible for twenty-four murders, you'll be lucky not to be indicted yourself. For murder. You got it?"

  No one spoke.

  "Any questions?"

  No one spoke.

  Three days later, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee decided unanimously that there was no substance to the reports of major espionage activity in Western Europe by the United States and decided to drop its planned investigation.

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