An Old Fashioned War td-68 Read online

  "We were great before the Europeans arrived in America. We were great while Europeans were living in stone buildings and butchering each other in little feudal kingdoms. The Arab world was truly the home of great learning, and military courage, and honor that was a beacon of enlightenment, not a torch in every part of the world where Islam is taught. We are an honorable people. Why do we allow ourselves to be known for infamy?"

  "The Zionists control the media. They tell lies about us."

  "It is not Zionist lies I care about, but the truth. And the truth is that we buy our weapons and we buy the people to operate them, and when trouble comes, the foreigners leave us to the bombs of the enemies. That is what I speak of."

  "Can you do better?"

  "I most certainly can. The first thing we must do is learn to fight a war. If we can't use a weapon ourselves, we won't have the Chinese or North Koreans or Russians use it for us. We will only fight with what we can use ourselves. We will give up our fancy cars, our fancy expense accounts in European hotels, and we will go back to the desert and become an army. And then we will fight our enemies-honorably. We shall give succor to the weak, mercy to the innocent, and honor to our arms."

  "And what if we lose?" asked the General.

  "Is death so bitter that you fear it more than losing your souls? Is defeat in honorable battle more shameful than impregnating a woman and using her as a living bomb with your unborn child, and worse, having it all planned by some of your generals? Are the words of the decadent West so appealing in your ears that they can deny you your heritage of tolerance and courage, just because you attack their enemies? Where are the Arabs who beat the Frankish knights? Who ground the Hindu armies into submission? Who turned Egypt from a Christian country to an Islamic one? Where are those who civilized Spain? Where, where, where?"

  The General, seeing this colonel was reaching the hearts of his men where not even a new car or fine imported food could venture, understood he was losing. And to lose an argument in Idra meant losing your life.

  He knew almost every colonel in the country, and he couldn't quite recognize that one.

  The man was bearded, with a thickish neck. He stood quite proud. The General would have followed him himself after that speech, which is why he knew the colonel had to die.

  "You speak well. You speak with courage. I am promoting you to general and making you leader of any force you wish to use to attack Israel. You may stab the Zionist snake right in the belly. Your weapons will be waiting for you offshore, or in Haifa, or Tel Aviv, or any Zionist city you care to name. Good luck. Good hunting, take any volunteers you wish. Any of you who wish to go with our new general, feel free. There will be bonuses."

  And with that, the General went into his tent. He took his most trusted adviser into conference, and there whispered to him:

  "He will not get followers, of course. No one is going to give up his Mercedes to die. They wouldn't give up their Mercedeses for Toyotas, let alone Israeli bullets. When he fails to get followers for the mission, tell him you will join him. Tell him you have a fine house in the capital you wish to give him for his courage. He will not trust you but he cannot turn down your house, after all. When he comes to dinner, poison him."

  "Will he not suspect something?"

  "Will he will suspect something. But the beauty of our plan is that a house is too valuable to refuse to look at. He will think he can fool us by convincing us he believes our story, and then try to kill us shortly thereafter when he thinks we think he is fooled. Do you understand, O brother?"

  "No one is smarter than you, O brother and leader."

  "I am not the leader because grass grows on my forehead." General Moomas smiled.

  But suddenly there was cheering from outside. Guns were fired into the air. War shrieks were heard. Columns of men were marching through the scrub and sand of the Idra desert. And to the General's vast relief, they were not marching toward him. They were marching toward the sea. They had left their Mercedeses behind, their lamb dinners served on Royal Doulton china, their almost-Arab desserts. A cry was heard and echoed through the hard night: "Let us die at the gates of Jerusalem."

  The General had often ended speeches like that. He would end them and then go home to his air-conditioned palace, and the cheering mobs would go to their homes, and they would all live another day to hear the same words.

  But no one was going home. No one was even bothering to drive his Mercedes.

  "They will tire in a half-mile and come back to their cars. Then I will tell them they are the real revolutionary heroes and any fools who continue to march with that colonel, excuse me, general, are not heading for Jerusalem, but death. The real road to Jerusalem is through my leadership."

  But no one came back that evening or the next evening. The General heard the colonels had organized themselves into platoons and battalions. They trained without comforts. They marched in the desert heat, and if they did not know how to fix a vehicle, they did not use it. Eventually two things happened. Some vehicles were abandoned but others were made to work. The Idran soldiers even became proficient at tank warfare. They did not bother with revolutionary speeches, but learned their weapons, discovered their new leaders, and prepared to live or die in battle.

  Their new leader from the ranks of colonels would not give his name. But one of the colonels, a bit shrewder than the rest, pressed him on several occasions to give his name. After all, if he were going to lead them against Israel, they should at least know what to call him.

  "Arieson," he said. "You can call me Arieson."

  "That's not an Arab name," said the colonel.

  "It most certainly is," said Arieson.

  "You have been a friend of mine in ages past who would shame the rest of all mankind with your glory."

  And the shrewd colonel passed this information to a German reporter in the capital, and that reporter relayed the information to his superiors, and finally the word got to a planning station outside Tel Aviv.

  The Arabs were putting together a tough little army the likes of which hadn't been seen in the Middle East since the eighth century, when Arab armies leapt out of the desert to conquer a massive empire in a thunderclap of time.

  "How many in that army?" asked Israeli intelligence.

  "Fifteen thousand."

  "That's nothing."

  "You've got to see these guys," they were told. "They're good."

  "How good can an Idran be?" asked the Israeli command.

  "You'd better not find out."

  They dismissed the report. The only time the Idran army had ever fired their weapons in anger was against some defenseless African tribes. And when they heard where the Idrans were going to attack, they were absolutely hysterical. The plan, as they found out, was to launch a drive right into the major base defending the Negev, prove the Israelis could be beaten even though they had larger forces, and then take prisoners and retreat fighting all the way to the Egyptiari border.

  None of them in the planning room of the Israeli defense forces outside Tel Aviv thought that within a short time they would be desperately calling up reserves from around Jerusalem to help out their armored units trapped in the Negev.

  Sinanju, home of the House of Sinanju, glorious House of Sinanju, smelled as it had the last time Remo had visited it. Waste from the pigsties flooded out into the main street, and the sewage system the Masters had brought the villagers lay unused for want of anyone to install it.

  The system was made of the Finest Carrara marble, with pipes hewn by hand and polished smooth. Unfortunately, that particular sewer system had to be installed by Roman engineers. In the year 300 B.C. travel was not as safe as it was nowadays, and the sewer pipes arrived in Sinanju but the engineers didn't. So the pipes lay unused all about, while the town stank.

  Remo commented on this as the two of them arrived on the main road from Pyongyang.

  "It's amazing the thieves didn't take the pipes also," said Chiun. "But what did you care? You are n
ot even coming with me for love of Sinanju but to find out how to kill someone you cannot kill."

  "Do you want me to tell you I love a pigsty?" asked Remo.

  "New Jersey is not a pigsty?" asked Chiun.

  "It doesn't smell like Sinanju."

  "It doesn't produce Masters of Sinanju either," said Chiun.

  At the entrance to the village, the elders lined up to greet the returning Master. They were happier this time, because now they could assure him that no treasure was missing. Of course it wasn't missing because it had already gone the last time Chiun had returned to discover that the head of North Korean intelligence had stolen it in a ruse to get the House of Smart ju to work for Kim Il Sung.

  When this had failed and the chief committed suicide, which was wise, he had unfortunately taken with him the secret of the treasure's whereabouts. Since he had not even told his glorious leader, Kim Il Sung, the whereabouts of the treasure, it was lost forever.

  That North Korea could not reimburse the House of Sinanju was evident. The only question remained whether Kim Il Sung should be punished for the misdeeds of his subordinate, and the answer was yes. But what punishment might be appropriate, Chiun could not decide right away, and in tribute, Kim Il Sung chose to build three new superhighways to the village and place a full chapter glorifying the House of Sinanju in every textbook in every school in North Korea.

  Thus, amid Marxist-Leninist ideology would appear the family-history tree of the Masters of Sinanju, with praises on one hand for worker committees and on the ocher for pharaohs and kings who paid on time.

  That this confusion was not protested was not unusual. The only thing most students knew about Marxist-Leninist dialectics was that they had better pass it.

  So hundreds of thousands of students now learned by rote that Akhnaton in his righteousness gave forty Nubian statues of gold to Master Gi, and King Croesus of Lydia did pay in gold four hundred plowduts, and Darius of Persia offered jewels of one hundred obol weight-along with the principle of the invincibility of the masses over oppression.

  This satisfied Chiun that Kim Il Sung was doing all he could. Especially when Remo and Chiun were met at the Pyongyang People's Airport by three thousand students waving the flag of the Masters of Sinanju and all singing:

  "Praised be thy glorious house of assassins, may thy truth and beauty reign forever in a world glorified by thy presence."

  Remo had waited impatiently with Chiun.

  "They don't even know what they're singing," he whispered.

  "Never disdain a tribute. Your American students should learn such manners."

  "I hope they never learn those verses," Remo had said, so naturally, by the time they reached the village, Chiun had collected this major in of the trip and happily stored it where he nurtured all the injustices Remo put upon him, so that they could bear fruit that could then be sprinkled upon their daily lives.

  "Perhaps you think the village elders of Sinanju are fools too, waiting as they are to pay tribute."

  "No," said Remo. "Why shouldn't they pay tribute? We've fed them for four thousand years."

  "We are from them," said Chiun.

  "I'm not," said Remo.

  "Your son will be."

  "I don't have a son," said Remo.

  "Because you play around with all those Western floozies. Marry a good Korean girl and you will produce an heir and we will train him. He too will marry Korean, and by and by no one will know there was a white stain in the Masterhood."

  "If that's the case," said Remo, "maybe you already have a white ancestor. Have you ever thought about that?"

  "Only in my nightmares," said Chiun, alighting from the car and receiving the deep bows of many old men.

  Remo looked behind them. As far as the eye could see, four lanes of absolutely unused highway spun into the Korean hills toward Pyongyang. He knew there were two other highways coming from the village, equally unused. Occasionally, he heard, a yak might wander over one of the massive thoroughfares and leave a dropping, whereupon a North Korean helicopter would speed out of Pyongyang with a brush and a scoop and clean it up, so that Sinanju Highways One, Two, and Three would remain always immaculate. It was the least they could do in lieu of the treasure of Sinanju.

  "Greetings," said Chiun to the elders. "I have returned with my son, Remo. I do not wish to hold it against him that he did not help search for the treasure when it was first discovered missing. After all, there are many worse to blame, those who did not offer up their lives to recover it."

  There were low nods from the men along Sinanju Highway One.

  "You might wonder why I hold nothing against Remo," Chiun said.

  "No, they don't. I'm sure they don't wonder that, Little Father," said Remo.

  The men looked up, worried. Two Masters were disagreeing. Either one could wreak punishment on them that they would wish they had not lived to endure.

  Chiun quieted them with a hand. "He does not mean that. We all know you wish to know why I will not hold this against Remo. First, because he has come home to study. He will read the scrolls of the history of Sinanju now, and why?"

  "I know why, Little Father."

  "Shhh. They don't know why. He will read the scrolls of the histories of Sinanju because he has come up against something he cannot defeat, and why cannot he defeat this?"

  No one answered.

  "He cannot defeat this because he does not know what it is," said Chiun.

  "I would if you'd tell me," said Remo.

  "It would do you no good. You cannot handle this person until you recover the treasure of Sinanju," said Chiun.

  "Now I know you're running a game, Little Father," said Remo, who decided not to wait around anymore to hear that. He knew Chiun knew what they were up against, just as he knew Chiun would not tell him right away. But sooner or later he would have to, if for nothing else than to gloat.

  Remo was not ready for what he heard as he walked away, though, not ready for the price that was now being offered on his behalf.

  "But being regretful and full of great remorse, my son, Remo, knows he must make up for the treasure to all of us, and he has decided to give the village of Sinanju a son."

  Heads raised. There was applause.

  "From one of the village beauties of Sinanju," said Chiun.

  "There is no such thing," said Remo.

  "No child, no help with your enemy," said Chiun.

  "He's your enemy too, Little Father."

  "That he is, but you are the one more anxious to finish him now. Besides, you cannot stay childless all your life, and if you have a son with some white woman, she could run off like all loose white women do and not care for the child. If you have a child with a Sinanju maiden, you know he will be raised honored and glorified because his father is a Master of Sinanju."

  "I don't want a child."

  "You don't know till you try."

  "Just let me at the scrolls," said Remo. "I know if you recognized that guy, the answer has to be in the scrolls. So that's why I'm going to read them again. But marriage, no."

  "One night. One moment. One sending of your seed to meet an egg. I do not ask for a lifelong commitment. Let the mother give that."

  "Just show me the scrolls."

  "No one-night marriage, no scrolls."

  "But you used to beg me to read the scrolls."

  "That was when you didn't want to read them." Remo sighed. He looked around. The sooner he got the scrolls, the sooner he would know what Chiun had recognized back at Little Big Horn.

  And what would be so bad about one night? He wouldn't have to raise the child. And Sinanju would have an heir to the Masterhood.

  Would he want his child to know Sinanju? Funny, he thought, looking down at the wood shacks and the mud walks being serviced by three major empty highways, he could not conceive of having a son without him learning Sinanju, becoming Sinanju, no matter what the cost to him and the boy. It was the way of things.

  He just didn't plan
on making the mother a woman from this village necessarily. He was still American enough to expect to fall in love before he married someone and made a child.

  "All right," he said. So what? he thought. Why not? How bad could one night be?

  "Then I shall open all the scrolls again to you. You shall read about the difference between the laudations to the pharaoh of the Upper Nile and the Lower Nile. You shall see how not to be tempted by a Ming courtesan. All the things I tried to teach you before, you will know. And you will marry a good girl, too. I will select her."

  "I didn't say you'd choose," said Remo. "I'll choose."

  "As you wish. Select the loveliest. Choose the smartest. Do as you will. I do not wish to run your life," said Chiun, beaming.

  But when Remo finally met the young women, he learned that all the good-looking ones had used the three main highways to leave Sinanju, and those left were the ones who would not leave their mothers, those who knew that even in Pyongyang, where there were more men than anywhere else in the world, they could still not find someone, and Poo Cayang.

  Poo weighed 250 pounds and knew two words in English. They were not "yes" and "no,' they were not "hello, Joe" or even "good-bye, Joe." They were "prenuptial agreement."

  Every other word in her vocabulary was Korean, specifically the Sinanju dialect which Remo spoke. But Poo's mother did the negotiating for her.

  Poo did not think of herself as overweight but rather as fully blossomed. Poo had not gotten married because so far no one in Sinanju was good enough for her, she felt. And she didn't see any potential in Pyongyang. She was the baker's daughter, and before anyone else in Sinanju got their breads or cakes, Poo chose first. It was to be understood this arrangement was to continue if she were to marry the white Master of Sinanju.