An Old Fashioned War td-68 Page 7

  More important and more specific, she was never to be forced to leave Sinanju or be more than an hour's walk from her mother.

  "You'd stay here even if I left?" asked Remo.

  "Yes," she said.

  "Will you marry me?" said Remo.

  "We haven't gotten to the ownership of the home yet," said Poo.

  "Will it be in Sinanju?"

  "It must."

  "It's yours," said Remo.

  "Now for point eighteen," said Poo. "Pots, pans, dinnerware."

  "Yours," said Remo.

  Chapter 5

  It was a brilliant plan. Even the Israelis had to admire it after it was pulled off. Under cover of night, thousands of dhows, old Arab fishing boats, set sail from ldra across the Mediterranean for the Israeli coast.

  If the Idran army had used the new Soviet destroyers or the French gunboats, or protected the craft with overflights of their fighters flown by Russians, the Israelis would have picked them up, and certainly the U.S. Sixth Fleet, which dominated the Mediterranean, would have seen them on the most advanced radar system in the world.

  But the dhows were wood. And they were sailed by Iraqis who knew their craft from the Euphrates. The Iraqis had no love for the Idrans or Syrians, and actually hated the Iranians, who were not Arabs at all but Persians. They were old feuds. But they too had met a Mr. Arieson and, as they told their Idran passengers, there was something about him that made fighting a war so worthwhile.

  "We feel good. We feel proud of ourselves," they said.

  "So do we," said their passengers as the great fleet of little wooden boats made its way slowly out into the Mediterranean. The stranger even seemed to be able to control the weather, because during the day, when airplanes would normally see something almost a mile across, there was fog. And one night they came upon the great Sixth Fleet, outlined dark against the sky, stretching for miles in its stateliness and awesome power, lights blinking from the great carriers as the finest fighter pilots in the world left the decks to challenge the world.

  They could hear the waves against the wooden prows, and many were the men who silently prayed to their desert god that the great U.S. Sixth Fleet would move off into the night to dominate some other stretch of sea.

  But to the horror of many, Mr. Arieson ordered the wooden fleet to turn in to the metal monsters from the West. They were not even trying to escape. They were attacking.

  "What are you doing, General?" asked the colonel whom Arieson had made his chief of staff. He was from a mountain tribe deep inland in the country now named Idra. He hated the idea of the sea, but through his courage had nailed his body into the boat with a smile on his face to show his men the proper leadership. Now he was overwhelmed by the stupidity of small wooden boats attacking the greatest navy the world had ever seen.

  He pulled at Mr. Arieson's sleeve. It felt like stone covered by cloth.

  "What are you doing?" he asked again.

  "We'll never see a prize like that again."

  "Prize?" asked Colonel Hamid Khaidy, who had studied briefly at Russian military schools and learned they thought of the Sixth Fleet as one of the three great threats in the world, the other two being kept secret from non-Russians.

  "Just think of the glory in attacking the U.S. Sixth Fleet. The finest sailors in the world, commanded by the finest officers, with the finest pilots, and the latest weapons. This truly is a challenge."

  "But isn't it the purpose of war to win? Aren't you supposed to attack where they are weakest?"

  "What's the point in that? Who would you beat then? If you want a victory like that, go fight a clinic for the terminally ill."

  "I have never read of tactics where you go looking for the biggest fight in the world," said Hamid Khaidy. He had the hard face of a desert warrior and cold night-black eyes.

  "Don't worry. You'll love me for it," said Mr. Arieson. He smiled and let out a soft song about great battles, great Arab battles, how they defeated the Crusaders at the Horns of Hattin, and now how they would defeat the great U.S. Sixth Fleet that stretched across the horizon and could bounce signals of the night moon and demolish any city it chose. Arrogant it was, and greater still, a living electronic and metal dragon that ruled this sea where Western culture was born.

  "Know this," said Mr. Arieson, "and pass it along. The word 'admiral' is an Arab word. Once you were great sea fighters too. You shall be known as such again."

  "We shall die in this landless place," said Khaidy.

  "Then die with honor, for surely you will die either way," said Arieson, and guided the little pieces of the vast wooden latticework bobbing on the coalblack sea like little water bugs toward the metal monsters in the distance.

  The electronics rooms on the U.S. ships could detect a fly on the wingtip of a missile cruising at Mach 10. They could differentiate between a nuclear warhead half a world away and a normal explosive. They could do this with missiles, planes, and even artillery shells behind inland mountain ranges.

  They could listen to telephone conversations and shortwave radios from Rome to Tripoli to Cairo to Tel Aviv.

  They knew when propeller aircraft took off from Athens and when a balloon landed on a hilltop in Cyprus.

  They could pick up submarines cruising near the sea bottom and tell a manta ray from a shark three miles down. They could identify a torpedo twenty miles away just as it launched its strike run.

  But they could not pick up wood on the surface of the ocean.

  Wooden sailing boats had disappeared from active combat almost a century before.

  The Idran fleet of a thousand tiny boats bobbed into the great Sixth Fleet that night, and when the little boats were close, the fear became the greatest. It was as though a civilization many stories high loomed above them, churning along with propellers that made great gurgling hisses all about the flimsy wooden boats.

  "What do we do now?" asked Khaidy in a whisper. He felt as though they could be sucked under by the great propellers of the aircraft carriers and would no more be noticed than a toothpick going under in a sink.

  "We attack for the glory of your tribes and your nation and your faith," cried out Mr. Arieson, and Khaidy prayed for help from his desert god.

  But Mr. Arieson was prepared. From boat to boat the order was issued.

  "Unwrap the green bundles."

  Khaidy had remembered that the bundles were too heavy to be food and too solid to be ammunition. He did not know why Mr. Arieson had some placed on board each dhow in the center, beneath the ammunition.

  Now, as one was unwrapped, he saw a nearby gun get pulled to it and stick there. They were magnets. Magnets with ropes. They were magnet ladders, and now Khaidy, always quick of mind, understood what they would be used for. The ldran army was going to board some of the American ships.

  And why not? The boats were actually safest here under the ships, because they were in the one place the big guns, the rockets and the airplanes could not reach. Mr. Arieson had showed them how to defeat the finest and most modern navy of all time. Up the ladders went the men of Idra, knives in their teeth, glory in their hearts, and when they hit the decks of the USS James K. Polk, they let out a battle cry and attacked.

  The captain of the Polk, scanning reports of air activity over the Crimea, heard the yell and thought it was some kind of party. The captain commanding the marine contingent called out his men, who put up a good fight but were outnumbered. The air pilots had never been that well trained in hand-to-hand combat, under the assumption that if they had to fight someone with their hands, they were already rendered useless for flying. The sailors fought with mops and brooms. But it was no use.

  Up went the green banner of Islam aboard the USS Polk with its nuclear weapons and aircraft, and for the first time since the Battle of Lepanto centuries before, the Mediterranean had a credible Arab naval presence.

  There was no slaughter of prisoners either. A new sense of combat had taken hold of the soldiers of idra. They honored those who foug
ht well against them.

  "Now tell me the truth, friend," Mr. Arieson said to Hamid Khaidv. "Have you ever had so much downright fun in your life?"

  "It's more than fun," said Khaidy. "It is life itself."

  "I knew you'd see it that way. Now, how do you feel about fighting the Israelis in the Negev?"

  "Just make sure we don't have to battle some out-of-shape reservists. I want their standing army," said Khaidy.

  He did not even ask how Mr. Arieson planned to get them into position against one of the most heavily defended countries per square foot in the world.

  In Washington the word was ominous. A nuclear-attack carrier had fallen into the hands of one of the zaniest countries in the world, which had devoted its military efforts to bombing kosher restaurants in Paris, kidnapping American priests, and trying to buy an atomic bomb to make it an Islamic bomb. Now it had a carrier full of nuclear weapons, had penetrated the U.S. Sixth Fleet, and could, if it knew how to fly the planes and use the equipment, probably slip a warhead right into Washington, D.C. Or anywhere else in the world it wanted.

  And General Mohammed Mootnas wanted lots of places. He wanted just about any place with good plumbing and a lack of infestation by tsetse flies; he wanted what were better known as the second and first worlds.

  The question was, and it was a hard one, should the United States sink its own nuclear aircraft carrier? The decision fell on the President alone.

  "I'm not going to kill American boys just yet. I've got other ways to deal with this," he said.

  In Folcroft Sanitarium, Harold W. Smith got the call for help.

  "If ever we've needed you before, we need you now. Get your people onto the ship and take it back," came the President's voice.

  "Well, I can't commit them just yet."

  "Why not?"

  "Both of them have gone back to their Korean town."

  "Well, call them out of it. Tell them it's more important than anything they've ever done."

  "I'll try. But I think they've quit."

  "Quit? They can't quit. Not now. No. They can't quit." The President's normally modulated and calm voice began to rise.

  "Who is going to stop them, Mr. President?"

  "Well, beg. Do anything. Offer them anything. Give them California if you have to. We'll lose it anyhow to that maniac Mohammed Moomas."

  "I'll try, sir," said Harold W. Smith, as the civilized world hunkered down for the onslaught.

  The wedding of Poo Cavang and the white Master of Sinanju could not be disturbed by an urgent message, not even one from America, where the Masters of Sinanju were now serving.

  It was a sacred time for a Master to be married, said the baker in broken, halting English. He was answering Chiun's special phone on this day because Chiun, as everyone knew, considered the white his son, and therefore he was the father of the groom.

  As was custom, four bags of barley were brought to the center of the home of the baker and were opened and trod upon by all the guests. Pigs were being roasted and their fresh crisp aroma tickled the nostrils of all those present, even the honored Masters of Sinanju, whom everyone knew did not eat pork, but only the weakest portions of the rice. From this village had come the great Masters of Sinanju, and now with the beautiful Poo Cayang joining herself to the white Master, everyone could be assured the line would continue. And if the line would continue, then the village would be assured of a livelihood without ever really having to work very hard.

  The Masters had brought sustenance to everyone for thousands of years and now they could be assured of thousands more. The white blood could be bred out within a generation or two. But even that did not matter.

  Korea had lived through rule by Mongols and Chinese and Japanese. Only rarely had they ever ruled themselves. Except for Sinanju. No one dared rule Sinanju because of the Masters. And so when communism, another foreign idea, took hold, they knew it would pass, but what would not pass would be Sinanju.

  Poo Cayang was hailed by all as she was carried through the streets of the village and then back to her house. Anyone who couldn't get inside stood outside.

  Inside, Remo the white was dressed in a Western suit a tailor had hurriedly made, along with a tie, a silly white ornament. Chiun wore the traditional formal black stovepipe hat and white kimono.

  He received the traditional assurances from the parents that their precious Poo was a virgin.

  "Of course she's a virgin," Remo whispered. "Who would do it to her of his own free will?"

  "You are talking about the woman who is going to be your wife, the mother of your child," said Chiun.

  "Don't remind me," said Remo.

  Poo entered and the floor creaked. The mother smiled to Remo. The father smiled to Remo. Chiun smiled back.

  A priest from a larger neighboring village had been brought in. He bound their wrists in white cloth. Poo pledged obedience and good spirit and whatever dowry she brought. Remo just said:

  "I do."

  Since Remo was Western, they all said he should perform the Western custom of kissing the bride. Poo lifted her moon-shaped face and closed her eyes. Remo gave her a peck on the cheek.

  "That's not a Western kiss," she said.

  "How would you know? You never left Sinanju," said Remo.

  "I'll show you a Western kiss," said Poo, reaching up to Remo's neck and pulling her face close to his. She pummeled her lips into his and thrust her tongue into his mouth, passionately searching for his.

  It felt like some giant-muscled clam was trying to eat Remo's gums. He slipped free and out of respect to the bridal party refrained from spitting.

  "Where did you learn that?" asked Remo.

  "I read a lot," said Poo.

  "Then practice tonight. I've got work. Is the wedding over?"

  "There are other things you are supposed to do, Remo," said Poo. "Other bridal things that I am entitled to."

  "You got everything in the prenuptial agreement," said Remo.

  "I am talking about things that are understood," she said. "Things that don't have to be mentioned."

  "Everything has to be mentioned," said Remo. "That's why there are contracts. The two hundred bolts of silk will be delivered in a couple of days."

  "She's right, Remo. You owe her certain duties," said Chiun.

  "You're interfering in my marriage," said Remo.

  "Did you think I wouldn't?" asked Chiun. He was puzzled by this. Remo had known him more than twenty years now. What a silly thing for him to say. Not only was he going to interfere with the marriage but he was going to make sure the son was raised right. And Remo should expect that.

  "Then if you care to interfere, you can fulfill the marriage obligations."

  "I have done my job for Sinanju. Now it is your turn, Remo," he said, and turning to the guests, Chiun asked for tolerance.

  "He has known only white women, generally consorting with the worst scum of womankind. They have gotten to his brain. I am sure that as he grows to know and revere our precious Poo, he will respond in a natural and correct way."

  "He's supposed to do things on the wedding night," said Poo.

  "It doesn't say so in the contract."

  "Every wedding agreement implies that," said Poo.

  "Now, you know, dear," said Chiun to Poo, "what I have had to live with to these twenty-some years." There was a grumble among the guests. Part of the grumble was the floorboards creaking under Poo's feet. She had a habit of stamping when she got mad. "Not that I'm complaining," said Chiun.

  "A Master never complains," said the baker, Poo's father. Everyone agreed that Chiun did not complain.

  "Some would say I have reason to complain, but I have chosen not to. After all, what good does complaining do?" he asked everyone assembled.

  They all agreed, except Remo.

  "You love to complain, Little Father. Your day without a complaint would be hell," said Remo. Everyone agreed Remo was an ungrateful son, especially Poo.

  "Whether you believ
e me or not, he likes to complain and he knows it," said Remo. "And someday I am going to be the sole Master of Sinanju, and let me tell you all right now: I'm taking down names."

  Chiun gasped, wounded to the core. What ingratitude! What malevolence! But what really astounded Chiun so much was that somewhere and somehow, Remo had picked up a knowledge of what would work in the village of Sinanju. Threats always worked, and keeping score was the best way to make them do so. The grumbling stopped. Poo began crying, and Remo walked out of the baker's house into the muddy streets and up the hill to the great House of Sinanju.

  It was empty inside. Remo had remembered it full, with treasure stacked on treasure, bowls of pearls, beautiful statues, and gold in coins minted by sovereign countries that no longer even existed. He had been amazed when he first saw it, how fresh the coins looked. How perfect the statues were. It was a historical treasure, untouched and unused. So Sinanju, he felt, really didn't lose anything it needed, rather something that was a poignant reminder of how long this house of assassins had existed.

  He would, if he could, get the treasure back, but he knew he couldn't, and his real gift to Chiun and the Masters of which he was a part was doing his service to perfection. That was the legacy of Sinanju. That was the real treasure. What he knew and what his body knew.

  The scrolls had been laid out for Remo. He was fairly certain Mr. Arieson would be in some Swedish scroll, since the name was definitely Swedish or Danish.

  But the Nordic scrolls, the time of service to the Viking kings by the Masters of Sinanju, were nowhere to be seen. Instead there were the scrolls of Rome and Greece from 2,000 B.C. to A.D. 200. Remo went over them again, looking for an Arieson. There were recorded tributes, recorded services, recorded prices, a comment on a new peculiar religion coming out of Judea which the current Master of the time said had no future because it appealed to slaves.

  He had advised one of the followers of the new sect to change a few things to make it popular. Make it appeal to the rich, not the poor. No one was ever going to get anywhere saving, "Blessed are the poor."

  It was this lengthy commentary that Chiun had marked, the analysis of gopd religions and bad ones. The religion of the Rabbi Jesus would never succeed because: