An Old Fashioned War td-68 Read online

  One, it did not appeal to the rich and powerful.

  Two, followers were not promised power and earthly goods.

  Three, there was no place in it for a good assassin. After all, what could one do with a sect that was supposed to love its enemies?

  Fortunately, as later scrolls showed, time healed that and Christians could be every bit as good employers for an assassin as everyone else. But at first, especially during its rise in the second century, Christianity had given Sinanju a scare.

  And then of course there were the ancient cults of Dionysus and Isis, Mithraism, which also gave Sinanju a scare, and absolutely not one word of a Mr. Arieson, or any description of a man who could let projectiles pass through him. No one could do that. Yet Remo had seen it at Little Big Horn.

  Remo knew Chiun was coming up the pathway to the great House of Sinanju.

  He could tell the light movement of the body, the silence of the footsteps, the unity of the being that now entered the big empty house, once storage for tribute of the ages.

  "The treasures of Sinanju," said Chiun.

  "I know," said Remo. "They're gone."

  "Only when we get them back will we be able to deal with Mr. Arieson. Until then may the world watch out."

  "Since when have you cared about the world, Little Father?"

  "I care about a world we may not be able to find work in."

  "There's always work for an assassin."

  "Not always," said Chiun, and would say no more, other than that Harold W. Smith had called for Remo and Chiun, and Chiun had told him he was not leaving Sinanju anymore.

  "I think I will," said Remo.

  "You owe something to Poo, precious Poo. Poo Cavang Williams. It is a funny last name. She asks if she must keep it."

  "Tell her she doesn't have to keep anything."

  The telephone line had been set up in the baker's house for the wedding and Remo entered the house amid the stares of a hostile family. He smiled at the parents. They turned away coldly. He smiled at Poo. She broke down in tears. The phone was off the hook.

  "Hello, Smitty, Remo here. If you say it's an emergency, then I'll just have to go."

  "Thank goodness. What changed your mind, Remo?"

  "No change of mind. Duty first."

  "I don't care what changed your mind. We have a problem. The USS Polk, with all hands on board and full of nuclear weapons, has been seized by the world's number-one lunatic, General Mohammed Moomas. We don't know how he did it, but he's got nuclear weapons at his command now. The Pentagon has retreated to its deep shelters beneath the Rockies, and the rest of the Sixth Fleet has surrounded the carriers, and atomic subs are waiting to make a pass. But we don't want to lose those men. Can you get in there and save them?"

  "That's not the place you want to get hit. I'm going to go right for the head."

  "Moomas?"

  "Exactly."

  "What if he's not afraid to die?"

  "I'll find something, Smitty."

  "How come you're so anxious now, Remo?"

  "Not anxious. As a matter of fact, I hate to leave home, and if so many innocent lives weren't at stake, I'd never go out."

  "You know, you sound married, Remo."

  Remo hung up, and with greater gravity he told Poo that only his service to his beloved country could be enough to make him leave Sinanju on his blessed wedding night. Even as he spoke, he realized how Chiun had learned to facilitate untruths so well. He had been married for forty years.

  In Korean, Poo said that was all right. She was going to go with him.

  "I can't take you with me, it's dangerous," said Remo.

  "Who can be in danger when protected by a Master of Sinanju?" asked Poo with a smile.

  Her parents nodded.

  "And if we should get a moment alone"-Poo smiled-"why then, who knows what we shall do on our honeymoon." The smile became a grin and the grin became a laugh, and her parents packed her trunks and when the American helicopter arrived to take him to the American ship that would take him to the American plane, her luggage totaled fifteen large crates.

  "What's that?" asked Remo, pointing to a crate the size of a small car.

  "That, dear Remo, is our wedding bed. You wouldn't want us to leave on our honeymoon without our wedding bed."

  By the time Remo arrived in Idra he was ready to kill before asking questions. He was ready to kill because it was morning, or possibly because it was hot. He did not care which.

  He had left Poo in friendly Jerusalem, to pick her up when he got out of Idra. That she accepted as a necessity, provided he came right back.

  Poo, a simple little girl from a Korean fishing village, settled for the suite at the Hotel David that Henry Kissinger used when he did shuttle diplomacy. Anwar Sadat had used it also. So had President Nixon. Poo said it would be fine provided she could possibly have another apartment for her personal effects. Remo left Poo to the United States State Department, which Smith had enlisted for him. He told the charge d'affaires to give her whatever she wanted. He asked if American diplomats ever performed special services for deserving Americans. "Sometimes," he had been told.

  Remo mentioned wedding-night duties. The charge d'affaires declined.

  Remo flew to Egypt, then boarded a plane for Morocco, and took a Moroccan flight into the capital of nearby Idra.

  Idra had three times signed a nation-merging treaty with Morocco. In between it waged war against that state as a traitor to the Arab cause. General Mohammed Moomas listed Aden through Syria as organizations loyal to the Arab cause, including at one time or another every faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

  Currently Morocco was considered in pan-Arabic unity with Idra, and therefore allowed to land planes. Remo was told that with his American passport he was going to have trouble in Idra.

  "No I won't," said Remo.

  When the customs clerk at the Idra International Airport asked to see Remo's passport, Remo killed him.

  That was what marriage had done to his temper. He beat the clerk's rolling head out of the airport's doorway amid his sudden very loud welcome to the foremost nation struggling against Zionism, imperialism, and the Islamic way of life. No one else asked to see his passport.

  In fact, the major part of the army was gone from Idra and the General was alone with a few guards around his palace, morosely listening to the news of the seizure of the USS Polk from the U.S. Navy.

  The Arab world was aflame with the news. Here was a truly great victory of courage and skill against a formidable foe. The soldiers had shown daring and brilliance that had even won the respect of their enemies. No longer were they just the darlings of left-wing academics and Nazis.

  They were even respected by their foes.

  The response was dizzying. People didn't run out into the street like angry mobs or even fire off guns in joy. Rather a new respect was sweeping through the Arab world, a confidence they had not known since Sal a Din.

  Remo chased a guard away from the gate and was sorry there was no fight. He stormed in on a vast marble-floored perfumed room called the "Suicide Revolutionary Command Bunker."

  The General, in a white suit with enough medals to have participated in fifteen major wars and a landslide, sat glumly listening to the announcers glorify his name as one of the greatest Arab leaders of all time.

  Remo grabbed a handful of his curly black hair and shook him. Some of the medals fell off, making clinking sounds on the marble.

  "Are you one of his men too?" said the General. "You've finally come to kill me."

  "I've come to get back my carrier."

  "I don't have it," said the General. Remo gave his neck a short twist between forefinger and thumb, pinching a nerve.

  The General cried out.

  "I don't control them anymore. I don't control them anymore."

  "Well, try, sweetheart. I'm sure you can set up communications to the USS Polk."

  "I already have, but they don't listen to me."
/>   "Try again," said Remo. While servants ran to neighboring rooms to bring in communications equipment-the suicide command bunker was only equipped with liquor and food-Remo polished a bit of the marble with the General's face.

  He would have killed him, but he needed him to talk. Remo even hated the walls. If he didn't watch out, the dangerous emotion of rage would take away his concentration, and without that he could just as easily kill himself as someone else with some of his moves.

  It was the mind that made Sinanju Sinanju. Finally the equipment was brought in and the General, weeping, got through to the USS Polk and a colonel he recognized as Hamid Khaidy.

  "Faithful brother, we command you to speak to a beloved guest."

  "We're busy," came back the voice.

  "What are you doing?"

  "We're activating the nuclear warheads. We're in range of Jerusalem and we can penetrate their air cover."

  The General put his hand over the receiver. "Should I ask them to stop?"

  "Hold on," said Remo. "We've got to think about that one."

  Chapter 6

  "No. I'd better stop that one," said Remo after a moment. He thought of Jerusalem going up in a nuclear cloud. It was a sacred place to all three monotheistic religions and home to one of them. And besides, precious Yoo was under his protection; it had been announced in the village that she had nothing to fear because she was leaving with a Master. Chiun would never forgive him if she got hurt.

  Was he going to save this sacred city, capital of a dear American ally, just because Chiun would hold it against him? Had he lost so much of his moral bearings? Had the work of the nuns in the Newark orphanage been so replaced by Sinanju that he would hardly give a second thought to the fact that Jerusalem was where Christianity was born?

  Had it gone that far? Long ago, thought Remo. "Tell him you are sending an emissary to help."

  "You will help, of course?"

  "They don't need help, apparently," said Remo.

  "What can one man do?"

  "I'm here, ain't I?" said Remo, nodding back at the wounded at the entrance of the luxurious suicide command center.

  "Can we come to an accommodation?" asked the General.

  "No."

  "What would you take to make sure those top officers never set foot on shore again?"

  Remo smiled. He knew what was happening, but he pretended to be the innocent American.

  "You want 'em dead?" asked Remo, feigning surprise.

  "I am faced with a problem you might not understand. Of course I am the foremost battler against imperialism, Zionism, oppression, and capitalism, as I am against atheism. I fight for the Islamic way of life," said the General, taking a thoughtful sip of his Scotch and soda, which was as forbidden a substance to a Moslem as pork to a Jew. "But to lead the fight, one must not have someone else winning more victories. I cannot afford a stronger battler against these evils than I. Do you understand?"

  "Golly, no."

  "Let us suppose they defeat the Zionist entity in the sacred homeland of the Palestinians."

  "You'll rejoice."

  "Of course. A great and wonderful victory. Unfortunately, it will not be mine. It will be theirs. First Jerusalem will be theirs, then who knows? Damascus? Riyadh? Cairo? Where will they stop?"

  "What are you saying?"

  "I feel safe, on behalf of the struggling masses against Zionism, the independent Arab and Islamic nations working for Allah to restore our rightful sovereignty over Jerusalem and all of Palestine, to offer you any price to make sure those on the USS Polk, the heroic Arab strugglers for justice, never set foot on land."

  "Kill them?"

  "Any price, and I guarantee you will have the support of every Arab government. We are not poor, you know."

  "There is something I want, General," said Remo, and from memory, from the droned recitations of the histories of Sinanju, he listed all the tributes he could remember, all that had been stolen while he was away doing the work of CURE.

  "Even for a beginning price, this is astronomical," said the General realistically.

  "No. All I want is any one of them, and for you to tell me where you got it. I'll get the rest."

  The General promised undying love, and hoped the American and his own renegade soldiers would fight to the death. Then he wouldn't be obliged to search for such an extraordinary list of valuables.

  The American certainly was no fool. He had been holding out for a treasure.

  Once the American was off on an Idran plane to the USS Polk, now named the Jihad, or holy war, the General contacted the ship again and got Hamid Khaidy on the phone.

  The General was about to play another card. He was not a leader of the struggle because he slept all day.

  "Beloved colonel," he said, "I am looking for a new commander of all my armies."

  "No," came back the voice of the colonel.

  "What?"

  "No deals. I am a soldier, not some dealer in promotions. I have fought an honorable battle. If I become a general, I will earn it on the field of honor."

  "Of course I am talking about honor, the honor of being a field marshal."

  "You obviously want me to set up someone, and I'm not going to do it. I will meet whatever enemy I have face to face, and live or die by what I can do with my courage and martial skills. No more scheming. No more baby killing. No more parking a car with a bomb at a supermarket and claiming some great Arab victory. I am going to live and die as a man, as a soldier, as an Arab soldier. Do you know what that is, General?"

  "I stand enlightened, brother. Your courage and honor shame me. Let me express my support for your new stand to your second in command."

  When the General got another colonel, he whispered into the phone:

  "Colonel Khaidv]y has gone crazy. He is talking about getting you all killed. I authorize you to seize command from him immediately and I am promoting you to general as of now. This is an inviolate order."

  "I'm not stabbing my brother in the back," said the other colonel. "If I get a promotion, it will be for killing enemies, not Arabs."

  "So true. So true," said the General, and asked if there was anyone else near the phone. To twelve men he offered supreme command of the Idran forces, and twelve men refused him, talking about honor, not as a normal word of conversation to make a point, but taking it to some ridiculous extreme. They were going to live by it.

  As a last resort he tried the colonel who had caused all this trouble in the beginning. And Colonel, now General, Arieson was most pleased to learn that a thin American with high cheekbones and dark eyes was now flying toward him on an Idran plane that was going to attempt to land on his decks.

  "He wanted to kill you, and how, I thought, could I protect our greatest victory but to warn you of his impending arrival? I am showing you I am saving you by sending him on a defenseless plane. And to show my good faith, I made sure it was not flown by a Russian, but an Idran hero commander ace pilot. They may not even reach your deck."

  "And in return?"

  "Hold off your attack against Jerusalem and meet with other Arab leaders. I will make you commander of all our victorious forces. You may be the ruler of the Arab world."

  There was only laughter at the other end of the phone.

  "But you don't understand. I have what I want. I don't want the world. I want my war, my good old-fashioned war."

  "Struggle, of course. It ennobles the soul. But a war must have a purpose, brother General Arieson."

  "It is the purpose, brother struggler," laughed General Arieson, and hung up.

  Remo learned almost immediately why the Idran air force, with the most modern jets money could buy, was ignored by the General in favor of hijacking of civilian airliners, machine-gunning of kosher restaurants, and bombing of discotheques where American servicemen danced.

  He was two thousand feet up, and still rising in Russia's most advanced fighter jet, when the pilot in the front seat of the two-seater jet asked him how he was doing. H
e asked in Russian. Remo only remembered bits of archaic Russian needed to understand Sinanju's many years of service to the czars.

  "I guess you did all right," he answered in that language.

  "Do you want to take over now?" asked the pilot. He was a hero, with medals for shooting down countless enemy planes-according to the publicity, fifty Israeli, twenty American, and ten British to be exact. Actually, under cover of diplomatic protection he had shot a British bobby from an Idran embassy, and when he was ejected from that country, given credit for shooting down British fliers in fair combat.

  "No, that's all right," said Remo. "You're doing fine."

  The blue sky over the tight canopy made him feel part of the clouds. It was true what they said about an advanced fighter. It was a weapon strapped to the body. He did not like the weapon because it was not his body. But he could see how it would enhance the crude unrhymed moves of the average person to make him forceful. Gut a corner at Mach 3 like an off ramp. Bang, turn, and you were gone into the clouds.

  "Did you like my takeoff?" asked the pilot.

  "It was fine," said Remo.

  "Don't you think I should have throttled forward more?"

  "I don't know," said Remo.

  "I felt too much resistance. That's why I asked."

  "I don't know," said Remo.

  "You didn't feel the lack of throttle?"

  "What throttle?"

  "Aren't you my Russian adviser?"

  "No. I'm your passenger."

  "Eeeah," screamed the pilot. "Who will land the aircraft?"

  "You can't land?"

  "I can. I know I can. I've done it in the trainer, but I've never done it without a Russian at the controls behind me."

  "If you can, you can," said Remo.

  "Not on a carrier."

  "You can."

  "That's special training."

  "I'll show you how," said Remo.

  "How can you show me how if you don't know how?"

  "I didn't say I didn't know how, I just don't know how to fly the plane."

  "That makes absolutely no sense!" screamed the pilot.

  "Don't worry," said Remo. "It'll work. Just make a pass at the carrier."