"You think I can't?" Remo said tightly.
"I am willing to accept the possibility," Chiun said thinly.
"Fine. We'll split up then."
Chiun regarded his pupil coolly. "If we split up, the first to come upon the Spider Diva will have the privilege of vanquishing her."
Remo thought about that a moment. "I'll take my chances."
Chiun bowed. "Then we will split up."
Remo looked back to the walled compound. He saw vague movement in one of the lighted windows, but even his trained eyes could make out nothing more than an unrecognizable shape.
Remo turned back to the Master of Sinanju. "I say the best way in would be-"
But Chiun was no longer there. The Master of Sinanju had disappeared like a shadow in the greater darkness.
"Damn," said Remo. And he started for the walled compound himself. Chiun was trying to beat him in. Maybe he figured Remo wasn't up to the job. Remo planned to prove him wrong.
Remo went up the wall like a climbing spider, a black shape against a blacker sky. Below, the grassy grounds were lit here and there with spotlights and monitored by motion sensor detectors. The zones didn't overlap perfectly. A mistake.
Taking the coil of barbed wire in his hands, Remo felt along it until he found a weak spot. It snapped when he tugged it apart.
Then he rolled off and dropped to the ground in a pool of shadow.
A Plexiglas guard shack was not far away. The guard was hard at work emptying a green jug. He had his eyes on a TV monitor. He would not be a factor, Remo decided.
Moving with an economy of motion that would not attract the human eye or show up on a video screen, Remo eased along the inner wall until he came upon one of the gaps in the sensor zone. He dropped to his stomach and began to crawl on elbows and knees. He could feel the weak outer edges of the ultrasonic motion-detecting field on his exposed skin. He kept from intruding on its integrity.
There was enough light to show him up if anyone happened to stare into the patch of darkness, so Remo wasted no time. He gained the wide veranda, slipped up the rail, and dropped onto the porch.
So far, so good. He wondered how the Master of Sinanju was doing. There had been no sign of him.
The Master of Sinanju dismissed the idea of scaling the wall as too obvious. Any amateur could scale a wall. The best approach to a fortress, he knew, was to employ the fortress's own secrets against itself.
And no fortress built by man existed without a secret escape tunnel for the convenience of the owner. He went in search of it.
There was a saltbox home situated on a dune well back of the beach, within line of sight of the sprawling Clancy compound, but beyond its walls. It was the only such place within practical tunnel-digging distance, so he went to it.
The door was padlocked. The padlock surrendered to a single chopping blow and the door opened but a crack. The crack was sufficient to swallow the Master of Sinanju, unseen.
Furnishings were sparse, but there was a single decorative rug. With a sandaled toe, he eased this from its accustomed place, revealing a not very cunning trapdoor and a rusty steel ring. Bending, he lifted the ring from its circular socket and the trap opened upward.
It was a concrete-lined tunnel, which meant there would be no unpleasant vermin to contend with.
Chiun dropped into the space, his black skirts billowing and his hazel eyes adjusting to the utter blackness.
Moving in no particular hurry because he knew he would not be expected, the Master of Sinanju wondered if his pupil had yet succeeded in breeching the wall.
There were alarm wires on the door and windows Remo was able to check, so he slipped along the veranda that dominated the white Victorian house along two sides.
He went up a round supporting column, gained the porch roof, and lay flat among the shadows. Through the columns would be transmitted any sounds of warning.
There were none. Footsteps came and went, unhurried and unimportant. No buzzers buzzed. He had tripped no alarms.
Remo got up enough to creep along and no more. He went to a darkened window.
There were foil strips attached to the other side of the glass. An alarm system.
So he stood up under a gable, reached high to grasp some decorative gingerbread, and pulled himself up onto the central roof, like a coiling snake.
Remo had a wide menu of chimneys to choose from. The wings must have been added in the days before central heating, because each wing had its own chimney.
The main chimney was the largest, so he went to that.
Remo peered down and saw darkness. No crackling of a fire came to his ears. Grinning, he climbed in, and used the spaces between the crumbling bricks to descend. They might as well have left out a ladder for his convenience.
His frown vanished when his feet encountered a stubborn obstruction.
It was solid enough to take his weight so he dropped on it. It was the flue, down in closed position.
Remo leaned his hands against one chimney wall and walked his feet back until his heels found the opposite side. He kept walking backward until his body was horizontal and he was suspended by the pressure of hands and feet pushing in opposite directions.
One hand reached down and he pulled up the flue. It barely creaked.
He dropped into the fireplace, paused to wipe soot onto his face and spread the rest on his hands, and peered out.
The room-a big spacious New England parlor with overstuffed chairs and antique armoires-was empty of people.
Remo slipped out and straightened up.
Almost immediately, he heard the whining of something mechanical coming his way.
The Master of Sinanju followed the concrete tunnel that was inexplicably littered with women's undergarments until he came to a set of crude wood steps. He mounted these in silence. There was a trapdoor above his head and he placed one ear to it.
No sounds reached his ears, so he placed his hands against the trap and straightened his pipestem arms.
The trap lifted into a room filled with darkness.
The Master of Sinanju, like a furtive moth, stood in the darkness a moment, swiveling his head from side to side, ears hunting for sounds.
He heard none.
He began walking to a pair of doors that lay open.
And a strange sound came to his ears.
It was a low, whining sound, and it was approaching rapidly.
Chiun faded back, disappearing behind a curtain from which he could safely view the strange threat before deciding to attack or retreat.
Into the room scooted a thing no bigger than a punch bowl. In fact, it very much resembled an upside-down bowl moving on tiny tires close to the floor. It was blue and black and an orange light blinked on its chrome face.
It paused and circled as if sniffing the air like a curious dog. The orange light blinked silently.
The Master of Sinanju remained still.
The round thing continued to circle the room. Then, apparently deciding the room was empty, it abruptly backed up and disappeared up a long corridor.
When the sound of its rubber wheels was far distant, the Master of Sinanju detached himself from the curtain and followed its path.
He did not know what the thing was, but he knew it was but a machine of some sort and therefore no threat to a Master of Sinanju. Perhaps it would be something for Remo to play with.
Remo crouched in the fireplace as the whining grew closer.
He began to recognize the sound for what it was and was not surprised when Pearl Clancy entered the room in a motorized wheelchair.
She was seated in the wheelchair like a corpse that had been left there to dry up and shrivel. One gnarled hand clutched the control stick, a silver pen in a universal socket.
Her eyes, like two wicked buttons, swept the room.
Seeing nothing, her hands fumbled for a button on the armrest and the overhead lights came on.
Remo kept still. He was still in shadow.
Then her gaze fell on him and her mouth made a grimace of surprise.
Remo came out of the fireplace too fast for a healthy person to react, never mind a stroke-debilitated old woman. Pearl Clancy's hand was on its way to the control stick when Remo intercepted it. He detached the stick and tossed it out of reach.
"Sorry," he said softly. "Can't have you causing problems." And Remo reached around for the battery cables. He pulled them. The electric motor cut off.
"Remind me to plug you back in on my way out," he whispered.
Pearl Clancy only bugged her eyes out at him. She seemed to be trying to stare him to death. Lifting her forefingers to her slack mouth, she began making animated wriggling motions.
"Crazy as a bedbug," said Remo, closing the door behind him.
He eased up a long corridor whose walls were decorated with oil portraits of previous generations of Clancys. Remo could tell he was starting at the older end because the further along he moved, the more bloated and dissolute the Clancy clan faces became.
At Senator Ned J. Clancy's portrait, he took a left without thinking. It was as if he were being drawn toward a specific goal.
There was something in the air. He recognized it. It was Nalini's scent. The fruity smell was coming from somewhere in the corridor ahead.
Remo found himself quickening his pace without realizing it. He paused at each door. The scent wasn't coming from any of them. He moved unerringly toward the end of the corridor door.
The scent was definitely coming from the other side of the door now. His heart started beating faster. He willed it to calm down. What was wrong with him? Was he afraid of what he had to do?
Remo took the knob and with infinite slowness, turned it. The lock tongue coming out of its groove made no sound. He eased the door in. The hinges were quiet. He expected that. It was an old house but well maintained.
The room was dark except for a slice of moonlight slanting in through a curtained window, and Remo slipped in, closing the door behind him.
Eyes and ears alert, he oriented himself. The fruity scent was all around him. And he zeroed in on it.
It was coming from a big four-poster bed in the center of the room.
Remo moved to it, walking on the outsides of his soles. He made no more sound than the curtains waving in the open window.
Nalini slept under a quilt coverlet, her dark hair a spray of ebony on the big white pillow. She breathed through her open mouth, and her lips were as red as when Remo had last seen her. Moonlight gleamed on the hard edges of her perfect white teeth.
And as Remo watched, he was overcome by the urge to lift the covers and see her perfect brown body one last time. Before he took her out.
Remo's hand drifted out. He snagged the hem of the quilt. Nalini slept with one hand tucked under the pillow and the other resting on the exposed sheet. She would not feel the quilt move.
Remo, surprised at his own curiosity, drew away the quilt.
He saw her perfect body lying there, rounded breasts rising and falling with her breathing, dark nipples like flat unseeing eyes. He noticed something he had not noticed before-a wealth of thick black hair under each armpit. They seemed to stir.
And the hairs on the back of his neck lifted.
Crouched in the shadowy hollows of Nalini's exquisite body, dark shapes crawled and squirmed. And all at once, myriad black eyes winked open.
There were fumblings coming from the main section of the house. The Master of Sinanju crept in that direction.
Surprisingly, there were no guards. Once, he encountered a clod-footed man making the floorboards creak under his feet as he passed through the darkened house, his breath reeking of alcohol.
The Master of Sinanju eluded him easily. It was less trouble to fell him with a blow to the back of his neck and leave him where he fell than to concern himself about where to hide the overweight carcass.
The fumbling sound came from a door that was closed. There was a keyhole and Chiun bent to put his eye to it.
He recognized the seated figure of Pearl Clancy, her arms flopping in her wheelchair, as if trying to goad it into life.
The Master of Sinanju saw the soot-smeared severed battery cables and the fireplace beyond, and deduced how his pupil had gained entry.
Chiun nodded to himself. It was a serviceable approach. There was little art in it, but the Master of Sinanju expected no art from his adopted son, who although practiced, was white and therefore congenitally graceless.
He left the woman to her helplessness. She was not important.
He walked along, seeking the familiar scent he knew would lead his unfailing senses to the last Spider Diva-and a reckoning that was long overdue. There was no hurry. Remo had had time to find the Hindu harlot by this time-and face a test of his ability to meet the difficult demands of a Master of Sinanju in training.
The jumping spiders began leaping at him from the moist hollow places in Nalini Toshi's brown body.
Remo used his hands to fend them off. There were too many of them for him to do otherwise. They leaped for his face, his hair, and his arms.
And encountered an invisible barrier that was Remo's flashing hands. They bounced back, not always whole.
The jumping spiders struck walls, bedclothes, and Nalini herself.
Her eyes snapped open. They fixed on Remo, and on the shattered, squirming rust-red body segments accumulating on the white sheet.
"My children!" she shrieked.
Immediately, she hugged her nakedness, trying to locate still-living spiders on her person. She seemed to find none.
"Who are you?" she demanded.
Remo batted away the last two attackers and said, "Forget me already?"
"Remo!"
Her voice was dull with shock.
"Surprised?"
She pulled the sheet over her breasts. "What-what do you do here?"
"I came for answers."
"To-to what?"
"To why you tried to kill me. To why you're killing people with spiders and blaming a virus that doesn't exist."
"I-I harm no one . . . ."
"Can it. I know everything. How you murdered Magarac, Parsons, and for all I know Lee Esterquest."
Nalini's eyes became wary slits. "If you know so much, you would not come seeking answers to questions."
"I know about the Spider Divas," Remo said.
Nalini just stared. "Who are you?"
"Not who. What. I am Sinanju."
And Nalini hissed like a cat in the darkness. Her eyes became hot. She flung off her sheet to reveal her splendid body anew. "If you are truly Sinanju, then I am helpless before you," she said submissively.
A cool, musty breeze was coming from under the door. The Master of Sinanju detected other smells mixed in with the mustiness. Sweat. Fear. He opened the door and descended unpainted steps.
A heartbeat in the cool darkness, muffled and sluggish. Great lungs labored for air. The Master of Sinanju sought those sounds.
There was a steamer trunk standing on end near the cold furnace. He went to it, knowing the sounds of life came from within.
The trunk was closed with padlocks but they surrendered to fingers that understood their strengths and weaknesses.
The Master of Sinanju pushed the halves of the trunk apart, and a great form rolled out and stopped at his feet.
"Roger, Thrush," said the Master of Sinanju.
Nalini was saying, "Please do not harm me, Man of Sinanju. I am but a poor servant who cannot harm you." Her voice was pitiful. Her heart was beating wildly.
Remo hesitated. Her fruity scent was in his nostrils, tickling them.
"Straight talk," he said.
Nalini gathered herself up, her liquid eyes steady on Remo's towering form.
"What do you wish to know?" she murmured.
"There's no HELP, right? Just poison spiders."
Nalini nodded. "There is no HELP, yes. Only spiders."
"So how come some people die in two days and others
go as soon as they're bitten?"
The Spider Diva mustered up a tentative smile that made her dark eyes sparkle alluringly. She stretched her legs, revealing no hidden arachnids.
"It is very simple," she said, averting her eyes. "My pets are no different from other creatures. Some are male. Some are female. The bite of the male brings weakness and a slow death. Those whom my sisters bite succumb at once."
Remo grunted. "Okay, why?"
"It is my duty." She lay back, stretching her arms, arching her back like a supple brown cat. "If you are Sinanju, I do not have to explain duty to you."
"Who's your boss-Clancy?"
She closed her eyes. "Yes, my boss is Clancy."
Remo listened to her beating heart. It had been slowing down, and was now beating normally. She was telling the truth, he decided.
"What's his game?"
"To be President of the United States."
"Blotto? Who'd vote for him?"
"Grateful Americans, once he delivers them from the terrible Human Environmental Liability Paradox."
"Smart. All you gotta do is pull your spiders back and anything he does will look like a cure. But it won't work."
Nalini found his eyes with hers. Her voice grew pleading.
"It could work, Remo. If you were to join us."
Remo shook his head. "No chance."
"I am sorry you say that," she said petulantly, lying back. Her head fell on the pillow. More of the fruity scent billowed up and Remo found himself breathing more rapidly. "I looked forward to more lovemaking with you."
"Sorry."
"You will not kill me."
"It's my job," said Remo.
"I too have a job. I am sorry that your job and my job have made us adversaries. But we need not be enemies."
"That's the biz, sweetheart," said Remo, trying to decide whether to shatter her face or deliver a simple heart-stopping blow over the left breast.
"I understand," Nalini murmured. "But I do not think you will kill me."
"Why not?"
"Because you cannot."
"Wrong," said Remo. Lifting his right hand, he made the stiffening fingers into a spear point.
Nalini spread her legs apart in the darkness, and her scent filled Remo's head. She lay open to him like a burst plum.
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