Well, Remo would see that the first message from the new ruler was interesting.
Remo walked around the back of the building. Six guards and four broken doors later, he stood in front of the new ruler of Lobynia, Lieutenant General Ali Amin.
The general looked at him and almost involuntarily his hand went up to his right cheek where a long gash had scabbed over, promising to heal into a beautiful white scar.
"Good," said Remo. "You remember me. Now if you want to keep breathing, this is what you're going to do."
While Remo was explaining to General Ali Amin what he was going to do, a message was left for him at his hotel room.
There was a knock on the door. Chiun in his own room heard the knock and then something else. Something sliding.
Chiun went through the adjoining door and saw a white envelope on the floor inside Remo's door. He picked it up, looked at both sides of it, then opened it.
The bare envelope contained a single small sheet of paper. On it was crabbed handwriting that Chiun recognized immediately. It said: "Pig Remo. I wait for you in the intended place. N."
Chiun held the paper in his hands for many minutes, as if absorbing its feel, as if he could pull from its texture a message other than the one that had been written.
Then he dropped the note to the floor and went back to his own room. Not even Chiun could tell how, but now he knew where the appointed place was. The legends of Sinanju said that the challenge must come in a place of the dead animals and now he knew where that place was.
It did not matter to him that the challenge had been meant for Remo. There was only one way for Chiun to redeem his honor as the Master of Sinanju. It would be to visit punishment upon the man who had robbed Chiun of the duty which was his: the duty of removing Colonel Baraka from the throne of Lobynia.
That much was left to Chiun. Slowly he dressed in a two-piece black karate type suit, and slipped thong sandals onto his feet. Then he opened the door and went downstairs.
Minutes later, a terrified taxicab driver floored the gas pedal of his vehicle and headed out on the central road into the desert, toward the vast Lobynian oil storage fields-the place of the dead animals. There, millions of animals had died to create for future ages the oil on which their foolish countries ran. Today Chiun might die. Would he someday be nothing but oil? Not even so much as a memory?
The cab driver whose meter had been ripped out by Chiun's bare hands smiled nervously at his fare, who sat silently in the front seat staring ahead.
"Radio, sir?" he asked.
There was no answer. Taking silence as acquiescence and needing something to cover the sound of his labored breathing, the driver turned on the radio.
The same announcer's voice came on: "General All Amin has just concluded his address to the Lobynian people from the balcony of the palace. He has announced the following major steps.
"First, an end to the Lobynian oil embargo against the United States.
"Second, in an effort to bring all of Lobynia into a cohesive world force and to end factionalism, he has issued an invitation to King Adras to join with him in the formation of a new government, recognizing both the monarchy and the right of free people to govern themselves.
"All hail General Ali Amin. All bail King Adras."
Chiun listened and smiled. Remo had done that for Chiun. Remo was really a good-hearted child.
And Chiun was happy it was he, and not Remo, who was going to the desert to face Nuihc's challenge.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Chiun stopped the cab two hundred yards from the gigantic oil depot, told the driver he would get his reward in heaven, and stepped out into the burning Lobynian sand.
As he had expected, the depot was deserted. There were no people, no signs of activity. Nuihc had not chanced interference in his challenge to Remo.
Slowly the aged Korean moved through the sand, his feet oblivious to any feeling of heat, toward the storage tanks. There was both sorrow and anger in his heart that his brother's son, born into the House of Sinanju, would attempt to disgrace him by killing Baraka. Death was too good for Nuihc, but death was the one punishment that Chiun was not allowed to administer. Because, for ages past, there had been a dictum that the reigning Master of Sinanju could not take the life of anyone from the village. The rule had been instituted centuries before to prevent the village's benefactor from becoming its tyrant. It still bound Chiun, and worse, Nuihc knew it.
And then, too, there was the fact that Nuihc was less than half Chiun's age, and had had access to the secrets of Sinanju since birth, when he had been anointed and designated as he who would one day become Master. How great were Nuihc's skills?
He still yearned to be the Master of Sinanju. Today, the Master would test him.
Chiun stopped before the gigantic red-and-white-striped oil tank and listened. From many miles away, he heard the hushed breeze buffet the coastline of this country. He heard the light scurrying of small desert animals. He heard the sound of oil moving slowly, heavily through a massive four-foot-wide pipe that snaked its way across the desert and ended here in a small concrete blockhouse, where its precious juice was piped from the building through smaller pipes to the rows of tanks,
But he heard nothing else.
Behind the long row of tanks, there were derricks of producing wells, but they too had been shut down for the day. Chiun moved softly through the sand toward the gigantic steel towers.
He stopped just before reaching the towers and turned around. It was as if he were in an amphitheater. He was bounded on three sides by oil tanks, on the back by the oil towers. No better place to be than in an arena.
Chiun stopped, folded his black-robed arms, and spoke, his voice ringing in the sodden stillness of the Lobynian summer.
"I am the Master, come to face the usurper of my duties. Where is he? Does he hide in the sand like a sick and dying lizard? Show yourself."
And a voice answered, ringing in echo off the oil tanks, "Be gone, old man. My challenge is to the white man to whom you have given the secrets. Be gone."
"You have not dishonored the white man," said Chiun. "You have dishonored me and dishonored the memories of all the Masters who have gone before. Show yourself."
"As you will," responded Nuihc's voice, and then he appeared atop an oil tank sixty yards across the sand from Chiun. Like Chiun, he wore a two-piece black costume, and now he spread his robed arms against the sun-bleached white sky and called out: "You are a fool, old man, for now you must die."
Nuihc looked across the distance to his uncle, contempt on his face, then jumped from the top of the tank. He seemed to float in slow motion. He landed lightly in the sand at the base of the tank and raised his eyes toward Chiun again.
Slowly he began to walk across the sand toward the aged, frail Chiun.
"You are too old, old man. It is time another took your place," Nuihc said.
Chiun did not speak; he did not move.
Nuihc advanced. "And after you are gone, then I shall deal with the pale piece of pig's ear who is your disciple."
Chiun was still silent.
"The buzzards will pick your meatless bones," said Nuihc still advancing, now only twenty yards from Chiun.
And still Chiun did not speak or move.
And then only ten yards separated them, and Chiun slowly raised a hand above his head.
"Stop!" he called and his voice resounded like thunder in the mock arena and Nuihc stopped in mid-stride, as if frozen.
Across the yards, Chiun fixed his steely hazel eyes upon his nephew.
"You should pray to your ancestors for forgiveness," Chiun said softly. "And especially my brother, the father whom you have disgraced. You go now to meet him in another world."
Nuihc smiled thinly. "Have you forgotten, old man, that you may not kill another from the village? I am protected."
"I knew you would hide, like a woman, behind a shield of tradition," Chiun said. "But I will not be untrue to my duties. I w
ill not kill you." He paused, and then his eyes narrowed even further, until they were only thin penciled slits in his face, which now looked like a primitive mask of hatred and doom. Nuihc seemed relieved, but Chiun said, "No, I will not kill you. But I will leave you here in broken pieces and let the sun finish the task I am not permitted to complete."
And then Chiun took a step forward. And another. And another.
And Nuihc backed up. "You cannot do that," he cried.
"Swine," shouted Chiun. "Dare you to lecture the Master on his powers?" And then he jumped through the air toward Nuihc, who turned and fled, running to escape between two of the tanks out into the broad trackless desert.
But Chiun was in front of him. Nuihc turned again. He felt the whir of air pressure and lowered his head fractionally. A yellow hand flashed by, over the top of his long hair. It hit with a crash against the side of one of the tanks, and thick gooey oil poured through the rupture Chiun's blow had made in the steel.
Nuihc gasped and bolted to the right, again heading for an opening. But there ... again .,. Chiun stood before him, a spectre of death and destruction in black.
In desperation, Nuihc left his feet and leaped toward Chiun, his feet cocked beneath his body, ready to lash out and smash into the old man's face or body. Chiun stood unmoving as Nuihc flew toward him. Then Nuihc's right leg flashed out, aimed at Chiun's face, but Chiun merely raised his right hand and to Nuihc it felt as if his foot had slammed into a mountain. He dropped heavily onto the sand, but as fast as he was he was scurrying away in another direction.
He slipped crossing the growing pool of oil that gushed from the ruptured tank, turning the sand arena into a sticky quagmire, then saw ahead of him one of the two oil towers and ran frantically toward it. He leaped upward, grabbed a crossbar, spun his body around, and then began to climb up the slim pyramidal steel web.
Chiun walked slowly across the sand toward the tower.
Remo returned to his room, pleased with the day's work, hopeful that getting Adras back onto the throne had helped lift Chiun out of his despondency.
"Hey, Chiun," he called as he entered the hotel room. There was no answer and the only sound in the room came from the radio, as the announcer talked about the impact of the oil embargo in making the West understand the unity of the Arab peoples.
"Chiun?"
Remo looked around the room, then went through the door into his room. There he saw the note on the floor. He picked it up and read it.
"Pig Remo. I wait for you in the intended place. N."
Chiun had gone instead of Remo. But where was the intended place. He carried the note back into the other room. Chiun should not have gone. It was Remo's challenge to meet. Suppose it was a trap? If Nuihc had hurt Chiun in any way, then he would not sleep another night on the earth, Remo vowed. But where was the intended place?
The squawk of the announcer burst into his thoughts and he went angrily over to turn off the radio.
"... and the shortage of fossil fuels has seriously hurt the West's economy . . ." Remo snapped it off. The intended place was a place of dead animals. But where?
And then it came, spurred by the radio broadcast. Fossil fuels. Of course. The place of dead animals was an oil field, Remo dropped the note and ran downstairs. Moments later he was in a taxicab.
The driver looked at Remo's face, drawn tight with anger and fear for Chiun, then looked at the spot on the dashboard where his meter had been until it was removed by an aged Oriental several hours before.
"Do not tell me, sir. You wish to go to our oil fields, correct?"
"Drive," Remo said.
If he could have climbed higher he would have, but he could not, and so now Nuihc hung from the very top of the oil derrick, looking down in fear at Chiun, who stood eighty-five feet below him, his arms folded across his chest.
"The most timid squirrel always seeks the most high branch," Chiun said.
"Be gone," called Nuihc. "We are members of the House. We have no quarrel."
"I go," said Chiun. "Yet, hear this. The white man, Remo, is the true heir of Sinanju. Count yourself lucky that he did not come today to meet your challenge. He would not have treated you so kindly."
Nuihc clung to the top of the derrick. The old man would go; Nuihc need only wait. He would live to fight another day.
He watched Chiun slowly unfold his arms below.
Then Chiun drew back his right hand and smashed it against the complex of valves, pipes, and gears at the base of the derrick.
Nuihc heard before he saw. A hiss and then a deep throated rumble. And then far below him, he saw the first bubble of slick black oil slip from the piping Chiun had ruptured, and then it turned into a frothy plume and it was growing stronger and louder, and it surged suddenly into the air, and then it was on him, and the oil choked him and coated him, and its pressure grew greater and greater as the gusher buffeted him, and then his oil-coated hands could hold no longer and he felt them slip, and then he was being carried away from the derrick, high into the sky atop the black chimney of oil.
Chiun looked up from below and saw Nuihc's body carried high into the sky by the eruption of oil. It seemed to bounce atop the black stream for a few moments, before it was flung out into the air, far off into the sand, and the tons of oil arched softly and began to pour down on Nuihc's body.
Chiun watched a moment, then folded his arms again and walked away from the derrick, across the now oil-filled sand arena toward the thin black road that led back to Dapoli.
Remo saw the frail black-clad figure walking slowly along the road, and ordered the cab driver to stop. The cabdriver recognized his fare from before and groaned, but he quickly braked the aged car.
Remo pushed open the back door.
"Chiun," he called anxiously. "Are you all right?"
Chiun looked up at him blandly. "I sleep well. I am well fed. I exercise daily. Why would I not be all right?" He slid past Remo into the backseat and Remo got in behind him, slamming the door.
"Back to town," he told the driver, then turned to look at Chiun. The old man's eyes were closed and a look of peace was on his face.
"Did you have any trouble?" asked Remo.
"Why should I have had any trouble?" asked Chiun, his eyes still closed.
By the time they reached Dapoli he was snoring.
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Oil Slick td-16 Page 15
