"Just because you couldn't, doesn't mean we can't," said the American general.
Anna smiled. "I guess I am the fool. I didn't see that you should be no different from us. Well, let me tell you I can get a hundred and fifty more just as good as Vassily Rabinowitz, and I won't. He's not a weapon. He's a direction, and it won't be your direction, at least I hope it won't. This man, because of crimes we committed against him, has been terrified into making an army. And frankly, he's going to make a damned good one."
"No problem for us," said the American. "Problem for you. "
"Really, do you want a war with us because one man has nightmares about what we did to him?"
"No comment," said the American general, and the others applauded.
Anna Chutesov shrugged.
"Well, I hoped you would be smarter. Nevertheless, I wish you luck in getting control of him. And if you ever figure out what you're going to use him for, please let me know."
Back at the Russian embassy, Nomowitz was furious. "You gave away Russian secrets to their officers."
"That is not the mistake I made," she said. "The mistake I made was telling them where they can find him. Now they will go down there to Fort Pickens and everyone who goes down will join his army. He's only getting stronger. "
"A sworn enemy gets stronger and you don't worry."
"Of course not. I know what to do. I know his profile. He will win his war, we will be duly impressed, and then we will give him what he wants."
"What's that?"
"We'll leave him alone and let him play with the American army as he would have played with ours. I told them the truth."
Of course, she hadn't. She just didn't want any more interference from back home, as she now worked on how she might be able to destroy Rabinowitz. For she was sure once this man had a taste of war, he would never want to give it up. She had read his profile back in Russia. Which made her even angrier that anyone would have been so stupid as to take him from his sleepy village of Dulsk to the parasychology clinic in the first place. She wished she could meet one man who used his mind. Apparently, in the last few days Rabinowitz had become assassin-proof. And that was just what she was afraid might happen if they sent their best people against him. But in this case, knowing who they had, and knowing what they didn't have, she was sure it was someone else who had tried to kill the hypnotist. If she knew who, she just might be able to give him something to help. But who in America was there? And who also understood what had to be done?
Harold W. Smith knew the moment Chiun's box had been destroyed. The worst had happened. And when he tried one slim hope of a chance of begging Remo into the mission, he got the strangest response from Remo.
Remo couldn't care less. He was talking to someone dead for forty-two hundred years.
Smith went home and from an upstairs closet removed his old army .45. He had not personally killed anyone since the Second World War. He knew he could not kill Chiun, but he also understood that Chiun thought him a sort of fool, and Chiun had never known Smith to lie.
He just might be able to lie this one time, first to Chiun, then to Rabinowitz, and then with one bullet do what the greatest assassins in the world had failed to do. He set the computers to self-destruct if he did not return.
The incredibly sensitive information in CURE computers could not be allowed to survive him. The organization had done its work over the decades, and now, rather than harm the country he loved, he would make sure his work would disappear with him.
Before he left he made one last phone call to the President. "Sir, as you know, the Russians were after this man. Precisely because of that, we enlisted, as you know, our special people to stop the Russians. Second, now we have a danger in this one extremely talented man. He is incredibly dangerous. He has taken over at least a division as far as I know, and maybe more. I think he is going to start a war. I don't know why, but we have lost one man already, and the other is inoperative at this time. I am going myself. If I fail, you will not have the organization to serve this country anymore, but then again, no one will get hold of our vast store of information either. It will be secure."
"Good luck, Smith. I know you'll do what's right," said the President.
At Vistana Views, Wang, sitting on a stool out in the kitchen while Remo prepared rice, asked him if the phone call had been from the American employer.
"Yeah. He's going to play cowboy with this hypnotist."
"And you're going to let him go alone?"
"Sure," said Remo. "It's his life. It's his country."
"Think you're pretty tough, don't you, Remo? You and Chiun. You're so much alike. You both have an infinite ability to lie to yourselves."
"I'm not lying, and I'm not like Chiun."
"Oh, but you are. That's your great secret. That's why you fight and that's why you love each other. What is the matter with you two?"
"I thought when I got to see the Great Wang I would get answers to my questions. That's what Chiun promised. Did he lie?"
"No. You're just getting the answers you don't like. You're just like him, you know, but slick enough to cover it, so that most people think you're sane. You're a lunatic, Remo. Name me one thing you like that you give yourself."
"I like to be left alone," said Remo.
"That's the biggest lie you've told me so far," said Wang, bouncing from the seat to the rug.
Wang assumed a simple stance, feet flat, arms at his sides, appearing defenseless.
"All right, Remo is not like Chiun. Let's see what you can do. Let's have it."
"I'm not going to fight you," said Remo.
"You won't hurt me. I've been dead thousands of years."
"For someone who's been dead so long, you certainly made the floor bounce with your body."
"You and Chiun have an obsession with weight. You don't have to be skinny, you know. C'mon, paleface, let's see what you can do."
Remo threw a desultory blow at the stomach, but carefully enough that he was not off balance. The air swished as he brought back his hand.
"Just like Chiun. If it isn't your way, you don't want to play."
Remo wanted to see just how solid the Great Wang was, and he knew that he could at least get a hand on the man. He might not be able to defeat him, but he certainly could touch that flabby belly.
And he did, without Wang making one move to stop him. Remo's arm went right through into the coldest center of the universe and he screamed with pain, as Wang laughingly told him Chiun had tried that too when they had met, when Chiun achieved his highest level.
"Got to say this for you two. You and Chiun have got the cleanest blows of all the Masters of Sinanju. Like father, like son."
Chapter 11
On the morning of May 11 three American columns under the command of a general some believed to be a reincarnation of General George Patton and others believed was their favorite commander, or father, or mother, or anyone close, invaded the newly liberated country of Sornica in Central America.
Sornica was newly liberated because after forty years of living under one-family rule, which was modestly oppressive with an army no larger than a police department, it was now ruled by a People's Council which had built a major army with major weapons, and was totally oppressive.
In the old regime, if one did not like the dictator, one could say it, but do little more. One could make a living, change jobs, marry whom one wanted, and if one didn't like it, one could leave.
The basic difference with the new Sornica was that no one was allowed to not like it. The newspapers which had published negative stories against the old oppressive regime, were now allowed the same freedoms. They could publish negative stories about the old regimes. When they published negative stories about the new People's Democratic Socialist Republic of Sornica, the enraged people shut it down.
The people were General Umberto Omerta, who was of the people, for the people, with the people. Anyone against Omerta was an enemy of the people. Therefore when
he sent his newly expanded police force to close down the newspaper and beat up the editors, something that never happened under the old oppressive regime, it was the people responding to the outrage.
The people made sure anyone speaking against the regime changed their minds. They stopped people speaking openly against the regime within the borders. They also stopped people leaving, as was a tradition in liberated countries.
No one dared ask if it were the people doing the arresting, executing, and spying on reactionary elements, traitors, and running dogs of America. No one asked if they, too, were not people. That would have been treason and brought up the ugly answer that if it was the people these reactionaries were against, they had to be something else. And that something else was untermenschen, a system used by Nazi Germany to categorize some people as less than human, a system which used gas ovens to take care of those who were deemed subhuman.
But the reason Sornica was invaded this May morning was not because it murdered its own nonpeople or kept them imprisoned and had its children spy on their parents. It was not because Sornica ran several training camps to help other like-minded folk liberate their neighbors from mildly oppressive regimes.
Sornica had eighteen companies of Russian soldiers and technicians stationed on their soil. And it was these companies that the reincarnation of George Patton, everyone's favorite commander or parent, the man who sometimes walked around cleverly disguised as a Russian immigrant, wanted to destroy.
Rabinowitz understood that if he could demolish the best troops Russia sent abroad, they would respect him. It made no difference if he killed them or treated them as prisoners. What the Russians understood was power. If he could show he was powerful they would leave him alone. It was not by accident that the only treaty the Russian communists ever kept with scrupulous precision was that with Nazi Germany. It only ended when the Nazis invaded them first instead of Great Britain, which the Russians were hoping for.
Hearing the guns fire, feeling the power of his tanks churn through the mud that was called a road in Sornica, Rabinowitz felt a strange sensation. While he desperately minded being killed by people personally putting their hands on him, and despised being chased, gunfire set off a special thrill within him. He dashed to the front of his columns. He cheered on his best commanders. He stood in open fields with shells falling around him to curse those who did not keep up with the rest of the column.
By midday the best Russian armor lay smoldering in the plains and jungles of Sornica. The ever-deadly Russian helicopter gunship, the Hinds, had been lured into attacking what appeared like light armor vehicles and infantry, only to be demolished by the hand-held rocket launchers he had refused to let his troops use on the first gunships in the area. When the Hinds saw no rockets beneath them, Generalissimo Omerta threw in his entire fleet to enjoy the carnage. And at that time, and only at that time, were Rabinowitz' troops allowed to use their rockets, a perfect defense against the gunships. The Hinds were caught strafing en masse and went up like firecrackers above the battlefields of Sornica.
"I fear only one thing, Chiun, and that's to be killed by hand. I never want someone's hands on me again," said Rabinowitz, turning to his bodyguard, who was dressed in the black battle kimono used by the Masters of Sinanju when standing near an emperor who had taken the field.
"But how, Great Wang, could you be killed by anyone's hand?" asked Chiun.
"You never know," Chiun heard the Great Wang say. "But it's your job to see that it doesn't happen."
"But have I not passed every earlier test to reach my highest level'?"
"This is another one."
"What kind?" asked Chiun.
"The most important one," said Vaasily.
"Why?" asked Chiun.
"Because I say so."
"But is it not the function of the Great Wang on his visit to a Master of Sinanju to answer the most important questions the other Master has? Is not your very name the answer to all?"
"Will you get off my back already with this answer mishigas?" Chiun heard the Great Wang say. And Wang would not even answer in Korean, but insisted on using English, a sign of disdain for Chiun, who could not figure out what he had done wrong, but was vowing to change it, whatever it was.
Following an army was not hard. No army ever moved without everyone around it knowing it moved, and Smith arrived in Sornica with credentials he had prepared for himself as a member of the Defense Department. He found the air oppressive and humid. His breathing was labored, and he could not stand for long periods of time. A sergeant got him a glass of water and helped him find what could pass for shade in Sornica: humid mass under a tree that attracted mosquitoes and large flying bugs as yet unidentified by science. Both of them bit, and Smith knew he was back in a war zone again. Except in the last war, he had been a young man who did not have to rest in the middle of the day.
His .45 felt heavier than he ever remembered it, and some of the soldiers who passed by him thought that because he wore it in a shoulder holster, he was some sort of secret agent. Smith didn't want to look this way when he approached Rabinowitz and Chiun. Chiun would not be all that surprised, but the great hypnotist, seeing a possible agent, might react immediately, and Smith's only chance was to surprise Rabinowitz about his intentions. And of course deceive Chiun.
No normal person could even see the Master's hands move, much less stop them.
"Sergeant," Smith asked, "do you think it would be possible to get me some fatigues? I feel awkward carrying this gun like some agent. I'm Defense Department and I don't think I should look like CIA, do you?"
"Yessir. Can do, sir," said the sergeant. He was an old top kick and Smith knew that if anyone in any army could get what he asked for, it was this sort of man. But the sergeant came back before nightfall, shrugging his shoulders, his palms open in helplessness.
"No extra anything, sir. Bottleneck back there."
"You mean to tell me there are no extra uniforms in the supply columns?"
"Not a one, sir. This is a tightly planned operation. Old Blood 'n' Guts has counted every bullet."
"What?" asked Smith. He couldn't believe the good news. Rabinowitz was nearby.
"Old Blood 'n' Guts counted every bullet. He knows just what and when and where. We'd better get moving now, sir, if we want to get up to the front to see him. We've already wasted a lot of time looking for a uniform for you."
"I don't think there's any worry about catching up to Rabinowitz. I'll just wait for him here."
"But he says he won't stop until he takes the capital of Sornica."
"I doubt that's a possibility at this point."
"But, sir, he's outfought everything the commies threw at him, even their gunships. Good Old Blood 'n' Guts has defeated the Hinds gunship."
"Could you possibly pitch some sort of tent for me here to spend the night?" asked Smith. "That is, if you can find one."
"I don't know, sir. Supplies are pretty tightly accounted for. "
"Good," said Smith. "I guess I'll just have to freeze in one of the cold nights of Sornica. Wake me if Rabinowitz should be back by morning, or Old Blood 'n' Guts-whatever you call him."
* * *
Wang was laughing.
"I'm not serious," said Remo. "I joke around a hell of a lot. I think the world is peculiar and I'm not afraid to say so."
"You never stop saying so. You take yourself so seriously, Remo."
"Hah," said Remo. He knew his anger was rising because his breathing told him so. Anger was the worst emotion to have, next to fear. It took away the other senses. "You know, here it is. I wait two decades to meet the Great Wang, thinking I will never achieve it, and now I finally meet you and you bust my chops more than Chiun. Chiun is the one who's serious. He thinks if we don't do this or that, the whole history of Sinanju is going to go up. He's been trying to get me married off to a Korean girl just to make sure the line will continue. Yeah. He's become a friggin' dating service."
"Why are you angry
?"
"Because I'm disappointed in you," said Remo. "Frankly, I expected more. And I got less than Chiun."
"The whole world is less than Chiun to you, Remo. You didn't learn his stroke style so perfectly without loving him. Nobody communicates that perfectly without love."
"I respect Chiun, and yeah, I love him. All right. Does that make you happy, you giggling bean pot?" said Remo to the round, smiling face of Wang. "But I don't think he's perfection. We have a term in this civilization called neurotic. I think it would eminently apply to our Master Chiun."
"Would it also apply to someone saving the world, Remo?"
"Not the world. I tried to save my country, if you don't mind. "
"How many is that? Two hundred and twenty million people?"
"About," said Remo. He was getting tired of this condominium, with its modern kitchen and living room and Jacuzzi and televisions in every room, and most of all the fat, happy Wang with a belly as cold as the center of the universe.
All Wang had wanted out of that was to see Remo's stroke. Any Master could tell from one stroke what sort of powers a man had. Remo walked outside, and Wang followed.
"You know, in our day the whole world had two hundred million people. America is your world."
"Not anymore," said Remo. He noticed groundskeepers look at Wang. So they could see him too, Remo realized.
"Then tell me. Who is the more neurotic, a man who tries to save a line of assassins or a man who tries to save a country? Who?"
"Look, you've had your visit. Thank you and good-bye."
"You haven't asked your question yet," said Wang.
"All right, when are you getting out of here?"
"When you ask the right question."
"That could take forever," said Remo.
"You don't have forever. But it could take until your dying day."
"You don't mean that, do you?"
"Do you think I want to hang around you for fifty or a hundred years?" laughed Wang. "Chiun was bad enough, but you are worse. Every time you open your mouth I hear Chiun."
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