Chiun was moving in on Jack Mullin. He stopped and turned to Remo, hands on his hips, his hazel eyes narrowed until they were mere slits in his parchment-yellow face.
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"Explain yourself," he demanded.
"Chiun, I'm a little busy," Remo said, as he threw the dead terrorist in his arms at the third terrorist. The weight crashed the man to the ground.
"Nonsense, busy," Chiun said. "You stop fooling around with those creatures and talk to me."
Remo turned toward Chiun. The third African, carried to the ground by the weight of his dead partner, extricated himself, rolled to his belly and aimed his automatic at Remo's stomach.
"You lost," Chiun accused.
"Let me explain," Remo said.
"You lost deliberately."
"For a good reason, Chiun."
"There is no good reason for a Master of Sinanju, even such a worthless one as you, to lose. That is without honor."
Just as the third terrorist squeezed the trigger, Remo, without turning, kicked out with his left foot and buried his shoe into the man's skull, in the thin spot between the eyes. The brain no longer ordered the finger to squeeze the trigger and both man and gun clattered onto the ground.
That left Jack Mullin.
"Losing today was a matter of honor, Chiun," Remo said. He was glancing at Mullin, who was backing away from the two men, trying to get far enough from them, so he could be sure to take them both out with bullets from his .45.
"All that training wasted by an ingrate, a white ingrate, a dead-white-like-a-dead-fish-pale-piece-of-pig's-ear-ingrate."
"Dammit, Chiun," said Remo.
"C'mon," Mullin yelled. He was fifteen feet from them now. His eyes were rolling wildly in his head. He pointed the automatic at first Chiun, then Remo. "C'mon," he yelled. "I'll get you. I'll take you both."
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"You be quiet," Chiun said. "I'm not ready to deal with you yet. First this ingrate."
"I know that gold medal meant a lot to you, Chiun. You've got to believe I didn't just lose it on a whim."
Chiun was disgusted. He threw his hands in the air in exasperation, turned, and walked away from Remo and Mullin. The Englishman carefully aimed his automatic at Chiun's thin back.
This time, he would not miss. This time, that old man was his. Let's see how inscrutable he'll be when he's dead, Mullin thought.
He forgot Remo and as his finger tightened on the trigger, he felt the gun slapped from his hands and saw it bounce away along the thin blacktop pavement.
"Aaaaaaarghhhhhh," screamed Mullin, his voice quivering in anguish.
"Where'd you plant the bombs?" Remo asked.
"Find them yourself," Mullin said. Remo buried Ms hand in Muffin's left side and the Englishman screamed in pain.
"The bombs," said Remo.
"Around the American barracks," Mullin said.
"So long, Major Blimp," said Remo, and he slowly removed his hand from Muffin's left side and Mullin felt a flash of cool air there and realized that his side had been opened and his vital organs exposed, but before he could wonder how Remo had done that without a knife, he fell dead to the ground.
Remo wiped his hand on Muffin's shirt. Forty yards away, Chiun was still marching resolutely off.
"I saved your life," Remo yelled. "I really did. He was going to shoot you and I saved you."
And Chiun's voice wafted back toward Remo.
"Blow it out your ears," called the Master of Sin-anju.
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CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It was the next-to-the-last day of competition. The bombs had been removed from the American athletes' quarters without incident. The Russian secret police had announced that they had apprehended the terrorists, but refused to give details beyond their announcement that "again the forces of reactionary racist capitalist imperialism had succumbed to the superior intelligence and dedication of the Soviet socialist system."
And Remo had not spoken to Josie Littlefeather since the day he had lost his race.
But he was sitting near the bench as her competition was slowly winding down to its final day. Josie had continued to stun the crowd by scoring nothing but tens on the balance beam. She was far ahead in that contest, and her score on the beam had kept her respectably close with an outside chance for a silver medal in the overall gymnastic competition.
Remo watched as Josie applied rosin to her hands and approached the beam. She mounted it cleanly and performed brilliantly, and Remo saw, by the confidence with which she moved, that the imaginary red line down the center of the imaginary wide wooden bar was still there in her mind.
Her dismount was perfect. So was her score. All tens. Just one more day to go for the gold.
As she came off the floor, she was surrounded by
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reporters who wanted to talk to her. Remo saw someone in the crowd pushing the reporters back, making room for her. His stomach fell when he saw who it was. Vincent Josephs, the sports agent, who had wanted to sign up Remo and manage his career.
Remo saw Josephs walk toward the arena exit and the press tent. Josie Littlefeather followed him, ignoring the questions of the trailing pack of reporters.
Remo tagged along. He wanted to hear her tell her story about how winning the gold medal would bring pride to her tribe of Blackhand Indians.
When Remo entered the tent, he almost bumped into Vincent Josephs, who was checking to make sure that all the major press outlets were represented.
"Stand in the back, kid, and don't talk," he told Remo. "This tent is for winners."
"She hasn't won yet," Remo said.
"It's a chip shot," Vincent Josephs said. "Tomorrow is a breeze."
Josie saw Remo standing in the back of the tent and when his eyes met hers, she quickly looked away. With Josephs at her side, she began to field the reporters' questions. She remembered all the answers she had been taught.
Her uniform, made by Lady Bountiful, fit perfectly and gave her the freedom for her championship performance.
She owed her conditioning to krisp-and-Lite breakfast cereal, which she had eaten every day since childhood.
She protected herself against slipping by using Shur-Fire Rosin, the stickum of champions, and when she wasn't competing, she liked to rest around the wigwam in her perfectly comfortable, wanning Hotsy Totsy Slippers by Benningham Mills, made of the new wonder knit, More-on.
She never mentioned Remo, which did not hurt his
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feelings. She never once mentioned winning the medal for the Blackhand Indians, which did hurt Re-mo's feelings.
Remo waited by the entrance to the tent so Josie would have to pass by him when they left. Reporters wanted her to come outside, and do a couple of handstands and cartwheels for publicity photos. She would be America's first woman gymnast gold medalist in history. The only way she could lose tomor-roe would be to fall off the bar and stay off.
He blocked Josie's way as she came toward the tent entrance.
"Congratulations," he said. "I'm sure all the folks back home on the reservation will be proud of you, even if you did forget to mention them."
She tossed her long hair back over her shoulder and stared at him, as if he were an autograph hound bothering her in a restroom.
"You were right," she said, "when you said that if I could work my way off the reservation, so could they. I have an opportunity now with Mr. Josephs to make a name for myself."
"And a lot of money," Remo said.
"Right. And a lot of money and there's no law against it. Maybe I'll see you around, Remo. Now, the photographers are waiting."
Vincent Josephs went ahead of her and as she passed Remo he reached out and delicately touched her lower back.
She turned. "What was that for?" she asked. She felt strangely uncomfortable. She knew he'd only touched her lightly, but for some reason she could still feel it and it seemed to be spreading through her body.
"You'll never forget that touch,
Josie," said Remo. "It's very special. Any time you try to perform any kind of gymnastic move, you'll remember that touch. When you mount a balance beam, you'll think of it,
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and when you do, you'll think about that beam and you're going to know it's not two feet wide with a red stripe down the middle. You're going to remember that it's only a piece of wood, four inches wide, and every time you try to climb on it, you're going to fall off, right on your lovely ass."
She frowned at him. "You're crazy," she told him, not wanting to believe it.
Suddenly, Vincent Josephs was back.
"Hey, honey, come on outside. They want some pictures, you know, handstands and flips and stuff. C'mon, let's go tantalize them . . . champ."
She hesitated.
"Go ahead, Josie," said Remo, with a cold smile. "Go do a few flips and handstands for them. And for me and the folks back home."
Josephs grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the tent and Remo walked out behind them, then turned and walked away.
Behind him, he heard the photographers laugh. He turned to watch.
Josie tried a handstand and lost her balance and fell over.
The photographers chuckled and Vincent Josephs laughed it off.
"Just nerves, fellas. Come on, Josie, put on a show for the boys."
She looked up and her eyes met Remo's. She looked apprehensive.
She tried to do a cartwheel, a children's exercise in a schoolyard, and fell heavily to the ground.
The photographers laughed and Remo walked away, back toward the room which he and Chiun would soon leave for a plane to London.
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In the fifth floor room at London's Dorchester Arms, Smith was trying to talk, but Chiun sat silently in the middle of the floor, arms folded, eyes staring into eternity, and Remo was watching the women's gymnastic competition on television.
"So it has ended reasonably well," Smith said. "The explosives were all removed, and the Russians have decided not to protest against our obviously having sneaked some agents into the games without their permission."
He got the feeling he was talking into an empty cave. Chiun did not move, not even so much as flickering an eyelid. Remo remained glued to the television set. An announcer, presumably chosen for hyperthyroidism, was shouting: "Now, here's the surprise star of the games. Josie Littlefeather. This little red woman hasn't been anything but perfect since she first set foot on the balance beam here in Moscow. All tens."
And homing in on his voice was the voice of a young woman commentator who was herself an ex-athlete but tended to forget it in the flood of gee-whizzes and wows which made up her broadcasting vocabulary. "That's right, folks," she said, "and, gee whiz, all Josie's got to do right now is score an eight . and she's got this balance beam competition all locked up."
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"Scoring an eight shouldn't be hard, should it?" said the male commentator.
"All you've got to do is stay on the beam and you'll get an eight," the girl said.
"Yeah?" snarled Remo to the television set. "Watch this."
Smith shook his head. Both Remo and Chum had been acting strangely since they returned last night from Moscow. He leaned over on his couch seat to look over Remo's shoulder at the television set. He saw an Indian girl with her hair tied up in a bun apply rosin to her hands, then move to the balance beam, put her hands on it, and lift herself up to the narrow plank of wood. Then her hands seemed to slip, and she fell to the matting surrounding the beam.
"Way to go, Josie," shouted Remo.
The girl leaped back up to the beam, but her foot slipped and she landed heavily on her backside. She grabbed the beam desperately to stop herself from falling off.
"Swell, sweetheart," Remo said.
Finally she raised herself to a standing position on the beam. She took a step forward, planted her right foot, tried to do a forward walkover, but her left foot slipped and she fell off the beam onto the mat.
"She's blowing it," the young woman commentator said. "Wow, folks, Josie had it all in her hands and she's blowing it."
"I guess she's blowing it," said the male announcer, not to be outdone in technical analysis.
Josie Littlefeather got up quickly and made one last attempt to mount the beam, but as her feet hit it, they slid out from under her and she fell to her backside, then rolled off onto the mat, then got up and ran off the floor, out of the arena. She was rubbing her back.
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"Yaaaaay," yelled Remo. He stood up and kicked off the television with his toe. He turned to Smith. "You were saying?"
"Why were you cheering that poor girl's disaster?" Smith asked.
"Just collecting a due bill," Remo said. "What about the Russians?"
"They are not going to complain that our country sent some agents into the games without their permission."
"That's big of them," Remo said. "They got all the bombs out?"
"Yes. They were in the ventilation shafts in each of the building's wings. It would have been a disaster."
"Good," Remo said. "And who were the terrorists?"
Smith dug in his attache case and brought out a photo, which he handed to Remo. "I think it was him."
Remo looked at him. "I thought Idi Amin had been disposed of."
"That's not Idi Amin. That's Jimbobwu Mkombu."
"Who's he?"
"He leads one of the terrorist armies that have been trying to overthrow the governments of South Africa and Rhodesia."
Remo nodded. "I got it. Make it look like the South African whites were trying to upset the Olympics and kill American athletes. Get the world ticked off at them, and then move in and take over."
"That's about it," Smith said.
"What's going to happen to him?"
"Nothing," said Smith. "In the first place, we can't be 100 percent sure that he sent this Lieutenant Mul-lin and the other four men to disrupt the games."
"He sent them," Remo said.
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"I think so too, because Mullin had been working for him for three years. But we can't prove it."
"What about the Russians?" asked Remo.
"Well, they've been supporting Mkombu's revolution. They're not about to announce that one of their own tried to mess up their games. That's why they're not announcing the identity of the terrorists."
"So Mkombu's going to get away with it," Remo said.
Smith shrugged. "Apparently. He might even get some good out of it for himself. Without any contradiction, much of the world is still going to believe it was the whites in Southern Africa who tried to blow up the games. That might strengthen Mkombu's hand."
"That's not fair," Remo said.
"Hah," said Chiun. "A fitting end to these games, then. Nothing is fair."
He continued to look straight ahead and Smith looked toward Remo for an explanation.
"He's ticked 'cause I didn't win a medal," Remo said.
"Nothing has gone right in these Olympics," Chiun said. "Nothing has happened the way I planned."
The self-pity oozed from his voice and Remo wondered if he should tell Smith what had happened. Yesterday, returning from Moscow, Chiun had become philosophical about Remo's defeat, and when Remo had pressed him, he found out that Chiun had figured out a new way to gain fame and fortune from the games. Chiun had decided that the entire world saw him lift Vassilev and the six hundred pounds of weights and this should bring the offers of endorsement contracts to him immediately in great floods. It was only when they reached London that Chiun found out that the television had blacked out at just that moment, and no one had seen him toss Vassilev
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around like a rag doll. Remo had not had the heart to tell Chiun that it was Chiun's own fault: that when he snapped the television cable that was blocking his way, he had stopped the TV transmission of the weight-lifting competition.
"I'm sorry for that, Chiun," Smith said.
Chiun eyed the ceiling
in disgust, and Remo felt sorry for him. Chiun had not gotten Ms gold medal, had missed out on all his endorsement contracts, and had experienced nothing but disappointment because of Jimbobwu Mkombu. And Mkombu might turn the entire thing into a great success for himself.
That wasn't fair, Remo decided.
"So Mkombu's going to get away with it," he said to Smith.
"Probably."
"Maybe," said Remo.
At that moment, he decided the job was not yet done.
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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Carried by jungle drums, passed in whispered word from one soldier to another, the story spread through the jungles above South Africa and Rhodesia that a slim white avenger stalked the jungles, seeking vengeance.
The stories said he was able to move unbelievably fast; that he was there one moment and gone the next. That bullets could not hurt him. That he smiled when he killed-smiled and spoke of vengeance for the sake of honor.
And Jimbobwu Mkombu's soldiers worried, because the trail of bodies was coming through the jungles toward them. And the soldiers asked themselves, "Why should we die this way for Mm? On a battlefield, yes, because we are soldiers, but at the hands of a white avenging spirit who smiles when he kills? That is no way for soldiers to die."
"He wants the general," one soldier told another. "Why should we die in his place?"
The other soldier heard a noise and fired a shot into the brush. Both men listened, but heard nothing.
"Do not let the general hear you speak that way," the second soldier warned. "He would have you shot or have your head torn off. He is very nervous these days."
"Of course. He knows this white avenger is coming for him."
"Silence, you fools," roared Mkombu's voice from
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above their heads. "How can I hear what is going on in the jungle if you keep whispering and mumbling? Be quiet, you dogs."
The first man leaned over to the second soldier. "He's drunk again."
The second man nodded and both looked up at Mkombu's window.
They were Mkombu's personal guard. They were also his sons.
Inside the building, Jimbobwu Mkombu was finishing his second bottle of wine. When the bottle was empty, he smashed it against the wall, as he had done with the first, and opened a third bottle.
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