In Enemy Hands

"It is about time that you and I had a talk," Chiun said.

"About what?"

"It is customary for a father to tell his son of certain things when the son is old enough to under stand them. In your case, I'll do it now rather than wait another ten years."

"You mean sex and like that?" asked Remo.

"Partially. And about women, good and bad."

"I don't want to hear about it."

Chiun bridged his fingers before him as if he had not heard Remo. "Now if you were able to select any woman in the world to be with, who would you choose?"

"Ludmilla," said Remo.

Chiun shook his head. "Be serious. I mean any woman in the world, not just a woman who is so desperate that she is willing to be seen with you. Let your imagination run amok. Any woman. Name her."

"Ludmilla."

"Remo. There are beautiful women in the world, even some with straight eyes. There are intelligent women and loving women. There are even some quiet women. Why would you pick this Russian tank truck driver?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

Remo hesitated for only a split second. "Because I love her," he said.

Chiun lifted his eyes upward as if requesting God to pay close attention to the problems Chiun had to deal with in this life.

"Does she love you?"

"I think so," said Remo.

"Has she stopped trying to kill you yet?"

"Pretty soon now."

"Pretty soon now," Chiun mimicked. His voice grew sincere and concerned. "Remo. Do you know who really loves you?"

"No. Who?" asked Remo, wondering if Chiun were going to let down his defenses. For once.

"Smith," said Chiun, after a pause.

"Bullshit," said Remo.

"The president of the United States. The automaker."

"Horse dung," said Remo. "He doesn't even know my name. He calls me 'those two.' "

Chiun yelled, "The people of Sinanju."

"Hogwash," Remo yelled back. "They don't even know I'm alive. If they can tolerate me, it's because I have something to do with those lazy slugs getting their gold shipment every November."

Chiun paused. He looked ceilingward as if gathering the courage to give Remo the name of one more person who really loved him. He looked back. "There is no point in discussing something with someone who can talk only in barnyard terms."

"Okay. Does that mean our discussion of the birds and the bees is over?"

"We did not once mention birds and bees, just other barnyard animals," Chiun said.

Remo rose. "I've got something to do."

"What is that?"

"I've got to buy a present."

"It is not my birthday," Chiun said.

"It is not for you," Remo said, walking to the door.

"See if I care," Chiun called. "See if the one who really…"

Remo paused. "Yes?"

"Never mind," Chiun said. "Go."

After picking up a bank draft for fifty thousand dollars at the American Express office, Remo went to a small jewelry shop on the Rue de la Paix.

The asking price for the diamond ring was forty thousand dollars, but by shrewd maneuvering, hard bargaining, and his incredible knowledge of the French language in which the negotiations were carried out, Remo managed to get the price up to fifty thousand. He pushed the bank draft over the counter to the French proprietor who had eyes that looked as if two hardboiled eggs, had perforated his face, and a mustache that seemed to have been drawn on with one stroke of a woman's eyebrow pencil. The jeweler put the draft into the cash register quickly.

"Do you want it gift wrapped?" he said, in the first English he had spoken since Remo entered the shop.

"No. I'll eat it here. Of course I want it gift wrapped."

"There is a two dollar charge for gift wrapping."

"Throw it in for free," Remo suggested.

"I would like to, but…" The man shrugged a Gallic shrug. "You know how it is."

"You know how this is too," said Remo. He punched the no-sale button on the register and plucked out the fiftythousand dollar bank draft. "Goodbye."

"Wait, sir. In your case we make an exception."

"I thought you might. Wrap it," Remo said.

When he presented the eight-carat stone to Ludmilla, she tore the paper, opened the box, looked at the ring, and threw it across the room.

"I already have diamonds," she said. "Do you think I would take a gift from a man who lies to me?"

"Okay, now I'll tell you the truth. I love you. I want you to come to America to live with me."

Ludmilla hissed at him. "Soooo, you think I give up my homeland that easily. Never. I am a Russian."

"Do you love me?"

"Maybe."

"Then come to America with me."

"No," Ludmilla said.

"My secret is in America," Remo said.

"Yes?" Ludmilla said.

"There is a spring there, a special water that makes any man invincible."

She came to his arms, and, without trying, he found himself flushing with warmth.

"Oh, Remo. I am glad you have at last told me the truth. Where is it, this spring?"

"In Las Vegas. That is a city," Remo said.

"I have never heard of it," Ludmilla said.

"It has much water," Remo said.

"And when do you want to go there?" she said.

"Tomorrow."

"Tonight," she said.

Remo kissed her lips. "Tomorrow," he said. "I have plans for tonight."

She looked at him with velvet eyes. "All right, tomorrow."

After Remo left, Ludmilla recovered the diamond ring from the floor. From a mother-of-pearl jewelry box in her top dresser drawer, she took a jeweler's loupe. She held the lens up to her eye and examined the ring carefully.

Only a VVF, she thought, a Very Very Fine. She noted a small carbon dot in the back of the stone. Worth no more than thirty thousand retail. But the American had probably paid forty thousand for it. Americans were such fools.

She put the ring in her jewelry box and then went to the phone to make a long distance call.

CHAPTER TEN

He was not going to the building at Dzerzhinsky Square. This time he was going to the Kremlin itself, and Marshal Denia decided not to wear his ribbons. He decided he was right when he saw the four men facing him. They wore dress uniforms with rows of ribbons on their chests. Each of them owned more ribbons than Denia had, and if he had worn his, it would have been a small admission that he was somehow less than them. By wearing none, he admitted only that he was different from them.

He looked at the clumps of ribbons on the four chests, each looking like an ear of Indian corn worn over the heart. Military decorations, he thought, were a tribute not to bravery or competence but to longevity. The best and bravest soldiers he had ever seen had often not lived long enough to earn even one ribbon. In their youthful pride, they would have laughed at these four cadavers who stared now at Denia and demanded explanations of his "curious performance."

"Curious, comrade?" Denia asked the chairman of the board of inquiry. "The Treska has demolished America's most secret and powerful spy organization in Western Europe. In the process, true, we have lost some men. But we are continuously training new men to replace them. In months… weeks, we will be back at full strength, while the Americans will never again put such a force in the field."

He said it and did not believe a word of it. Neither apparently did the chairman, a wizened old man with a face like cracked desert mud.

"And what guarantee do we have," the old man said, "that our new force will not be obliterated just as our last force was? What have you done about this?"

"I have isolated the special American agent who worked such damage on our men. I have infiltrated the entire apparatus. Soon we will have the answer to this riddle."

"Soon is not good enough."

"Soon is as good as it can be," Denia said, trying unsuccessfully to keep the edge from his voice. He looked to the other men sitting behind the stark wooden table in the small basement room. "In operations like ours, one occasionally encounters the unusual. You must study it before you can destroy it." One of the men on the panel had been a leader in Russia's scorched-earth policy when the Nazis invaded during World War II. Denia spoke in his direction. "It must be like the first foot soldiers ever to encounter a tank in battle. It would have been easy to run away. Or to panic and throw stones at the tank. But it was wise to watch and learn the monster's weaknesses. As our glorious people did against the Hitler hordes."

The old resistance leader nodded. Denia thought he had convinced one, before he realized, with disgust, that the old man was nodding himself to sleep. The man at the far right of the table had the look of a retired ribbon clerk and the manner of a lifelong cuckold. The look and manner disguised the fact that he was the premier's closest military advisor, a man whose bark could send even the secret police jumping. He had peopled one entire prison camp with his personal enemies.

"Your analogy is interesting, Gregory, but insufficient. We do not need descriptions of tactics that were successful thirty years ago in different situations. We need an up-to-the-minute report on what you are doing to eliminate this existing problem."

"One of our agents is with the American right now. She…"

"She?" Denia was interrupted by the aged chairman.

"Yes. Ludmilla Tchernova." Denia look at the man on the far right and smiled slightly. The man had been sleeping with Ludmilla for two years.

"Some of you know her," Denia said. "Ludmilla is one of our best agents. She is now on her way to America with this man. He thinks she has defected with him in the service of love. Her assignment is to find out what unusual weapons or techniques or powers this man uses, and then to report back to us so we can destroy him."

"When do you expect this will be accomplished?" asked the confidante of the premier.

Denia shrugged. "It is hard to say." From their faces, he could see that this did not go down well. "Within a week."

The premier's aide nodded. He looked at the other men at the table, then said, "All right. A week. And if that does not produce results, we shall have to try other measures."

Denia nodded in a military fashion. He tried not to show that he understood that those "other measures" would specifically exclude him, and that one week and a sexy Russian courtesan were all that stood between him and exile.

Or worse.

On the Air France plane to New York, Remo sat between Ludmilla and Chiun, who kept asking the stewardesses to bring him more magazines. He would scan each magazine quickly, then lean across Remo to point out to the young Russian woman stories about the latest atrocities behind the Iron Curtain.

Ludmilla kept her face fixed grimly on the window.

"All right, Chiun, knock it off," Remo said.

"I am just being friendly," Chiun said. He flipped the pages of the magazine in his lap, then excitedly pushed it across Remo into Ludmilla's hands. "See. The advertisement for a new tractor. You will love America. They have many tractors for you to drive."

Ludmilla snatched the magazine from Chiun and slammed it to the floor then threw her arms up over her head in desperation. The diamond ring on the index finger of her right hand glistened an eight carat glisten.

"How much of this abuse must I tolerate?" she said.

"Abuse?" Chiun said. "Abuse? What abuse? Now a friendly gesture and warm conversation is abuse?" He talked to Remo as if Ludmilla was not there. "Really, Remo, I cannot see what you like about this one."

Remo growled. Ludmilla turned her face stonily toward the window. Chiun looked back at another news magazine. He recognized a picture and pushed the magazine into Remo's lap.

"Look, Remo. The woman. Isn't she beautiful?"

"Yeah," Remo said without spirit. "Beautiful."

"I knew you would like her," Chiun said. He sat back in his seat and stared at the magazine. The woman was the kind Remo liked. Long in the leg and big in the chest. The man was hopeless. If a racehorse could fit into a dress, Remo would fall in love with it.

Chiun read the caption under the picture of the half-clad Hollywood star who was making her nightclub debut with a new act that featured partial nudity and total witlessness.

"Remo. Where did you say we were going?" Chiun asked.

"Ludmilla and I are going to Las Vegas. I don't know where you're going."

Chiun nodded and said softly, "I might just go to Las Vegas too." He read the caption again. The Hollywood star was opening her new night club act at the Crystal Hotel in Las Vegas. Chiun nodded. There was only one thing to do: fight ugly with ugly.

How simple it all would have been though if Remo had been taken with one of the lovely maidens of Sinanju. How simple.

Chiun mused as Remo got up and went to the men's room in the front of the first class section.

Ludmilla waited until he disappeared into the small room, then moved over into his seat. She looked at Chiun.

Eyes like a cow, he thought.

"Why do you hate me?" she said.

"I do not hate you. I do not understand what he," Chiun nodded toward the bathroom, "sees in you."

"Perhaps love."

"He has all the love he needs."

"From whom?"

"From me," Chiun said.

"You are jealous of me, aren't you?"

"Jealous? The Master jealous? Do you think I care what that pale piece of pig's ear does? No? Except for this. I have invested years of my life in this one, and I cannot sit by and watch him turn into mud in the hands of one whose only wish is to kill him."

"You think that's all I want?" she said.

"I know that is all you want. It is written on your face in foot-high letters. Only a fool could fail to see it."

"A fool. Or a man in love." Ludmilla laughed. She was still laughing when Remo returned to his seat.

"I'm glad to see you two are hitting it off better," Remo said.

Ludmilla laughed again. Chiun grunted and turned away, across the aisle, to look out the windows on the other side of the plane.

Two important meetings were held later that day.

In Washington, the Secretary of State stood before the President's desk, waiting for the Commander in Chief to finish stapling together a small pile of papers. The President carefully positioned the stapler at the upper left hand corner of the sheets. He held it accurately in place with the thumb and middle finger of his left hand. He raised his right fist up in front of his forehead and slammed it downward at the stapler.

And missed.

His right fist slammed into his unprepared left hand. The stapler slid away. Papers bounced into the air. The President jerked his left hand to his mouth and began sucking on the injured fingers.

He sighed, looked up, and remembered the Secretary of State. Odd that the man should be standing in the center of the room. Why hadn't he come closer to the desk?

He beckoned the Secretary to come nearer. With a cautionary look at the stapler, the Secretary waddled slowly forward.

"What is it?" the President asked.

"I have just returned from a closed door meeting of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee," the man said. His voice was a slow professional chant that sounded as if he were going to begin a disquisition on mathematical theory in the Golden Age of Greece.

"Yeah?" mumbled the President around the fingers that were still stuck in his mouth. The hurt was starting to leave them now. If he was lucky, he wouldn't get blood blisters under the nails.

"They had heard that somehow we have scored a major intelligence victory in Europe and of course they wish to investigate this."

"Ummmmmm," the President sucked.

"I told them that I had no knowledge of such a victory and certainly we did not have anything to do with securing it, if victory it was."

"Ummmmmm," the President said.

"They did not believe me. They think this administration has defied their Congressional prerogatives and gone off on some kind of intelligence adventure."

"Ummmmm."

"They will call me and the CIA Director to testify, probably in the next few days."

"Ummmmm. Seems logical."

"So don't you think, Mr. President, that it is now time to tell me just what has occurred in Europe?"

The President took his fingers from his mouth. "No," he said. "What you know is accurate. The United States took no action with any of its agencies to bring about whatever Congress thinks may have happened in Europe. Stick with that. It's true."

The Secretary of State looked unhappy, but he nodded.

"Tell me," the President said. "Do you think the Congress really wants the Russians to beat us?"

"No, Mr. President," the Secretary said. "But they are pandering to those who do."

"Who are?"

"The press. The young. The radicals. Everyone who hates America because they have been rewarded, by life here, in a manner that far exceeds their worth."

The President nodded. He liked it when the Secretary was philosophical. The Secretary waited, then turned again to the door.

His hand was on the knob when the President spoke.

"Mr. Secretary," he said.

"Yes sir?"

"I've just about had it with these people. I want you to know. If Congress puts any heat on you over this European business…"

"Yes?"

"I'm going to hang them up by their balls."

When the Secretary of State met his eyes, the President of the United States winked.

The other important meeting was held later that day, backstage at the Crystal Hotel in Las Vegas where Miss Jacquanne Juiceshe was always billed as "Miss Jacquanne Juice," although there had not been, since she was eleven years old, any danger of anyone's mistaking her for Mr. Jacquanne Juice was trying to explain to a costume designer what was wrong with the bra she was wearing.

"Look, I'm going to flash my galonkers at them for the finale. But it would help if I could get them out of the bra. The goddamn thing doesn't open up."

The designer was a small man with long whiteblond hair. His wrists were thinner than the woman's. His fingers were inoffensive as he touched the front clip on the bra the young woman wore and showed her how a simple squeeze on both sides of the strap would pop it open.

"See?" he said, as the bra exploded open and Miss Jacquanne Juice was left standing barebreasted in the middle of the rehearsal stage. Around them, throats cleared and movement ceased. Men who a second before had been busy doing things, professional things on which their livelihoods depended, stopped, no longer caring about anything except Miss Jacquanne Juice's mammary glands.

"It's easy," the costume designer said.

"It's frigging impossible," the woman answered. "It's easy for you, you're fooling around with somebody else's tits all day. For me, it's hard. I keep clawing at this thing and clawing at it. If I ever get the thing open, I'll be standing there, my jugs covered with blood. Is that what you want for a finale? Is it? A frigging horror show? You going to bring bats down out of the balcony? Hah? Oh, crap. Doesn't anyone around here care about me? Am I always going to be just a piece of meat?"

She looked around the stage and found that every pair of male eyes within sighting distance was fixed upon her breasts. Some of them were nodding answers to her question.

Except one.

A small, aged Oriental wearing a white robe looked at her with hazel eyes that were wise beyond wisdom, and he smiled at her slightly and nodded, a nod of sympathy and understanding. The small movement of his head seemed to send waves across the room to where Miss Jacquanne Juice stood, waves that enveloped her with knowledge of her own womanhood and personhood. She suddenly felt barebreasted, and she pulled the bra's cups closed around her front and fumbled with the clip.

"We'll work on it later," she told the clothing designer, then brushed past him to speak with the old Oriental.

She stood in front of the old man, staring down at the white brocade robe, and then, because she could think of nothing to say but had to say something, she said: "Did you know I have an IQ of 138?"

"I can see that," Chiun said. He had never heard anyone describe her bust size with the letters IQ before, but if she claimed to be a 138, he believed it, because she was cow-like like most American women were or aspired to be.

"And yet," he added, "they treat you badly. They all want something from you, but in turn they give nothing."

He patted a spot next to him on the top of the wardrobe trunk, indicating that she should sit down.

"How did you know that?" she said.

"They all want and take but never give. There is none you can trust, none who cares about you as much as he cares about himself."

Miss Jacquanne Juice nodded.

"But how did you know? You're some kind of a guru, aren't you? How did you know?"

"It is ever thus with leaders. With stars as well as with emperors. The most difficult thing is to find one you can trust, someone without motives of his own, someone who cares for you as you and does not wish something from you."

"Oh. All my life. Looking and looking," Miss Jacquanne Juice said. She put her head on Chiun's shoulder. He patted her bare back gently, to console her for a world so cruel that it paid her only a quarter-million dollars for two weeks of breast-baring in the middle of the Nevada desert.

"You can stop searching," Chiun said. "There is one who cares about you." He turned his face to look into her eyes.

"I believe. I believe," she said. She pushed her face closer to his shoulder. "Oh, what a feeling to know there is someone who cares."

Chiun patted her back again, this time searching out a precise spot for tapping with his long fingernails.

"And you must let me…" She sighed as she felt the currents from Chiun's fingers pass through her body. "You must let me do something for you."

She looked up at Chiun hopefully. He shook his head. "There is nothing I need, my child."

"There must be something, something I can do for you."

"Nothing," Chiun said.

"Something. Anything. A gesture."

Chiun paused, long enough to appear thoughtful. Then he said:

"Well, there is just one little thing."

That afternoon, after a platoon of hotel personnel had made her comfortable in her room, Ludmilla pressed Remo for the exact location of the secret spring that gave him his powers.

Remo sighed. "Look, we're in America. You promised to give this a try, and maybe to stay. Now can't you stop being a government honcho for a while?"

"This has nothing to do with government. This has to do with honor. And trust. And love. You promised me and you should live up to your promise."

"It's not far from here," Remo said. "Ten, twenty miles."

"When will we go there?"

"Now if you want."

"Tomorrow. Tomorrow will be better. And we will have a picnic. And we will make love out in the sand."

Remo, who knew more about sand and desert heat than Ludmilla, nodded, but the more he nodded, the more appealing the idea sounded.

"And now you must leave," Ludmilla said.

"Why?"

"Because I need my rest. Go. Go. I will see you later and be beautiful for you."

Remo nodded again and left, and walked whistling down the hallway toward the steps to his own room. He did not hear the silent movements behind him as Chiun came from behind a potted palm and walked to Ludmilla's door.

Inside the telephone rang. Ludmilla said "hello" and waited while the operator opened the line on her call to Moscow. Chiun could only hear her half of the conversation with Marshal Denia.

"Yes. Probably tomorrow we will go there. Oh, good. You are coming? When will you get here? Wonderful. I long to see you again. I will not go there until you arrive."

Chiun rapped on the door, and heard the telephone quickly hung up. When Ludmilla opened the door, her face was first surprised, then annoyed.

"Oh. You."

"Yes. I hope I did not disturb anything important." He smiled at her and Ludmilla knew that Chiun had heard the call. What she did not know was that Chiun, at that moment, was only a hair away from killing her to protect Remo. But he did not strike, because Remo would never have believed in the necessity of the act.

"Nothing important," she said. "What do you want?"

"I am inviting you and Remo to dinner tonight. As my guests."

"Oh, well…"

"You must," Chiun said. "You and I must be friends."

She paused, then acceded. "If you insist."

"I do. I insist. Remo will call for you. I will see to it."

Ludmilla laughed. "I have already seen to it, old man. He will call for me whenever I wish."

"As you would have it," Chiun said and walked away, angered because the woman was right. Remo was her slave.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"I don't know why you keep that old man hanging around anyway," Ludmilla said.

"I've grown accustomed to his face," Remo said, and sipped his mineral water to turn off the conversation.

They sat at a front table in the Crystal Hotel supper club. Chiun had insisted that all the arrangements be left to him, and when Remo and Ludmilla arrived, the headwaiter smiled at them, showed them to a front row table, was polite, and set the indoor record for Las Vegas, a mark that would live forever, Remo decided by refusing a tip.

Ludmilla persisted. "It would be different if that old goblin gave something to you. But nothing except complaints. This is how you spend your life? Listening to him complain? Why is he here? Why is he with us?"

"He's really a nice old geezer," Remo said. "Besides, he has his strong points."

"Yes?"

"Yes," said Remo.

"Tell me one of his strong points."

Remo thought a moment. How to tell her that Chiun was more deadly than a whole military division, more powerful than plutonium, more accurate than calculus. How to tell her?

"He's all right," Remo said. "He knows a lot of things."

"He knows how to get old and sponge off his betters and his youngers," Ludmilla said. "Too bad for you that you do not send him away."

"Well…" Remo was noncomittal. "That's the way it goes."

He was spared further conversation by the crowd. Instead of a roar, there was a hush and then every voice in the room was silent, and Remo turned toward the entrance to the supper club.

Walking down the aisle through the tables was Chiun, wearing a black robe, and on his arm, towering a head over him, was Miss Jacquanne Juice, headliner of the show at the Crystal Hotel. She wore a scanty white gown and nothing else.

Remo looked at them, as did every other pair of eyes in the room.

"Stop looking at her," Ludmilla said.

"I'm not," Remo said. "I'm looking at Chiun. The old fox is enjoying this."

There was a spattering of applause. Like a heavyweight fighter, Chiun waved, a king's gesture to quiet the unruly mob.

Then Chiun and Jacquanne were at the table and the headwaiter helped seat them, and slowly the room returned to its steady buzzing as customers went back to their drinks.

Chiun smiled. "Remo, this is Miss Jacquanne Juice. Or something like that. This is Remo, who is better than he looks."

Chiun stopped and Remo cleared his throat.

"Oh," Chiun said. "This…" He waved toward Ludmilla. "This is a Russian woman. This is Miss Jacquanne Juice."

Ludmilla nodded. Jacquanne looked at her, then said, "You're beautiful."

Chiun nudged her under the table, but Remo said, "Yes, isn't she?"

"So are you," Chiun said to Jacquanne. "You are most beautiful. The most beautiful woman Remo has ever seen. Isn't that right, Remo?"

Remo shrugged and looked at Ludmilla.

"Isn't that right, Remo?" Chiun persisted.

"What is your name?" Jacquanne asked Ludmilla.

"Ludmilla."

"You are beautiful. Truly beautiful."

"Thank you." It did not occur to Ludmilla to return the compliment; it did not occur to Jacquanne to hint at it.

Chiun said, "You are truly beautiful," to Jacquanne. "Don't you think so, Remo?"

Remo nodded, reluctantly.

"And she makes a very good living, Remo. She has her own band, and people who walk around fastening her brassieres and everything," Chiun explained.

Remo nodded again.

Ludmilla said, "Remo, I have a headache. I think I'd like to go back to my room."

"All right." Remo stood.

"You are coming back, though, Remo, right?" said Chiun.

"I doubt it." Ludmilla answered for Remo.

Chiun looked dejected. Jacquanne could not take her eyes off the Russian woman. Remo shrugged.

"Good night, Chiun. Good night, Miss…'' Remo said.

"Juice," said Chiun. "Jacquanne Juice."

"Good night, Miss Juice," Remo said.

"Good night," said Ludmilla. "Miss Juice. Old man." And when Chiun met her eyes, she winked-the wink of a winner to a loser, and then she turned and led Remo from the supper club.

They had gone only two steps toward the exit when Remo was stopped by an order, barked by Chiun in Korean.

Remo turned. He felt Ludmilla stop and look back also. Chiun, speaking a fast flow of Korean words, picked up the dinner knife at the table. He held it in his left hand, handle between his fingertips, then with the tip of his right index finger struck the knife three times, with no more apparent force than if he were poking someone in the chest to make a point. The first two pokes broke off pieces of the steel knifeblade; the third poke split the silver alloy handle into two pieces which fell on the table in front of Chiun.

He nodded to Remo who nodded back before pulling Ludmilla toward the door. She was looking over the shoulder at Chiun and the pieces of knife in front of him.

"What did he say?" she asked.

"It was Korean," Remo said. " 'Even a knife may shatter; even a strong man may fall.' "

Ludmilla was still looking over her shoulder, her eyes narrowed.

"How did he do that with the knife?"

"Who knows?" said Remo.

"Can you do it?"

"I don't know. Maybe. Chiun understands more about objects than I do. It has something to do with vibrations."

They were at the door and Remo led the way out. Ludmilla kept staring at Chiun until the door closed behind them.

The next day Marshal Denia arrived in Las Vegas.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Ludmilla had begged off the trip to the desert to see Remo's magic spring, pleading an upset stomach; Remo had gone out to walk around Las Vegas; and Chiun was alone in their room when a messenger came.

"I must see you. L."

Chiun crumpled the message and dropped it on the floor, then walked up to Ludmilla's room.

When he entered, she was seated at her dressing table, her back to Chiun, wearing only a bluish robe that made her skin seem to glow a pale yellow. She smiled at Chiun in the mirror, a dropped eyes coy smile, then carefully closed her open robe before she spun on her chair and faced him.

"I have asked you to come so I could apologize to you," she said. "I have treated you badly."

"I am always treated badly," Chiun said.

"I know how it must be. No one understands you; they ask much of you but give nothing in return."

Chiun nodded. The faint tendrils of hair over his ears continued nodding after his head had stopped.

"Well, I do not wish to be one of those ungrateful ones," said Ludmilla. She rose and walked to Chiun who stood just inside the door. She took his two hands in hers. "I am sorry," she said.

"Why?" said Chiun.

"I am sorry for my rudeness, but more for my stupidity. I realize all I could learn from your wisdom and your gentleness and like a fool I have rejected that gift of friendship you offered me."

Chiun nodded again.

She reached her right hand to touch the side of his face. As her left arm left her side, the front of her dressing gown slipped open. She moved even closer to Chiun, so close their bodies almost touched. "Can you forgive me?" she said.

"Yes," said Chiun. He looked down at Ludmilla's flawless skin, shadowed yellow by the blue of the gown. "You are a lovely woman," he said.

She smiled at him again and left her hand on the side of his face. "Thank you," she said. "But beauty is a gift of God; wisdom is an achievement of character."

"That is true," Chiun said. "That is true. Most never see that truth."

"Most never have their eyes fully open," she said. She leaned even closer to him.

"And what of Remo?" Chiun said.

Ludmilla shrugged. The movement almost, but not quite, released her breasts from her gown. "Who looks at the sapling when he stands on the edge of the forest?"

And again Chiun nodded, and as he did, Ludmilla leaned forward and moved her face down to his, searching for his lips with hers. As she found them, she said softly, "I have never been made love to by a Master of Sinanju."

And afterwards, she said-and meant it-"Never before like that."

She lay next to Chiun in her bed, his body still clothed in his red kimono, hers covered by a sheet, and laughed.

"To think of Remo telling me his power came from a magic spring."

"The child likes to joke," Chiun said.

"But the power is Sinanju, isn't it?" she said.

"No, beauteous one. The power is within each person; Sinanju is the key that unlocks the power."

"And you are the Master." She said it in a tone of reverential awe, as if she could not believe that Chiun was with her.

Then she rolled on her side toward him, put her left hand on his face, and said, "Show me a trick. Do something for me."

"Sinanju is not meant for tricks," he said.

"But for me? Just once. Just let me see some of your awesome power. Please?"

"Only for you," Chiun said.

"Remo told me it was vibrations," she said.

"Sometimes it is vibrations," Chiun said. "It is in knowing what you deal with that you make each thing a weapon. Each thing has its own vibrations, is its own central being, and to use it, you must first understand it, then become it."

As he spoke, Chiun used a fingernail to bust open the pillow under his head. He sat up and pulled out two small feathers, each an inchlong piece of fluffy down.

"What could be softer than the feather?" he said. "Yet, it is soft only because we use it for softness. We need not."

Hands moving faster than eye could follow, Chiun raised the two feathers, one in each hand, to his eyes, and then splashed his hands forward toward the opposite wall of the room.

The two small feathers left his fingertips like supersonic darts, hit the wooden wall with simultaneous "pings," and buried themselves into the wood panel where they stayed, vibrating, in the breeze of the overhead air conditioner, like miniature plumes.

"Marvelous," Ludmilla said. "Can I do that? Can I learn?"

"Only after much practice. Much time," said Chiun.

"I have much time," she said, pulling him back onto the pillow next to her. "And I want to learn everything you can teach me."

"And I will teach you," Chiun said. "Things you never even dreamed of before."

Later, Ludmilla had a wonderful idea. Her upset stomach had vanished, so why didn't she and Chiun drive out into the desert and look for a spring, then tell Remo they had found his magic spring. It would be a joke. A wonderful joke, she thought. And if Chiun wanted to change, he could; she would arrange for a car and driver, and meet him in front of the hotel in fifteen minutes.

Chiun looked at her and she could see in his eyes that he wanted to do this thing very much, so without even waiting for an answer, she patted his face again and walked with him to the door.

He stopped in the doorway and looked up at her violet eyes.

"You are a most beautiful woman," he said.

Ludmilla blushed and then closed the door behind him. She had things to do and she didn't need Chiun around. No fool like an old fool, she thought, as she went to the telephone.

Twenty minutes later, she and Chiun were sitting in the back of a Rolls Royce on its way out of Las Vegas on Boulder Highway. Chiun wore a thin black robe.

In the front seat was their driver, a pudgy mustached man, and two other men who, Ludmilla explained, were guides to the desert around Las Vegas. Each had a neck as big as the average man's thigh. They wore hats and stared straight ahead. Ludmilla's eyes looked up and caught the eyes of the driver in the rearview mirror.

Field Marshal Gregory Denia smiled at her. The courtesan had done her work well. First, they would finish this old man, and then even the score with the American, Remo. The courtesan had done very well.

Remo lost $2,350 playing roulette but won $4.00 in nickels playing slot machines before getting back to the hotel, where the first thing he saw was the crumpled note Chiun had dropped on the floor.

I must see you. L.

He would talk to Chiun about that. Intercepting a note obviously meant for Remo, and then just throwing it away. He steamed on his way up the stairs to Ludmilla's room.

There was no answer to his knock, but the door was open and inside, in an envelope, he found another note: this time for him.

Remo. I do not wish to see you again. The old one has shown me what true love is. I am heart and body the woman of the Master of Sinanju. Goodbye. Ludmilla.

Remo crumpled the note and dropped it. His brain whirling in confusion, he spun and looked at the room. The bed was unmade, and Remo could see that it had been used, but not for sleeping.

"Chink bastard. Dirty two timing conniving slant-eyed Korean fink," Remo shouted. He slammed his fist into the wall, splintering the wood panel, and then, the blood rising up in his temples, he walked from the room with a mission in his mind. He was going to find and kill Chiun. Search and destroy.

It took him five minutes to learn that Chiun and Ludmilla had driven out into the desert in a rented Rolls Royce and only five seconds to steal a car to follow them.

Minutes later, Remo was racing across the desert highway, his foot holding the gas pedal down to the floor, the stolen Ford a projectile, moving at 120 miles an hour down the straight as string two lane road.

And ten minutes later he saw the big Rolls Royce parked alongside the highway, and he saw footprints through the sand leading toward a small hill seventy-five yards from the road.

He turned off the key and skidded the car to a stop and was out, on the ground, before the car stopped rocking on its springs.

There were a lot of footprints leading through the sand but Remo was interested only in one pair-those of Chiun's sandals, which scuffed along in the middle of all the other footprints.

Remo took the hill in three giant strides. He was looking down into a natural depression, a bowl in the ground surrounded by an almost perfectly circular hill. Sitting in the sand, his black robe swirled about him, was Chiun. His arms were folded and he looked implacably ahead.

"Dink bastard," Remo shouted and ran down the hill into the natural amphitheater, before it occured to him to wonder where Ludmilla was.

"Rat bastard," Remo yelled again.

Chiun looked up. "I have waited for you."

"And so have we." The voice came from behind Remo. He turned and saw three men and

Ludmilla coming down the hill toward him. The three men carried pistols in their hands.

Remo looked from Ludmilla to Chiun, then back to the woman and the three men.

Two of the men stopped behind Remo and trained their weapons on him, while the third man, Marshal Denia, and Ludmilla walked past Remo and stopped in front of Chiun.

"Ludmilla," Remo called weakly. She did not respond. She did not even look at him. Denia did.

"This is a better catch than I hoped for. First the old man, and then you, American. The spilled blood of the Treska will be avenged."

"Go ahead," Remo said. "Kill the son of a bitch."

Denia cocked his revolver and pointed it at Chiun, who sat still only six feet away from him, his arms still folded.

"Chiun," Remo called. But Chiun did not answer, and Remo suddenly realized the truth. Chiun was going to let himself be killed.

"Chiun," he yelled again.

"Only one can save my life," Chiun said finally.

"I'll save it," Remo said. "I'll save it. Just for the pleasure of killing you myself, you two-timing fraud."

Chiun shut his eyes. "The House of Sinanju has lived on a frail thread for thousands of years," he said. "If it must be broken now by a Master I have chosen and I have trained, then these eyes will not see it. I welcome this Russian death."

As if to oblige, Denia raised his pistol at arm's length before him, taking aim at Chiun's forehead. Remo saw Ludmilla reach into her handbag and remove her cigarette case and begin to light a cigarette.

"I'll save it," Remo yelled. "I'm going to save it and then I'm going to wring your scrawny neck."

He lashed back with both feet, kicking up and out. He felt the backs of his shoes crack into two gunbearing hands. His own hands hit the sand and Remo pulled his weight up and forward, then slammed back with the toes of his feet into two throats. He knew without turning that both men were dead, and he used their throats for a toehold to break across the sand toward Denia and Chiun and Ludmilla.

"Gregory," Ludmilla said when she saw Remo coming toward them. Denia turned and pointed his pistol at Remo who stopped, ten feet away, apparently neutralized by Denia's gun.

"So these are the tricks of Sinanju," Denia said with a smile. "In some other age, American, I would have liked to learn them." He sighed heavily. "But this is not the time or the place."

He squeezed the trigger and fired a shot at Remo. At ten feet, it missed. Remo had slipped off to the left, and now he was standing motionless in a new spot. Denia fired again, and missed again, and now Remo was moving slowly across the sand toward him, high on his toes, scurrying, slipping, and sliding, and Denia fired again and again and again and… click! The revolver was empty, and Remo made one final move in, plucked the revolver from Denia's hand, and replaced it in the Russian spy's throat. It went in barrel first and Denia coughed, as if he had swallowed a piece of food down the wrong tube, and then he reached for his throat but the gun butt got in his way. His hand closed on it, and it looked as if he had just punctured his own throat with his own gun, and then he exhaled, a single loud hiss of air, and fell heavily onto his side in the sand.

Chiun opened his eyes and saw Remo towering over him. Remo rocked back and forth on his feet as if building up enough inertial energy to strike.

"You're dead, Chiun," he said. "You made love to her. My woman. How could you?"

"It was easy," Chiun said mildly. "She asked me to. She would have asked anyone to, if she thought they could give her a way to kill you."

Remo blinked, then looked from Chiun to Ludmilla. She shook her head at him. "He lies," she said. "He lies. He came to my room and took me by force. It was awful. Terrible."

Remo looked back to Chiun who still sat motionless in the sand. "Ask yourself, Remo. What are these Russians doing here? Who were they sent to kill? Who led them to you and to me?"

"Enough of this, Remo," Ludmilla said. "Kill this old fool and let us be off. In Russia, you can have a new life with me."

Remo hesitated. His hands clenched and unclenched.

"Do it now, or I leave," Ludmilla said. "I will not stand here burning in the hot sun waiting for a fool to make a decision." She flicked her gold lighter and raised it to the cigarette at her lips.

Remo looked down at Chiun. His hands were folded in his lap; his eyes were closed, but his face was tilted upward, and his throat was a target as open as an Irish drunk's mouth. A toe shot would take him out for good. Rip out the throat and leave him in the sand.

"I'm waiting, Remo," Ludmilla said. Remo still hesitated, and Ludmilla walked past him to the body of Marshal Denia. "If you won't do it, I'll do it myself." She picked up the empty revolver and turned to aim it at Chiun.

His left arm flailed out around his body, and the side of his hand came up, hit into the end of Ludmilla's gold cigarette holder and slammed it back into her throat. She looked at Remo with large violet eyes, made larger by shock and surprise, then she smiled at him the smile of sudden joy-but she still didn't have it right, and she died.

Remo dropped to his knees and buried his face on Ludmilla's body. He wept. Chiun rose to his feet and moved silently to Remo and patted him on the shoulder.

"She wanted only to kill you, my son."

With almost invisible pressure, his patting motion turned into a grasp that lifted Remo up from the sand and placed him on his feet.

"Come," Chiun said. Still holding Remo's shoulder, he walked him away toward the cars behind the small hill.

At the top of the hill, Remo looked down at the body of Ludmilla and his voice broke again.

"I loved her, Little Father."

"How long are you going to hold this against me?" Chiun asked. "Am I going to hear nothing but complaints for the rest of the afternoon?"

A week later, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, which had given the Secretary of State and the CIA Director a tough going-over behind closed doors, was called to the office of the President of the United States.

The President dumped out a manila envelope containing some two dozen passports. He looked around the room at the thirteen senators who sat in soft leather chairs facing his desk.

"Those are the passports of twenty-four American agents who have been killed since you clowns began meddling with our intelligence setup."

The chairman of the committee began to rise to protest. The President of the United States put a large sinewy hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into his chair.

"Sit still and shut up."

The President dumped out another envelope filled with passports.

"Those are the fake cover passports of the Russian spies who killed our men. They're dead now, too."

He looked slowly, around the room, meeting and holding every man's eyes in turn.

"Now you can make something of this if you want to. It's your right to do that. But let me tell you something. Mess with this and I'm going to hang all your asses on a garage door. When I'm done telling the American people how you were responsible for twenty-four murders, you'll be lucky not to be indicted yourself. For murder. You got it?"

No one spoke.

"Any questions?"

No one spoke.

Three days later, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee decided unanimously that there was no substance to the reports of major espionage activity in Western Europe by the United States and decided to drop its planned investigation.