Midnight Man

CHAPTER SIX

EVEN ILL, EVEN PROPPED up in bed on pillows, the Emir was royalty. He exuded nobility. Remo noticed it even as he walked into the room.

Chiun was the only other man he had ever noticed to have that quality.

“Your Highness,” Pakir said. “This is Mister Remo Schwartzenegger of the United States Government.”

Again, the man had ignored Chiun.

“Your Highness, this is Chiun,” Remo said. “He is my companion and very much more.”

“Yes,” the Emir said. “I can see that. Thank you, Pakir. You may go.”

“Your Highness, I wish to point out…”

The emaciated figure in the bed waved a bony, weak hand at his aide-de-camp. “I am sure, Perce, that I shall be quite safe with these two gentlemen. Please leave us.”

“As you wish,” Pakir said. “I shall be alert, should you need me.” He bowed his way from the room.

Chiun was staring intently at the man in the bed, and Remo hoped that the old Korean had not decided to hold the deposed monarch accountable for that ancient debt.

“Please,” the Emir beckoned. “Come closer, both of you. My voice no longer carries as it once did.”

Remo and Chiun moved forward to opposite sides of the bed, Chiun still staring intently at the Emir who seemed not to notice the scrutiny he was under.

“It disturbs me that you were able to breach our defenses so easily,” the Emir said.

He was gray-haired and incredibly thin. The skin on his face was loose, as if his skin had been a balloon which had suddenly deflated. Remo could see that he was a very tall man, and at one time he must have been imposing, but now he was just bones and loose flesh.

“It should not disturb Your Highness,” Remo told him. “No one else could have gotten through that security so easily. With a few suggestions from us, your security should be tight enough to protect you from everything short of an all-out army attack.”

The man in the bed laughed dryly, not by choice but as a by-product of his illness. “I don’t think anyone wants me quite that badly, yet.”

“I hope not,” Remo said and meant it.

“Oh, no doubt there are many who would like to see me dead, but most of them would only attempt my death if it were easy. As you know, the prospect of any effort at all being needed for a particular task will always make that task that much harder and undesirable.”

“I guess that’s true enough,” Remo said.

“Except in the case of the fanatic,” Chiun pointed out. Remo and the Emir looked at him as he spoke. “Very often, it is the difficulty of the challenge that will make the mission that much more desirable for the fanatic.”

“Excellent point,” the Emir said. “I salute an obviously superior knowledge.”

Suddenly the man in bed was struck by some sort of pain. His face twisted in anguish and then a coughing fit shook his body with spasms. Chiun, speaking soft, comforting words in Korean, reached out and touched the ruler’s chest, pressing it along the ribs.

The coughing stopped and the look on the Emir’s face showed that the pain had gone, too. The contorted grimace of hurt had given way to surprise, then delight.

“What… what did you do?” he asked Chiun.

“A simple manipulation of muscles,” Chiun said.

“Are you then a physician?”

“Not in the strict sense of the word,” Remo answered for Chiun.

“But obviously you have some knowledge of medicine?” the Emir asked Chiun.

Chiun nodded.

The Emir moved around in bed, seeking a more comfortable position. Remo felt he was also trying to come to some sort of decision. When he lay still, he seemed to have made his decision.

“Will you examine me?” he asked Chiun.

Chiun looked at Remo who shrugged.

“I do not know if I would be able to tell you anything different from what your own physicians have already told you,” Chiun warned the Emir.

“And none of my physicians has been able to do for me what you just did with a touch. Please. I would be forever in your debt if you would examine me. No matter what the result.” The sick man’s eyes met Chiun’s, held them a moment, and then once again, he said “Please.”

At that moment, Princess Sarra entered the room, clad in a flowing silken robe, with a thick string of diamonds around her neck.

The Emir’s face lit up as he saw her. “Sarra,” he called.

“Yes, my brother.”

“Be a good girl. Take Mister Remo for a walk while his companion and I have a private discussion.”

It sounded to Remo like a polite request, but he was learning that a royal request, no matter how politely phrased, was a command to be obeyed.

Sarra bowed slightly. “As you wish, my brother. Please join me, Remo.”

“Lead on, Princess. I’ll see you downstairs, Chiun.” But the old Korean seemed not to have heard him. He already had his hands on the Emir’s chest, pressing gently.

Walking side by side, Remo noticed that Sarra had removed her high-heeled boots because she was now noticeably shorter than he was.

“What is that about?” she asked him.

“What?”

“Your companion and my brother.”

“To be perfectly honest, Princess, I don’t exactly know,” Remo confessed.

Sarra led him downstairs, through the house and out onto a massive, front patio of stone, surrounded by an equally massive, overgrown garden. In the center of the garden was a large fountain. They sat on a stone bench looking at the water.

“Do you live out here all the time?” Remo asked.

“No, I have an apartment in New York City. Actually, I am here very little of the time. I get bored very easily.”

“Pakir seems as if he’d be able to get along with your not being here. He seems to resent you.”

“Pakir is in love with me,” she said, “but he has a great deal of pride. A woman should be a woman and not put her nose in men’s affairs. Actually, I am not the least bit interested in his affairs.” She turned to look at Remo and said, “I have my own affairs to think of.”

She touched Remo’s hand and then smiled.

“What’s funny?” he said.

“I would have expected sparks to leap from my hands to yours,” she said.

“So would I,” said Remo. He moved closer to her and touched a spot on her back with his fingertips, rotating them slightly. She arched her back like a stroked kitten.

“I’d like you to come visit me,” she said, closing her eyes to the slight pressure of Remo’s fingertips. “At my apartment. Some time soon.”

“Very soon,” Remo promised.

When she opened her eyes again to look at him, she looked abruptly past him, then straightened up stiffly. Remo followed her eyes and saw Chiun watching them impassively from the terrace.

“You and he,” she observed. “You belong together, somehow.”

“Yes,” Remo said. “We are joined by thousands of years of tradition.”

“But leave him behind when you visit me in New York,” she said.

“Your wish is my command, sugar,” he said as he got up and walked to Chiun.

“What’s the story, Chiun? Will he make it?”

Chiun shook his head. “He will die, and much sooner than everyone thinks.”

“You told him that?”

“Do you think I am insensitive? I told him that I could find nothing different from the findings of his own physicians. He accepted that.” Chiun stared stolidly out at the sea.

“You’ve been acting strange since we got here,” Remo said, “and even funnier since we met the Emir. Did you finally decide to hold him responsible for that debt?”

Chiun glared at him angrily. “Since you seem so concerned, I will tell you what is bothering me.” He pointed toward the ceiling with a bony, long-nailed finger. “That man is a great man, a great monarch. A Master of Sinanju knows a true monarch when he meets one. That man was born to rule and what has been happening to him these past few months is beneath contempt. It is better that he die than live in exile.”

“That’s what happens to people who trust the United States. The quickest way to the boneyard is to figure on us to help you out.” Remo paused. “Chiun… you didn’t…”

“I took no action to put him out of this misery caused by your government,” Chiun said coldly. “I have told you, he will die soon enough.”

Remo let his air out in a sigh of relief.

“All right, then. Let’s get Pakir and tell him how to beef up his security and maybe we can give the Emir the opportunity to do just that.”