Warren Murphy: The End of the Beginning

Chiun left his teacher to his pruning. With a troubled shadow across his parchment brow he left the plateau.

Only when his pupil was gone did H'si T'ang stop his pruning. Eyes of milk turned to face the shore. The fuzzy blot of the submarine was barely visible in the bay.

"Have a care, my son," the Venerable One said in a voice so low Chiun's sensitive ears could not hear. "While you are racing off to fulfill one legend, do not allow yourself to be blinded to the second."

Laced with foreboding, his words of caution were carried off on the wind. They were lost in the sounds of celebration that still rose from the squalid main street of Sinanju.

Chapter 2

The American looked up with bleary eyes.

He had waited so long that he had passed out from the cold. The villagers had revived him. Someone started a fire. Sitting on the edge of a rubber raft, he leaned near the flames, arms drawn in tight to his chest.

When he saw the old Korean approaching, he stood. There was a hook where his left hand should have been.

"You about ready to go?" he grunted. The collar of his trench coat was turned up in a futile attempt to ward off the bitter Korean cold.

Padding up beside the big man, Chiun aimed his chin toward the water's edge where three steamer trunks bobbed in the frothy water like colorful corks. The trunks had been lashed together with wire from the waiting submarine.

"Where is the rest of my luggage?"

"The SEALs brought the other trunks aboard the sub hours ago," the man with the hook said. He was shivering from the cold. He extended his good hand to the raft. "We should get out of here. I don't know what kind of mojo you worked on the North Koreans, but they won't hold off forever."

"Our reputation keeps them away," Chiun intoned. "You who would petition the House of Sinanju should know that. Are you certain that you collected all of the trunks I left at the steps of the Master's House? You whites are notorious for your sloppy work habits. I do not wish to get halfway to-what is the name of the place we are going again?"

"America. Look-"

"Yes, that place. I do not wish to sail halfway to that place with the ugly name only to have to come back."

"Can't say I blame anyone for not wanting to come back," the man muttered. Twice in his life he had gotten a good look at the Pearl of the Orient. It wasn't a place he'd opt to return to if given half a chance to leave. "There was a total of fourteen trunks. We loaded eleven. The last three are the ones you said could be floated out on their own."

Chiun inspected the three bobbing trunks. Satisfied that they were indeed the right ones, he nodded. "You may take them in tow," he said imperiously. Hiking up his skirts, he stepped into the rubber raft. Before sitting, he paused.

Chiun took one last look back at Sinanju. The village was a black rock lodged into unforgiving earth, surrounded by a churning sea of despair. He didn't know how long this journey would take him from his home. If the omens were true, it could be a long time before he saw his homeland again. With sharp eyes of hope and regret he soaked in every stone, every sound, every twist and turn of the jagged shore.

Once the mental photograph was complete, he turned.

Chiun's parchment face formed a stoic mask as he settled onto his seat. Slender fingers fussed with the fabric of his brocade kimono around his bony knees. The additional ninety-pound weight of the Korean in the boat proved not a problem to the man with the hook. Somehow the old man seemed able to make himself lighter than air.

With the curve of his hook and his one good hand, the American shoved the boat from the shore.

It was tricky paddling. It would have been easier to get one of the sailors from the Darter to help. But his orders had been specific. Minimize exposure of the Darter's crew to anything and everything that had to do with retrieving the old man. Do whatever he had to do to enlist the aid of the Master of Sinanju. But do it alone.

ALONE. That was a word with which the American was well acquainted. Alone and Conrad MacCleary were old friends.

In the OSS in World War II, Conn MacCleary had worked mostly alone. Whenever some higher-up wanted to put him on a team, MacCleary's answer was invariably the same: "With all due respect, if I screw up, I die. If someone I'm with screws up, I'm just as dead. If it's all the same, sir, I'd rather be the one doing the screwing."

His lone-wolf attitude would never have been tolerated if not for one simple fact. Conrad MacCleary got results.

Fluent in German, MacCleary had spent much of his time behind enemy lines coordinating Allied spy efforts. In his six years in Germany-both prior to and throughout American involvement in that great conflict-MacCleary enjoyed greater success than all but one other deep-cover U.S. agent.

There was only one shadow in his entire wartime record. Although no one but Conrad MacCleary saw it as a blemish, to him it was the darkest moment of his entire espionage career.

It happened just before the fall of Berlin. The war in Europe was at an end. Bombs were dropping like April rain.

When MacCleary learned that Heinrich Himmler had fled Berlin, Conn gave chase. No history book would ever record the fact but, thanks to MacCleary, the SS head was captured attempting to sneak out of Germany. While Conn was away from Berlin the Russians took the city for the Allies.

Bad timing had drawn him away from his ultimate prize-the mad kraut sausage-sucker, der fuhrer himself.

Someone had to be there. Someone had to be first to wrap his hands around the neck of that demented paperhanger. Why not Conn? But thanks to bad timing, the goddamned Russkies got there first.

Only afterward did MacCleary learn that no one had claimed the prize. Finishing his life with an act of ultimate cowardice, Adolf Hitler had committed suicide.

Conrad MacCleary's field of expertise was actually Asian affairs. With the war in Europe over, he was anxious to get over to the Pacific theater. When MacCleary was allowed back into Berlin with the American army, he didn't really want to go when the call came for a translator.

A German captain had been discovered in a bombed-out wing of the SS headquarters. For reasons unclear, the officer had been slated for execution. He had missed his date with the firing squad when the building collapsed around the ears of his would-be executioners.

When discovered by the Russians, the man was babbling. Fearful that he might be aware of some sort of doomsday weapon hidden in the city, they called for a translator.

When Conn showed up in the detention cell, he found a lone German army captain sitting in a wobbly chair.

The man's eyes were glazed. His face sported a week's growth of beard. There were bruises inflicted by SS torturers. The captain rocked back and forth as he sat. Voice low, he repeated something over and over.

Three Russians-a colonel and two conscripts-stood above the German. Their anxious eyes snapped to MacCleary as the tall man entered the cell.

The Russian colonel quickly briefed MacCleary on the situation. As he spoke, the seated German continued to murmur softly to himself, repeating only one word.

"He speaks nonsense," the colonel insisted in heavily accented English. "I speak German well, and that is not a word I have ever heard."

With a glance at the Russians, MacCleary leaned forward. He cocked an ear, listening closely.

The German continued to hiss softly. Eyelids fluttered at half-mast over his twitching eyes. MacCleary frowned. "Whatever it is, it ain't German," he concluded.

"What does it mean?" asked a Russian colonel. MacCleary shrugged. He listened hard once more.

Maybe the kraut had some kind of speech impediment. But try as he might, Conn could hear no German in what the man was saying.