Warren Murphy - The Last Monarch

After a miserable, self-indulgent three months, the Master of Sinanju seemed to finally be putting his movie deal behind him. This little jaunt around the world had turned the Korean back into his old self again, and in spite of all the kvetching and insults, Remo was happy to have him back. Of course, he kept his own mood masked, lest Chiun, sensing complacency in his pupil, revert to being the pain in the neck he'd been since last spring.

"I just hope the President is with Aruch after all this," Remo commented.

From the distance, they felt a sudden rumbling. It was a much smaller explosion, nowhere near as powerful as that from the neutrino bomb.

"What was that?" Remo asked as the aftershocks rolled away beneath their feet.

As if in reply, a thin finger of black smoke began to rise in the pale blue sky above the distant rooftops

"Whatever it is," the Master of Sinanju intoned, "it comes from the direction in which we are headed."

It took another fifteen minutes to wend their way through the maze of streets to the spot where the explosion had originated. When they got there, they found the pile of smoking debris that was all that remained of the West Bank offices of the PIO. "This was the headquarters?" Remo asked their Arab companion.

"It is the home of the Palestine Independence Organization," the guide replied.

"You think Aruch was inside?" Remo asked Chiun.

The Master of Sinanju had dismounted from his camel and was walking around the brick and mortar rubble with his pupil. He paused in the rear courtyard.

"No," Chiun said. He pointed at some footprints, recently made in the dusty earth. "Several men escaped injury. And look," he added, "the former occupant of the Eagle Throne was with them."

"The President?" Remo asked. "Are you sure?" Chiun gave him a baleful glare.

"Okay, so he went with him." Remo nodded reasonably. "Now we've got to figure out where they went."

"There is no figuring necessary," Chiun explained. "Aruchs are born of the desert. That is where he will return."

"How can you be so sure?"

Chiun folded his arms matter-of-factly. "A dog never tires of smelling the same mound of excrement," he replied.

"Since I'm lousy with pets, I'll have to take your word on that," Remo said. Surveying the damage, he exhaled in annoyance. "Well, if we're going into the desert, I'm not hoofing it."

"There is a stable nearby," the PIO guide offered hopefully.

This sounded good enough to Remo.

"Scrounge us up four horses and I'll consider letting you live," he said to the soldier.

Face brightening, the man spun, hurrying from the rubble-strewn courtyard.

"Let's hope the President can keep his mouth shut a little longer," Remo said to Chiun as they followed the man out to the street. "If he spills the beans this late in the game, Smitty'll have a stroke."

Chapter 33

A few hours of untroubled sleep at his desk had faded into a waking nightmare for Harold W. Smith. Remo and Chiun had failed to halt the detonation of the neutrino bomb. That much was painfully obvious.

The world had been turned on its ear following the events in the Middle East.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The sound came from Smith's computer. More raw data.

Scanning it quickly, he filed it. It was like spooning out the ocean. Another bulletin raced in to fill the space.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The CURE director was looking at one of the greatest crises he had ever faced.

The range of the neutrino bomb's magnetizing wave was far greater than even the wildest guesses of the scientists at Los Alamos. Even though the small plutonium bomb had been set off in the north of the West Bank, it had caused a technological catastrophe nearly eight hundred miles away in some instances.

Due to the effects of the bomb, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and Cyprus were totally cut off from the outside world. Nothing technological appeared to be working in any of the small nations nearest the blast site. Much of Iraq was similarly affected.

Saudi Arabia, Egypt as far as Aswan, Izmir, Turkey, on the Aegean, Syria-all had experienced the devastating sweep of the magnetic neutrino wave. The invisible wall of heavy atoms had even reached as far as Abadan, Iran-some 780 miles from the blast zone.

It was a cataclysm of incalculable proportions. The only information coming out of the region was that available via satellite.

Smith had shifted his focus almost immediately. At that point, the neutrino bomb was the old news. What was happening in the rest of the world as a result of the blast was what worried the CURE director now.

The situation was grim.

As he had secretly feared, other nations viewed the incident as an opportunity.

Smith was in the process of reading the latest report, this one from Cuba.

Castro had acted on the news out of the Mideast with surprising speed. The head of the former Soviet client state was in the process of rounding up weapons to ship to Arab sympathizers. A fleet of three banana boats had been assembled to sail the arms to the Mediterranean. For Castro, it was both a moneymaking scheme and an attempt by the forgotten dictator to gain a toehold in the region.

While Castro's eagerness to take advantage of the situation was almost laughable, the actions of other nations were far more serious.

Smith dumped the terse Cuban report back into the growing file of international opportunists. He pulled out an update of one of the more troubling cases.

Russia was involved in a massive collection of arms. Even as Smith read the report, he knew that crates of guns and ammunition were being airlifted to ships in the Black Sea.

The former superpower clearly saw the events in the Mideast as an opportunity to regain some of its past glory. Smith had even intercepted a private memo to the United Nations that had originated somewhere high up in the Russian Duma. Before the end of the day, there would be official condemnation from the Russian government for the actions of the United States in the West Bank. At the same time, the vessels would already be on their way to the Middle East.

America would be helpless to stop them.

The Sixth Fleet was in disarray. The aircraft carrier that had brought Remo into Lebanon was out of commission. At present, it was unknown whether it was damaged beyond repair. Smaller battleships in the vicinity had been similarly affected.

The Russians would have no interference entering the region. There would be no objection from the helpless U.S. ships nor from their impotent crews. They would be forced to watch in silence as the Russian flotilla sailed with its deadly cargo into the silent ports of terrorist nations.

And the United States would not be alone in silence. The navies of virtually every nation in the area had been crippled by the neutrino wave. At the moment, hundreds of vessels were floating helpless in the sea, targets to be boarded or blown out of the water by hostile forces. The crews did not even have arms to resist.

While the Russians presented the greatest threat, they were by no means alone. Libya and Iran were involved in an air war-limited at present to see who would have the pleasure of annexing the entire affected region.

The French saw an opportunity to retake some of their former possessions.

China was thrilled with the chance to spread its military influence into a new region and, if anyone attempted to stop them, perhaps employ some of the American technology they had obtained with Dr. Ree Hop Doe's aid.

Even the British-worried that others would get there first-were preparing arms shipments. A force was already on its way from those western areas of the Mediterranean not overcome by the neutrino blast. More were heading in from the Atlantic. America was also responding.

Worried that some hostile nation would be first to lay claim to the wide-open oil fields of several of the countries in the magnetized zone, task forces from the Second Fleet were already being pulled out of the western Atlantic and sent into the Mediterranean. Ships from the Pacific were being spread thin into both oceans to compensate. But the repositioning would take two days at best.