Warren Murphy: Fool's Gold

Wissex looked at the screen and laughed softly at their crude attempt to deceive him. The screen was built into a television but it was the latest form of radar screen, picking up the movement of objects over the size of a child.

Four overlapping cameras that Wissex had mounted on the edges of the tabletop mesa scanned the area around the hill,

Wissex watched the movement of the two men on the screen. First one of them would dart forward, fifteen feet or so, close to the edge of the camera's range. Then the other would move forward, and join with the first. Then the first would move forward again. It was obvious to Wissex that they were trying to find a pocket of space that the cameras didn't cover.

Not a chance, he thought. He reached under the table and opened a small case from which he took a submachine gun. He clicked off its safety and set

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the first round into the chamber, then waited, his eyes watching the screen, as the two figures continued their unusual leapfrog motion toward the base of the hill. Only forty yards more and they would be at the bottom of the cliff.

They would have to climb up. And he would be waiting.

Remo tossed the tree forward fifteen feet and waited until it hit. Then he ran forward himself until he was on a line with the tree, then turned sharply to his right and moved over to the tree. He waited a few seconds, then tossed the tree forward again and repeated the maneuver.

Chiun should be at the base of the hill now, Remo thought.

Terri saw him as the moon came out from behind a cloud for a brief moment. It flashed on the dark purple of the kimono and she saw Chiun's face, looking upward, as he came silently up the stone face of the hill. She had been looking at that wall all day and it had been smooth and seemed impossible to scale, but Chiun was moving upward as rapidly as if he had been climbing a ladder.

She glanced over toward Wissex at the platform in the center of the hill but he had seen nothing. His eyes were still riveted on the television screen.

And Chiun was climbing.

Remo had reached the bottom of the hill. He dropped the tree and looked up at the smooth stone walls. If he went up, Wissex had only to

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look over the edge and he could pick Remo off like a wingless fly clinging to a wall.

He hoped Chiun's scheme was working and the Briton was still focusing his attention on Remo. Maybe ... if he kept that attention.

Remo backed off from the wall and shouted out.

"Wissex, we're here for you. Surrender the girl."

He waited a split second, then got his answer, a deep, rolling laugh that shattered the quiet of the night.

And then Wissex's voice.

"Come on up. I'm waiting for you. You can join the wench."

She saw Chiun put a hand over the top of the cliff and then, like smoke rising, he moved up onto the edge. Wissex had moved to the other side of the hill, from the bottom of which had come Remo's voice. His back was to Chiun but the old man did not move. He had his head cocked as if listening to something far off.

Suddenly, Terri heard it too.

It was a distant rumbling, like the sound of machinery.

Wissex heard it too and spun toward the noise and he saw Chiun. Even as he said, in confusion, "How . . . what are you doing here?" he aimed the spray machine gun in Chiun's direction.

The Korean did not answer.

"There are three of you?" Wissex said.

"Perhaps four or five," Chiun said.

"It doesn't matter," Wissex said. "However many there are, they are all dead."

The sound came from trucks. Terri could rec-

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ognize the noise now. And then the sound lessened, and search lights flamed from out of the darkness toward the hill. Then a voice boomed through the night, powerful amplification making it seem that it came from every direction at once.

"Wissex, I know all," shouted Moombasa. "And now you die, thieving Englishman."

"That damned wog," Wissex said. "I'm getting out of here." He raised the gun toward Chiun. "But first you."

Remo had lingered at the base of the hill but when he heard the first machine gun blast, he leaped upward, grabbed a finger hold and began to move up the face of the smooth rock. It had been the hardest of lessons when he was young in Sinanju, learning to put the pressure of his weight into the face of the wall he was climbing and not down toward the ground. Harder still to learn was to harness the fear of falling that brought tension to the muscles and made the act of climbing impossible.

There was another burst from the machine gun and Remo raced toward the top of the cliff.

Moombasa heard the machine-gun fire too and he ducked down inside the 1948 Studebaker that was the pride of Hamidia's armored corps. He dropped his megaphone on his driver's head.

"That limey is trying to harm my royal person," he said. "Attack," he shouted. "Attack. Reduce that hill to rubble. I don't want a stone left."

His driver moved the Studebaker out of the way of the seven cannons, mounted on the backs of

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flatbed trucks, as uniformed soldiers loaded the big guns and began sighting in on the flat mountain top.

Even though she had seen it, she didn't believe it. Terri had seen Wissex aim the gun at Chiun and press the trigger. The old man hadn't seemed to move and yet somehow the bullets had missed and Chiun was ten feet away from his previous position. Then he circled slowly away from Wissex and Terri realized that he was turning Wissex away from her, to protect her from being hit by a stray shot.

Wissex wheeled toward Chiun. He held the machine gun at waist level and then squeezed the trigger again, this time letting out a spray of bullets in a wide arc. And again, they missed, because when Wissex released the trigger, the old man was still standing, still smiling, and then he moved forward toward Wissex.

"My ancestor let yours live," Chiun intoned. "You will not be so lucky. This is the last time you pretenders attack the House of Sinanju."

Wissex looked at Chiun and the gun, then threw the gun on the ground and bolted toward the helicopter on the far side of the mesa.

He got only two steps before being hauled up short. Terri saw him. It was Remo, moving out of the night, wearing his regular black chinos and black t-shirt, and he had his hand on Wissex's shoulder.

Wissex wheeled to face him.

"No, no, no," he cried. "My challenge was not to you, American. It was to Sinanju."

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"And I am the next Master of Sinanju," Remo said.

Terri saw Wissex' face pale. Then he pulled away from Remo and tried to run but again Remo stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

Terri saw Remo flick a finger toward Wissex' neck. Wissex reached up to touch his throat.

"What was that?" he asked. "I hardly felt it."

"Don't turn your head," Remo said.

"Why not?" asked Wissex.

He turned his head.

And as Terri looked on, his head fell off.

Remo looked down at the body and said, "That's the biz, sweetheart."

He ran over toward Terri. "You all right?"

"Just arm weary," she said. "Get me down from here."

"Coming right up," Remo said.

He scampered up onto the long boom and walked out along it to where Terri was hanging. She looked up between her hands and saw him break the ropes between his fingers, and then take her hands in his. Easily, he lifted her and walked back along the boom until they were both over the safe rock of the hilltop. Then he set her down carefully.

Chiun came over to look at the girls' wrists in the illumination from the floodlights on the trucks below. He began to massage them gently.

"Too much thumb," he said to Remo.

"What?"

Chiun nodded toward Wissex' body. "With him," he said. "Too much thumb on that stroke."

"It needed thumb," Remo said.