Warren Murphy: Arabian Nightmare

"You only wished I was dead. You coveted my Mastership. "

"Bulldooky!"

"And you never informed the village of my demise."

Remo folded his arms. "What demise? You aren't dead."

"We will discuss this later," Chiun flared, one eye darting to the interested Mongol faces. "After the company has left."

"If this is a party," Remo said, looking down at the ruins of Abominadad, "I'd hate to see these guys at a riot. No offense."

"None taken." Kula beamed, nocking an arrow and letting it fly in Remo's direction. It whizzed by Remo's ear.

A Renaissance Guardsman, picking his way through some rubble, caught the shaft square in the eye. He screamed like a piano wire snapping. It was that short.

"This is good sport," said Kula, grinning.

"Looks like war to me," Remo muttered, checking his ear. It was still there.

"Yes, good sport. If you do not mind, we have many Arabs to massacre." They started off.

"Spare the women and children," warned Chiun.

"Of course. If we kill them too, then our descendants will have no sport in the centuries to come. They will curse our memories. Better that the Arabs curse us while we live. We will not have to listen to them after we are with our ancestors."

Laughing, they slipped away into the night.

"Nice guys," Remo said dryly.

"They are true friends of Sinanju." Chiun turned. "Have you no questions to ask of me?"

Remo pretended to think. "Yeah, just one."

"And that is?"

"Did they ever explain who killed Laura Palmer?"

Chapter 45

"It was an owl named Bob," said Harold W. Smith with a straight face.

Remo laughed with surprise. "That's pretty funny," he said. "I didn't know you had a sense of humor."

It was the next morning. They were in the Royal Emiri Palace in liberated Kuran City. Remo had been briefed by Smith, who had flown to Hamidi Arabia to take charge of Reverend Juniper Jackman and Don Cooder, both of whom had been discovered hiding in a closet of the Palace of Sorrows.

As vice-president of Irait and the highest-ranking survivor of the Revolting Command Council, Reverend Jackman had formally surrendered the nation to the Master of Sinanju.

Immediately Don Cooder had begun pestering him for an interview. Jackman had refused on the grounds that he had too much on his mind. With an actual elected office under his belt and the presidential sweepstakes only a year away, he would make a formal announcement later. After the war-crimes tribunal.

Remo had slipped up behind them and, applying pressure to nerve centers, made them limp enough to be carried out of Irait.

That had been the day before. This was now.

"I am speaking the truth," Smith said flatly.

A decurion in a pink gasproof suit, his swinish gas mask hanging from his web belt, entered the throne room.

"The transport has arrived, sir."

"I don't suppose anyone wants to explain why the U.S. Army is tricked out like Porky Pig these days?" Remo wanted to know.

No one did, so Remo wrote it off to the vagaries of the all-volunteer army. He had been a marine. Remo did understand that Kuran had been taken without a shot being fired. Sheik Fareem and Prince Imperator Bazzaz were in the capital, Nemad, claiming the lion's share of credit. Officially, Washington had decided not to contradict this boast. The truth would have been impossible to support.

"Did you bring my ice?" Remo asked the orderly, for some inexplicable reason called a decurion.

"Here, sir."

Remo accepted the cube in a handkerchief and applied it to the lump of flesh on his forehead.

"You know," he murmured unhappily, "I don't think this swelling is going down at all."

"We will deal with that back in America," Chiun said.

"They don't have ice back in America?" Remo asked.

"Hush!" Chiun snapped.

"Why do I get the impression everyone is holding something back from me?" Remo said suspiciously.

"Because we are," said Chiun flatly.

Praetor Winfield Scott Hornworks barged in at that point, and when he saw Chiun, a bearlike grin broke over his broad face.

"Imperator Chiun!" he bellowed.

Remo almost dropped his ice pack. "Imperator?"

"You should hear what's going on up in Irait! The Kuranis have grabbed a hunk of their southern frontier. The Syrians have swept in to the Euphrates. The Iranians grabbed a slice of the east, and the Turks are taking back all the land they lost back when the Ottoman Empire broke apart. The way it's going, all that's gonna be left of Irait will be Abominadad and some suburbs, and the Kurds are sure to lay claim to that once the Mongols get through picking it over. I gotta hand it to you, using the Kurds and Mongols means we ain't ever gonna hear a squawk outta Irait again."

"What did the Kurds do?" Remo asked.

"They wrote their names on the Spuds," Chiun supplied.

"Potatoes?"

"No, he means Maddas' Scud missiles. Here . . ." Praetor Hornworks pulled an LME tube out of a slash pocket and tossed it to Remo.

Remo looked it over and said, "A Magic Marker, right?"

"Naw, it's an LME. Stands for liquid-metal-embrittlement agent. You smear some of it on any metal or alloy, and faster than corn through a cow, it breaks it down like invisible rust. Metal fatigue equals catastrophic failure. When of Maddas launched his rockets and planes, they up and discombobulated." He paused. "There's only one downside."

"And what is that?" asked Harold Smith.

"We not only chased all the Iraitis out of Kuran, but the Kuranis too. They all lit out for Bahrain. And nobody can find the emir to give the country back to. There's rumors he's off buying up half of Canada."

Hornworks suddenly noticed Smith's three-piece suit. "Are you CIA?" he asked.

"No." Smith pretended to adjust his glasses. He kept his hand over his face in a suspicious manner.

"You sure? You got 'spook' written all over you. I dealt with you CIA types all during the Nam thing."

"I think it is time that we depart," said Smith uncomfortably.

"Before you do," Hornworks said, turning to Chiun and coming to attention, "I just want to say that you are the finest officer I ever served under. And that includes my dear departed daddy."

"Officer?" Remo said.

Praetor Hornworks saluted smartly. The Master of Sinanju returned the salute with a deep formal bow.

Remo watched all this in growing confusion.

"Maybe this will start to make sense after the swelling has gone down," he grumbled.

The strange looks on the faces of Harold W. Smith and Chiun caused him to doubt that statement, but he shoved the doubt into the back of his mind. The nightmare was over. Everyone who mattered to him had gotten through it alive. Everyone who deserved to die, had.

Remo Williams felt a nervous exultation quivering in his solar plexus like butterflies of promise.

His good mood carried him through the fifteen-hour flight in a C-5 Galaxy.

"When we get home," Remo said, lying in a webbing net, his hands clasped behind his head in contentment, "I'm going to bake you a rice cake, Little Father. With a hundred candles."

"Why?"

"For your birthday. You're a hundred now."

"I am not!" Chiun snapped.

Remo sat up. "Then what was all that phony crap you dished out last spring?"

"That was true crap," Chiun retorted. "But I have missed my kohi, therefore I have not properly achieved the venerated age. Since Masters of Sinanju celebrate no birthdays between the ages of eighty and one hundred, I must remain forever young."

"Bull. You're a hundred."

"I am only eighty," said the Master of Sinanju firmly. "Remember this. Any assertion to the contrary is a canard."

They argued this point for the remainder of the flight. Remo Williams didn't care. Smiling contentedly, he let Chiun's carping and complaining wash over him like a reviving surf. All was right with the world. Nothing this bad could ever happen to them again, he was certain.