Warren Murphy - The Final Crusade

"You have a map to the place of this false kafif Sluggard?"

"Ari. Here. And American money. More than you will need. Also there is a picture. You will need it if you are to locate him personally. He often moves with an entourage."

"I may not need it," said Rashid Shiraz.

"Your task is to abduct him and bring him to us. If this is impossible, you may kill him so long as you do it painfully."

"I know this. But this one will see that I am brought before Sluggard."

"How do you know he will not betray you?"

"Because he hates Sluggard more than we do," said Rashid Shiraz. And to prove his point, he extracted the photograph of the Reverend Eldon Sluggard from the folder and, after glancing at it briefly, placed it in Lamar Booe's empty, trembling hands.

"Is this the devil who betrayed you?" Rashid demanded.

"Aaahh!" said Lamar Booe, squeezing the photograph into a crumpled shape. Then, making little mewling sounds of pain, he tore the photograph first into big pieces, then into small pieces. He stopped only when the remaining pieces were so small his fingers could not grip them for further destruction.

His lips moved. The words were barely audible. Lamar Booe was whispering "Marg bar Sluggard" over and over in poor Farsi.

Chapter 17

Remo put his head in through the half-open door. "Have you seen Victoria?" he asked.

"Too often," Chiun replied sourly.

"The same to you. If you do see her, tell her I'm looking for her."

"Why?" asked Chiun. He was seated on a tatami mat in his stateroom aboard the Reverend Eldon Sluggard's yacht, the Mary Magdalene. He was boiling water in a brass bowl suspended over a tiny wood stove. It was his personal rice-making set, used when the Master was not in civilization. It had arrived within the green-gold lacquered trunk only a few hours ago, shipped by Harold Smith from Folcroft Sanitarium to a series of relay points and finally to the Eldon Sluggard World Ministries.

"Because I asked you," Remo said quietly. His tone was not peevish, nor was it demanding. It was, if anything, troubled.

"That is not the why," said Chiun, spooning brown rice grains out of a glazed celadon container in the shape of a bear. "The why is why do you want to see her? Not the other why."

"Because I do."

"I see. And has it anything to do with the troubled tone I detect in your voice?"

"How do you know I'm troubled?"

"Because you are. It is self-evident."

"Yeah?" Remo shifted on his feet. "Well, I thought she could explain something to me."

Chiun turned suddenly, a wooden ladle of rice poised over the happily bubbling water.

"Oh? Do you think that woman can explain what troubles you better than I?"

Remo hesitated. "Yeah, I guess. Probably. It's about Reverend Sluggard. And she's his personal adviser, after all."

"I can tell you all you need to know about this priest. "

Remo was half in and half out of the door. He thought a moment and entered the stateroom, closing the door behind him. Chiun pretended to examine the boiling rice closely so that Remo did not behold the slight tug of satisfaction pulling at his lips. He let the final grains of rice mix with the others.

"I am having rice. Will you have some?"

"I'm not hungry," Remo said, joining him on the floor.

Listening to Remo's voice, Chiun added two more ladles full. Enough for Remo.

"So," Chiun said, lifting his face. "What is it that troubles you now?"

"I just had a talk with Reverend Sluggard. I asked him about receiving forgiveness for my sins."

"Ah. That."

"And you know what he did? He took all my money and said I was forgiven."

"Why does that surprise you, Remo? Reverend Sluggard takes everyone's money. For a holy man, he acts like the hated tax collectors the Romans once set upon the Jews and the Christians."

"He puts it to good use. You saw all the people he healed."

"Pah! An old game. A conjurer shouts loudly, causing the heart to beat faster, the pulse to quicken, the mind to concentrate. Or he speaks soothing words that inspire belief in the self. Or he does both. I have seen it many times in many lands. Sluggard does both. And fools believe that they are healed."

"I saw lame people walk. Others get up from wheelchairs. "

"I saw the same. The truth is, those people healed themselves."

"What's the difference? They're healed, aren't they?"

"The difference is that their healing will last only as long as their hearts beat fast and their minds are filled with that belief. I saw some of them falter as they returned to their seats. No one else was watching because their minds were on the healer, not the healed."

"If you say you saw it, you saw it," Remo muttered defensively.

"So speaks Remo Williams, the stubborn."

"When Reverend Sluggard told me that God forgave my sins because I gave him all my money, it made sense. It even reminded me of some of your lessons."

"Mine? How so?"

"I don't know. It was the way he explained it, I guess. It started off as one thing and ended up as another. The point he made was that if I was simply forgiven, I wouldn't learn. But if I paid a price, I would learn not to commit the same sins again."

"That is sound reasoning. So why are you troubled? You have paid your tax to this man and he has promised you a blessing in return. What could be more equitable?"

"Well, I don't feel the same way as when I was a kid leaving confession. You know, cleansed."

"Ah, then you question this man?"

"Not exactly. This isn't the Catholic way. It's different. Maybe I'm not supposed to feel the same way as I did then."

"I think there may be enough rice for you," said Chiun, tending to the boiling pot. "If I take less, that is."

"No, thanks," said Remo, shaking his head.

"Do you remember the first time I taught you to overcome heights?"

Remo considered. "I remember the first time you tried. "

"That is it."

Remo's face clouded over. "You took me out into these woods where you had miles of logs laid end to end. You made me put on a blindfold and pretend the logs were over a ravine. I climbed on and started walking. "

"It was not hard."

"No, not until you told me to take off the blindfold and I found myself standing on a log that was suspended between two ciiffs. "

"You did not fall."

"I could have!"

"You did not fall when you walked along the first twenty logs. Why would you fall from the twenty-first, just because it was not as close to the ground as you imagined it to be?"

"That's not the point. I could have."

"The point is that you did not."

"So what's the point of reliving it now?" demanded Remo. The old anger was rising in his voice. Chiun found it reassuring, although disrespectful.

"Do you remember, only weeks later, when I again asked you to do something for me?"

"No. "

"I asked you to run through a burning room."

"Yeah. It's coming back. You opened the door and there were flames coming from different spots on the floor. Little flames. Tiny ones."

"And I told you to run as if the entire room was ablaze. To run with your eyes shut and your breath held tightly within you."

"And when I was halfway through the little fires, the room exploded in a ball of hell. Christ, Chiun, how could you?"

Chiun shrugged. "A simple mechanical contrivance. The floor contained gas jets. Smith installed them when I insisted that he build me a room for that purpose. I merely turned a wheel."

"I could have been incinerated," Remo growled. "But you were not. And so you learned that flame is no more to be feared than water if you keep moving and do not inhale. But that is not the point of this discussion either."

"And just what is the friggin' point?" Remo snarled.

"The point is that even though I had tricked you with the logs, you trusted me with the room of fire."