Warren Murphy: The Final Crusade

He was ignored.

Suddenly Victoria wrenched the book from Sluggard's hands. She presented it to the crowd around Chiun, showing the blank white pages.

"Behold!" she cried. "The pages are blank. "The Lord is speaking through his true messenger. It's a miracle!"

"So is walking on water," someone pointed out.

"That's been done before," said Victoria. "This is new. "

"Is it truly a miracle?" someone asked. The question was addressed respectfully to the Great Chiun.

"It is a fraud," Chiun replied. "Now I command you to throw away your unnecessary weapons."

His heart sinking, Reverend-General Sluggard watched as the rifles and bayonets and grenades went overboard. "We're dead," Victoria Hoar said.

"Not me," said Eldon Sluggard. "I'm outta here!" He started to belly over the rail.

"Don't be a fool. Look at those speedboats out there."

"You know that old sayin', better the devil you know than the devil you don't?"

"Yes."

"It don't apply here," said Reverend-General Eldon Sluggard just before he went over the rail. It was a long fall. He hit the water with a huge splash. Sluggard bobbed up on his stomach, facedown, his empty scabbard floating beside him.

A speedboat filled with Revolutionary Guards puttered up and he was pulled from the water. The victorious cries from below indicated that the Iranians recognized the face of their hated enemy Reverend Eldon Sluggard. The speedboat dug in and raced for shore.

On the shore, Remo had routed the Iranians. It was a disappointment. He had hoped to inflict more damage. But as soon as the first few fell with assorted internal injuries, the others turned tail and ran. Remo ran after them. He kicked whirling tires flat. He popped the treads of the decrepit tanks. But the soldiers he pulled out of the ruined vehicles were mostly boys. Few of them looked older than thirteen. Remo hadn't the heart to kill any of them. He sent them on their way with solid kicks to the seats of their khaki pants.

Disgusted, he returned to shore.

On a little hillock, the Grand Ayatollah was shouting imprecations at the Gulf. His bony fists shook with rage. His beard collected spittle from his sphincterlike mouth.

Remo came up from behind and tapped him on the shoulder.

"Hi! Remember me?"

The Grand Ayatollah whirled. His eyes registered shock, then fear as he realized he was alone and with whom.

"Not so brave now?" Remo asked, knowing that the man did not understand English.

"Down, down, USA!" the mullah shouted suddenly, and started off. Remo stepped on the hem of his camelhair robe. The Grand Ayatollah of the Islamic Republic of Iran fell to the ground.

"You know, people said a lot of bad things about the Shah, but you jerks are the pits," Remo said. "I ought to snap your scrawny neck, but my orders are to avoid making this crisis worse than it is."

"Down, down, USA!" the Grand Ayatollah spat. It seemed to be the only English he knew or understood.

"Somewhere I read that the reason you people started this revolution was that the Shah had some of your mullahs' turbans pulled off when they started throwing their weight around. You've caused the world a lot of pain over a damned length of cloth."

And placing a foot on the Grand Ayatollah's heaving chest, Remo took one end of his turban and pulled. The pile of cloth unwound in a twinkling. Remo threw it aside.

"Chiun tells me that was the second worst thing you can do to one of you mullahs. The first is to shave off your beards. Too bad I didn't bring my scissors."

The Grand Ayatollah spat on Remo's loafers.

"Well, what the hell," Remo said. "Anything worth doing is worth doing thoroughly." And he got down on the Grand Ayatollah's chest. He started plucking at the man's beard. With each pluck the Grand Ayatollah howled.

When Remo finally stood up, the Grand Ayatollah was as clean-shaven as a baby's behind.

The Grand Ayatollah, tears erupting from his eyes, screamed his wrath at Remo.

"I don't know what you're saying, pal, but I'm sure the proper response is, 'That's the biz, sweetheart.' " Remo walked away grinning.

Chapter 25

Remo Williams saw that the Gulf was quiet. Chiun was standing in the forecastle of the Seaworthy Gargantuan, hands tucked into his sleeves. He was addressing Sluggard's disarmed forces. Remo couldn't hear what Chiun was saying, but he noticed that the speedboats of the Revolutionary Guards were standing off the tanker, as if uncertain what to do.

Remo dived into the water and sought them out. He crippled their idling propellers with snapping blows of his hands and then punctured the hulls from below.

The boats sank swiftly. Underwater, Remo reached out for the floundering Revolutionary Guards and pulled them under. He jabbed them in critical areas of the spine, not enough to paralyze them, but to ruin their coordination. If some didn't make it to shore, Remo reasoned, it was not his fault. Just the natural expression of the law of survival of the fittest.

Remo used Chiun's finger holes in the side of Seaworthy Gargantuan to reach the deck.

Chiun observed Remo's sopping clothes disdainfully. "This is my son," he told the crowd. "Remo." Immediately the Crusaders fell to their knees in supplication.

"The son of the Great Chiun!" they cried. "Great Remo. "

"He is not great. He is adequate."

"Adequate Remo," they exulted. "Praise be to Adequate Remo."

Chiun turned to Remo.

"Now do you understand?" he whispered. "This is how these things begin. These people will go back to their homes and tell of Chiun the Great and the Adequate Remo. They will start churches. They will make up rules to keep their followers in line, and in a mere three or four centuries, we will be considered deities ourselves."

Remo saw the worshipful gazes being directed at him. They reminded him of the expression on his own face when he was with Reverend Sluggard's ministry. Their sheeplike acceptance disgusted him.

"You've made your point," Remo said quietly. "It is ridiculous. It is wrong."

"I said you made your point," Remo repeated testily.

"Let us give tribute to the Great Chiun." This from a kneeling member of the crowd.

"We have had enough of your tribute," Chiun began to say.

But when the coins and paper money, not to mention whole wallets, began falling at his sandaled feet, Chiun whispered to Remo, "Do not just stand there. Help me collect my rightful tribute from these proper worshipers of perfection."

"You can't take money from them under false pretenses, Little Father," Remo said. "It's wrong."

"And it is a long boat ride home. We must keep these cretins in line. And what better way to do it than this? Besides, if they are so deluded that they take me for a higher being, how is that my mistake?"

"Tell you what, you take care of this. I'll handle Sluggard and Victoria. Where are they?"

"I do not know," Chiun said, tearing open a fat wallet. He threw the identification cards and the credit cards overboard and stuffed the money into a secret pocket in his kimono.

"The Iranians got Reverend Sluggard," said a pimple-faced Crusader. He pointed toward the coastline.

A speedboat had slowed in the water. Revolutionary Guards were wading ashore. They carried the limp bloated body of Reverend Eldon Sluggard like a fat pig being hoisted to a feast.

Remo's first impulse was to go after Sluggard. He hesitated at the rail. Then he said, "Screw him. He's not worth it. That just leaves Victoria."

Remo searched the ship. He found Victoria Hoar on the captain's bridge, high in the white superstructure. Victoria was giving orders to the captain.

"You listen to me. We've got to dump these people. They're all witnesses to the company's involvement. Get us out to the open sea, and we'll herd them into a flood-control compartment and let the water in. We can dump the bodies on the way home."