Warren Murphy: The Sky is Falling

That was why Zemyatin had told him about the American discovery of the device in their own territory and the Russian missiles ready to go like a timer on an American coffeepot; without an order, just a date. Even now Ivanovich could hear the Third World War clicking away with all the mindlessness of a mechanical clock. He did not panic. He thought. And when the North Korean boasted about finishing de Lyon himself, Ivanovich did not wait to get some superior to join him in this new bold move he was taking upon himself.

He had remembered Cang from a visit to Moscow. The man's only weakness was cigarettes and a sense of inferiority which he hid well. There was no reason for North Korea to eliminate a Russian problem in Western Europe, but Ivanovich understood immediately the North Korean action. Instead of laughing at the North Koreans for doing something seemingly not in their direct self-interest, Ivanovich ordered a direct salutation sent to Kim II Sung with a request for advice from their genius in special action work abroad.

What Ivanovich did, in effect, after all these years, was to have his country answer the North Korean's call. Sayak Cang was on a line immediately inside the Russian embassy, an access Ivanovich, too, had risked ordering. But now, thinking like Zemyatin, he understood that retribution at home did not matter, especially since the American monster had personally crippled the great government of the Soviet Socialist Republics.

Ivanovich held an entire country in the palm of his hands as he talked to the once lowly Sayak Cang.

"We stand in awe of you, and seek your protection," said Ivanovich. "You are the leader of the socialist world."

"I have lived my life to hear those words," said Cang. His voice cracked. Was it the emotion? It sounded so much like fear.

"We had failed so many times with our problem in Western Europe that we called it insurmountable. You solved it."

"You see we are a great nation."

"Great nations have burdens, Sayak Cang. We have sent one of our leaders with a monster of a man, a killer you could not fathom, to America to seize a weapon that will destroy the Eastern world," said Ivanovich, shrewdly playing on Russia's Asian connection.

"We not only can fathom any American killer, we can crush him like a leaf," said Cang. Cang cleared his throat. He sounded nervous.

"There is a man whom we must have killed," said Ivanovich. "We have failed. There is an object we must have. There is a great game America is playing against us, and we are losing."

In an almost stuttering voice, Cang asked what the game was. Ivanovich gave him the location of the American device near their city of Boston in their northeast province of Massachusetts. The general also gave Cang a description of the American monster and the Russian whom he wished saved. What Russia wanted was the device taken, the American dead, and the Russian, his name Zemyatin, taken out of the country, safely if possible.

"We can do that. We can do all of it."

"But it must be done now. Your experts who have shown us the way must take off now. Immediately."

"Perfect. I really don't have much time now either way," said Cang. "Give all the glory to Korea because I will not be here."

"Are you all right?"

"I must build the only door our greatest sun cannot pass through. The door is death. In that I will control him." Ivanovich did not explore that. He gave the North Korean intelligence chief his salutations, and then tried to reach the plane Zemyatin was on to let him know what he had done. There just might be that flaw in the American after all. For the way the French SDEC director was killed, according to reports from the Paris embassy, was virtually identical to the way the American monster killed.

Fire was going to be fought with fire.

Cang could not feel his arms or legs, or even the last breaths in his throat. Good, he thought. I am lucky. The timing is perfect.

He ordered the Master of Sinanju to be informed of where he was. Cang had been hiding for days now, trying to figure out exactly what his country could do. He knew he was a dead man. He accepted that. But how could his country use his death? And then the Russian gave him the perfect way to use a life any reasonable man had to admit would be over soon.

Chiun had figured out who had stolen the treasure of Sinanju and why.

He had told Cang in their last meeting:

"Pyongyanger, dog. The treasure will be restored to the House of Sinanju. And I will sit here to receive it. I do not carry burdens like a Pyongyang dog."

Cang did not protest. He bowed and left, and went into immediate hiding, warning the President for Life to stay out of the country at all costs until this disastrous corner could be turned. He had not even asked Chiun how he had figured out who had stolen the treasure. Now he would know that, too. He was using the door even Chiun and all the Masters of Sinanju were defenseless against.

When Chiun entered Cang's rock-deep office, Cang was lying on a mat with his head on a piilow and smiling inwardly because his lips were hard to move.

"I am dying, Chiun."

"I have not come to witness the disposal of garbage," said Chiun,

"The poison I have taken robs me of almost all sensation. I cannot feel, therefore you cannot make me tell you where I put your treasure. I am about to pass through the only door that can withstand an assault by a Master of Sinanju: death, Chiun. Death." Cang's fading eyes saw that Chiun remained still. He did not talk. Good. He did not wish to waste time. Cang had ordered what he wanted to be written out in case the poison acted too quickly. It was all the descriptions the Russian had given him, including the location of the machine. Chiun was to bring the machine to Russia and then he would be told where the treasure was. And incidentally, there was a presumptuous American he was to kill, and a Russian he was to save.

"I am to trust you now?"

"Trust or not. Do the task or not. I am leaving you and you cannot follow through the door of death. No one here knows where the treasure is, and you can kill for a hundred years and never find it."

Chiun read the note again. He knew where Boston was. He had spent so long in America, wasting the best years of his life in one country serving the insane emperor who refused to take the throne. He knew Boston. He knew whites. He was perhaps the foremost authority on whites in the world.

"Tell me, O Great Master, how did you fathom I had stolen the treasure? Tell me that, and I will give you one piece now."

"The Frenchman told the truth. He didn't know who had sent him the coins. This I know. And the great theft by the pope was impossible."

"How did you know that?"

"The popes have not shown any skill since the Borgias. To steal the treasure of Sinanju, maybe, only maybe, could have been done by a Borgia pope who sought conquest and land. But for the one decent period, the popes have been as useless as their founder, caring not for the glory of gems, the power of land, but for fanatic and useless things like prayer and their Western cult manners of charity and love, and whatever other peculiarities are endemic to their kind."

"You truly know whites, don't you?" said Cang.

"They are not all the same. But Pyongyangers are. They are dogs without the virtues of courage and loyalty," said Chiun. "Where is this piece of treasure you are willing to return?"

"Underneath me," said Cang.

Chiun rolled him over with one foot and found a minor silver statue taken as tribute by a minor Master, Tak. Tak was always the Master Chiun used to forget when memorizing the cadences of the history of the Masters of Sinanju.

Chiun ordered one of the flunkies to return the statue to the village of Sinanju and let the villagers place it on the steps of his house in tribute.