Warren Murphy: Encounter Group

"She went left," Chiun directed.

Remo steered the car to the left. There was no sign of Amanda Bull, but then a brown van pulled onto the street ahead, and Remo recognized its custom body. It was the official FOES van, which Amanda had retrieved from where it had been ditched earlier.

"We have them, no?" Pavel asked.

"Let's hope," Remo said.

"Where is she going?" Pavel wanted to know.

"Place is called Broken Arrow," Remo told him.

"Broken Arrow? See? I was right. I have helped you, but you wouldn't listen," Zarnitsa said.

"I'm not listening now," Remo said.

?Chapter Seventeen

When the Homestead Act opened up Oklahoma in the last century, the area called Broken Arrow had boasted of only two natural features: osage and Indians. Then the homesteaders came and started their cattle ranches and farms. Neither the osage nor the Indians vanished. They just sort of blended into the background. Broken Arrow had been a good place to raise beef. There was plenty of wide-open space and it was a short trek to nearby Tulsa, where cattle could be sold or shipped by rail to the hungry East.

By all rights, Broken Arrow should still be that way, and it would be if the cattlemen hadn't found the land bad for farming. It was bad all around. In time, the cattlemen sold off their land and tried again in Arizona or Wyoming. Others, not as young or perhaps more stubborn, stayed on and were still there when the first oil was struck. But not many of them. So few, in fact, that even the Indians got to share in the oil boom. And so what was once cattle-grazing territory vibrated to the chug and creak of the oil derrick.

By all rights, Broken Arrow should have remained a booming oil town, but even that did not last, as more of the black stuff was pumped out of the ground to be shipped to the oil-hungry East. While the wells did not always run dry, the ability of men to pump all of the oil out of the ground was not absolute. And so, one by one, some of the oil fields were shut down, not for lack of product, but because the oil lay so far underground, it could not be tapped.

The building stood in the middle of one of these abandoned fields, among the silent and forgotten spidery towers and pipelines and the overpowering smell of crude. It didn't belong there, but then it looked as if it didn't belong anywhere.

For one thing, it was blue— except for the door, which was a simple white panel on one side. There were no windows or any other ordinary features. In fact, there were no sides in the true sense because the structure was built along the lines of an Eskimo igloo and looked vaguely like a giant seashell lying on its side. But even that didn't describe the thing accurately.

It was unusual enough that Amanda recognized it for what it was immediately even though she had not been given a description of the World Master's emergency retreat, just its general location.

Amanda pulled the van off the road and walked through the scrub oak until she got to the white door. There was no sign of any other vehicle, which struck her as peculiar even in her present state, which was one of high agitation.

The door slid aside as soon as she got near it, and she entered the structure. It was dark inside. The walls felt smooth to her touch, like the bottom of a Teflon-coated frying pan. Amanda followed the wall.

"Stop, Amanda Bull," the baritone voice of the individual Amanda knew only as the World Master said. "You have come far enough. Report your success."

"I— I can't," Amanda said in the gloom. "I tried... oh, honestly, I tried. But everything went... wrong. Everything has been going wrong all along."

"Cease crying. Continue."

Amanda swallowed. Somehow the darkness made her feel worse than she had been feeling. It seemed to enwrap her.

"I told him the warhead was in the city, but— he tricked me. He found out the truth. I couldn't kill him— I tried to, but I couldn't— but I got away. I managed to get away somehow."

"I expected that," the voice intoned.

"You did?"

"Of course. You were no match for this Remo. I expected him to lead or follow you here. This is where I will defeat him, for this place is designed to defeat any intruder."

"What about the warhead? Where is it?"

"The warhead has been activated and positioned. It will detonate in the city of Tulsa within three hours."

"Good, I guess," Amanda said sickly. "What about the others? Are they here?"

"Their usefulness has been fulfilled. Preparation Group Two has been rewarded. Just as Preparation Group One was..."

"Dead?" Amanda asked weakly. "All of them?"

"All that remains is their brave leader," the World Master said ironically. And he laughed like a ghoul.

* * *

Remo waited for Amanda to disappear into the strange blue structure before he left the car, which he had parked in the early morning sunlight at the edge of the abandoned oil field.

"I am coming," Chiun said, stepping out of the car, too.

"No," Remo said. "You've got to stay with the Russian. Smith's orders, remember?"

Chiun shook his head firmly. "Emperor Smith's orders are that I am responsible for him. That does not mean I am to be his babysitter."

"We can't take him with us," Remo said. He was worried that Chiun might complicate matters when it came to a showdown with the World Master.

"We will lock him in the trunk," Chiun said, dragging Pavel Zarnitsa out of the back seat.

"I protest," Pavel said.

"Me, too," Remo said. "He might escape."

"Then I will incapacitate his legs so he cannot escape," Chiun returned. "It is important that I accompany you, Remo. I have unfinished business."

"That's what I was afraid of," Remo grumbled. He turned to the Russian. "What'll it be? The trunk or your kneecaps?"

"I think I will be very comfortable in the trunk," Pavel said through a forced smile as they put him in the trunk.

There wasn't much cover near the round building. Remo and Chiun moved along the oil rigs until they were as close as they could get without being exposed. Remo, seeing no activity, began to move forward.

"Wait," said Chiun. "It is a maze. I recognize the form."

"So?" said Remo. "There's the door, and I don't see any guards. Let's rush it."

"Yes," Chiun snapped. "Let us rush the door. Let us blunder to our deaths now, while there is still daylight. Why should we wait and carefully plan our attack when we can go impatiently to our deaths and end this terrible suspense?"

"All right, all right," Remo said. "I'm listening."

Chiun sat down amid the wild grass and placidly waited until Remo, heaving a sigh of exasperation, sat beside him. Chiun gestured toward the blue building.

"Behold this structure, Remo," he said. "What does it say to you?"

"Say? It doesn't say anything."

"Wrong. Nothing in the universe is silent. All things have voices." Chiun pulled a long blade of grass from the earth and held it up so that Remo could see its roots. "This lowly blade of grass speaks to me. By the lack of dirt in its roots and by its yellow color, it tells me that if I had not plucked it and put it out of its misery, it would have withered away painfully."

"So?" Remo looked around him. The thought had occurred to him that this might be a grazing area and he hoped he hadn't stepped or sat in anything unpleasant.

"So this, dull one. That structure, by its very form, tells me that it is a maze designed to create difficulties for any who enter it. For it is a snail maze. There is only one entrance, one exit and one path, which winds around itself and ends in a central chamber."

"That doesn't sound like a maze to me," Remo said doubtfully. "A maze has a lot of passages and blind turns and things like that."

"That is a Western maze. A confused pattern designed by confused minds to confuse minds even more confused than they."