Warren Murphy: Master's Challenge

And Chiun. The pain would be tough on Chiun.

Remo tried to speak, but couldn't. His mind formed the words: I'm sorry I let you down, Father.

The pressure receded. Chiun must have heard him. It would soon be over for both of them.

But the Dutchman's force didn't only lessen. It died altogether. With a deep, involuntary breath, Remo opened his eyes. He and Chiun both stood in the shadow of H'si T'ang.

The old Master had stepped in front of them both to absorb the full power of the Dutchman alone. Chiun made a move to stop him, but H'si T'ang held out his hand.

"I can withstand him better than you," the blind man said.

The Dutchman's face contorted.

"He is weakened," Chiun said, amazed.

While the Dutchman focused his concentration on H'si T'ang, Remo ran silently behind the hill and climbed it swiftly. The Dutchman never turned. Using his strongest attack, Remo sent out both legs in a powerful thrust aimed at the Dutchman's spine.

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The legs swung through empty air. There was no one on the hill.

Below, Remo saw H'si T'ang clutch at his chest and fall. At the same moment, the Dutchman stepped from behind a bush near the old man.

"A mirage," Remo said, feeling his heart sink. The figure on the hill had been no more than the projection of an image in the Dutchman's mind. He had been standing near them all along.

But something was wrong. Chiun wasn't watching the man coming from the bushes. He was bending over H'si T'ang, massaging the old man's chest.

"Chiun! Behind you!" Remo screamed.

But the Dutchman had already prepared his blow by then, and even though Chiun readied himself in an instant, he was too late. The Dutchman's hands moved like lightning, striking two fierce slices into Chiun's abdomen. The old Oriental seemed to fly through the air, arms windmilling. His face registered pain for the first time Remo could remember. He landed face down in the sandy grass.

The thin old body didn't move. Chiun's gown was twisted between his legs, making him look like a strange little doll that someone had discarded. His feet showed.

"Chiun?" Remo whispered, unable to believe the sight before his eyes. Jilda, clutching her broken hand in the other, her face swollen from the rocks that had struck it, screamed in terror. The boy, Griffith, knelt by H'si T'ang, whose legs twitched weakly.

The Dutchman looked expectantly at the ground, then the sky. He examined his hands. He was speaking. A gust of wind carried his words to Remo on the hill.

"It is the same," he said, sounding surprised. "There is no peace from killing him. You promised me rest, Nuihc. What of your promise?"

And far away from all of them lay Chiun, lifeless and

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still. The old man was dead. It had never before occurred to Remo that Chiun would die.

Inside him grew a sadness so deep that his body could not contain it. Remo lifted his head and wailed like a man who had saved all the frights and tears of his life for one moment.

"My father," he called.

It was time to fight the Dutchman. Alone. He walked down the hill to meet his opponent. His last opponent, most likely. If the Dutchman's power was greater than Chiun's, it surely surpassed his own.

The thoughts passed through his mind like wisps of air. It didn't matter. He cast one more glance at Chiun.

There was so little left to lose now.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Smith slid into consciousness. He was not alone. There had been some kind of a light flashing, and now there was someone in the room, and his hand started to move down toward the revolver, which he had hidden under the sofa.

But his hand stopped when it met something smooth and soft. It was fabric-satin-and it was draped over the legs of Mildred Pensoitte.

"Mildred?"

"Shhhhh."

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Shhhhhh," she whispered again. He tried to raise himself to a sitting position, but she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back onto the sofa.

How long had he been asleep? He glanced at his watch. Less than two hours.

Mildred Pensoitte was wearing a long white satin robe that flickered eerily in the moonlight. Her hands were still on his shoulders, and then she moved closer to him, and then she was straddling him, looking down at him, one leg on each side of his waist.

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"Did you think you were going to survive the night?" she asked. He could see her smiling in the faint light that the bright moon reflected into the room.

"Please, Mildred. We can't."

"We must," she said.

She reached down to open his shirt buttons. The moon emerged from behind a cloud and he saw her smile again, but it was a different smile now. It was a hard and cold smile, and there was no warmth in it. It was a smile he had seen before, many years ago, and she said again, "We must," and her hand went to a pocket in her satin robe, and in the moonlight he saw a knife glinting in her hand. As she plunged the knife down toward his throat, Smith spun and rolled and dumped her off him onto the floor.

Smith sprang to his feet, grabbed his revolver, and ran across the room to flick on the light switch.

Mildred Pensiotte was on the floor, her knife still in her hand. The white robe was open, and her breasts were exposed.

"Is that the knife you used to kill Robin Feldmar?" Smith asked.

"Yes." Her voice was chilled as ice.

"Why?" Smith asked.

"Because she would have talked. She talked too much. You can have cranks around when you're starting up and all you're doing is talking. But when you get to action, to doing things, those people are dangerous."

"The revolution eats its own children," Smith said softly. "When did you know it was me?"

"A few minutes ago. I called the computer at Du Lac College. It said that you were the spy in Earth Goodness. What are you? CIA? FBI?"

"None of those," Smith said. "Why-do they call you B?"

"You know about that," she said with some surprise.

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"I should have known. From the moment you came aboard, all we've had is confusion and death and disorder. I should have known it was you."

"Why do they call you B?"

"Bunny. A childhood nickname," she said.

"I thought it meant Birdie. Feldmar," he said.

She shook her head. "She was too stupid to be real. With her antics, marching around those lunatic college children, as if they counted for anything."

She rose to her feet. The robe hung open over her opulent body. She dropped the knife in front of her on the floor and extended her arms toward Smith and came across the room to him.

"We can still have it," she said. "We can have it all."

She smiled, and Smith remembered where he had seen that smile. It was in a French farmhouse, and the girl who had smiled had been responsible for the deaths of fifteen of Smith's men. She had smiled too, and Smith had killed her.

He concentrated on the smile, and he hesitated, and Mildred Pensiotte's smile grew wider. Her hands reached to her waist and pulled her robe open wide.

The smile. The dead weren't smiling. They were in St. Martin's and Washington, and they would be all over if this woman had her way.

She smiled again and Smith smiled back.

And fired his revolver.

"Good-bye, Bunny," Smith said.

Back in his mid-town office at Earth Goodness, Inc., Smith again called the Folcroft computers.

He punched his code into the triggering device, then signaled: "WHAT HOOKUP OF DU LAC COMPUTER WITH OTHER MAJOR SYSTEMS?"

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The computer reported back: "SYSTEM HOOKED BY MICROWAVE TO CUBAN OFFICE OF KGB."

Smith paused a moment. The Russians had been behind the plot to kill the president. Mildred Pensiotte and, to a lesser degree, Robin Feldmar, had been Soviet plants, spies working in this country to help overthrow it. The awful thing, he thought, was probably that no one would ever know.