Warren Murphy: Midnight Man

"Right."

Remo reached out and touched the fake agent on the back of the neck, where the spinal column enters the skull and is the most vulnerable. It snapped

and the man fell at Ms feet, dead. was brick and the üúnindentation of mortar be-

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"Four," Chiun said.

"Smith said there were twelve federal agents on the island. And we saw eight Royal Guards. There's at least twenty," Remo said. He looked up, then hissed to Chiun: "There's two up on the roof. I'll go up and work my way down. You start down here and work up. One of us'11 get to the Emir before they have a chance to kill him."

Remo went to the rear of the house. The building

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tween the old, red bricks was enough for him to get 1 Chiun had started in the front door, just as four

finger and toe holds as he started up. men had walked out of the house. Each of them car-

He went up the side of the building like an upside down film of a drop of rain running down a window. The. secret was in the pressure; the body had to keep the pressure concentrated inward, into the center of the stone, and if the pressure were strong enough and concentrated enough, it overpowered the normal pull of gravity that would yank someone back down to the ground.

As Remo went over the top of the roof, he saw the two men, members of the Royal Guard, looking over the front brick wall toward the ground.

It would have been easy to throw them over.

Easy but noisy. And silence was everything now, if they were to keep the Emir alive.

When he was behind them, he tapped both men on their shoulders. They turned. In a blink of an eye, both dropped to the roof. Remo caught their rifles before they hit the rooftop with a clatter, and carefully laid them down.

Six down. Depending on what Chiun was doing below.

An unlocked trap door opened to the floor below. Remo dropped through it, right into the middle of two more guardsmen who were holding a ladder, getting ready to climb up to the roof.

The men looked at Remo for a split-second before reacting. It was a split-second too long.

Eight down. Remo caught the ladder before it hit.

Remo was alone on the fourth floor. Two floors down was the Emir's bedroom. Remo wondered if Princess Sarra would be with her brother.

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ried an automatic rifle.

All any of them saw was the purple blur of Chiun's nighttime robe. When he was done, the four rifles were propped together in a military tripod in one corner of the porch. On the other corner were propped the four men in the identical fashion. They looked like a singing group on a Philadelphia street corner.

No one inside the house had heard a sound.

Remo eased his way down to the third floor. There were two men around the corner at the bottom of the steps. Remo heard them talking.

"I think Pakir's dreaming," said one, in a harsh American voice. "There's nobody here."

"Just you and me," said another American voice.

"And me," said Remo, stepping from around the corner.

The two Americans wheeled toward him, their hands reaching for the guns in holsters on their hips.

Ten. That he knew of.

Inside the front door of the house, Chiun had paused, listening. There were no voices, no footsteps. The steps to the second floor were a long, curved staircase, and from the bottom floor it was impossible to see the second landing. On the side of the wall was the lightswitch, and Chiun threw it, casting the downstairs floor and the stairway into darkness.

"Light went off," he heard a voice from upstairs call.

"Check it out," another said.

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"Sure. Anything's better than standing here." I "There are three of them. The Emir, the Princess,

Chiun moved to the stairway, and raced half up, | and Pakir. Pakir is nearest us," Chiun whispered.

stopping halfway to the next floor. He could tell by the sounds of their feet that two men were coming down. As they turned the corner so their vision covered the first floor, Chiun stepped out from the shadow at the side of the stairs. His long-nailed hands shot forward from his kimono sleeves and fastened themselves around the throats of the two men. They struggled for a brief instant, trying first to free themselves, then to scream. They did neither. Slowly, Chiun let them drop to the soft, carpeted steps. He ran up the remaining steps to the second floor. Remo was coming down the steps from the third floor.

Perce Pakir was walking into the Emir's room. He carried a pistol in his hand.

Both Remo and Chiun saw him enter the room as they reached the second floor landing.

Four men, two on Remo's side, two on Chiun's side, also watched Pakir enter the room.

It was their last view of life. Remo and Chiun each moved behind their two men and silently throttled them. They released the men's bodies which sank softly to the Persian-carpeted hallway floor, then the two men, Master and disciple, ran down the hallway, meeting at the center door to the Emir's room.

"Took you long enough to get here," Remo said.

"At my age, one must avoid sudden movements," Chiun said lightly. "Quiet."

Remo was silent as Chiun listened at the door. He turned back to Remo.

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"Then we might as well go in," Remo said.

Remo tossed himself at the door, just at the critical point where the heavy oak and the brass hinges were misbalanced, and as the door swung open and Pakir wheeled, gun in hand, Chiun came through the door over Remo's body, and with an elegant motion of a slippered toe kicked the gun from Pakir's hand. Before the bearded aide could go for it, Remo had him paralyzed, digging his fingers into the Bis-lamian's shoulder muscle.

"He was going to kill my brother," Princess Sarra said. She stood next to the Emir's bed, leaning over, as if ready to shield her monarch with her own body.

"I know," Remo said.

Chiun retrieved Pakir's gun from the floor and put it on the table, next to the Emir.

The old monarch's eyes were fiery with anger.

"Why, Pakir? Why?"

"Because you are going to die anyway. Because when you die I will still be hunted by your enemies. But if I kill you, they will no longer hunt me and I will be wealthy. Wealthy beyond my wildest dreams."

"Ten million dollars," Princess Sarra said to the Emir. "That is what is offered for you."

The Emir looked at her, then back at his once-trusted aide. "Wealthy beyond your wildest dreams? Your trouble, Pakir, is that you always dreamed small," the Emir said.

His hand darted out from his bed and picked up

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the pistol Chiun had put on the end table. He brought his arm around and squeezed off a shot at Pakir. Remo felt the man grow limp in his hands and dropped him to the floor where he lay motionless.

"Good shot," he said. "I'm glad you didn't hit me."

"I apologize."

"That's all right. I would have dodged," Remo said.

"Not for that," the Emir said. "For using the gun. There was a day when I would have strangled this traitor with my bare hands. But now ... I cannot." He looked toward Chiun.

The old Korean nodded. "Weapons take all the fun out of it," he said. Something seemed to catch his attention and he went to the Emir's large, bedroom window which looked out over the Atlantic Ocean.

He turned back to Remo.

"There is something out there," he said.

"A boat," Remo said.

Chiun nodded. "A black boat. Very black."

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

Elmo Wimpler was almost ready to go.

The joke would be on the man he rented the boats from when they were found, painted black, and he wondered why someone would want to deface his boats.

The boats had taken more paint that Wimpler had expected and he was glad that he had made up a new batch of the invisibility paint and put it into spray cans. The paint job wasn't much, but it would do for a quick operation.