Warren Murphy: Dangerous Games

He followed.

Alexi Vassilev put powder on the inside of his massive thighs as the Russian coach told him, "You are the greatest, Alexi. The greatest that ever was."

Vassilev grunted. His grunt would be enough to knock some men over. He was six-foot-three and weighed 345 pounds, and for two successive Olym-

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pics he had been the super heavyweight weightlifting champion of the world.

But today he was worried. He was thirty-eight years old and the pulled muscles and the hyper-extended tendons and ligaments no longer healed as quickly as they once did, and also he felt on his neck the hot breath of a world of lifters who had come finally to realize that Vassilev was human and might, just might, be beaten.

In the past he had disdained setting world's records. He owned every record in the world, but he never tried to lift for a record. He had always lifted only enough to win.

But today, at thirty-eight and nervous, he was going to lift a record. He was going to set a mark that would intimidate generations of weight-lifters and would guarantee that even when his aging body gave out and he lost a competition, his government would not respond as they had with so many failed athletes in the past, by taking away their apartment and their car and shipping them off to live someplace where man could not live. They would continue to honor his record.

There was a saying among the athletes on the Olympic Russian team, "Training is hard, but so is Siberian ice."

His coach kept babbling. "You are the greatest, Alexi. The greatest." Vassilev nodded but he was not listening.

His primary opponent today would be an American lifter who had won a television competition as "Mister Strongman," which title he earned by carrying a refrigerator up a hill. That this task was accomplished every day by dozens of moving men in the city of San Francisco seemed to have been lost on the judges.

But despite Ms bogus credentials, the American was a good lifter, Vassilev realized.

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"I must win," he mumbled aloud.

"Of course you win," said his coach.

"This will be my last Olympics," he said. "I crush that American today. I will show the glory of Soviet Socialist Republics."

He looked at his coach carefully, making sure that the man had caught his words properly so he could report them back to the secret police which kept a close eye on an athlete's actions and words.

"You will win for Mother Russia," his coach said.

And for me, Vassilev thought.

It was time.

He walked out onto the platform to thunderous applause. His face was stolid, unmoving, and he characteristically ignored the audience, concentrating solely on the weight before him. It was loaded with 600 pounds and the crowd hummed with anticipation. Vassilev was going to try to jerk 600 pounds, for in excess of anything anyone had ever lifted before. It was the equivalent of a three-minute mile.

Breathing deeply, rhythmically, Vassilev bent down and placed his hands on the cold bar, flexing his fingers around it for the right grip, finally grabbing it tightly. With one explosive gasp of air he brought the weight to his chest.

He took a deep breath. He felt Ms hands sweating and he knew it was time to jerk the bar overhead before it slipped. He blew out the air, pushed the weight up over his head, but before he could lock his elbows to hold it in place, it slid from his damp hands and hit the wooden platform in front of him with a crashing thud.

Vassilev cursed inwardly. He had failed on the first of three lifts.

The relief that Mullin had felt when he spotted the mam hall had annoyed him. It was a disgrace, he thought, that a soldier who had been decorated in

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Her Majesty's Air Force was running from an old man, trying to join up with four blackamoor toy soldiers, and feeling relief that he had almost reached them.

He was ashamed of himself. It was all that Chinaman's fault.

He stopped at the door to the hall and cursed out loud, wishing for a moment that something would will him to go back and take that Chinaman on alone, this time hand to hand, and cut him into bits. But no voice inside him said to do that and so he opened the door and walked inside the great hall, looking around in the back for his men. He did not see them.

On the platform, he recognized the strongest man in the world, Alexi Vassilev. With his great potbelly, the center of gravity that was so valuable to weight-lifters, Vassilev had hoisted weights no other man was capable of, and yet, Mullin thought, I could defeat him hand to hand with no problem. And still ... a scrawny old Chinaman . . .

He walked around the back of the hall, behind the crowd. Suddenly he heard the gasp and the sound of the weight hitting the platform. He looked up to see Vassilev with a look of pain on his face, after failing to hold the weight.

That's okay, Alexi, he thought. We all have our bad days. You and I are the best but we're just having a bad day.

He felt better suddenly. A bad. day, that's all it was. Maybe even just a bad moment.

Sure.

And with that thought, he was able to turn his neck and take a look behind him.

What he saw made his blood go cold. That damned Chinaman. He was standing just inside the door, staring at Mullin with those cold hazel eyes.

"Damn you," Mullin shouted, but nobody heard

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because Vassilev was again approaching the weight. Mullin ran.

Vassilev was going to try again. This was Ms last chance, his third attempt. His coach wanted him to rest before trying another lift, but he waved his handler away and simply walked around the weight and began to stare straight ahead, into space, over the heads of the audience.

Get it over with, he told himself. Do it now. Win or lose now.

His hands were sweating and for the first time in many years, he felt the pinch of nervousness in his stomach as he bent over and placed his hands around the cold textured steel of the bar.

Mullin ran down the left side of the hall, toward the stage, and the back door leading outside. The crowd was dense and there was no way for Chiun to get through without hurting someone. He ran down the right side of the building. He saw Mullin slip through a back door to go outside.

There was only one way to follow him: Across the weight-lifters' platform.

Remo entered just as Chiun hopped up onto the platform. He watched as Chiun stopped before a thick television cable that crisscrossed back and forth, barring his path. Chiun grasped the cable in his two small hands and ripped the inch-thick strands cleanly in half.

Sparks flew. TV technicians shouted. Chiun ignored them and started across the platform just as Alexi Vassilev hoisted the 600-pound barbell to his chest.

Vassilev felt a rush of relief as he took a deep breath, exploded it outward, and hoisted the weight

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overhead. He locked his elbows and held the weight.

How foolish he had been to be nervous. Who but the great Vassilev could ever lift such a weight and hold it with such ease?

The audience exploded with cheers, and Vassilev gave them a rare small smile, but he waited for the judges to signal that he had held the weight long enough for the lift to count. Then he saw the audience's eyes move off him. He looked toward his right, toward where all the people were looking, and saw a blue-robed Oriental running across the platform.

Staggering under the weight, still awaiting the judges' signal, Vassilev stumbled two steps forward in the Oriental's path. How dare this little man detract from Alexi's great moment?

He was standing right in the Oriental's way.

"How dare you?" he bellowed in Russian.

He could not believe what happened and the next day in the hospital he would not be able to explain.

He heard the Oriental say in perfect Russian, "Out of my way, gross meat-eater," and then he was being lifted up-he and the great 600 pounds he held-they were being effortlessly lifted by this frail old Oriental, who tossed them both through the air toward the rear of the platform, and then continued to run off the stage, as the audience sat in shocked silence.