Warren Murphy - In Enemy Hands

At a small coffee shop, he phoned the sports store under the Quirinal Palace. There was no answer. He wanted to inform Denia that Ivan had become totally uncontrollable, and that he was going to make Ivan safe for the team.

Back at the apartment, Ivan was nibbling at the side of beef, taking handfuls. He watched Italian television. Ivan did not understand Italian. He was still working on Russian. He liked the pictures. It had taken him three years to recognize that English was not some fancy form of the Russian language.

Better than Italian television, he liked American cartoons. He had cried when a KGB officer translated Bambi for him. Shrewdly, the officer had told him the hunters were Americans and the deer communists. Ever since then, Ivan had wanted to kill Americans. His only trouble was that he could not tell them from Russians. Everyone looked alike to Ivan, except Chinese. He could tell Chinese from Europeans, and very often he could distinguish Africans, although when they were cleaning up the Sunflower team and taking out an American black, Ivan thought they were at war with Africa.

Vassilivich hacked off a twenty eight pound piece of beef. He added five pounds of butter and three shopping bags of garlic. He baked it for five hours, then made a whipped rat poison sauce.

Ivan snacked it away by midnight. Lying on the couch, he closed his eyes. Vassilivich was overcome with relief. He discarded his small gun and holster in the closet, careful to wipe off fingerprints. He changed his clothes for the spares in the apartment. He burned his old recognizable garments in the bathtub and let the air out of the bathroom. He shaved off a small mustache.

He glanced at his watch. It had been an hour since Ivan had consumed the fourteen cans of rat poison. Just to make sure, he checked Ivan's pulse. When his hand touched the giant wrist, Ivan jumped up, blinking.

"Well," he said, "another day, another ruble." He laughed and complained of a mild headache.

Vassilivich took Ivan with him to the sports shop. No one answered the knock. The door was open. Ivan followed Vassilivich into the shop. Vassilivich whispered caution. He called out three different code signals in three different languages. When he used English, a voice answered.

"Hiya, sweetheart. Welcome to the first team."

A thin American ambled out from the back room. He had thick wrists. He wore a black turtleneck shirt and gray slacks and handmade Italian black loafers. He looked at Ivan, and instead of showing terror, he smiled. He also yawned.

"Who are you?" asked Vassilivich.

"The spirit of detente," said the American.

Vassilivich's shrewd eye saw no weapons in the American's tight fitting clothes. He heard Ivan behind him gurgle with excitement.

"Chinamens, Chinamens," said Ivan, pointing to what had appeared like a golden cloth in the back room. It was a delicate aged Oriental with a white wisp of a beard.

Vassilivich knew that this time he could not keep Ivan from keeping the head.

CHAPTER FOUR

Remo could tell by the weight, by the strong balance on oaken thighs, that the second man through the door brandished immense animal power. Iron-bending arms and tendon-thick neck. A skull armored like battleship plating.

Remo could also smell the meat heavy on his breath, and his body reeked of grape wine. Remo put a table between them. The man cracked it with a thundering fist. Remo danced back.

"Who called me Chinaman?" said Chiun. "What idiot called me Chinaman?" He shuffled into the showroom of the sports shop, his hands hidden like delicate buds in the folds of his kimono. The other man stepped back against a counter laden with running shoes.

The other man looked at Chiun as if observing a corpse. Chiun asked his name.

"Vassily Vassilivich," said the man.

"And the big idiot?"

"Ivan Mikhailov," said Vassilivich.

Ivan grabbed a long racing ski and swung it like a sword. Vassilivich was sure it would drive into the thin American like a spike. But the American, with strangely slow movements, somehow avoided the ski. Ivan lowered a fist down to the American's skull but the force of the fist only lurched Ivan forward and the American was behind him.

"Are you in charge?" asked Remo.

"Yes," said Vassilivich.

"Then we don't need Ivan," Remo said.

Vassilivich blinked. What was he talking about?

Chiun had a point to make. People in charge of things had special responsibility for people under them. And those sorts of people shouldn't let other people who were under them call other people Chinese, especially when they were so obviously and magnificently Korean. Chiun said this in Russian.

"What?" said Vassilivich.

"You are irresponsible to let that animal called Ivan run around loose."

How did this Oriental know? Vassilivich would have wondered about this if he were not witnessing a bloody horror before him.

As soon as the thin American had been told that Ivan was not in charge of them, he caught one of the big fists. With a floating flick of his fingers, he briefly jammed a wrist. An elbow uncoiled from the American's waist and drove up with a hollow thud into the rib trunk of Ivan. Ivan came forward as though smothering the American beneath him, and the American's right hand was above the American's shoulder as if he were begging for mercy. The hand was under Ivan's chin. Ivan's mouth opened. There were two fingers sticking out of his throat. The American's fingers.

The American's foot went out so quickly, Vassilivich only saw it come back. Ivan's immense skull was caved, as if a knuckle had rammed risen dough.

Ivan landed on the polished floor, heaved once, and was still. The American wiped his hands clean on Ivan's shirt.

"Garbage," said Remo.

"My god, who are you?" gasped Vassilivich.

"That is not important," said Chiun. "He is nobody. What is important is the barbarism in the world today when innocent Koreans can be called Chinese."

"Are you Americans?" asked Vassilivich.

"No wonder it went around insulting people," Chiun said. "First I am called Chinese. And now American. Do I look white? Do I have a stupid pale expression about me? Are my eyes sickeningly round? Why would you call me white?"

"Look, Vassilivich," said Remo, "we can make this easy or we can make this hard. But no matter, we're going to make it. Now I know you're Treska or you wouldn't be here."

"I am part of a cultural exchange," said Vassilivich, using the first cover that came to mind.

"All right," said Remo, shrugging. "We go hard."

And Vassilivich felt hands grab his ribs and move him like a store mannequin to the back room. Chiun turned out the lights in the display area and locked the door. Vassilivich felt his ribs go blistering, as if touched by a hot iron. And so strong was the incredible pain that he did not notice there was no smell of burning flesh.

He was asked his rank, his position, and the names and locations of his men. With each lying answer came the pain, and it became so regular that his body seized control of his mind to stop the pain, and he was giving everything code names of the teams, descriptions, zones, layoffs, contacts and still the pain was there and he was whimpering on the floor of the back room where just the other night he had refused champagne. He saw the cork under a small couch where it had rolled and he wondered if Marshal Denia had made his escape.

He heard shuffling behind his ear.

"Now for the important question," said Chiun. "Why do you feel free to slander Koreans? What has prompted you to such blasphemy? What drives your crazed mind to utter such obscenities as am I an American? What?"

"I thought you were American of Korean descent," moaned Vassilivich. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

"Heartily sorry," corrected Chiun.