Warren Murphy: In Enemy Hands

His left arm flailed out around his body, and the side of his hand came up, hit into the end of Ludmilla's gold cigarette holder and slammed it back into her throat. She looked at Remo with large violet eyes, made larger by shock and surprise, then she smiled at him the smile of sudden joy-but she still didn't have it right, and she died.

Remo dropped to his knees and buried his face on Ludmilla's body. He wept. Chiun rose to his feet and moved silently to Remo and patted him on the shoulder.

"She wanted only to kill you, my son."

With almost invisible pressure, his patting motion turned into a grasp that lifted Remo up from the sand and placed him on his feet.

"Come," Chiun said. Still holding Remo's shoulder, he walked him away toward the cars behind the small hill.

At the top of the hill, Remo looked down at the body of Ludmilla and his voice broke again.

"I loved her, Little Father."

"How long are you going to hold this against me?" Chiun asked. "Am I going to hear nothing but complaints for the rest of the afternoon?"

A week later, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, which had given the Secretary of State and the CIA Director a tough going-over behind closed doors, was called to the office of the President of the United States.

The President dumped out a manila envelope containing some two dozen passports. He looked around the room at the thirteen senators who sat in soft leather chairs facing his desk.

"Those are the passports of twenty-four American agents who have been killed since you clowns began meddling with our intelligence setup."

The chairman of the committee began to rise to protest. The President of the United States put a large sinewy hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into his chair.

"Sit still and shut up."

The President dumped out another envelope filled with passports.

"Those are the fake cover passports of the Russian spies who killed our men. They're dead now, too."

He looked slowly, around the room, meeting and holding every man's eyes in turn.

"Now you can make something of this if you want to. It's your right to do that. But let me tell you something. Mess with this and I'm going to hang all your asses on a garage door. When I'm done telling the American people how you were responsible for twenty-four murders, you'll be lucky not to be indicted yourself. For murder. You got it?"

No one spoke.

"Any questions?"

No one spoke.

Three days later, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee decided unanimously that there was no substance to the reports of major espionage activity in Western Europe by the United States and decided to drop its planned investigation.