Warren Murphy: Oil Slick

"So what?" Remo shrugged.

"So what? So a debt owed by the Master of Sinanju must be paid by the Master of Sinanju. It was my contract to return King Adras to the throne. He has robbed me of my right to fulfill that contract. In the eyes of my ancestors, it will be as if I failed. I am disgraced."

"Oh, come on, Little Father, it's not so bad as all that."

"It is worse," said Chiun. "Such perfidy. I would never have expected it from one who was born into the House."

The announcer's voice repeated the bulletin. Chiun listened to it all the way through, as if hoping the announcer would say that it had all been a mistake. But it was no mistake. Baraka was dead and this time, Chiun greeted the three-minute pause for Baraka's memory with a smash of his right hand that left the ancient wood-cased old radio a mass of splinters. Miraculously, it continued to squawk.

Remo watched Chiun's face. It seemed to have aged twenty years in a few minutes.

The old man turned and walked slowly across the room. He sat on the floor facing the window. His fingers were touched before him, in prayerful supplication. He was silent, staring at the sky.

Remo knew there would be no way to cheer him up; that there was nothing he could say.

The telephone rang.

Almost thankful for the break, Remo picked up the phone.

It was Smith.

"Remo, what the hell are you doing there?"

"What are you talking about?" Remo said testily.

"We heard that Clogg and a lot of his men are dead. And a government agent. A black girl. And now Baraka. Are you running amok?"

"I didn't do it," said Remo. "Not all of them anyway."

"Well, enough's enough," said Smith. "Forgot about the assignment and trying to get the oil turned back on. The government's going to deal with the new president politically and see what happens. I want you and Chiun to come home. Right away."

Remo looked at Chiun, sitting sadly, looking out the window.

"Did you hear me?" asked Smith. "I said, you two come home right away."

"I heard you," said Remo. "Stuff it.. We've got things to do."

He hung up the telephone.

He looked again at Chiun, but the old man was deep in a sadness that Remo could not enter, that no one could enter, because it belonged only to the Master of Sinanju. Chiun was what his history and tradition made him.

Just as Remo was Remo and must do what Remo must do. Right now, that was his job. He had been assigned to get the oil turned back on. He would do his job, and if he could, he would do something for Chiun along the line.

Chiun wanted to be alone now, Remo knew, so he walked quietly out of the room and loped the four blocks to the presidential palace. It looked no different. Just as many guards. Only the Lobynian flag showed a change, because it was now flying at half-staff, and Remo noticed that the grommets were starting to pull loose. The huge city square was beginning to fill with people, probably awaiting a message from the new ruler, Lieutenant General Ali Amin.

Well, Remo would see that the first message from the new ruler was interesting.

Remo walked around the back of the building. Six guards and four broken doors later, he stood in front of the new ruler of Lobynia, Lieutenant General Ali Amin.

The general looked at him and almost involuntarily his hand went up to his right cheek where a long gash had scabbed over, promising to heal into a beautiful white scar.

"Good," said Remo. "You remember me. Now if you want to keep breathing, this is what you're going to do."

While Remo was explaining to General Ali Amin what he was going to do, a message was left for him at his hotel room.

There was a knock on the door. Chiun in his own room heard the knock and then something else. Something sliding.

Chiun went through the adjoining door and saw a white envelope on the floor inside Remo's door. He picked it up, looked at both sides of it, then opened it.

The bare envelope contained a single small sheet of paper. On it was crabbed handwriting that Chiun recognized immediately. It said: "Pig Remo. I wait for you in the intended place. N."

Chiun held the paper in his hands for many minutes, as if absorbing its feel, as if he could pull from its texture a message other than the one that had been written.

Then he dropped the note to the floor and went back to his own room. Not even Chiun could tell how, but now he knew where the appointed place was. The legends of Sinanju said that the challenge must come in a place of the dead animals and now he knew where that place was.

It did not matter to him that the challenge had been meant for Remo. There was only one way for Chiun to redeem his honor as the Master of Sinanju. It would be to visit punishment upon the man who had robbed Chiun of the duty which was his: the duty of removing Colonel Baraka from the throne of Lobynia.

That much was left to Chiun. Slowly he dressed in a two-piece black karate type suit, and slipped thong sandals onto his feet. Then he opened the door and went downstairs.

Minutes later, a terrified taxicab driver floored the gas pedal of his vehicle and headed out on the central road into the desert, toward the vast Lobynian oil storage fields-the place of the dead animals. There, millions of animals had died to create for future ages the oil on which their foolish countries ran. Today Chiun might die. Would he someday be nothing but oil? Not even so much as a memory?

The cab driver whose meter had been ripped out by Chiun's bare hands smiled nervously at his fare, who sat silently in the front seat staring ahead.

"Radio, sir?" he asked.

There was no answer. Taking silence as acquiescence and needing something to cover the sound of his labored breathing, the driver turned on the radio.

The same announcer's voice came on: "General All Amin has just concluded his address to the Lobynian people from the balcony of the palace. He has announced the following major steps.

"First, an end to the Lobynian oil embargo against the United States.

"Second, in an effort to bring all of Lobynia into a cohesive world force and to end factionalism, he has issued an invitation to King Adras to join with him in the formation of a new government, recognizing both the monarchy and the right of free people to govern themselves.

"All hail General Ali Amin. All bail King Adras."

Chiun listened and smiled. Remo had done that for Chiun. Remo was really a good-hearted child.

And Chiun was happy it was he, and not Remo, who was going to the desert to face Nuihc's challenge.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Chiun stopped the cab two hundred yards from the gigantic oil depot, told the driver he would get his reward in heaven, and stepped out into the burning Lobynian sand.

As he had expected, the depot was deserted. There were no people, no signs of activity. Nuihc had not chanced interference in his challenge to Remo.

Slowly the aged Korean moved through the sand, his feet oblivious to any feeling of heat, toward the storage tanks. There was both sorrow and anger in his heart that his brother's son, born into the House of Sinanju, would attempt to disgrace him by killing Baraka. Death was too good for Nuihc, but death was the one punishment that Chiun was not allowed to administer. Because, for ages past, there had been a dictum that the reigning Master of Sinanju could not take the life of anyone from the village. The rule had been instituted centuries before to prevent the village's benefactor from becoming its tyrant. It still bound Chiun, and worse, Nuihc knew it.

And then, too, there was the fact that Nuihc was less than half Chiun's age, and had had access to the secrets of Sinanju since birth, when he had been anointed and designated as he who would one day become Master. How great were Nuihc's skills?