Warren Murphy - Slave Safari

From a small envelope he took a stack of newspaper clippings. The last one was a pretty little piece in the Norfolk Pilot about a Hillary Butler's engagement to a Harding Demster III. He hoped Harding Demster III would not be upset about waiting at the altar.

CHAPTER SEVEN

There had been trouble at the Busati Airport. According to the army. detachment continuously assigned to Air Busati, largely to prevent the planes' tires and wheels from being stolen, seven large lacquered trunks were missing from the baggage terminal, and fourteen soldiers were unaccounted for.

The periodicals' stall had also been ransacked. It was believed that a riot had occurred in the stall because of the extensive damage, yet there were not enough people at the airport to cause such a riot. In fact, the only people there who were not Busatians were a white American and an aged Oriental, who had vanished along with the soldiers and the lacquered trunks.

"Do you think it is true?" asked General Obode of his personal valet, a fellow Hausa.

"About the riot?"

"About everything."

"You mean the East and the West, father and son?"

"Yes," said Obode.

The valet shook his Head. "The Loni are in their mountains and there they shall stay. We should have no fear of a heartless mountain band. Especially now that you have begun to give them positions in the government. They shall not rise again. Fear not"

General Obode thought a minute. "Draw another $10,000 from the Ministry of the Treasury and deposit in my Swiss bank account," he said.

Meanwhile, across the Busati plains, a caravan plodded toward the mountains. Seven trunks on the shoulders of fourteen soldiers bobbed along the line, the sun glinting off their lacquered exteriors.

In front of this line marched the Master of Sinanju and Remo. Remo was furious.

"You're a damned two-faced sonuvabitch," he said.

"A contract is a contract," said Chiun. "A preceding unfilled contract always takes precedence over a more recent one. It is only fair."

"You're talking about a contract over two thousand years old. The House of Sinanju didn't even exist then, damned two-faced sonuvabitch."

"Name-calling no more obviates a contract than a few years here or there."

"This thing dates back before Christ. A few years. A few years, Little Father?"

"It is you who choose to date things from the time of Christ, not the House of Sinanju. We have an unfilled contract, paid for, mind you, paid in full. It was from the year of the ram. Or was it the year of the rat?"

"Probably from the year of the two-faced sonuvabitch."

"No matter. It was before the year of your 1950s or was it 1960s when the House of Sinanju agreed to train something dragged in off the streets, as a stopgap measure in lieu of a real assassin."

"May your autographed picture of Rad Rex be burned," said Remo.

Chiun looked back at the trunks and said something to one of the soldiers in what Chiun had explained was a Loni dialect. By the tone of the voice, Remo could tell Chiun was reminding the soldiers that the trunks contained valuables, probably that the first trunk contained the picture of Rad Rex, the star of As the Planet Revolves, and in case of emergency, it should be saved first.

It had shocked Remo when he had first heard Chiun speak this Loni tongue. He had thought the Master of Sinanju knew only Mandarin, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and some English.

But at the airport where he and Chiun had headed by foot after leaving General Butler in the jeep, Chiun had silenced him while moving to the airport gate. When they had gotten out of Butler's jeep, Remo had wanted to go right back to town to get on with the job of looking for the white house behind the iron gate. But Chiun had demanded they go to the airport and pick up Chiun's luggage. He would not negotiate or compromise. He wanted his luggage, he told Remo.

They did not know it but they reached the airport only minutes after Butler's airplane had taken off, and the permanent military detail at the airport was lounging around in the terminal when the two entered.

"I will speak to them in the language of the Loni Empire," Chiun said, "to find where our luggage is."

"The Loni? That's a tribe, Chiun."

"No, it is a great kingdom of great virtue," Chiun had said, which Remo took to mean that when they hired assassins they paid their bills on time.

"Well, let's get your luggage and get back to the capital. I've got work to do."

Chiun raised a long bony finger. The nail reflected the overhead light like a sliver of diamond. Chiun called to one of the guards in what sounded to Remo like the Swahili spoken as the main language of Busati.

"They're not going to talk to you, Chiun. We're foreigners."

"Speak for yourself, white man," had said the Master of Sinanju.

Remo crossed his arms and waited confidently for Chiun to get a rifle pointed at him by one of the guards. Let him fight his own way out, thought Remo. Perhaps there would even be a flaw in a stroke. That would be good to watch, even though Remo wasn't going to hold his breath waiting to see it

Chiun spoke first in Loni dialect, then translated for Remo.

"I am the Master of Sinanju and this is Remo who is white but close to me. I tell them close, Remo, because they would not understand your natural disrespect and lack of appreciation. I would see your king for a debt I owe as a Master of Sinanju. Remo, they will know this, for it must be spoken of widely in their villages and temples that there is a debt owed by the Master of Sinanju."

The two guards conversed heatedly between themselves. Remo smiled.

"You mean to tell me, Little Father, that two African soldiers are going to remember a centuries-old contract by a foreign hitman."

"Try as you might, Remo, you will not understand the nature of Sinanju. The Loni know how to appreciate he services of the Masters of Sinanju, not like the Chinese emperors or the vile Americans."

Remo shook his head. When Chiun began on the glories of Sinanju, there was no reasoning with him. Perhaps five people in all the world had heard of the House of Sinanju—four of them must be in intelligence agencies and the fifth an obscure dust-covered historian. But to hear Chiun tell it, Sinanju was more important than the Roman Empire.

Chiun babbled on and the soldiers looked confused. They motioned for Remo and Chiun to follow them.

"You will see how a true people of dignity treat a Master of Sinanju," Chiun whispered proudly to Remo. "There are those with enough culture in the world to see a true assassin as more than a hitman as you call him. You will see."

"Chiun, you don't even know if these soldiers are Lord. They're probably going to shake us down."

"You have them confused with Americans," Chiun said.

The soldiers led Chiun and Remo to an officer where Chiun again explained something, hands moving unusually rapidly for just the telling of a story. Remo tried to discern from the officer's face what the reaction was, but the officer's night face was as changeless as space.

The officer pointed to a newsstand inside the airport.

Chiun nodded and beckoned to Remo.

"You'll see. You'll see what true respect is," he said. "Follow me."

Remo shrugged. The air terminal—slightly smaller than the one in Dayton, Ohio—was five tunes too big for the passenger use. Remo waited with Chiun at a periodical stand which had mostly English language publications.

"We'll store your luggage, Chiun, making sure your picture of Rad Rex is safe and tonight, I'll check out the white house with the iron gate."

"No," said Chiun. "We must wait for that officer. To leave now would be disrespectful to the Loni."

"How come, Chiun, these Loni have your respect?"

"Because, unlike some people, they have earned it."