Destroyer - Master's Challenge Part 24

But something was wrong. Chiun wasn't watching the man coming from the bushes. He was bending over H'si T'ang, ma.s.saging the old man's chest.

"Chiun! Behind you!" Remo screamed.

But the Dutchman had already prepared his blow by then, and even though Chiun readied himself in an instant, he was too late. The Dutchman's hands moved like lightning, striking two fierce slices into Chiun's abdomen. The old Oriental seemed to fly through the air, arms windmilling. His face registered pain for the first time Remo could remember. He landed face down in the sandy gra.s.s.

The thin old body didn't move. Chiun's gown was twisted between his legs, making him look like a strange little doll that someone had discarded. His feet showed.

"Chiun?" Remo whispered, unable to believe the sight before his eyes. Jilda, clutching her broken hand in the other, her face swollen from the rocks that had struck it, screamed in terror. The boy, Griffith, knelt by H'si T'ang, whose legs twitched weakly.

The Dutchman looked expectantly at the ground, then the sky. He examined his hands. He was speaking. A gust of wind carried his words to Remo on the hill.

"It is the same," he said, sounding surprised. "There is no peace from killing him. You promised me rest, Nuihc. What of your promise?"

And far away from all of them lay Chiun, lifeless and 214.

still. The old man was dead. It had never before occurred to Remo that Chiun would die.

Inside him grew a sadness so deep that his body could not contain it. Remo lifted his head and wailed like a man who had saved all the frights and tears of his life for one moment.

"My father," he called.

It was time to fight the Dutchman. Alone. He walked down the hill to meet his opponent. His last opponent, most likely. If the Dutchman's power was greater than Chiun's, it surely surpa.s.sed his own.

The thoughts pa.s.sed through his mind like wisps of air. It didn't matter. He cast one more glance at Chiun.

There was so little left to lose now.

Chapter Twenty-Six.

Smith slid into consciousness. He was not alone. There had been some kind of a light flas.h.i.+ng, and now there was someone in the room, and his hand started to move down toward the revolver, which he had hidden under the sofa.

But his hand stopped when it met something smooth and soft. It was fabric-satin-and it was draped over the legs of Mildred Pensoitte.

"Mildred?"

"Shhhhh."

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Shhhhhh," she whispered again. He tried to raise himself to a sitting position, but she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back onto the sofa.

How long had he been asleep? He glanced at his watch. Less than two hours.

Mildred Pensoitte was wearing a long white satin robe that flickered eerily in the moonlight. Her hands were still on his shoulders, and then she moved closer to him, and then she was straddling him, looking down at him, one leg on each side of his waist.

215.

216.

"Did you think you were going to survive the night?" she asked. He could see her smiling in the faint light that the bright moon reflected into the room.

"Please, Mildred. We can't."

"We must," she said.

She reached down to open his s.h.i.+rt b.u.t.tons. The moon emerged from behind a cloud and he saw her smile again, but it was a different smile now. It was a hard and cold smile, and there was no warmth in it. It was a smile he had seen before, many years ago, and she said again, "We must," and her hand went to a pocket in her satin robe, and in the moonlight he saw a knife glinting in her hand. As she plunged the knife down toward his throat, Smith spun and rolled and dumped her off him onto the floor.

Smith sprang to his feet, grabbed his revolver, and ran across the room to flick on the light switch.

Mildred Pensiotte was on the floor, her knife still in her hand. The white robe was open, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were exposed.

"Is that the knife you used to kill Robin Feldmar?" Smith asked.

"Yes." Her voice was chilled as ice.

"Why?" Smith asked.

"Because she would have talked. She talked too much. You can have cranks around when you're starting up and all you're doing is talking. But when you get to action, to doing things, those people are dangerous."

"The revolution eats its own children," Smith said softly. "When did you know it was me?"

"A few minutes ago. I called the computer at Du Lac College. It said that you were the spy in Earth Goodness. What are you? CIA? FBI?"

"None of those," Smith said. "Why-do they call you B?"

"You know about that," she said with some surprise.

217.

"I should have known. From the moment you came aboard, all we've had is confusion and death and disorder. I should have known it was you."

"Why do they call you B?"

"Bunny. A childhood nickname," she said.

"I thought it meant Birdie. Feldmar," he said.

She shook her head. "She was too stupid to be real. With her antics, marching around those lunatic college children, as if they counted for anything."

She rose to her feet. The robe hung open over her opulent body. She dropped the knife in front of her on the floor and extended her arms toward Smith and came across the room to him.

"We can still have it," she said. "We can have it all."

She smiled, and Smith remembered where he had seen that smile. It was in a French farmhouse, and the girl who had smiled had been responsible for the deaths of fifteen of Smith's men. She had smiled too, and Smith had killed her.

He concentrated on the smile, and he hesitated, and Mildred Pensiotte's smile grew wider. Her hands reached to her waist and pulled her robe open wide.

The smile. The dead weren't smiling. They were in St. Martin's and Was.h.i.+ngton, and they would be all over if this woman had her way.

She smiled again and Smith smiled back.

And fired his revolver.

"Good-bye, Bunny," Smith said.

Back in his mid-town office at Earth Goodness, Inc., Smith again called the Folcroft computers.

He punched his code into the triggering device, then signaled: "WHAT HOOKUP OF DU LAC COMPUTER WITH OTHER MAJOR SYSTEMS?"

218.

The computer reported back: "SYSTEM HOOKED BY MICROWAVE TO CUBAN OFFICE OF KGB."

Smith paused a moment. The Russians had been behind the plot to kill the president. Mildred Pensiotte and, to a lesser degree, Robin Feldmar, had been Soviet plants, spies working in this country to help overthrow it. The awful thing, he thought, was probably that no one would ever know.

He directed the computers: "VACUUM DU LAC," then entered his code and hung up. In moments, he knew, the giant Folcroft computers would be sweeping clean all the memories from the Du Lac computers. Who knew what might be in those files? There might be some little bit of information that one day might provide him with leverage he might not otherwise have in dealing with America's enemies.

He looked up a number in his wallet and dialed.

The secretary of the interior answered the telephone himself. He was sleepy, and his voice was thick with exhaustion.

"Yes?" he said.

"This is Smith. Tell the president it's safe to come home."

He hung up and thought again of Remo and Chiun. There they were, off, gallivanting around on a vacation, leaving it to him to protect America and the free world. They'd hear about it when they got back. They'd hear what a h.e.l.l of a nerve they had leaving all the dirty work for Smith while they were off disporting themselves.

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

The Dutchman groveled on all fours, muttering. "You promised me, Nuihc. You said . . . you said ..."

Remo approached him like a man whose soul had died. His eyes were blank, his face expressionless. He stopped in front of the Dutchman and kicked him in the throat.

The Dutchman rolled over, startled.

"Get up," Remo said. Before the Dutchman could rise, Remo kicked him again.

"I have no quarrel with you," the blond man rasped.

"Think of one." Remo slapped him flat across the face.

The Dutchman stood to full height. "Don't do this," he warned. "I am trying-"

Remo sent two jabs to the man's belly. "I don't care if you fight me or not," Remo said quietly. "As long as 1 hurt you." He slammed an elbow into the man's hip, which sent the Dutchman sprawling.

A mist appeared instantly, settling over the landscape. The hills softened into pastel domes, like melting ice cream.

"And you can save the artwork, too. I know where you are."

219.

220.

"Do you?" the voice came from behind him. Remo turned. Five identical figures, all the Dutchman, peered at him through the fog. "Where am I, Remo?"

The five figures disappeared. Another materialized beside him. Remo swung at it. It faded into smoke. "Or am I everywhere?" In a flash of light, the ice cream mountain-tops glowed in phosph.o.r.escent colors. On the peak of each stood the Dutchman, hundreds of him, like tiny paper cutouts.

Remo stood still and watched. There were no birds in the sky. The fields were quiet. The Dutchman was real, he told himself, no matter how many figments of himself he could produce. And that one real being moved on two legs like anyone else. Remo s.h.i.+fted his eyes out of focus and concentrated entirely on his peripheral vision.

Through the fog, to the right of Remo, a figure ran, crouching. He moved swiftly and silently, using all the skill of a lifetime of training. He climbed the highest hill in the area, stopping behind a large dead tree.

Another figment appeared directly beside Remo, prepared to strike. Remo clenched his jaws and walked through it. He had things to do now.

Kiree . . . Kiree and Ancion. They had both known things that were new to Remo. Things that could help him against an enemy more powerful than himself. If he could just remember. He stooped to gather two handfuls of gra.s.s and a rock the size of a baseball. He stuffed the rock inside his belt and began to rub the blades of gra.s.s.

Lightning flashed across the sky. A high wind gusted out of nowhere. Remo ignored them, and was left untouched. He concentrated on disintegrating the gra.s.s, as Kiree had done, his hands moving so fast that the moisture in the blades evaporated instantly. He spat, slapping his hands together in rhythm.

He had to take the Dutchman by surprise. No matter 221.

how fast he ran, the Dutchman would see him coming in plenty of time to perform one of his tricks. Remo knew that the changes in weather and the constantly s.h.i.+fting landscape were visual lies, but the Dutchman could be subtle. What if he made Jilda burst into flame? Or caused the top of Griffith's head to explode like a firecracker? They weren't invulnerable to his ugly games. No, this contest had to be between Remo and the Dutchman, one on one. Remo didn't expect to win, but he wasn't about to make anyone else take the loss with him.

"Fool," the Dutchman sneered. "You waste my time."

Remo spat into his hands again. The pulp was almost the right consistency. He pulled his hands away, and like taffy, the wire-thin fibers formed. He worked quickly, weaving the fine, transparent net around the rock. His hands were moving too fast to see.

"Your skin is burning," the Dutchman insinuated. "Your eyes are dry and withering. Blisters cover your body."

"Go eat a toad." It was ready. With'one swing, Remo wound the net around a tree and swung up. The second propelled him to a boulder. On the third orbit of the net, he flew toward the crag where the Dutchman waited and landed with both feet in the blond man's chest.

"Thanks, guys," he said to the spirits of Ancion and Kiree. Somewhere, he felt, from some unknown vantage point, they were watching.

With a whoosh of air from his lungs, the Dutchman fell down the hill. At its base, he righted himself awkwardly and ran. Remo followed him. The ground was soft and covered with holes. The snakes, Remo remembered. Watch it. He can make them come out your ears if he wants to.

But the Dutchman had no hallucination waiting. He stood beside an open pit, absorbed in its swarming interior. Remo approached, standing across the wide hole from him. The pit contained the skeletons of four men, picked 222.

clean by scavengers. They were loosely draped in rags that had once been uniforms of some sort. Over them crawled more snakes than Remo had ever seen in one place.