The next trunk contained rolls of delicately packed parchment scrolls, each tied closed with a different-colored ribbon. Here was the history of Chiun's days in America. These were what had called Remo to the house. He would have to return them to the village of Sinanju, where they would join the histories of past Masters.
Remo reached down to pluck one up. It looked to be the freshest.
He held it in his hand for a long time, fingers poised over the emerald ribbon.
Finally he simply replaced it unread. It was too soon. He could not bear to reexperience their days as seen through Chiun's jaundiced eyes. Remo closed the trunk.
The next one opened up on a sea of silks and fine brocades. Chiun's ceremonial kimonos. Remo lifted one-a black silk kimono with two orange-and-black tigers stitched delicately onto the chest, rising on their hind legs, their forepaws frozen in eternal combat.
A faint light made the tigers jump out from the shimmery ebon background.
"What?"
Remo turned, the kimono dropping from his surprised fingers.
Feeling his mouth go dry, he gasped.
"Little Father?"
For there, less than six feet away, stood the Master of Sinanju, shining with a faint radiance. He wore the royal purple kimono that he had last worn in life. His hands were concealed in the joined sleeves. His eyes were closed, the sweet wrinkles of his face in repose, his head tilted back slightly.
Remo swallowed. Except for a bluish cast, Chiun looked as he had in life. There was no corny opalescent glow like in a Hollywood ghost. No saintlike nimbus. None of that ghostly stuff.
Still, Remo could see, dimly, the shadowy bulk of the big-screen TV behind the Master of Sinanju's lifelike image.
"Little Father?" Remo repeated. "Chiun?"
The bald head lowered, and dim hazel eyes eased open as if coming out of a long sleep. They grew harsh when they came into contact with Remo's own.
The sleeves parted, revealing birdlike claws tipped with impossibly long curved nails.
One trembling hand pointed to Remo.
"What are you saying?" Remo asked. "If it's about my going through your trunks"
Then it pointed down, to the Master of Sinanju's sandaled feet.
"You did this last time," Remo said. "And the time before that. You're telling me that I walk in your sandals now, right?"
The eyes flashed anew. The hand pointed down, the elbow working back and forth emphatically, driving the point home again and again.
"I'm going back. Really. I have something to clear up first."
The elbow jerked.
"I was on my way but Kali came back. I don't know what to do."
With the other hand the spirit of Chiun indicated the floor.
"You can't hear me, can you?"
Remo put his hands in his pockets. He shook his head negatively.
The Master of Sinanju dropped silently to both knees. He rested tiny futile fists against the hardwood floor and began pounding. His hands went through the floor each time. But their violence was emphatic.
"Look," Remo protested, "I don't know what you're trying to tell me. And you're starting to drive me crazy with all this pantomime stuff. Can't you just leave a note or something?"
Chiun sat up. He formed strange shapes with his hands and fingers.
Remo blinked. He peered through the half-light.
"What is this?" he muttered. "Charades?"
Chiun's crooked fingers twisted this way and that, forming Remo knew not what. He thought he recognized the letter G formed of a circled thumb and forefinger bisected by another index finger, but the rest was a meaningless jumble of pantomime.
"Look, I'm not following this," Remo shouted in exasperation. "Why are you doing this to me? You're dead, for Christ's sake. Why can't you just leave me alone!"
And with that, the Master of Sinanju came to his feet like ascending purple incense.
He approached, his hands lifting to Remo's face.
Remo shrank back. But the hands plunged too quickly to evade.
"Noooo!" Remo cried as the whirl of images overtook his mind. He smelled coldness, visualized blackness, and tasted brackish water-all in one overwhelming concussion of sensory attack. His lungs caught in mid-breath-from fear or what, he didn't know. It felt like the oxygen had been sucked from them.
He sank to his feet, eyes pinched shut, breathing in jerky gasps.
"Okay, okay, you win!" he panted. "I'll go! I'll go to Sinanju. I promise. Just stop haunting me, okay?"
The images swallowed themselves like water swirling down a drain.
"What?"
Remo opened his eyes. The faint radiance was gone. In the half-light he thought he caught a momentary retinal impression of Chiun's dwindling afterimage. The Master of Sinanju had thrown his face to the heavens. Remo could almost hear his wail of despair.
Now Remo knew. The Master of Sinanju had gone to the Void-the cold place on the other side of the universe where, according to Sinanju belief, those who had dropped their mortal shells were ultimately cast.
It was true! There was a Void. And Chiun was there. Remo swallowed his fear several times before he found his feet. Now he understood. No wonder Chiun kept coming back. The Void was a terrible place. And it was the place Remo would one day go too. Remo shivered at the thought.
Perhaps he was better off a slave of Kali. He did not know. Remo reached into the open trunk and took up a shimmery bolt of fabric.
Then he left, sealing the front door by compressing the protesting hinges with the heel of his hand. They would have to be unscrewed before the door would ever open again.
Remo did not expect to see that done. Ever.
Chapter 22
President Maddas Hinsein, Scimitar of the Arabs, left the presidential palace in his staff car. He was feeling very Arabian today, so he wore a blue-and-white burnoose whose headdress was held in place by a coiling black agal.
It was also excellent protection against the scourge of the Arab leader-the would-be assassin. For no one knew what Father Maddas, as his worshipful countrymen called him with childlike affection, would wear on a given day. A paramilitary jumpsuit, a Western-style business suit, or traditional bedouin garb. It was one of the many survival tricks he had learned in a lifetime of surviving the snakepit that was modern Irait.
The decree that all males of puberty age and above wear Maddas Hinsein mustaches was another. If all Iraiti men looked alike, Maddas reasoned, an assassin would have to consider well before shooting, lest he fire upon a relative. In that fractional hesitation sometimes lay the difference between glorious victory and ignominious death.
The staff car whirled him through the broad multilane highways and the sparse traffic, through Renaissance Square, where two huge forearms-cast from life molds of Maddas' own and expanded to the girth of a genie's arm-clutched curved scimitars to form an arch. On every building, on the traffic islands, and in the centers of rotaries, magnificent portraits of Maddas alternately smiled and glowered in testimony to the sweeping depth of his magnificent wardrobe. How could a man who so inspired his people, Maddas thought with deep pride, fail to unite the Arabs?
Presently the car brought him to Maddas International Airport, where a Tupolev-16 bomber sat on the tarmac.
Under armed escort, Maddas Hinsein entered the airport.
His defense minister, General Razzik Azziz, rushed forward to meet him.
General Azziz did not look well. Maddas preferred his generals to look unwell. If there was fear in their bellies, he was a safer president. They exchanged salutes.
"Salaam aleikim, Precious Leader," said General Azziz. "The plane has just arrived."
Maddas nodded. "And this United States deserter, where is she?"
"For security purposes, we have not allowed anyone to deplane. The crew awaits you."
"Take me."
Members of his elite blue-bereted Renaissance Guard formed a protective circle around Maddas Hinsein as he strode in his fami
liar rolling gait onto the tarmac. A wheeled staircase was brought up to the aircraft, which had flown in from occupied Kuran carrying the deserter. She had presented herself to an astonished patrol.
Two airport security guards climbed the aluminum stairs and knocked on the hatch. They waited. Nothing happened. They pounded this time, shouting insults and curses in voluble Arabic.
This produced no result. They hastily clambered down the staircase and moved it in front of the cockpit. They climbed up and looked in the window.
Their manner became excited. They shouted. Other soldiers came running. From the top of the stairs they opened up on the occupied windows with AK-47's. Glass flew. Blood splashed, spattering them all.
Finally the shooting died down.
Reaching in, they hauled out the dead pilot and copilot. Their inert bodies slid and slithered down the wheeled staircase.
Maddas Hinsein saw the tight yellow knots around their throats. They contrasted sharply with the purplish-blue of their congested faces.
He frowned, his face a thundercloud of annoyance.
"What is this?" Maddas demanded of his defense minister.
"I have no idea," the general gulped.
Maddas drew his sidearm, a pearl-handed revolver. He placed the immaculate muzzle to General Azziz's sweating temple.
"If this is a trap," he uttered venomously, "you will soon have no brain."
General Razzik Azziz stood very, very still. He hoped that this was not a trap too.
The security men crawled into the cockpit. Soon the hatch popped open.
When a new staircase rolled into position, Maddas Hinsein ordered his Renaissance Guard to storm the plane. No shots were fired. Only when they called back that it was safe to board did Maddas Hinsein mount the stairs personally.
Just to be certain, he marched his defense minister into the plane at gunpoint.
When the man was not gunned down, Maddas Hinsein stepped in, towering over his men.
The crew sat in their seats, tongues out like those of parched dogs, their faces horrible purple and blue hues. Their stink was not that of corruption, but of bowels that had released in death.
Maddas Hinsein had no eyes for the dead. He wanted the American servicewoman who had promised his patrol the secret American order of battle.
But a two-hour search produced no American servicewoman, even though General Azziz repeatedly assured him that she had been aboard."
"She must have escaped," General Azziz swore. "Before I arrived here," he added.
"Have the responsible parties stood before a firing squad," Maddas Hinsein told his defense minister.
"But, Precious Leader, they are already dead. You see them about you. All of them."
Maddas Hinsein fixed General Azziz with his deadly gaze.
"Shoot them anyway. As a lesson to others. Not even the dead are safe from the firing squad."
"It will be done as you say, Precious Leader," General Azziz promised eagerly.
"And have the CIA spy-for that is obviously what she is-captured alive if possible. I will accept dead. No doubt, she is an assassin."
"As you command, Precious Leader."
As he was whisked from the airport, Maddas Hinsein was thinking of the yellow silk scarves and how much they resembled the yellow ribbons that American farmers had tied around their coarse western trees.
And he wondered what fate had truly befallen his ambassador to the United States.
The Americans were sending him a message, he decided. Perhaps their patience was not inexhaustible, after all.
Chapter 23
The Reverend Juniper Jackman took great pride in his blackness.
It was his blackness that enabled him-despite a complete lack of credentials-to run for the office of the presidency and convince the media and a sizable but electorally insignificant portion of the American voters that he might actually win.
It was such a convincing con that on his last foray into national politics, Reverend Jackman himself actually caught the fever and fell under the sway of his own hypnotic speechmaking.
He came to believe he had a chance to become the nation's first black President.
He had no chance, but he clung to the whiff of victory straight through the primaries. The aftermath of his party's convention, where he wowed America with an arresting speech about catching the best bus, was a bitter comedown.
There was talk of Reverend Jackman running for mayor of Washington, D.C. Many of his constituents practically demanded it. But the Reverend Jackman declined the offer, saying he saw himself as a player in a larger area-global politics.
The truth was, he understood better than anyone else that if he won the mayor's race, he was sunk. What did he know about running a city? And he didn't want to end up like the last disgraced mayor of Washington. As the Reverend Jackman saw it, his only chance was to grab that presidential brass ring and hold on for dear life. They wouldn't dare impeach him. Not him. His blackness would get him in the door and his mouth would keep him in the Oval Office-even after the nation realized it had been scammed.
But the calls for the Reverend Jackman to run for some elected office were too strong for even him to ignore. Especially when, in the wake of the last election, the pundits began calling him irrelevant. So he had allowed himself to be drafted into the meaningless role of shadow senator.
It was perfect. No responsibilities. No downside. He could phone his work in. Often did.
Which, after he had launched his TV talk show-the reverend's latest scheme to acquire a national platform-was exactly what he needed.
Now, with an actual political office on his resume, they stopped calling him irrelevant.
He was once again branded by the press as a shameless opportunist. The Reverend Jackman hated that tag, but it was better than being irrelevant. A shameless opportunist was at least a player. And if there was anything the Reverend Jackman needed to be, it was a player.
So it was that he sat in the plush cabin of his former campaign jet, the Rainbow Soundbite, winging his way over the Middle East to a rendezvous with destiny.
"I'll show 'em," the Reverend Jackman said, sipping a tumbler of pepper vodka.
"Yeah," his chief adviser slurred, hefting a tall rum and Coke, "those jerks in Washington are gonna sit up and take notice of you now."
"I don't mean them," Reverend Jackman snapped. "I mean those glory hounds at BCN. I ain't forgotten how they scooped me on Maddas. I had the first interview with that date-muncher all sewed up. And they sent in Don Cooder to beat me to the punch."
"We should never have broadcast our intentions. Secret diplomacy. That's what we gotta learn. Secret diplomacy."
"Damn Cooder is scoop-crazed. I hate people like that," Reverend Jackman said with a surly twist of his upper lip. His mustache contorted like a worm on a pin.
"Well, the Arabs got him now, and if this works, Juni, you gonna make that guy look as dumb as the time he promised to put a live neutron bomb on TV and ended up showing a twenty-year-old rerun about saving the humpback whale."
"I'll talk of Maddas into letting him go in my custody, and that ass-kisser Cooder will be kissing my ass all the way home. You seen him on TV? Man's scared. Never seen a man so scared. Probably has to change his underwear three times a day."
The two men laughed. Reverend Jackman looked out the porthole. Endless sand rolled beneath the starboard wing.
"What do you think, Earl? Maybe when I step off, I'll announce that I've come to trade places with Cooder. Think that'll work?"
"It might. But what if they take you up on it?"
"They wouldn't dare. I ran for President twice. Which is more than you can say for JFK, LBJ, and Ford. And Ford got in without even runnin'."
"Maybe you're right. We are brothers, us and the Arabs."
" 'Cept we got more sense than to dress up in our bed linen." Reverend Jackman sneered. "Then that's what I'll do. I'll offer myself in trade. We'd better work up a speech."
"What kind you want?"
"One that doesn't say anything but sounds good."
"I know that, but what do you want to be sayin', Juni?"
"As little as possible. That's how people like it. Just make sure it rhymes. I'm gonna hit the head. All this sand is making me thirsty and all this vodka is making me leakier than the State Department."
The Rainbow Soundbite touched down at Maddas International Airport after being cleared by Iraiti air-traffic control. It taxied up to Terminal B, where a wheeled ramp was pushed into place.
A cordon of Iraiti security officers in khaki and black berets kept the multinational press at bay. The press cheered the opening of the hatch door. They cheered the appearance of the Reverend Juniper Jackman as he stepped onto the top step.
They cheered because when they weren't reporting on events in Abominadad, they resided in the Abaddon Air Base, known to be a primary U.S. target in the event of hostilities.
Reverend Juniper Jackman lifted his hand to acknowledge the cheers. His pop eyes cast down to the reception committee and his youthful features broke into a frown.
"What is this crap!" he demanded. "I'm not going down there. I don't recognize anybody. They sent some flunkies!" His chief adviser looked out. "Yeah, you right, Juni. I don't see hide nor hair of the foreign minister. I don't even see the information minister. Maybe that's him-the one with the brushy mustache."
"They all got brushy mustaches," Juniper Jackman growled. "You get on the phone. Call everybody you gotta. I ain't steppin' off this plane until they send somebody important to shake my hand in front of all this media."
"Gotcha, Juni."
The Reverend Jackman put on his famous smile and waved with his other hand. Cheers went up from the press. Juniper Jackman beamed. What the hell. This wasn't so hard to take. Some of the same jerks who'd bad-mouthed him on the air were now cheering to beat the band. He hoped they'd remember this moment the next time he ran for President instead of claiming it was like making a fry cook chairman of the board of McDonald's without having to work his way up.
Reverend Juniper Jackman switched hands until they got tired. The press cheered until they were hoarse.
"What's keeping you?" Jackman hissed through his wilting smile.
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