"Sir?"
"I'm going in."
"Colonel, the environment down there is pretty hairy. Rotting beams. Floating wood. I wouldn't. At your age. I mean-"
"Step out of the suit now," Smith repeated.
Without a word. the diver handed Smith his flashlight as Smith helped him off with his oxygen tanks. Smith stripped to his gray boxer shorts and T-shirt. The suit was a snug fit. The tanks felt like booster rockets on Smith's spare frame.
Smith blew into the mouthpiece to clear it, and trying not to trip over his flippers, simply walked down the steps into the coldest, blackest water he could imagine.
He thumbed on the light. The water closed over his head. He could hear his own pounding heart, his labored, ragged breathing, and a faint gurgling. Nothing else. The world he knew was replaced by an alien environment that pressed its swirling cold fingers into his ribs. Steeling himself, he launched himself from the security of the steps.
There was a heart-stopping moment of disorientation. The floor and ceiling became indistinguishable.
Smith had done demolition work for the OSS during his war days. Long ago. His underwater craft came back to him. He pushed after the cone of light he held before him.
He swam the length of the ninth floor-actually the twentieth, counting down from the desert-going from room to room, his light probing. Fortunately, the Condome project had not reached the furnished state when it had been stopped. There were few floating objects to navigate around. Just wood flotsam and algaelike jetsam.
Other divers joined him, adding their lights to his. Not wanting to be distracted by their activity, Smith motioned for them to follow his lead.
The ninth floor proved disappointingly empty. He swam past the elevator door to the propped-open fire doors and enjoyed the eerie sensation of swimming down a long flight of stairs.
The next floor was devoid of even floating detritus. So was the floor beneath it.
Smith persisted. He glanced at his borrowed chronometer, then realized he had not asked the diver how much air remained in his tanks. Grimly he pressed on. He must be sure before he abandoned the search. Although the thought crossed his mind that if the Master of Sinanju truly lay in this watery realm, he had been here for nearly three months. Smith's heart sank. What did he expect to find? Perhaps only a corpse whose spirit demanded proper burial.
That and no more. Meanwhile, the world marched toward the Red Abyss of Kali. And if they went over the precipice, there might be more dead to bury than living. But since he was powerless to affect the situation otherwise, Harold Smith pushed on.
In the end, Dr. Harold W. Smith gave up only when he found himself gasping for oxygen. Frantically he reversed course and swam for the stairs. His heart pounded. His ears rang. Then his vision turned as red as the roaring in his ears.
Smith broke the surface gasping, his mouthpiece ejecting like a throat-caught bone.
"I'm sorry, Colonel," Lieutenant Latham said, leaning down to pull him up to a safe step.
"I had to see for myself," Smith said hollowly.
"Shall I call off the search?"
Smith coughed a dry rattling cough.
"Yes," he said quietly. His voice was charged with defeat.
Two engineers assisted Smith to the surface. His lungs labored. His breath came out in wheezes of agony. He carried his uniform and shoes.
"Maybe you'd better rest a few moments," one of the pair suggested.
"Yes, yes, of course," Smith gasped.
They all sat down on the steps, saying nothing. The divers continued on in their bare feet.
"Too bad the elevators aren't working," one grumbled to the other. "Save us the climb."
Smith, in the middle of a cough, looked up.
"Elevators?" he gasped.
"The're not working," Lieutenant Latham told Smith. "We might be able to jury-rig a stretcher if you don't think you can manage-"
Smith grasped his arm. "Elevators," he repeated hoarsely.
"Sir?"
"Did . . . anyone . . . check the elevators?" Smith wheezed out.
"I don't know." The lieutenant looked up. "Hey, Navy. The colonel wants to know if you checked the elevator shaft."
"Couldn't," a diver called back in the murk. "All the doors are frozen shut below the nineteenth floor.
"The cage," Smith croaked, "where is it?"
"We don't know. The unsubmerged section of the shaft is clear, so it must be down below."
Using the engineers for support, Smith clawed himself to a shaky standing position.
"We're going back down," he said grimly.
"Sir?" It was one of the divers.
"We must investigate that elevator."
They returned to the dry tenth floor in silence. Using pry bars, they separated the elevator doors. Smith looked in. He saw dancing water with rust specks floating on top less than four feet below. The cable disappeared into the murky soup.
"Check the cage," Smith ordered.
Lieutenant Latham gestured to the open doors. "You heard the man."
Without protest, but with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, two of the divers donned their breathing equipment and climbed in. Slithering down the cable, they disappeared with barely a splash.
Their lights played down below, faded, and then disappeared entirely. Time passed. Throats were cleared nervously.
"Either they found the trap," Latham ventured, "or they're in trouble."
No one moved to investigate.
It was the better part of ten minutes before a sudden hand reached up, like a drowning man returning to the surface. Smith's heart gave a leap. But the hand was encased in rubber. A rubber-encased diver's head popped into view next. The hand peeled the scuba mask back.
"We found something," the diver said tensely.
"What?" Smith asked, tight-voiced.
"It's coming now." The diver returned to the water.
He was back in less than a minute, joined by his teammate.
They bobbed to the surface in unison, cradling between them a small bundle wrapped in wet purple cloth. Flashlights came into play.
"My God," Smith said.
Reaching down, he touched a cold, bony thing like a slime-coated stick. It was as white as a fish's underbelly. The surface slipped under his grasp with appalling looseness, considering it was human skin.
Resisting an urge to retch, Smith pulled on the dead thing. Other hands joined. Using the heavy cable for support, the divers lifted their burden.
As they wrestled the soaking cold bundle to the floor, Smith saw that he had hold of a pipestem forearm. The hand attached to it was clenched into a long-nailed fist of anguish. The skin over the finger bones was hung slack and transparent. It reminded Smith of a boiled chicken wing.
"It was in the elevator," one of the divers muttered as he climbed out. The other joined him, saying, "He was in a fetal position. Just floating like a ball. Isn't that weird? He went out the way he came into the world. All curled up."
Harold Smith knelt over the body. The head rolled, revealing a face that was stark in its lack of color. The wrinkles of the Master of Sinanju's face were deeper than Smith had ever seen. The head was like a shriveled white raisin, the lips parted in a grimace, exposing teeth that looked like Indian corn. His hair clung to his temples and chin like discolored seaweed.
It was a corpse's face.
Still, Smith put one ear to the sunken chest. The wet silk was clammy. He was surprised that the muscles had not gone into rigor mortis.
"No heartbeat," he muttered.
"What do you expect, Colonel? He's been immersed for the last three months."
Smith looked back at the face.
"Just a body," he said huskily. "I came all this way just for a body."
Behind Smith's back, the others exchanged glances. They shrugged.
Silence filled the dim corridor deep in the sand.
Smith knelt with one hand over the body's head.
Under his finge
rs he detected something. Not a heartbeat-exactly. It was more on the order of a slow swelling, like a balloon. It stopped, or paused. Then the swelling retracted with studied slowness in the next breath.
Without warning, Harold Smith flung himself on the body. He threw it over on its stomach. Leaning one hand into the other, he began pumping away at the Master of Sinanju's back.
"Sir, what are you doing?" It was the lieutenant.
"What does it look like?" Smith hurled back savagely. "I'm doing CPR."
"That's what I thought," the other said in a small voice.
"Don't just stand there," Smith snapped. "You have a medic standing by. Get him down here!"
There was a moment's hesitation. Smith pushed again, using every ounce of his strength.
"Do it!"
The team broke and ran. They climbed the stairs like Olympic runners fighting to be the one to light the torch.
Smith threw himself into a rhythm.
He was rewarded by a sudden expelling of rusty water from Chiun's tiny mouth and nostrils. He redoubled his efforts, not stopping until the water slowed to a spasmodic dribbling.
Taking the frail shoulders in hand, Smith turned the body over. He found no heartbeat. Prying the teeth apart, he dug his fingers into the tiny mouth. It was like putting his fingers into the cold dead innards of a clam.
The tongue was not obstructing the windpipe, he found. There were no chunks of vomit or phlegm lodged below the uvula.
"Where the hell is that medic!" Smith called in the emptiness twenty floors down in the California desert.
"Here he comes now, sir," a diver offered.
The medic took one look and said, "Hopeless."
Smith climbed to his feet with arthritic difficulty and put his face into the medic's own. He spoke one word.
"Rescuscitate."
"Impossible."
Smith took the man's khaki tie in one trembling fist. He pushed the knot up to uncomfortable tightness.
"Do as I say or lose your rank, your pension, and possibly your life."
The medic got the message. He got to work.
A scalpel parted the fine purple silk of the kimono, exposing a chest whose ribs could be counted through translucent bluish-white flesh. The heart-starting paddles came out their box.
"Clear!"
He applied the paddles to the chest. The body jerked.
"Clear!" the medic repeated.
This time the body jumped. As everyone held his breath, it settled back-sank, really-into macabre repose.
Three times the galvanized corpse spasmed, only to settle back into inertness.
After the fourth try, Smith got down and pinched off the nose. He blew air into the dead mouth.
The medic joined in, somehow inspired by Smith's determination. It was impossible, ridiculous, and yet . . .
The medic manipulated the chest. Smith blew in the air.
After an eternity of moments, Smith felt a return breath-foul and distasteful. He turned away. But in his eyes tears welled.
Everyone saw the sharp rise of the naked chest. It was repeated.
"He's breathing!" the medic choked out. His voice was stupefied.
"He lives," Smith sobbed, turning away, ashamed of his display.
And in the dimness pierced only by crossed underwater flashlights, a rattling voice spoke up.
"You . . . understood."
It issued from the paper-thin lips past discolored teeth like Indian corn.
The lids split open, revealing filmy reddish-brown eyes.
The Master of Sinanju had returned from the dead.
Chapter 44
The dawn that shook the world began like any before it.
The sun lifted over Abominadad's storied minarets like a resentful red eye. The muezzin wailed out their ageless cry, calling the faithful to prayers, "Allaaah Akbar!"
God is Great.
In this hot dawn, Remo Williams' thoughts were neither of dawn nor of God nor of greatness.
The darkness had borne witness to his despair. He had not slept. His mind was a frozen eye of fear.
Then a crack of light. The ironbound door creaked open on his cell deep in the Palace of Sorrows.
Remo looked up, shielding his sunken eyes against the unwelcome light.
And was struck by a cold shower of water thrown over his body. Another followed. And soon he was drenched.
"Dry yourself." a voice commanded.
It was Kimberly Baynes's voice, no longer breathy and childish, but strong and confident.
Remo removed his soaked kimono, now heavy as a rainsoaked shroud. He dried himself slowly. He was in no hurry.
Something landed at this feet with a plop!
"Put these on," Kimberly instructed.
In the raw light, Remo struggled into the strange garments, not fully aware of what he was doing, and not caring. The pants were gauzy. He saw that. The shoes soft. What he mistook for a shirt proved to be a sleeveless vest. He looked for a matching shirt, and found none. Shrugging, he donned the vest.
"Step out, Red One."
Remo entered the light, which was coming through an iron-barred window high in the stone basement wall of the palace.
"You look perfect," said Kimberly Baynes in approval.
"I feel like . . ." Remo looked down. He saw that his purple slippers curled up at their tips. The vest was purple too. He wore scarlet trunks with gauzy reddish leggings. His bare sunburned arms almost matched the color of the gauze.
"What is this?" he asked, dumbfounded.
"The proper costume of the official assassin of Abominadad," Kimberly said. "Now, come. You have victims to claim."
She turned with a swirl of her abayuh, drawing the hood over her head and restoring her veil.
"Who?" Remo asked, following her with wooden steps.
He was ignored until she let him out a side door to a waiting armored car. The door slammed shut behind them. Remo took a fold-down seat.
"The very ones you came here to save," she told him then.
"Oh, God!" Remo croaked in disbelief.
Maddas Hinsein stood before his Revolting Command Council, attired in a splendid green burnoose, Nebuchadnezzar's heroic portrait behind him.
"I have made a decision," he announced.
"Allah be praised."
"Reverend Jackman and Don Cooder must be liquidated before all mankind so that the world knows that I am a crazy ass not to be trifled with."
The Revolting Command Council blinked in stunned silence, eyes like fluttering, frightened butterflies.
As hot-blooded Arabs, they understood the need-no, the absolute necessity--of repaying the stinging insult the United States had inflicted on Arab pride by shipping home the murdered and desecrated body of their patriotic ambassador, along with the bald lie that he had drowned in a car accident.
But as rational men, they knew that this could, more than anything else, put them under the cross hairs of the American fleet lurking in the Arabian Gulf.
"Are there any here who think this is not the proper response?" Maddas demanded. "Come, come. Speak truthfully. We must be of one mind on this."
A lone hand was raised. It was the agriculture minister. Maddas nodded in his direction.
"Is this not dangerous?" he wondered.
"Possibly." Maddas admitted. "Are you concerned that the U.S. will retaliate?"
"Yes, Precious Leader. It concerns me deeply."
At that, Maddas Hinsein drew his pearl-handled revolver and shot the worried minister full in the face. He fell forward. His face went splat on the table, breaking like a water balloon. Except the water was scarlet.
"Your fears are groundless." Maddas told him, "for you are beyond their bombs now." He looked around the room. "Are there any others who are concerned about falling before a U.S. bombardment?"
No one spoke.
"You are all very brave," Maddas murmured. "We meet in Arab Renaissance Square in one hour. After today, we will know who stand
s with us and who against."
Polite applause rattled the wall hangings, and Maddas Hinsein took his departure.
No more would they call him Kebir Gamoose.
Selim Fanek's visage was known throughout the world. His was the official face of Maddas Hinsein. When President Hinsein wished to give a speech over television, it was Selim Fanek who gave it. He had been chosen because, above all others, he most resembled Maddas Hinsein. It was an honored post.
So when Selim Fanek received a personal call from his beloved Precious Leader to officiate at the public execution of Reverend Jackman and Don Cooder, he took it as a great honor.
But as the official car whirled him to Arab Renaissance Square, he realized that this could be a double-edged honor.
For this made him a participant in what the Americans might call a war crime-and suddenly Selim Fanek had a vision of himself swinging from the end of an American rope.
Since his options swung between the rough bite of American hemp and the blistering wrath of Maddas Hinsein, he swallowed hard and beseeched Allah to strike the U.S. forces dead from thirst.
When the door opened on their Sheraton Shaitan suite, at first Don Cooder took the uniformed intruders for an American task force sent to personally liberate him. He had counted on his network to pull strings. He was paid whether he broadcast or not.
The grim mustachioed faces of two Renaissance Guards, like cookie-cutter Maddas Hinseins, stopped his shout of triumph in his throat.
"You . . . you guys aren't Americans," he blurted stupidly.
"We are the execution escort," he was told.
Ever the newsman, Don Cooder asked his question first and thought about it later. "Who's being executed?"
They seized him roughly, and two more went in after Reverend Jackman.
"I knew they'd free us," Jackman whispered as they were hustled down the stairs.
"They say they're the execution escort." Cooder hissed.
"Yeah? Who's being executed?"
"I think it's us."
"Is it us?" Reverend Jackman asked tightly of one guard.
"You have been condemned to die before all the world."
"Does that mean cameras?" Reverend Jackman and Don Cooder said a quarter-second apart.
"I believe it is called simulcasting," the guard offered.
The Reverend and the anchorman exchanged glances. The glances said that the news was bad, but at least they were going out as the centers of attention.
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