It was lurking under the stern.
When the patrol craft backed away from the shadow in the water that turned out to be a sunken oil drum, it rammed the spy submarine. The sub broke open like an eggshell and sank, killing all aboard and embarrassing the Soviet Union before the entire world.
Major General Gunnar Rolfe's patrol boat also sank during the Battle of Stockholm Harbor, with the loss of half its crew, but this was dismissed as "an acceptable level of casualties in an engagement of this magnitude," in the report the Steel-Haired Peacemaker submitted to the office of the Prime Minister.
Or, as he later expressed it to his fellow officers: "Leading men to their deaths is good for morale. More officers should have the opportunity. Who knows, we may be forced to fight a war in another hundred years."
"Or two," a lieutenant said grimly.
"Or two," agreed Major General Rolfe, taking a deep draft of imported dark lager to stiffen himself against the prospect that his great-grandson, or great-great-grandson, might have to go through the hell he had suffered on that dark day. He shuddered.
Life had been good to the major general since that day. The government had increased his pension by many thousands of krona. A summer cottage in the pastoral valleys of Norrland had been built especially for him. Nubile blonde teenage girls asked for his autograph in public, and entertained him in private as only Swedish girls can.
As much as Major General Rolfe was admired in his native land, he was despised by the Soviet leadership. It had been an open secret that Russian submarines regularly prowled Swedish coastal waters, mapping her military installations. Everyone knew it. And everyone knew why. Sweden was an officially neutral nation, and the only Scandinavian country not allied with NATO. Sweden had no military allies, an inexperienced army, and virtually no defense against Soviet aggression. The Soviets had targeted Sweden as the first nation for annexing in the event of a ground war in Europe. When the Soviet subs first began venturing into Swedish waters, the official policy was to ignore the intrusions. When the Kremlin realized how much they could get away with, they began slipping tractor-treaded midget subs into Swedish waterways. This was too much even for the peace-loving Swedes, so they sent out their patrol boats to drop depth charges a harmless three miles away from the lurking subs and made a public show of pointing an accusing finger at the terrible Soviet aggression.
Each time, the Russian subs were allowed to leave peacefully-even though Swedish law called for their capture on espionage charges. It was official policy not to antagonize the Soviet leadership. In fact, there had been considerable embarrassment in the upper levels of the government when it came out that Major General Rolfe had actually sunk a Soviet spy sub in Swedish waters. The Prime Minister had been formulating a formal apology for hand-delivery to the Russian ambassador and there was talk of cashiering Major General Rolfe for violating Sweden's official neutrality policy, which had kept them safely out of World War II-although it hadn't prevented the government from allowing German troops to cross supposedly neutral Swedish territory so the Nazis could finish crushing Norway.
But when the Russians didn't retaliate, the Swedish government decided they were safe and declared victory. Overnight, Major General Rolfe had gone from blunderer to national savior-although he, too, suffered from sleepless nights wondering if Soviet KGB agents weren't planning to liquidate him personally as a warning to his government. But nothing of the sort had happened.
This lack of retaliation bothered Major General Gunnar Rolfe, but he was enjoying his newfound acclaim too much to dwell on it. Even six months after the Battle of Stockholm Harbor, he was still receiving decorations; presents, and the favors of high-school girls. His apartment overlooking the Kungstadgarden, whose marigolds had been in bloom a century before Columbus, overflowed with them.
Had he known that at that very moment a Scandinavian Airlines jet was carrying the representative of a tradition far older than Sweden's neutrality, with several grisly methods of dealing with him in mind, Major General Gunnar Rolfe would have immediately fled his beloved Sweden for asylum in a safer country.
Even if that country was Soviet Russia.
* * *
Lord Guy Phillston pulled his elegant black Citroen into the spot reserved for him in front of Ten Downing Street and noticed that his pipe had gone out during the drive from his office at Britain's supersecret counterintelligence agency, the Source.
"Oh, drat!" he exclaimed. He pulled the pipe, which was a meerschaum with a bowl carved in the semblence of Anne Boleyn's head, and applied a freshly struck wooden match. The rich Dunheap tobacco caught slowly and Lord Guy inhaled a good stiff draft to steel himself for the interview.
Puffing furiously, he walked up to the simple door with the gold number ten on it and rapped the brass knocker politely.
A male secretary answered.
"She is expecting you," the secretary said. "Do come in."
The secretary waved him to a velvet-cushioned seat in the foyer and Lord Guy took it gratefully. Ordinarily he detested waiting, but a few additional minutes meant a few more bracing puffs of the pipe.
When the secretary finally emerged from the study to inform him the Prime Minister would see him, Lord Guy hastily snuffed out the pipe and slipped it into his jacket pocket. It wouldn't do to appear before the Prime Minister with poor Anne Boleyn's face sticking out of his mouth. Might offend the sensibilities and all that. Privately, Lord Guy doubted that this woman who controlled the destiny of the Commonwealth, who was known by friend and foe alike as the Iron Lady, had sensibilities of any sort. But he knew that she was not above pretending to take offense if she thought it gave her psychological leverage.
The Prime Minister greeted him cordially, with that smile that was more a polite baring of teeth than a smile. It was completely empty of warmth, like a barracuda's smile.
"Good of you to come," she said, waving him to a seat. "I have your report on my desk." She looked at the report, removed her reading glasses, and still smiling emptily, added, "Rather fanciful, isn't it?"
"Ah, Madam Prime Minister, I realize the ... er ...unorthodox nature of the matter. But I stand behind every...ah ...word."
"I see." She adjusted her glasses again and flipped through the report-or pretended to. The head of the Source was suddenly struck by the thought of how much like a schoolmistress she seemed with her too-matronly brown hair and condescending manner. She wasn't reading a jot, he knew. She just wanted to make him as uncomfortable as possible.
When he refused to fill the dead air with an apology or qualification, the Prime Minister spoke again.
"You are absolutely sure of your facts, then, Lord Guy?"
"Quite."
The Prime Minister dropped the Source report and leaned back in her high-backed chair. The room was dim and somehow homey, like the parlor of some grandmotherly sort from Dorset, Lord Guy thought.
"Let's review, then," she said. "There has been the extraordinary coincidence of two separate meteor falls in the area of the American capital. Our spies in the States report that for several days after the first fall, the central government virtually shut down. The President disappeared, and when he resurfaced he spoke vaguely of a crisis of some sort that he was in the process of putting down. We can find no evidence of any crisis except that the American Joint Chiefs of Staff also went into hiding and their NORAD system went to the highest state of alert short of total war. And now a small section of New York City has been destroyed, and this is blamed, of all things, on a gas-main explosion."
"It is rather lame," Lord Guy admitted.
"Now, what does this suggest to you?" asked the Prime Minister, tapping the edge of her desk with a pencil.
"The Americans have been attacked."
"So your report suggests. But by whom? There, you see, I find your report curiously lacking."
"We can discount the Soviets. And the Red Chinese, one would think."
"And on what, my dear man, do you base eliminating
from consideration America's principal enemies in the Communist world?"
"They would not risk retaliation. Further, our information is that neither country is on alert at this time. Hardly prudent behavior by an aggressor."
"That is sound reasoning, perhaps."
"Further, Madam Prime Minister, we are clearly dealing with a rogue element. No sane national leader would undertake such a foolhardy thing as this."
"Yes, I agree. And that brings me to my next question. What precisely is this? What are the Americans facing here?"
"A nonnuclear missile of some kind. I would guess from that fact alone that they are dealing with one of the Central or South American nations who are antagonistic to them. It is the only possibility. Otherwise the Yanks would have struck back by now. They have not. Therefore, the perpetrator is too close to their sovereign borders to chance their own fallout being blown back into their faces."
"Well-spoken. I am inclined to agree with you. But which?"
"I will endeavor to find out, if Madam Prime Minister will authorize."
"Good. And I will lay before you another task. We must locate that weapon. Anything so powerful that it would send the American military seeking shelter like a frightened bunch of pubescent public-school boys should be in our hands."
Lord Guy winced. He was public-school. Proud of it too. He cleared his throat.
"If we can lay our hands on this weapon," Prime Minister went on crisply, "the balance of power would clearly shift to England. Where it belongs."
"Ah," said Lord Guy. "A return to the glory days of the Empire, eh?"
"Oh, spare me the Kiplingesque rubbish," the Prime Minister said testily. "I am speaking of the survival of Europe. For as long as we are forced to exist under the shadow of the nuclear stockpiles of the two superpowers, we can never feel safe. All of Europe is clamoring for disarmament, but it is simply unachievable by treaty. But if this weapon, whatever it may be, is so bloody fearsome that it has frightened the Americans half out of their wits, then with it we might force global disarmament."
"But I am under the impression that you favor the nuclear deterrent."
"I do. Until something better comes along. And I think it has."
The Prime Minister smiled her barracuda smile.
Lord Guy Philliston smiled back. She made sense. She made perfect sense.
"I quite understand," he said simply as he rose to his feet. The Prime Minister came out from behind her desk, and after smoothing her grayish skirts, offered her hand.
"I will handle this personally," he said, squeezing the hand. It felt cool to the touch.
"Do so."
He was very glad, once he got outside, to relight his pipe and suck the fragrant smoke into his lungs.
As he got into the car, he remembered that he had forgotten something. He had intended to tell the Prime Minister that the Lobynian news agency, TANA, had issued another of its frequent calls for reprisals against Great Britain. Colonel Intifadah obviously still smarted from the closing down of his London People's Bureau and the ousting of Lobynian diplomatic personnel caught trying to kill dissident Lobynians.
Oh, bother, he thought. The Lobynians were forever threatening something. This time was probably no more serious than the last. He would let it go. Just this once.
Chapter 26
The Master of Sinanju was having difficulty finding his way around the cluster of islets that made up the city of Stockholm. In all the history of the House of Sinanju, no king of the Swedes had ever hired the services of Chiun's family. This despite the fact that Sweden had been at peace for nearly two centuries. Assassins enjoy the greatest demand during peacetime, because in times of war, every citizen kills for his king. Thus, no guide to the city of Stockholm was inscribed in the Book of Sinanju for the benefit of future Masters, and Chiun had never troubled himself to learn the language.
After wandering around the Ostermalm section of the city, where most of the foreign embassies and consulates were located, Chiun decided he had had enough and flagged down a taxi with its ledig sign on, which meant that it was available.
Ten minutes later, the cab deposited Chiun in front of the address supplied by Harold Smith, in the Gamla Staden section, not far from the Royal Palace.
The Master of Sinanju swept into the lobby of the apartment building, past the twin flower-choked urns identical to those found everywhere in the city, and floated up the wrought-iron staircase. The expression on his face sent chills through a matron stepping off the modern elevator on the twelfth floor. Chiun glided along the hallway, counting off the modest black apartment numbers until he came to the one he sought.
The Master of Sinanju did not bother to knock. He merely turned from his path without seeming to pick up speed or momentum and walked into the door.
There came a rending shriek of brass hinges and panelled wood, and suddenly the door lay across its jamb.
Major General Gunnar Rolfe looked up from the tender face of a recently underage female acquaintance and beheld a frail old Oriental attired in a scarlet kimono swirling into his parlor with an expression of such savage ferocity on his face that it almost caused the major general to vomit up his lunch.
The old Oriental's clear eyes flashed.
"Woe to the House of Sinanju, that I am forced to come to this white land," he wailed. "For this land is the whitest of white lands, with pale, round-eyed people whose very eyes and hair are white."
"What ... who?" sputtered Rolfe.
Chiun pointed a single curled fingernail accusingly. "Deny to me that your kings have never in this white land's entire history hired a properly colored assassin!"
"King ... assassin?" Rolfe said weakly. He released the buxom girl, who modestly rearranged her sweater.
"And now, heaping insult upon insult," Chiun raged, "after I had promised my emperor no harm would fall upon his people, one of your white ilk worked to make my words a base be. How could you do this to the very house you spurned? When we sent our babies to the cold harbor waters to spare them from starvation, where was Sweden with enemies to be slain, pretenders in need of silencing? And now this!"
"I know nothing of what you say."
"No, duck-hearted one? We shall see. Mightily shall you pay the penalty for causing me to come to this place of milk-haired barbarians and their cowlike women."
Rolfe's buxom blond took the hint and ran into the bedroom, locking the door behind her.
"And now, I will ask you but once. Tell me about the locomotives that fall from the very sky."
"I do not understand you," Rolfe repeated.
"Understand?" Chiun screeched. "When your limbs are collected from all the corners of this city for burial, you will understand. I am talking about your KKV's dropping on the heads of subjects I am pledged to defend."
"Again, I am ignorant of your meaning," insisted Major General Rolfe, slipping a hand between the cushions of his divan, where a nine-millimeter Lahti automatic nestled as a precaution against burglars.
"You are the buyer of one of the locomotives," stormed Chiun, stepping closer, seeming to fill the room with the awesome energy of his presence.
"No ... no," Rolfe protested as he felt for his pistol. Where was it?
"You deny your perfidy?"
"Yes," Major General Gunnar Rolfe said forcefully. Chiun stopped, hesitating. The man seemed to be telling the truth. But Smith had uncovered his guilt. Smith was usually right about such things.
"I have information to the contrary. Why would such information come into my hands if you were not guilty?"
"I do not know. But I am a great military hero in this country. I have enemies. Perhaps they have deceived you."
"You are a white maggot wallowing in garbage. No. You are less than that. A maggot will one day sprout wings and fly. You will not live that long if you do not speak the truth to me."
"You cannot kill me," said Major General Rolfe as his questing fingers at last clamped over the Lahti's grip. He thumbed the safety
off.
"I cannot not kill you if you are guilty," Chiun countered. "For only your blood will atone for this insult. But I will be merciful if I am convinced of your innocence."
Major General Gunnar Rolfe cracked a sick, frightened grin and brought the Lahti up, pointing it at the Oriental's fierce face. He squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened. The pistol did discharge. A spike of flame spurted from its black snout, and the recoil kicked back against his tender hand. But the frail Oriental stood unmoving. He fired a second time.
And again there was no reaction from the old man, although the wispy beard and tufts of hair framing the Oriental's face seemed to vibrate strangely. So, too, did the skirt and sleeves of his kimono. It was as if the Oriental had been in motion. But he had not moved. Major General Rolfe knew that, because he was staring at him all the time. He never realized that in the fractional seconds when the gunflash made him blink, the Master of Sinanju had sidestepped the bullet and returned to his former place in a twinkling.
Major General Gunnar Rolfe looked sick. He knew his pistol was loaded. The bullets were fresh. They could not misfire. Then he understood that he was doomed. He decided that he would rather die by his own hand than face the fury of this incredible being.
He turned the Lahti to his own face and started to squeeze the trigger.
"Aaaiiieee!" The cry came from the old Oriental. It shattered every window in the room.
Major General Gunnar Rolfe froze, his finger just touching the trigger.
The old Oriental was suddenly in motion. He spun into the air with a floating leap. His skirts whirled like an opening flower, exposing his spindly legs. They looked so delicate, Major General Rolfe thought, like the stamens of a bright red flower. How beautiful. How magnificent. How could the Oriental just hang in the air like that?
And as he thought that thought, a sandaled foot lashed out at his head with the nervous speed of a striking cobra. The Lahti shot out of his hand. It embedded itself in the bedroom door. The blond girl let out a cry and ran from the apartment, out the door, and down the hall.
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