That left Remo alone with the Swiss Guards, who stood sentinel with their pikes at rest.
"Lot of good those frog-stickers will do you against nutomatic weapons," Remo told them.
The Swiss Guards stood staring into infinity and said nothing. In their striped pantaloons and felt hats, l hey reminded Remo of the Buckingham Palace Guard, except the latter had better uniforms. These guys looked like ballerinas with a pantload.
After a few more boring minutes, the pope and the Master of Sinanju bowed to each other respectfully, and with a final wave in Remo's direction, the pope signaled to his Swiss Guard to follow.
"Now what?"
"We must depart," said Chiun, his face pleased.
"You cut a deal?"
"No."
"You going to cut a deal?"
Chiun switched to Korean. "I merely reiterated the long-standing treaty the House has with Rome never to accept work which will harm Roman interests. Thus, whatever gossip he hears regarding future service will not be misconstrued."
"So we're not working for the Vatican?"
"Not unless absolutely necessary."
"You tell the pope that?"
"There was no need to injure his sensitive feelings."
They entered the white chocolate limousine. It took them away and back into the din and congestion of Rome traffic.
"So what's the point?"
"The point is to encourage better offers," Chiun explained.
"How?"
"By being seen here, it signals to the pope's enemies that Sinanju looks with favor upon the Vatican. The enemies of the Vatican will in turn recount their coffers and consider increasing any contemplated offers."
"What enemies does the pope have?"
"His Holiness is currently vexed by rival pontiffs. Mullahs and ayatollahs would like to extinguish the candle that is Christian Rome."
"I could stand guarding the pope," Remo allowed.
Chiun waved the comment away. "The pope expressed great confidence in his Swiss Guards. No. He asked the House if it would consider extinguishing rival candles."
"The pope asked you to off his enemies!" Remo exploded.
"Must you be so crude? Not in so many words, of course. Certain delicate words were spoken like rose petals strewn on cobbles. A gesture here. A regret there. The meaning was conveyed even if the words were oblique."
Remo folded his arms defiantly. "I don't believe it."
"You are so naive."
"So that's it. You use the pope to stampede other rulers and he gets the big kiss-off?"
"There was one other matter."
And from the mouth of one kimono sleeve, the Master of Sinanju extracted a heavy crucifix of ornate gold.
"Look, Remo. Solid gold."
"He gave you that?"
"Not knowingly," Chiun admitted.
"You filched the pope's cross!"
"No, I collected an amount past due. For in the days of the Borgia pontiffs, a popish payment was missing a weight of gold. This is equal to that weight. If one calculates three hundred years' interest."
"What will he think when he finds his crucifix missing?"
"That his vaunted Swiss Guard are insufficient for his needs," purred the Master of Sinanju as he restored the trophy of the modern pontiff of Rome to his kimono sleeve and fell to enjoying the sights of the Rome of his ancestors as he was conveyed to Leonardo da Vinci Airport.
It was good to treat with true rulers again, as his ancestors had.
Chapter Twenty-five
When Lieutenant General Sir Timothy Plum was assigned to command UNIKOM, everyone said it was the end of his career.
He wasn't the first UN commander to fail magnificently in Bosnia. There had been a Belgian general before him. Much lauded by the poor beggars of Bosnia, he had been all but adopted by them. But he had gotten out before the Serbs had solidified their battlefield gains.
While Lieutenant General Sir Timothy Plum had commanded UNPROFOR, the UN Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia, United Nations personnel were routinely sniped at, deprived of their weapons, and held hostage while the power and international authority that backed him was routinely flouted.
Not that there was any help from the Security Council, NATO or, God forbid, Generalissimo War-War himself. The sodding bastards had made speeches while the Serbs cut the so-called blue routes to beleaguered Sarajevo, commanded UN relief trucks and APCs and made a mockery of civilized norms.
Seeing the nature of the game, Sir Timothy had decided two could play both ends against the middle. So when Serbian fire inflicted atrocities against helpless civilians standing in bread-and-water lines, Sir Timothy publicly blamed the victims for taking foolhardy risks for small reward. When the Bosnians defended themselves, he branded them as warmongers determined to prolong the conflict the rest of the world had tired of merely to prolong their lives.
These pronouncements garnered him no friends, except in Belgrade. But they did serve the very important PR purpose of lowering UN expectations.
So it came as a relief of sorts when, his tour completed, Sir Timothy—as his loyal troops affectionately called him—received orders to take command of UNIKOM on the disputed Iraq-Kuwait border.
It had been a peaceful border these past few months. The weather, while hot, was pleasant—if one discounted the odd dust devil stirring up the sand and dried goat dung. And best of all, there were no bloody Serbs with doubtful names like Ratko and Slobodan along with disagreeble manners to get up his nose. Or shoot at him, for God's sake.
Yes, the Kuwaiti desert was actually pleasant even if sand did fill one's boots and the outside world had all but written him off as an utter and complete nincompoop.
After two years in Bosnia, Lieutenent General Sir Timothy Plum had redefined his measure of success or failure. Success didn't include saving assorted Serbs, Bosnians and Croats—whatever they were—from one another, and failure wasn't a function of career advancement.
No, the simple, elementary truth was if one survived, one succeeded. Failure was lying facedown in the muck and slush of Eastern Europe with one's spine snapped in two by a .50-caliber round. That was failure.
Thus, a posting in Kuwait constituted an extended furlough.
"If one only didn't have to put up with these infernal wogs," he was telling his attaché in the cool shade of his pup tent not two miles from the Iraqi border, "I should say this was a sort of extended holiday. With scorpions."
"More tea, Sir Tim?"
"Thank you. Is it still hot?"
"Decidedly."
"Excellent," said Sir Timothy, holding out a blue china cup that had survived the Falklands, Northern Ireland, Sarajevo and would surely survive a quiet observer mission of indefinite duration.
"I say, does it ever rain in these parts?"
"Hardly ever."
"Dash it, I should enjoy a good rain now and again."
"Perhaps we might arrange one somehow."
"Oh?"
"We have pumps and hoses. And strong-backed men."
"If you consider Bangladeshis and Pakistanis men."
They laughed with polite restraint. There was no point in really enjoying their superiority, obvious as it was.
"Why is it, Sir Tim, that every one of these missions is oversupplied with wogs of all types?"
"Think about it, man. If there is to be a fight, it is better to command men one shan't miss if matters go awry. And if not, who better to do the donkey work than men entirely unfit for civilized soldiering?"
"I never thought about it that way. Oh, I say, I do believe this cream is a trifle sour."
"Hazard of war, Colin. Buck up. A bracing cuppa tea is far jollier than a Serbian mortar shell mucking up one's bivouac."
" 'Bivouac' Is that an American word?"
"Yes. I thought I'd try it on you. With all these Yank chaps tramping about, we shall have to learn their confounded tongue, will we not?"
"That's sensible. And what is the name of th
at unit who careened through here the other day?" the attaché asked.
"I can't say I rightly recall. They all sound so numbingly alike. The Bloody-Taloned Screaming All-American Eagles and all that macho rubbish. Whatever possesses them to embrace such deafening coinages?"
"I imagine it's a way for them to keep their peckers up when the going turns frightful, wouldn't you say?"
"Right." Sir Timothy drained his cup. "My good man, I never asked which of Her Majesty's regiments enjoyed your service, now have I?" he continued. "Why, the First Ptarmigans."
"Is that right? Now, there's a noble bird, the ptarmigan. Knows when to seek cover. Just like the infantry."
Lieutenent General Sir Timothy Plum enjoyed a hearty laugh with his aide. When it had subsided, he remarked, "Do you know what I heard this morning? Rumors of troop movements near the DMZ."
"Imagine that? I wonder whose?"
"I think the American spy satellites have some novel bugs in them if their lenses detect troop movements from on high."
"Perhaps they are soldier ants. Or Goliath beetles, which rather resemble tanks."
The tent shook with laughter in the windless desert, and when it again died away, the roar and growl of approaching tanks came clearly through the tan-colored canvas.
"I say, hello. Are we on maneuvers?" said Sir Timothy, whipping open the tent flap. His smile froze, cringed and shrank with alarming rapidity.
For he was looking at a line of sand-colored tanks and APCs coming toward them at full gallop.
The aide joined him, a scone crumbling in his half-open mouth. "Those aren't Americans," he said, dripping crumbs.
"I believe they constitute Kuwaiti armor."
"Is there an alert?"
"I do not know."
"We should ask."
"We shall ask," said Sir Timothy, striding out into the open. "Halt. Lieutenent General Sir Timothy Plum here, ordering you to cease."
The line of tanks, which he now saw stretching from east to west, rolled on past them with a determined fury that actually made the Brit's heart quail even though technically it was but a wog maneuver.
Turning their heads north, Sir Timothy and his aide fully expected to see Iraqi forces descending to meet the Kuwaiti countercharge. They did not.
"I do not believe that is a Kuwaiti countercharge that we just witnessed," he told his aide.
"If not that, what then?"
The explanation came a moment later when a limb of the Kuwaiti column broke off and surrounded a unit of white UN Challenger tanks and APCs.
"I do not like the looks of this, Sir Tim," the aide muttered, finishing his scone with nervous bites.
"I think we'd best intervene. This is most unsettling."
They hurried up to the encircled UNIKOM unit and jostled through.
"What is the meaning of this?" Sir Timothy demanded of a Kuwaiti officer in full battle regalia, including bloodred beret and gold-headed swagger stick.
"We are commandeering your armor."
"For what purpose?"
"For the invasion of Iraq, of course."
"Beg pardon. Did I hear you correctly? You fellows are invading Iraq, and not the other way around?"
The Kuwaiti officer flashed teeth like rows of tiny light bulbs. "It is a necessary self-defensive action."
"And pray tell, what necessity necessitates this action?"
"If we do not crush Iraq before they launch Al Quaaquaa, there will be no Kuwait to defend."
Sir Timothy and his aide exchanged blank looks.
"Al Quaaquaa?"
"There is no time to explain. I must have your tanks and your uniforms and your blue helmets."
"I can understand why you might wish to commandeer UN armor—it is done all the time, after all—and it is a matter of supreme indifference to me personally and professionally if you conquer Iraq, but I must object in the most strenuous terms to the confiscating of UN uniforms and helmets. We stand squarely for peace. Not bloodshed."
"You will stand naked for peace or you will taste royal Kuwaiti sand as your last meal."
This seemed quite clear to Sir Timothy, so he surrendered his blue beret and his uniform. They let him keep his underthings, which was jolly decent of them, after all.
And as the newly impressed UNIKOM armor grumbled to life to tear off toward the north, Sir Timothy turned to his aide and shivered under the beating desert sun.
"I say, I shouldn't wish to fight an actual shooting war riding a white charger and wearing a blue bucket on my head, would you, Colin?"
"Whatever could they be thinking, Sir Tim?"
"Who can fathom the wog mentality? Well, I imagine we'll be getting complaints from all quarters after this unhappy day."
"Especially inasmuch as our armor is charged with practice rounds."
"Oh, I say, we really should have warned the blokes, now shouldn't we?" Sir Timothy said.
"Too late now. Shall we see about more tea?"
"I think it a necessity under the circumstances. I fear we are at the very least in for a rough time filling out bloody replacement-armor requisition forms."
"I suppose this means you shall be reassigned once again."
"A bit of a bother, perhaps. But with Generalissimo War-War in charge, we shan't lack for trouble spots to muck about in, now shall we?"
"I hear Haiti is rather balmy this time of year, Sir Tim."
When the NOIWON line rang on his desk at the CIA, Ray Foxworthy knew who would be on the other end before the now-familiar voice announced, "Woolhandler. NSA."
"I'm listening," Foxworthy said guardedly.
"It's called Dongfenghong, or something like that. Translated, it means 'East is Red.' It's Red China's latest secret weapon. We don't know what it is or what it does, we just know that it is."
"How do you know it is?"
"There's a front-page article about it in this morning's Beijing Daily."
"They have a secret weapon and they announce it on their front page?" Foxworthy said. "Why would they do that?"
"Why do we conduct press tours of our nuclear-missile facilities? To let opponent nations know we have them."
Foxworthy said nothing.
"Well?"
"Haven't heard of East is Red."
The NSA duty officer's voice brightened. "Good. I'm going to NOIWON this. It sounds solid."
"Have you heard about the new Mexican terror weapon?"
"What new Mexican terror weapon?"
"They're calling it El Diablo," Foxworthy elaborated.
"El Diablo. Sounds angry. Doesn't it mean 'the Devil'?"
"That's what our linguistics people tell me."
"You NOIWONing it?"
"Don't have to. Our intelligence comes from the Pentagon. By now the President knows about it."
"News to us. What is El Diablo?" Woolhandler asked.
"That's the scary part. Nobody knows. We can only guess."
"Mexico is dirt poor. Can't be a nuke. Or a missile. It's probably a chemical agent."
"Maybe biological," Foxworthy speculated.
"Biological is possible, but I'd go with chemical."
"What the hell's going on? Within the space of days, three different nations are announcing secret terror weapons, and we have Mexico on our exposed asses."
"Something's up for sure."
"You bet. Still going to NOIWON that Chinese thing?"
"Have no choice. It's in print."
Foxworthy sighed. "Let's get the others up to speed, then."
When the National Reconnaissance Office came on the line, the duty officer was breathless.
"This is NRO. Chattaway. I mean Chattaway. NRO."
"Spit it out, Chattaway," Foxworthy said.
"We've been juggling KH-11 satellites ever since the Iraqi troop-movement story got started. And we've confirmed it."
"The Iraqis are on the move?"
"No, the UN."
"Say again?"
"United Nations tanks have crossed th
e DMZ and are moving toward Basra at full gallop. They appear to be backed by elite elements of the Royal Kuwaiti Armed Forces."
The line was deathly silent for the better part of half a minute.
"Let me have you confirm that," Foxworthy said in a restrained tone. "The United Nations is moving against Iraq?"
"Backed by the Kuwaitis."
"On whose authority?"
"It's too early to tell. But our read is they'll be knocking at the gates of Basra within the hour."
"Oh, sweet Christ. It's Gulf War II. We better alert the JCS chair."
Chapter Twenty-six
In his office at the Secretariat of the UN, secretary general Anwar Anwar-Sadat was working the phones. On his desk was a draft resolution calling for the establishment of a UN peackeeping mission on the disputed U.S.-Mexico border.
All he had to do was convene a meeting of the Security Council. To do that, he needed the presence of the Security Council membership. All fifteen members.
Unfortunately none of those ambassadors was taking his calls.
"But this is quite urgent," he was saying. "I must speak with the ambassador."
"The ambassador is in consultation."
"When he emerges, have him call me immediately," said Anwar Anwar-Sadat, who hung up on the Chinese capital and hit the speed-dial button marked Soviet Union. He had never gotten around to changing the label, and given the state of Russia these days, it was entirely possible any change would be premature. Besides, he could never remember what shrinking Russia called itself these days.
Moscow was likewise unavailable. As was Berlin. A call slip placed on his desk informed him that the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was waiting on line four. He scribbled "I am out!" on the slip, and the secretary took the slip outside to brush off the permanent member of the Security Council Anwar Anwar-Sadat least wanted to speak with right now.
As she exited, the under secretary for peacekeeping operations barged in, looking startled.
Anwar-Sadat looked up. "Yes, yes. What is it?"
"Urgent call from the ambassador from Iraq, line three."
Anwar-Sadat frowned like a rock falling into shadow. "I have no time for this. I am trying to reconvene the Security Council. Tomorrow is our fiftieth anniversary, and we have no diplomats for the official reception."
"But the ambassador is calling to surrender."
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