Arabian Nightmare
( The Destroyer - 86 )
Warren Murphy
Richard Sapir
The Maddas Touch
Everything that Maddas Hinsein touched turned to blood as the mad-dog dictator of outlaw Irait pursued his plans of conquest by taking over tiny oil-rich Kuran. Only Remo and Chiun could stop this man who was up to his mustache in gore. But Remo was possessed, slave to his immortal nemesis, the death goddess Kali. And the feeble Chiun was merely a shadow of his former awesome self. Unless CURE's terrific twosome could be restored to their full powers, Maddas Hinsein would turn the whole into one...
Destroyer 86: Arabian Nightmare
By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir
Chapter 1
The entire world knew that Maddas Hinsein was dead.
They had seen with their own eyes the Tyrant of Irait, the sacker of peaceful Kuran and self-styled Scimitar of the Arabs, being assassinated under the gigantic crossed scimitars of Arab Renaissance Square in downtown Abominadad.
CNN had picked up the Iraiti Information Ministry news feeds. The Iraiti government was determined to show the anti-bait coalition-particularly the United States-that it did not fear their armies and sanctions. Moreover, it would not allow the murder of its ambassador to the U.S. to go unpunished. The late Turqi Abaatira had been shipped back to Abominadad in an aluminum coffin, the victim of a car accident, according to an apologetic U.S. State Department, which had reluctantly surrendered the remains.
But when President Maddas Hinsein himself had flung open the coffin to see the ambassador's empurpled face, his blackened tongue draped over his chin, and a yellow silk scarf-the symbol of the American human-shield hostages-knotted tightly around his strangled throat, Maddas Hinsein had ordered two of the most prominent of the so-called "guests under duress" to be publicly executed before the world.
The instrument of this dangerous order was no less opposite directions. And their voices made millions of hands reach for volume-control knobs.
"I am created Shiva the Destroyer; Death, the shatterer of worlds! Who is this dog meat who stands before me?" So howled the assassin.
"I am Kali the Terrible; the devourer of life!" screamed a voice no one could possibly recognize as belonging to Kimberly Baynes. "And I claim this dance!"
Howling, they began to drum their feet in unison.
Then pandemonium broke loose. The reviewing stand collapsed in a splintering ruin. The upset cameras veered in every direction, capturing running, panicked feet, blue sky, and one of the Brobdingnagian steel scimitars as it came crashing free of the huge bronze forearm that held it aloft.
Then the satellite feed went black.
No one outside of Abominadad knew what had happened after that. No one knew the fate of Don Cooder or Reverend Jackman, or of the hundreds of U.S. hostages still held at strategic locations throughout Irait. The world held its breath as it wondered what would be the President's response to this latest Iraiti outrage.
But of one thing everyone was certain.
President Maddas Hinsein was no more.
Chapter 2
"His name is Remo," Dr. Harold W. Smith said into the dialless cherry-red telephone.
"Better refer to him as the Caucasian," returned the President of the United States in a cautious voice. "No telling who might be listening in."
"Mr. President," Harold Smith said in a lemony voice, "I assure you this line is absolutely secure. Absolutely."
"Back to the matter at hand," the President said, still guarded. Smith imagined him in the Lincoln Bedroom, where the dedicated line that connected the White House to Folcroft Sanitarium, the headquarters for CURE, was kept in a nightstand drawer. The tension came across the wire like electricity.
"Sir," Harold Smith said wearily, "I watched the same tape you did. It seemed to me that Remo-"
"The Caucasian."
"Our . . . ah . . . operative assassinated Maddas Hinsein. "
The President's voice perked up. "Does that mean he was a double agent? I mean, that he wasn't a double agent? It looked for a while that he had become Maddas' personal assassin. His face was on all those threatening Iraiti broadcasts."
"Mr. President, I regret I cannot read into the situation any more than I have. We know that Remo apparently fell under Iraiti control shortly after he went over there."
The President asked, "How is that possible, anyway? He was our best hope of averting war."
"I can offer no opinion on that score," said Harold Smith stiffly. What could he tell the President? That Remo Williams, the human superweapon who for two decades had safeguarded America's shores, had all along been, in reality, the unsuspecting avatar for Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction? That he had fallen under the sway of Kimberly Baynes, a thirteen-year-old girl who had somehow blossomed into a mature woman with four arms, and who might now be Remo's counterpart, the human vessel of the goddess of death, Kali?
No, Harold Smith was not going to volunteer that himself. He could hardly believe it. How could he expect the President, who shared his own salt-of-the-earth New England roots, to accept such a fantasy?
Instead he said, "The problem before you, Mr. President, is determining your best course of action in the aftermath of Hinsein's death."
"I was mentally preparing myself to launch an all-out attack if Abominadad went ahead with a public execution," the President said slowly. "But without knowing if Cooder and Jackman are dead too, I can't jeopardize our other humanshield hostages over there. The way it looks to the world, the guy the Iraitis have claimed is a renegade U.S. agent turned around and clobbered their leader. That makes us the bad guys. It's a mess."
"The question is, what will Hinsein's war council do?" mused Harold Smith. "Will they agree to withdraw from Kuran, blaming it all on a misadventure engineered by their maverick president, or will they willingly carry out his deadfall commands?"
"That's the part that scares me up a tree," the Commander in Chief admitted ruefully. "If he did leave behind deadfall commands, what were they? To launch terrorist attacks on U.S. targets? To attack our troops in Hamidi Arabia? To gas Israel?"
"knowing Maddas Hinsein," Harold Smith said soberly, "all three."
"If only we could get a fix on the thinking in Abominadad. "
Smith cleared his throat before saying, "Perhaps we can."
"How? Both your people are out of commission. The old Oriental is dead and the Caucasian is missing in action. Our only assets over there are the hostages."
"Correction. The Master of Sinanju is, contrary to earlier reports, alive."
"What?" The President's modified New England accent went south and acquired a startled Texas twang.
"He is recuperating from his coma," Smith added quickly.
"What coma? I understood he was nuked out by Palm Springs. "
Smith swallowed uncomfortably, his Adam's apple bobbing out of sight. "If you recall, Mr. President, the situation was this: a jury-rigged neutron bomb had been programmed to detonate in Palm Springs. Remo and Chiun-"
"The Caucasian and the Oriental," the President said quickly.
"-were rushing the neutron device out into the desert to save the population. Time ran out. The . . . um . . . Oriental took the weapon from the other man. The neutron device detonated. There was no trace of the Asian found after the radiation abated."
"Then how-?"
"You'll remember that this matter had to do with a real-estate swindle involving weapons of mass destruction. Near the detonation site was the underground condominium development that was at the heart of the entire matter. "
"The Condome, yeah." Smith could visualize his President nodding thoughtful
ly. It was the President who had helped prepare the cover story that explained away the detonation of a nuclear device in the California desert as an Atomic Energy Commission snafu. Through his society contacts, he had arranged with the parents of the student physicist who had built the device to quietly leave the country. And so Sky Bluel was packed off to finish school in Paris.
Smith went on. "Apparently the Master of Sinanju, knowing that this development had accumulated standing water on its lower floors, dropped the neutron device just before it detonated and found shelter in the flooded floors almost two hundred feet below ground. The combination of sand and water shielded him from the worst of the neutron bombardment."
"Amazing. "
"I . . . er . . . suspected that he had survived, and rescued him. He is quite ill, but may recover."
"But he's been presumed dead for months. What on earth tipped you off, Smith?"
Harold Smith hesitated. Could he tell the President that the Spirit of Chiun, Master of Sinanju, had haunted his pupil, Remo, and Smith himself, silently pleading to be rescued from his sandy tomb, until Smith had had the site excavated by the Army Corps of Engineers?
No, Smith decided. He could not tell that to the President. As the head of the supersecret organization that officially did not exist, he was entrusted with one of the nation's most sensitive positions. Telling the truth would put him in the category they used to call Section Eight back in his OSS days.
"I have always been troubled by the lack of a body, Mr. President," he said at last, his vocal cords quivering slightly under the weight of the distasteful lie. "It simply did not occur to me to investigate the Condome site, because it had been sealed with concrete in the immediate aftermath of the detonation."
"I see," mused the President, who was the only man to whom Smith was accountable. "Very good, Smith. The President who selected you for the post you now hold had good judgment-for a Democrat. Too bad they cut him down before he even finished his term."
Smith sighed inwardly. That had been a long time ago. Before Remo. Before Chiun. Before everything.
"It may be that the Master of Sinanju might be able to help us in some way," he went on. "His ancestors-the early Masters of Sinanju-had extensive experience in that part of the world. I will look in on him when we are through discussing the situation."
"Let me know, Smith. I'm going to hold off on a decision until I confer with the other coalition members. I just wanted to check with you first."
"I will be in touch, Mr. President," said Harold Smith, replacing the cherry-red receiver. He then gave his cracked leather executive chair a turn. Rarely oiled ball bearings squealed and grumbled until he found himself facing a plate-glass window of one-way glass and a panoramic view of Long Island Sound and the colorful sails of summer in America.
Dusk was not long off. Summer was on the wane. It seemed, even as he looked out upon the peaceful waters off Rye, New York, where sails luffed and unseen keels etched unreadable signatures on the clear blue slate of water, as if the world was holding its breath.
A vast multinational army stood poised on the border of friendly Hamidi Arabia and occupied Kuran. To the north of that stripped and conquered land, the outlaw nation of Irait, hemmed in by unfriendly powers, isolated by scores of UN resolutions and sanctions, sat like a nuclear core about to go critical from the mounting pressure.
The coalition arrayed against Irait was too fragile to hold for long, Smith understood. The Germans, Chinese, and Jordanians were secretly dealing in munitions and circumventing that supposedly ironclad blockade. The French were showing signs of collaboration. The Hamidis were growing nervous. Worse, the Syrians were putting out feelers to Abominadad that they might entertain switching sides if the U.S. went on the attack.
And the biggest wild card of all, the Israelis, were dusting off their Jericho missiles for a preemptive strike. No one could blame them, but once Irait unleashed its awesome arsenal of mass destruction, civilization might not be able to pick up the pieces for a thousand years.
Harold Smith removed his rimless glasses and brushed tiny dust motes from the immaculate lenses. He had noticed that in his advancing age these tiny things bothered his weak eyes. Too many long hours hunched over a computer screen-scanning his vast data bank for incipient danger signals, guarding the nation from the forces that would twist the Constitution against the land that had birthed it-had made his gray eyes hypersensitive.
A freak of glancing light made the glass window dimly reflective. Smith stared at his own pinched, lemony features, took in the grayed hair that was only a shade or two lighter than his three-piece suit, and understood that the world was poised at a crossroad in history. If all went well, a new world order would emerge in the coming decade. If not, a new Dark Ages loomed. CURE would be needed more than ever-and he was an old man with failing eyes and no enforcement arm.
Smith gave the lenses a final brush, replaced them, and heaved his lanky Ichabod Crane body out of the chair.
He strode wordlessly past his busy secretary and took the elevator to the third floor.
The Master of Sinanju was in the sanitarium's private wing.
Smith knocked politely on the door.
A cracked and querulous voice said, "Enter, O Emperor."
Smith suppressed a start. When he had last looked in on the Master of Sinanju, he was a sunken shell, seemingly clinging to life by the thinnest of threads.
Yet through the heavy oak door Chiun had recognized Smith, whom he called emperor because in the five-thousand-year history of the House of Sinanju, no Master had ever served one who was not royalty-except in disgrace. And Chiun, the reigning Sinanju master of this century, refused to acknowledge that he was any less great than his predecessors.
Thus Smith was Emperor Smith, sometimes Harold the Generous. Other times, Mad Harold. He bore it in stoic distaste, because if there was one thing he had learned since the day he had hired Chiun to train a Newark beat cop named Remo Williams to become CURE's enforcement arm, it was not to directly disagree with the Master of Sinanju.
Clearing his throat, Smith opened the door and stepped in.
Chiun lay under the white sheets, his birdlike head resting on the pillow. No muscle seemed to move on his frail exposed arms. Only the eyes, as hazel as mahogany buttons, showed life. They flicked in Smith's direction.
"How are you feeling, Master Chiun?" Smith asked as he approached the bed.
"As well as can be expected," said Chiun, putting a dry rattle in his voice that had not been there before.
Catching the prompt, Smith played along.
"Is there something wrong?"
"The nurses are brutes," Chiun croaked. "Except for the one who personally prepares my rice. She should be allowed to live."
"It is against Folcroft policy to execute the nurses on the basis of poor performance," Smith said soberly.
"I would accept a caning, if it were severe enough."
"Corporal punishment is out of the question. But if you are insistent, I can have them terminated-I mean let go," Smith added hastily.
The Master of Sinanju closed his eyes wearily. "Yes, by all means let them go. Over a precipice."
Smith examined Chiun's head with a sinking feeling of despair. The puffs of hair over each seashell ear seemed dull and gray, the wisp of a beard that curled from his chin thin and insubstantial as incense. The aged face, like an amber raisin, was a network of radiating wrinkles, the closed eyes sunk in their bony orbits as if receding into death and corruption.
Perhaps it was that the Master of Sinanju was still recovering from his months of coma suspended in a dark body of stagnant water like an insect larva. Possibly it was because Smith had only recently learned that Chiun had turned one hundred, but the old Korean seemed far, far older than before. He looked helpless beyond words, in fact. Smith despaired of the future of the organization he helmed.
"The nurses told me you watched the transmission from Abominadad," Smith said carefully.
No response.
"You saw what happened to Remo."
Chiun's papery lips thinned in a bloodless line.
Smith pressed on. "Do you think that Remo can be salvaged?"
The pause was long before the answer came. "No."
"Does that mean you would not undertake such a task?"
"I am an old man, and very ill. The task before me is to become well. There is no other objective possible. Or desirable."
"It was not Remo's fault that he did not understand your . . . appearances."
"You understood," Chiun said disapprovingly.
"I was not as emotionally involved as Remo," Harold Smith explained. "He interpreted your repeated gesture of pointing to the ground as indicating his feet. He thought you were trying to tell him that he walked in your sandals now."
"My spirit appeared to him four times," Chiun intoned. "He did not understand because he did not want to understand. He covets my title. I have given up my retirement years to train a pale piece of pig's ear, and when I needed him most, he pretended to be a tree ape and scratched his head in puzzlement." He turned his wizened face to the wall.
Smith decided to change his approach.
"I have just been on the telephone with the President of the United States."
"Hail to the chief," Chiun muttered.
"He was wondering what insights you might have," Smith went on. "Your ancestors worked for the Iraitis when they were the Mesopotamians."
"Bong worked for them. Bong the Worthless. He had alienated the Persians and the Egyptians, and was forced to make do with inferior clients."
"Ahem. They are entrenching themselves in occupied Kuran."
"Worms also dig holes."
"They refuse to knuckle under in the face of overwhelming economic ruin."
"They have always been poor. How much poorer can they become? It is all the same to those barbarians."
Smith listened to the bitterness of the old Korean's voice. He understood it. The Masters of Sinanju had always shouldered a cruel burden, hiring themselves out as assassins and protectors to the thrones of antiquity, because the village of Sinanju, situated on the bleak rocky shores of modern North Korea, could not support itself through fishing or industry. In the bad years, they drowned the children. It was called "sending the babies home to the sea."
Arabian Nightmare td-86 Page 1