The thought of the Englishwoman flashed, unbidden, into his mind. Lying in her bed, the skin of her throat creamy white in the dim light of the reading lamp, her arms extended to him in invitation, a smile on her face. He had never had cause before to question or to criticize the stern New England upbringing that had made him who and what he was: a hard, unyielding, narrow man with an overdeveloped sense of duty and obligation, but if he were ever to question it, it would have been now.
The feel of the rough sofa through his shirt made him think how sleek and inviting were the sheets on Mildred Pensoitte's bed. They would be not be bumpy as this sofa was; her bed would be smooth and slippery . . . her body too.
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No. Stop.
With an effort of will, he forced her out of his thoughts and reached a hand over his head, turned off the lamp by the side of the sofa, and two minutes later was asieep.
Chapter Twenty-Five
They buried Emrys near the cave. H'si T'ang took the arrangement of pine, bamboo, and plum blossoms from the entrance and placed them on the Welshman's grave. No one spoke until Griffith gave a small cry, weaving where he stood.
"Danger." He spoke softly, his eyes fixed on the sky above.
H'si T'ang raised his hands and then tasted his fingers. "He speaks the truth. There is death in the sky."
"Get inside," Remo said. "Hurry."
Griffith pointed to a cloud bank in the distance. It moved toward them at tremendous speed, changing color from gray to black to brick red as it rolled forward, blanketing the sky. "We will not be safe inside," the boy said.
At that moment, a shaft of lightning ripped through the red clouds and struck the cave, blasting a hole into the side of the hill where it stood. Fragments of clay pots flew out of the entrance, along with burnt shards of the grass matting that coated the floor.
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It began to hail. The stabbing pellets hurt Remo.
Hail? Now? It was as senseless an occurrence as the rolling red sky. He forced himself to concentrate. There was no hail. It was the Dutchman. If he could understand that, he would be safe from the visions. But what about the others?
Griffith covered his head. Chiun carefully led H'si T'ang behind a targe boulder and went to the boy. Jilda looked up, stunned, cupping her hands in front of her. They filled with small stones. One struck her wrist, scraping off the skin. Dots of blood appeared on her arms. She threw the pebbles to the ground. "Who is this man who makes it rain stones upon us?" she shrieked. Her face was a mass of bruises.
"It's his mind," Remo shouted above the din of falling rock. He tried to cover Jilda with his own body. "There aren't really any stones. Look at me." There was not a mark on his body. "They only exist if you believe they do. Don't trust your eyes. They aren't real, I tell you."
Griffith whimpered. His neck and arms were covered with blood. Chiun, doing all he could to protect the boy, shook his head. There was nothing he could do against an enemy who killed his victims from inside their minds.
"But they do believe," a voice said from near the cave. The Dutchman was standing on the hill over the entrance. He was smiling. Even at a distance, Jilda could see the terrifying power in his electric-blue eyes.
"I have come for Chiun," he said. "Let him fight me now, Chiun alone."
"I cannot fight you," the old man said. "It is against the laws of Sinanju."
"I'll fight you," Remo said.
"You are nothing to me. To kill you will bring me no satisfaction. It must be Chiun." He waved one arm slowly.
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The stones disappeared. The sky rolled back. The sun shone.
Silently, while he spoke, Jilda picked up her spear. She hurled it so hard that her feet left the ground.
"Devil,"she muttered as the weapon flew toward him.
The Dutchman's hands moved. The spear shattered into a thousand pieces in midair.
"The girl amuses me," he said. "And she is a beauty. Perhaps she will please me later."
"See if this pleases you, scum," she shouted, taking her ax from her belt.
"Jilda-" Remo reached for the ax. Jilda kicked at him.
"He is mine," she said.
She rushed at the hill, stopping suddenly near the cave. The Dutchman watched her.
"Go ahead. Attack," he said, smiling.
Her breath was labored. She clutched the ax tightly. She turned. Her eyes were frightened, her mouth twisted.
"Jilda?" Remo asked, walking uncertainly toward her.
"Stay away," she hissed. "I can't-I don't know what he's doing." She broke into a run. When she was near Remo, she swung the ax with all her force at Remo's neck.
He leaped out of the way. It had been so close that he had felt the wake of the blade.
"Run!" she shouted. "1 cannot stop!" She attacked him again. He struggled with her, but her strength was enormous. She pulled away and swung, screaming, full force at Remo's belly.
He saw the blow coming. At the beginning of the swing, he flattened himself on the ground and rolled toward her, knocking Jilda off her feet. Then, spiraling upward, he kicked the ax away and landed on her hand, hard. He heard the small bones crack, and when she
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moaned with the pain, he felt as if a hammerblow had been struck into his own gut.
"I couldn't let you go on," he said.
She lay on the ground, curled into a ball. The useless hand stretched in front of her. "I know," she said. She hid her face so that he could not see her tears.
Chiun watched it all in horror. He had not expected the Dutchman's power to be so complete.
The laws of Sinanju had prohibited him from killing the man when he'd had the opportunity. He had obeyed those laws. Now he realized that by letting him live, he had unleashed a beast that would destroy them all. Now it was too late to fight him. The Dutchman was too powerful. Remo had been the only hope, but Remo still did not understand that he was Shiva. He, too, had no chance. There was only one thing left to do.
Chiun walked slowly into the clearing. "It is I you want," he said. "Very well. I understand your power. I cannot fight you, for reasons known only to my village."
"Chiun!" Remo shouted. "What are you saying?"
"Take me. Let the others live."
"Oh, no, you don't," Remo said, joining the old Oriental. "You take him on, you take me, too. You might be able to kill one of us in battle, but not both of us together."
"No," Chiun insisted. "If there were even the smallest hope that we could fight him and live, I would take it. But there is none. You've seen what he can do. I am an old man, and have made my peace. Let me go."
Remo swallowed. He looked up at the Dutchman. "You don't get to him unless you take me first," he said.
"That will be no problem," the Dutchman said. From his perch on the hill, he raised both arms, his fingers curved like the talons of a bird of prey. The blue eyes glowed. From them came a wave of pure energy, as powerful as the shock waves from a nuclear blast.
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Remo felt as if the skin on his skull were rolling back with the force. It took all his concentration to remain standing. His shoulders began to shake. His breath came shallowly. He felt a spot in the center of his chest giving way. His heart. His heart was about to burst right out of his body. He wasn't even going to get a chance to fight.
He closed his eyes. No sight, no sound. Nothing remained before him but the gaping hole of the Void.
He thought of Jilda. Her hand would heal in time, even if she couldn't fight anymore. It was just as well. She was awfully beautiful to be a warrior. He only wished he could have met her earlier. It hadn't been enough time. But then, a lifetime wouldn't have been enough time with her.
And Chiun. The pain would be tough on Chiun.
Remo tried to speak, but couldn't. His mind formed the words: I'm sorry I let you down, Father.
The pressure receded. Chiun must have heard him. It would soon be over for both of them.
But the Dutchman's force didn't only lessen. It died altogether. With a deep, involuntary breath, Remo opened his eyes. He and Chiun both stood in the shadow of H'si T'ang.
The old Master had stepped in front of them both to absorb the full power of the Dutchman alone. Chiun made a move to stop him, but H'si T'ang held out his hand.
"I can withstand him better than you," the blind man said.
The Dutchman's face contorted.
"He is weakened," Chiun said, amazed.
While the Dutchman focused his concentration on H'si T'ang, Remo ran silently behind the hill and climbed it swiftly. The Dutchman never turned. Using his strongest attack, Remo sent out both legs in a powerful thrust aimed at the Dutchman's spine.
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The legs swung through empty air. There was no one on the hill.
Below, Remo saw H'si T'ang clutch at his chest and fall. At the same moment, the Dutchman stepped from behind a bush near the old man.
"A mirage," Remo said, feeling his heart sink. The figure on the hill had been no more than the projection of an image in the Dutchman's mind. He had been standing near them all along.
But something was wrong. Chiun wasn't watching the man coming from the bushes. He was bending over H'si T'ang, massaging the old man's chest.
"Chiun! Behind you!" Remo screamed.
But the Dutchman had already prepared his blow by then, and even though Chiun readied himself in an instant, he was too late. The Dutchman's hands moved like lightning, striking two fierce slices into Chiun's abdomen. The old Oriental seemed to fly through the air, arms windmilling. His face registered pain for the first time Remo could remember. He landed face down in the sandy grass.
The thin old body didn't move. Chiun's gown was twisted between his legs, making him look like a strange little doll that someone had discarded. His feet showed.
"Chiun?" Remo whispered, unable to believe the sight before his eyes. Jilda, clutching her broken hand in the other, her face swollen from the rocks that had struck it, screamed in terror. The boy, Griffith, knelt by H'si T'ang, whose legs twitched weakly.
The Dutchman looked expectantly at the ground, then the sky. He examined his hands. He was speaking. A gust of wind carried his words to Remo on the hill.
"It is the same," he said, sounding surprised. "There is no peace from killing him. You promised me rest, Nuihc. What of your promise?"
And far away from all of them lay Chiun, lifeless and
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still. The old man was dead. It had never before occurred to Remo that Chiun would die.
Inside him grew a sadness so deep that his body could not contain it. Remo lifted his head and wailed like a man who had saved all the frights and tears of his life for one moment.
"My father," he called.
It was time to fight the Dutchman. Alone. He walked down the hill to meet his opponent. His last opponent, most likely. If the Dutchman's power was greater than Chiun's, it surely surpassed his own.
The thoughts passed through his mind like wisps of air. It didn't matter. He cast one more glance at Chiun.
There was so little left to lose now.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Smith slid into consciousness. He was not alone. There had been some kind of a light flashing, and now there was someone in the room, and his hand started to move down toward the revolver, which he had hidden under the sofa.
But his hand stopped when it met something smooth and soft. It was fabric-satin-and it was draped over the legs of Mildred Pensoitte.
"Mildred?"
"Shhhhh."
"Are you all right?" he asked.
"Shhhhhh," she whispered again. He tried to raise himself to a sitting position, but she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back onto the sofa.
How long had he been asleep? He glanced at his watch. Less than two hours.
Mildred Pensoitte was wearing a long white satin robe that flickered eerily in the moonlight. Her hands were still on his shoulders, and then she moved closer to him, and then she was straddling him, looking down at him, one leg on each side of his waist.
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"Did you think you were going to survive the night?" she asked. He could see her smiling in the faint light that the bright moon reflected into the room.
"Please, Mildred. We can't."
"We must," she said.
She reached down to open his shirt buttons. The moon emerged from behind a cloud and he saw her smile again, but it was a different smile now. It was a hard and cold smile, and there was no warmth in it. It was a smile he had seen before, many years ago, and she said again, "We must," and her hand went to a pocket in her satin robe, and in the moonlight he saw a knife glinting in her hand. As she plunged the knife down toward his throat, Smith spun and rolled and dumped her off him onto the floor.
Smith sprang to his feet, grabbed his revolver, and ran across the room to flick on the light switch.
Mildred Pensiotte was on the floor, her knife still in her hand. The white robe was open, and her breasts were exposed.
"Is that the knife you used to kill Robin Feldmar?" Smith asked.
"Yes." Her voice was chilled as ice.
"Why?" Smith asked.
"Because she would have talked. She talked too much. You can have cranks around when you're starting up and all you're doing is talking. But when you get to action, to doing things, those people are dangerous."
"The revolution eats its own children," Smith said softly. "When did you know it was me?"
"A few minutes ago. I called the computer at Du Lac College. It said that you were the spy in Earth Goodness. What are you? CIA? FBI?"
"None of those," Smith said. "Why-do they call you B?"
"You know about that," she said with some surprise.
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"I should have known. From the moment you came aboard, all we've had is confusion and death and disorder. I should have known it was you."
"Why do they call you B?"
"Bunny. A childhood nickname," she said.
"I thought it meant Birdie. Feldmar," he said.
She shook her head. "She was too stupid to be real. With her antics, marching around those lunatic college children, as if they counted for anything."
She rose to her feet. The robe hung open over her opulent body. She dropped the knife in front of her on the floor and extended her arms toward Smith and came across the room to him.
"We can still have it," she said. "We can have it all."
She smiled, and Smith remembered where he had seen that smile. It was in a French farmhouse, and the girl who had smiled had been responsible for the deaths of fifteen of Smith's men. She had smiled too, and Smith had killed her.
He concentrated on the smile, and he hesitated, and Mildred Pensiotte's smile grew wider. Her hands reached to her waist and pulled her robe open wide.
The smile. The dead weren't smiling. They were in St. Martin's and Washington, and they would be all over if this woman had her way.
She smiled again and Smith smiled back.
And fired his revolver.
"Good-bye, Bunny," Smith said.
Back in his mid-town office at Earth Goodness, Inc., Smith again called the Folcroft computers.
He punched his code into the triggering device, then signaled: "WHAT HOOKUP OF DU LAC COMPUTER WITH OTHER MAJOR SYSTEMS?"
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The computer reported back: "SYSTEM HOOKED BY MICROWAVE TO CUBAN OFFICE OF KGB."
Smith paused a moment. The Russians had been behind the plot to kill the president. Mildred Pensiotte and, to a lesser degree, Robin Feldmar, had been Soviet plants, spies working in this country to help overthrow it. The awful thing, he thought, was probably that no one would ever know.
He directed the computers: "VACUUM DU LAC," then entered his code and hung up. In moments, he knew, the giant Folcroft computers would be sweeping clean all the memories from the Du Lac computers. Who knew what might be in those files? There might b
e some little bit of information that one day might provide him with leverage he might not otherwise have in dealing with America's enemies.
He looked up a number in his wallet and dialed.
The secretary of the interior answered the telephone himself. He was sleepy, and his voice was thick with exhaustion.
"Yes?" he said.
"This is Smith. Tell the president it's safe to come home."
He hung up and thought again of Remo and Chiun. There they were, off, gallivanting around on a vacation, leaving it to him to protect America and the free world. They'd hear about it when they got back. They'd hear what a hell of a nerve they had leaving all the dirty work for Smith while they were off disporting themselves.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Dutchman groveled on all fours, muttering. "You promised me, Nuihc. You said . . . you said ..."
Remo approached him like a man whose soul had died. His eyes were blank, his face expressionless. He stopped in front of the Dutchman and kicked him in the throat.
The Dutchman rolled over, startled.
"Get up," Remo said. Before the Dutchman could rise, Remo kicked him again.
"I have no quarrel with you," the blond man rasped.
"Think of one." Remo slapped him flat across the face.
The Dutchman stood to full height. "Don't do this," he warned. "I am trying-"
Remo sent two jabs to the man's belly. "I don't care if you fight me or not," Remo said quietly. "As long as 1 hurt you." He slammed an elbow into the man's hip, which sent the Dutchman sprawling.
A mist appeared instantly, settling over the landscape. The hills softened into pastel domes, like melting ice cream.
"And you can save the artwork, too. I know where you are."
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"Do you?" the voice came from behind him. Remo turned. Five identical figures, all the Dutchman, peered at him through the fog. "Where am I, Remo?"
The five figures disappeared. Another materialized beside him. Remo swung at it. It faded into smoke. "Or am I everywhere?" In a flash of light, the ice cream mountain-tops glowed in phosphorescent colors. On the peak of each stood the Dutchman, hundreds of him, like tiny paper cutouts.
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