"Quadruple."
"Your highness, if I could I would."
"All right," the sheik said testily. "Quintuple! But no higher, you bandit!"
"I'd love to take your money," the man said sincerely, "but it's impossible. We just can't deliver an aircraft carrier on such short notice."
"Somewhere," growled Sheik Abdul Hamid Fareem just before he hung up the phone, "there is someone who can." He knew the white was lying. But he would not pay two billion dollars for a mere aircraft carrier. The prince general would have to wait. And the House of Hamid would have to find a way to solve this matter through the Americans.
When, hours later, the Master of Sinanju was announced, Sheik Fareem awoke with a start.
"Show him in," said the sheik, gathering his red-and-brown-striped thobe about his body, for he trembled in anticipation.
And upon beholding the sight of a short, wrinkled visage he had thought never again to see again in life, the sheik wept tears of joy and cried, "Master of Sinanju! Boundless is my joy on this day. For only you can assist me. I am beset my madmen."
"Salaam Aleikim," intoned the Master of Sinanju gravely. "I have come to deal with the madman known as Maddas Hinsein. For he has cost me my only son."
The sheik started.
He said, "Maddas is dead. Which I believed you to be, as well. As for your son, I know only that he was the perpetrator of that glorious deed."
Chiun shook his age-racked head.
"No. The evil one lives. As for my son, he is beyond salvation. For he has fulfilled his ultimate destiny at last. As for me, I have come back from the very Void to deal with these things."
Sheik Fareem compressed his lips into a thin line. His ancestors had come to power with Dar al-Sinanju-the House of Sinanju-by their side. They had waxed powerful under their guidance. Their enemies had fallen like the sugar dates from the palms when the Masters of Sinanju of old had willed it.
Before him stood a man who looked a thousand years older than when last they met less than a decade ago.
The man he had believed dead. Now he resembled a mummy come back to life. There was no spark in his eyes. No vibrancy in his low, squeaky voice.
It was as if all the juices of life had been squeezed from the old Korean, leaving only a steely purpose and no hope, no joy at all.
"What is your desire, friend of my forefathers?" Sheik Fareem asked at last.
"It may be a war is to be fought. You will need a general."
"I have a general, my adopted son. He is-"
"For what is coming," Chiun said, "you will need a general like none to be found in your kingdom. Warriors such as have not trodden these deserts in many generations."
"Name these great ones."
"I," said the Master of Sinanju steadily, "am the general of Hamidi Arabia's salvation. As for the warriors, their name is so dreadful even I dare not speak it to you,"
The sheik touched his chest, chin, and forehead in the traditional salute.
"It shall be as you wish, ally of my forefathers."
Chapter 12
Wang Weilin was the first one to hear the sound.
It began as a distant hum. It was in his ears for many minutes before the eternal thunder-in the years to come, he would refer to the phenomenon in exactly those words-intruded upon his brain.
He was a peasant, was Wang Weilin. He squatted by the side of the road where his Flying Pigeon bicycle had struck the sharp rock that fattened his front tire.
He had no spare and the road was ill-traveled, so Wang had squatted by the roadside to smoke patiently as he awaited a passerby who might assist him.
When the eternal thunder first penetrated his morose thoughts, Wang stood up, casting his narrow darting eyes in all directions.
He saw nothing at first. Then, north, somewhere beyond the Tianshan Mountains, there was dust. Just dust.
"Karaburan," he murmured. But it was not the Black Hurricane of the desert, he realized a moment later.
The thunder swelled. It did not rumble or gobble, or change tone or pitch in any way. It was steady. It drummed. Gods drumming on great iron rice bowls might have produced this thunder.
It disturbed Wang Weilin for some reason. Its very inexplicability was disheartening.
The dust continued to lift. Whatever phenomenon was producing it, it was many miles away. Yet the wind carried some of the dust to his nostrils, and with it an unpleasant odor. It was not an odor Wang would naturally associate with the gods. It was animallike, distasteful. Tigers on the prowl might smell so. Or perhaps, he thought-his superstitious nature asserting itself-so might dragons.
Whatever it was-gods, demons, or dragons-it was following the old Silk Road that Marco Polo had once plied. And it was grinding westward.
And as it passed due north of Wang Weilin, another sound lifted over the thunder.
It was eerie, melodic. Unlike the thunder, this was not a constant sound. It undulated. And could only have been produced by a living throat.
But what throat? Wang Weilin thought, his heart skipping a beat. For the sound was huge, gargantuan, and in spite of its haunting beauty, threatening.
Thinking again of dragons, Wang Weilin threw away his Blue Swallow cigarette and grabbed up his Flying Pigeon bicycle by the handles.
He would push the balky thing all the way back to the village of Anxi, he vowed.
Even though Anxi was due east, in the opposite direction from which he had been traveling.
For if the singing dragon was bound west, Wang Weilin was going east. He did not wish to feed that melodious full-throated song with his mortal bones.
Chapter 13
General Winfield Scott Hornworks was adamant.
"I do not take orders from sheiks; prince generals or . . ." He groped for a polite word. None came. "Whatever the heck you are."
"I am the Master of Sinanju," said the tiny little Asian guy who looked like death warmed over. He wore a kimono of raw silk. It was the color of a shroud. He stood with his sleeves joined together, his hands tucked inside.
"I especially do not take orders from Masters of Sinanju, whatever that may be," Hornworks added.
The old Asian cocked his head to one side. "You are a soldier?"
"Ninth generation. A Hornworks fought with General Washington at Valley Forge."
"A Master of Sinanju stood at the throne of Pharaoh Tutankamen, with Cyrus the Great, Lord Genghis Khan, and others of equal stature."
General Winfield Scott Hornworks' blocky jaw dropped. He shut it. The sand fleas loved open mouths.
"You got me outflanked and outranked ancestrywise," he gulped. He doffed his campaign hat in sincere salute.
They were standing outside Central Command Headquarters in the Star in the Center of the Flower of the East Military Base. Patriot missile batteries ringed the perimeter, to protect against incoming Iraiti rocketry.
The sheik had had a tent erected beside a Patriot radar array for this meeting. They were outside the tent now. Prince General Bazzaz looked lost and unhappy standing beside his adoptive father.
"O long-lived one," he began, "I agree with the infidel general. I do not see the reason why-"
"Silence," said the sheik, chopping off the sentence with a swipe of his hand. "I command obedience." He turned to the American general. "As for you, your President, my ally, has commanded that you defer to the Master of Sinanju."
General Hornworks squared his star-bedizened epaulets. "I gotta hear that from the President himself."
The sheik snapped his fingers. A cellular telephone was slapped into his upraised hand. He worked it briefly, spoke, and then handed it to General Hornworks.
The general no sooner said, "Howdy," than he snapped to attention. "Yes, sir," he barked. "No, sir," he added. "Of course, sir," he concluded. "You got it. In spades."
Hitting the disconnect button, he returned the phone to the sheik. His broad features were sheepish. He swallowed uncomfortably.