"It is missing something," he mused.
"What?" asked Hornworks acidly. "A propeller beanie?"
The Master of Sinanju went to a desk drawer and removed a pipe cleaner, which he twisted into a corkscrew shape. Returning to the decurion, he affixed it to the pink seat of the suit.
"Now you done it," Hornworks complained. "You just punctured that man's protection. The suit's integrity is shot now."
"This is how you shall outfit your legions for the taking of the enemy limes."
Praetor Hornworks wrinkled his sweat-smeared brow. "Limes?" He searched his memory. "Oh, yeah, the frontline troops. My Latin is still rusty. We gonna laugh the enemy into submission, are we?"
"You are obviously an unimaginative lout. Summon the sheik and his son."
"Sure. Just let me put on my own gas mask. That dang Ay-rab has taken to bathing in Aqua Velva lately."
A moment later, Sheik Fareem and Prince Imperator Bazzaz started through the doorway.
On the threshold they came to a dead stop, their gaze drawn automatically to the ludicrous pink figure of the decurion. Their sloe orbs flew wide.
"Allah!" the sheik cried, clutching his brown-and-red robes.
"Blasphemy!" echoed Bazzaz. "Khazir!"
Faces filled with fright, they backed away. The door slammed. Their frantic feet could be heard receding the full length of the corridor.
The Master of Sinanju turned to Praetor Hornworks, asking, "Do you understand now?"
Praetor Hornworks' chin did not quite touch the rug, but it hung slacker than a discarded marionette's jaw. With equal woodenness he pivoted toward the startled decurion.
"Son, think you can whistle the 'Bridge over the River Kwai'? Let's hear a few bars for your kindly praetor."
An hour later, the Master of Sinanju strode toward a waiting Apache helicopter gunship.
"There's your Apache," Praetor Hornworks informed him.
"He looks like a Nubian," Chiun said, noting that the pilot was black.
"The LME's are all aboard. The pilot has orders to stick with you until the job's done and get you back in one piece."
"We will return separately. For I will continue on to Abominadad alone."
The Apache's rotors began whining in a gathering circle. Sand kicked up.
"What's up there?" Hornworks wanted to know.
"The man you wish me to decapitate."
"How you gonna do that without calling in the B-52's?"
"By calling another number entirely," said the Master of Sinanju, stepping into the rising rotor wash as if into a desert sandstorm. "Which I have done."
Chapter 30
In the sleepy village of Sinanju, poised over the cold. waters of the West Korea Bay, an unfamiliar sound arrived with the morning sun.
It brought the villagers from their fishing shacks and mud huts. Dogs barked. Children raced to and fro, as if to discover the source of the insistent bell under a rock or buried in the eternal mud that even the bitter cold of winter never completely hardened.
One man emerged from his hut with sleepy determination, however.
Stooped old Pullyang, caretaker of the village of Sinanju, Pearl of the East, Center of the Known Universe, trudged up the steep hill to the House of the Masters, which perched like a gem carved of rare woods on the low hillock that dominated the otherwise ramshackle village.
He muttered imprecations under his breath as he knelt before the ornate teak door, touching two panels with his forefinger. A concealed lock clicked. He removed a panel that revealed a long dowel of wood.
Only after old Pullyang had removed this obstructing dowel could the door be opened safely.
He passed into the close, musty atmosphere, where the insistent ringing continued more loudly.
A tall black object reposed on a low taboret. Pullyang knelt before it in wonder. The rings continued, spaced apart, but untiring. He saw that the source of this ringing was like a candlestick with an ugly black flower sprouting at the top. The object was of a dull black material, like ebony.
Old Pullyang searched his mind for the proper ritual.
"Ah," he murmured, remembering. Speak to the flower and listen to the pestle.
He took up the candlestick, plucking the pestlelike object from the forked prong from which it hung. He clasped this to his ear and lifted the ugly unscented flower of a thing to his mouth, as he had been instructed so long ago.
The bothersome ringing instantly ceased.
Pullyang spoke. "Yes, O Master?"
A voice buzzed from the pestle. Pullyang listened.
"But . . ." he began. "I did not hear that you were dead. Yes, I know that you are not sojourning with your ancestors. I-"
Wincing, he flinched from the sharp quacking voice emanating from the ear device.
"Immediately, O Master Chiun," he said.
He replaced the device and went in search of a specific item in the dim room.
Around him stood the treasures of the ages. Fine silks. Gold in all manner of shape and form. Jewels in jars, in heaps, spilling from silken sacks, lay in profusion. Coins bearing the likenesses of emperors of renown and obscurity were stacked in an open chest, segregated into two piles-those who paid on time and those who did not.
The object of the old Korean's search hung in a place of honor.
It was a sword. Over seven feet long, with a thin blade that flared into a broad spade-shaped point.
The hilt was encrusted with exquisite emeralds and rubies.
Taking care not injure himself, old Pullyang took the long ornate sword down from its silver pegs. Gingerly he bore it to a long ebony box and placed it within.
The interior of the box was molded to accept the sword. He clapped the lid shut and threw two brass hooks into eyelets, securing but not locking the box.
Then, after heating a bowl of wax, Pullyang affixed a seal atop the box. It was a simple device, a trapezoid bisected by a slash mark.
It was, he knew, better than the securest lock, more valuable that the most expensive stamp, and more fearsome than any written warning against theft.
It was the seal of the House of Sinanju and it would ensure that the sword reached its destination.
With a sharp stick dipped in the hot sticky wax, Pullyang inscribed the destination on top of the box:
TO PRESIDENT MADDAS HINSEIN PALACE OF SORROWS ABOMINADAD, IRAIT
Then he went in search of a messenger who would go to the outside world and summon a lackey of the North Korean government to start the sword on its way.
Chapter 31
Saluda Jomart belonged to the Pesh Mergas. In Kurdish this meant: "Those Who Face Death."
For hundreds of years the Kurds had suffered at the hands of the Arabs and Turks. For a century they dreamed of establishing a new Kurdistan in the north of Irait. For thirty years they had been at war with Irait.
The cruel decrees of Maddas Hinsein were only the latest oppressor, but as oppressors went, Maddas was especially wicked. Not content to exterminate the Kurds through bloodshed and cruelty, he had unleashed his death gases upon simple Kurdish villages.
Saluda had nearly died from such terror when the Iraitis had attacked his home village in the Behinda Valley.
In those days, he had been the commander of an entire surlek-a company of one thousand men. After the gas had been blown away, leaving only black-skinned corpses, he was able to muster but a lek of 350 Kurds.
Now, after the conquest of Kuran, he was down to a mere pal. But fifty men. The others had been forcibly conscripted into the Iraiti Army. It was a final cruelty-to be forced to fight for the oppressor.
Still, Saluda looked forward to the day when these very Kurds would become vipers in the bosom of the oppressor who dared proclaim himself as modern Saladin-knowing that Saladin had been, not an Arab, but the mightiest of all Kurds.
Saluda crouched in the crags of a mountain, cradling his 7.98 mm. Brno rifle-which he had pried from his valiant father's dead hands after a firefight-when the sound of a helicopter assaulted his ears.