"I'd like that," the boy said. In his room, Grigori climbed out the window and slid silently to the drifted snow beneath. It was night. The streets were nearly empty of civilians. Only the-soldiers clomp-clomped back and forth across the snow-packed streets, their rifles at
the ready.
Grigori approached one cautiously.
"What do you want?" the soldier demanded.
"There is a traitor to the revolution in my house," Grigori Seminov said.
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After his aunt had been dragged away screaming, Grigori stood before a small mirror in his bedroom and placed the monocle in his eye for the first time. And in the enlarged, fisheye view of himself he saw with satisfaction a cruelty that would make him among the most feared men of the Party.
Seminov breathed deeply as he took in the view of Red Square from the top of the steps leading to Moscow Center. The great revolution must have begun on a day just like this one, he mused. Cold, clear, still except for a distant buzzing in the square. A buzzing that was growing louder.
He squinted through his monocle at the widening cluster of people. He sprinted down the steps. The officials at Moscow Center would not tolerate sudden outbursts of the populace. They knew well what happened the last time the masses were permitted to express discontent with those in power.
"Move aside," he commanded, kicking his way through the crowd. The throng parted, and Grigori Seminov stepped into the inner circle of activity.
The source of the commotion appeared to be two men dancing with one another and yelling in foreign tongues. One of them, jittering and swaying crazily, wore only a pair of American-style trousers and a cotton T-shirt in the twenty-degree October chill. The other, an aged Oriental, was garbed in flowing orange silk robes and clutching at the other angrily.
"Breathe, fool," Chiun shrieked, shaking Remo
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by the shoulders. "I knew we shouldn't have made this trip. No country in the world will hire an assassin who sounds as if he has castanets for joints."
Seminov shouted an order at the two men, the Russian equivalent of "No loitering."
Chiun snapped out the Korean equivalent of "Get away, mongoose dung."
"Will you guys please quiet down?" Remo said in English. "I'm trying to concentrate."
"You are American," Seminov said with disdain. , "Show your papers."
"I don't have time," Remo said. "I'm breathing."
"You will take time, imperialist warmonger," the Russian said, preparing to boot the young American to attention. He never got the chance. Just as he began to pull his foot backward for the swing, Remo's leg shot wildly into the air, of its own volition, and landed with a thwack in Semi-nov's midriff. The Russian's head snapped upward. His monocle popped into the air. As his mouth opened wide to let out a whoosh of breath, the eyepiece spiraled into his gullet. Seminov sputtered it out, his eyes round and furious.
"You will pay for this," he snarled. "You and your Japanese capitalist friend."
Chiun's mouth dropped open. "Japanese? Did I hear this fat person in the horse blanket call me a Japanese?"
"Help me up, Chiun," Remo said, coiling and uncoiling weirdly on the ground.
"Japanese?" he asked again as the twenty-four
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Red Guards came running, their weapons trigger-ready. He walked up to one of the guards, who was kneeling and getting a bead on Chiun. "Stop waving that thing at me," he said irritably. The guard didn't pay attention. That was his first mistake.
He squeezed the trigger. That was his next and last mistake.
In a flash of billowing orange, Chiun leaped into the air and took off the soldier's head with his toe. Another raised the butt of his rifle to lunge at the old man, but gave up when the bayonet on the barrel passed through his own chest.
"Hold, old man," Seminov said in his best field commander's voice. Chiun turned to look at him.
"Perhaps my men cannot kill you. But they can certainly kill that piece of carrion behind you." He nodded toward Remo. "Is that what you wish?"
Involuntarily, Chiun took a step back toward Remo as if to shield him with his own body. The twenty-two remaining guards raised their rifles and took aim at Remo.
"Looks like they got us," Remo whispered to Chiun.
"I hope they keep you," Chiun said, "so I can return to living a life of peace and dignity."
"You two will follow me," Seminov said. He turned to walk away and Remo said, "Hey. You from the Moscow Center?"
"Yes."
"Good. That's what we're looking for. We're filthy capitalist spies."
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"Three of those words aptly describe him," Chiun said. "None of them describe me."
"You will follow me. We will find out who is who," Seminov said.
Chiun snorted at the Russian and walked up the stairs to the white building, close to Remo's side.
But inside the building, there was another cadre of armed guards, and Seminov quickly waved them into position, where they encircled Remo, then slowly shoved him away from Chiun's protection.
"For the white man's sake, you will cooperate," Seminov said. Chiun stared at him, then nodded, and seconds later, both he and Remo were wearing handcuffs and being prodded forward.
"I have captured the enemy agents single-handedly," Seminov announced. "Alert the high commander I am on my way."
"What does this buffalo chip think he is doing now?" Chiun said as he placed Remo into a walking position.
"Go along with it," Remo whispered in Korean. "We've got to get a look at the cells. Gonzalez is probably in here someplace. We can always get out."
"I can get out," Chiun corrected.
Far down a long corridor, two double doors opened onto a large room furnished in Early Revolutionary Russian cinderblock. In the center of the room sat an oversized desk and a swivel chair facing away from the doors.
"Your Excellency, High Commander of the So-
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viet People's Republic," Seminov intoned in Russian, "I bring you two dangerous alien enemies of the state. I caught them single-handedly, at great personal risk."
Chiun's narrow eyes strayed, amused, toward Remo.
"Thank you, Comrade Major," a female voice said as the chair swiveled around to reveal a strikingly beautiful woman. "You may leave, Seminov. I wish to speak to these two alone."
"Yes, Commander." Seminov said. "They speak English." He strode purposefully toward the door.
The high commander's mouth was lush, but twisted into a permanently sadistic sneer. Her wide eyes shone beneath dramatic flared eyebrows, and her hair was pulled into a wavy crescendo high on her head, highlighted by two streaks of white flashing upward from her temples like lightning bolts.
She sat silently for several minutes, studying the tiny, frail-looking old Oriental who had caused all the damage outside and the strange young man who was inexplicably tap dancing on her rug.
Chiun elbowed Remo to stop, but Remo only shrugged. "I can't," he whispered. "It's in my blood."
"Why are you here?" the commander snapped, her accent thick.
"Why are any of us here?" Chiun said serenely. "It is the whim of fate, a fluttering breeze in the void of eternity."
"That was last chance to give information vol-
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untarily," she said. "But no matter. Voluntary information very boring. We here use more interesting methods to find information."
She pressed a buzzer and said something in Russian into her intercom. "I want you to meet someone," she said to the two men.
When the doors opened again, five guards walked in a wedge behind a battered, bruised young man with olive skin and two missing front teeth. His sldn was striped red from flogging, and he had no fingernails. His eyes barely opened in his sagging, bobbing head.