Jellicoe saw no bubbles and the man did not resist. So Jellicoe held for ten minutes, then released, and rose toward the glittering surface, having earned, he thought, his hundred thousand dollars.
But he stopped short of the light above him. Something was tugging at his flippers. It was Remo. And he tugged downward and when his face was level with Jellicoe's face mask, he smiled and removed the mouthpiece connected to the air from the tanks behind the diver. And as water flooded Jellicoe's lungs, he had a strange thought: he had never had a chance to get rid of the metal spur. And then there was something even more strange. Under water, he thought he heard this Remo say something, something that sounded like:
"That's the biz, sweetheart."
On a cliff over Magen's Bay, Mr. Gordons had stopped to watch the combat beneath clear water.
"That makes negative for water as well as fire as well as metal," he said softly to himself. "If only I were more creative. This new program I acquired at O'Hare Airport, it can be improved. But how?"
He heard something move in the brush fifty yards away and although he could not see it, he could track its direction. It moved faster than men could run and when it emerged from the bushes it stopped. In robes singed dark at the edges was the Oriental.
"Mr. Gordons, why do you persist?" asked Chiun. "What endeavors do we, my son and I, endanger of yours? Tell us so we may avoid them."
"Your existence is what endangers me."
"How? We seek not to assault you."
"So you say."
"So I show. I keep my distance. Without your lackeys near you, I still keep my distance."
"Would you move against me? Attack," said Mr. Gordons.
"No," said the Master of Sinanju. "You attack me, if you dare."
"I have already. With those lackeys."
"Attack me with your person," defied Chiun.
"Are you a person?" asked Mr. Gordons.
"Yes. The most skilled of persons," said Chiun.
"I wondered. I wondered how you knew that he who attacks with himself first, gives away his patterns of attack and becomes the more vulnerable," said Mr. Gordons.
"The question is how do you know, white man," said Chiun.
"It is my nature. By nature, I react."
"The gun and the fire were not reactions," said Chiun.
"A bit of my new creativity," said Mr. Gordons. "It is something I need more of."
"Thank you," said the Master of Sinanju and disappeared back into the thick growth covering the hill rising above Magen's Bay. Neither he nor Remo would have to wait for a later generation of the Masters of Sinanju. Mr. Gordons had given himself away.
CHAPTER SIX
"We attack," said Chiun, and Remo shrugged in confusion for he saw no enemy, as he had seen no enemy when they had left St. Thomas and Chiun had said "We attack," as he had seen no enemy in the NASA Space Center in Houston when Chiun had said "We attack," as he had seen no enemy when the office of public relations at NASA had said:
"The research on the creativity component has pretty well been given up because of cutbacks in the program. It's now non-operative."
"Aha," Chiun had said.
"Does that mean it's closed down?" Remo asked.
"Pretty much," said the public relations man.
"We understood you the first time," Chiun said.
"Horsefeathers," said Remo. According to a brochure on unmanned space flight that they got from the public relations man, the component they sought had been developed in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and by the time their plane had landed, both Remo and Chiun were exhausted from the pressures of flight upon systems more finely tuned and more sensitive than the average person's.
The Wilkins Laboratory, as it was called, was a three-story building, rising from a flat grassy plain, as though someone had stuck an isolated box on a bare floor. It was dusk when Remo and Chiun arrived: all three floors of the laboratory were lit.
"Doesn't look like there's been any cutback here," said Remo.
"We attack," said Chiun.
"What the hell do we attack? First you want to run, then after Mr. Gordons comes after us, you want to attack and I don't see what we're attacking."
"His weakness. He gave us his weakness."
"I already saw his weakness. He moves funny. If I hadn't thought that was him in the water in Magen's Bay, I could have gotten him back in St. Thomas. He decoyed me."
"Wrong," said Chiun. "He bracketed us. To find out what is, he found out what wasn't. Neither metal, nor fire, nor water worked against us. He found this out without risk to himself. But in his arrogance, he told us that he would not leave us alone, so we must attack."
"But you said a future generation, and only when they knew Mr. Gordons's flaws."
"We are that generation. He told me on the cliffs. He lacks creativity. Now this is a place that designs machines for creativity. Mr. Gordons knew about it. That is why he wanted that thingamajig you gave him at the airport in that dirty city. Now we are here. And we attack. You will, of course, take care of the details."
"Well, how are we going to get an attack out of creativity?"
"I do not know machines," said Chiun. "I am not Japanese or white. That's your job. All whites know machines."
"All Orientals don't know Sinanju; why should all whites know machines? I don't know anything about machines."
"Then ask someone. You will learn it quickly."
"I can maybe change a sparkplug, Little Father."
"See. I told you. You know machines. All whites know machines. You fixed the machine with the offensive drama."
"That was just threading a movie projector reel."
"And it will be just figuring out an attack that uses a machines that makes creativity."
"These are space-age computers, Chiun. Not movie projectors."
"We attack," said Chiun, advancing on the building.
"How do we know we'll ever see Gordons again?" asked Remo.
"Aha," said Chiun, clutching a lump of lead that he wore on a thong around his neck. "We know. Inside here is the secret," but he would say no more because while he knew Remo would be good with machines, because all whites were, he was still afraid that Remo might somehow find a way to break the metal spur by which Gordons could track them down. Chiun would keep it wrapped in lead until it was time to call Gordons to join them.
When they reached the front door of the laboratory, a woman's voice, husky with too many cigarettes and dry martinis, asked, "Who's there?" Remo looked for the woman but did not see her.
"I said who's there?" The voice did not sound as if it came over a speaker but when the voice repeated the question, Chiun spotted the source. It was a speaker, apparently of incredible fidelity, without the ring or vibration of normal speakers.
"The Master of Sinanju and pupil," said Chiun.
"Put your hands on the door."
Chiun placed his long-nailed hands flat on the metal door. Remo followed, keeping alert to any possible attack from behind.
"All right, you perspire. You can come in."
The door slid to the right, revealing a lighted passageway. As they entered, Remo and Chiun cursorily checked above and alongside the door. No one.
The passageway smelled strangely like a bar.
The door closed behind them.
"All right. Talk. Who sent you?"
"We're here about a creativity program," said Remo.
"I thought so, you bastards. The rat doesn't dare come here himself. How much did he offer to pay you? I'll top it."
"In gold?" asked Chiun.
"Cash," said the voice.
"If it were gold, the House of Sinanju is at this moment seeking employ."
"Sinanju? That's a town in Korea, right. Just a second. Hold on. Okay, Sinanju, North Korea, House of. A secretive society of assassins, known for exceptional ruthlessness and willingness to hire itself out to any buyer. Said to be the sun source of the martial arts, but little is known of its existence. Nothing is known of its ways or even if it is not just some ancient tale used by the dynasties of China to frighten people into submission. You don't look that frightening, fella."