"Yes," said Chiun. He looked down at Ludmilla's flawless skin, shadowed yellow by the blue of the gown. "You are a lovely woman," he said.
She smiled at him again and left her hand on the side of his face. "Thank you," she said. "But beauty is a gift of God; wisdom is an achievement of character."
"That is true," Chiun said. "That is true. Most never see that truth."
"Most never have their eyes fully open," she said. She leaned even closer to him.
"And what of Remo?" Chiun said.
Ludmilla shrugged. The movement almost, but not quite, released her breasts from her gown. "Who looks at the sapling when he stands on the edge of the forest?"
And again Chiun nodded, and as he did, Ludmilla leaned forward and moved her face down to his, searching for his lips with hers. As she found them, she said softly, "I have never been made love to by a Master of Sinanju."
And afterwards, she said-and meant it-"Never before like that."
She lay next to Chiun in her bed, his body still clothed in his red kimono, hers covered by a sheet, and laughed.
"To think of Remo telling me his power came from a magic spring."
"The child likes to joke," Chiun said.
"But the power is Sinanju, isn't it?" she said.
"No, beauteous one. The power is within each person; Sinanju is the key that unlocks the power."
"And you are the Master." She said it in a tone of reverential awe, as if she could not believe that Chiun was with her.
Then she rolled on her side toward him, put her left hand on his face, and said, "Show me a trick. Do something for me."
"Sinanju is not meant for tricks," he said.
"But for me? Just once. Just let me see some of your awesome power. Please?"
"Only for you," Chiun said.
"Remo told me it was vibrations," she said.
"Sometimes it is vibrations," Chiun said. "It is in knowing what you deal with that you make each thing a weapon. Each thing has its own vibrations, is its own central being, and to use it, you must first understand it, then become it."
As he spoke, Chiun used a fingernail to bust open the pillow under his head. He sat up and pulled out two small feathers, each an inchlong piece of fluffy down.
"What could be softer than the feather?" he said. "Yet, it is soft only because we use it for softness. We need not."
Hands moving faster than eye could follow, Chiun raised the two feathers, one in each hand, to his eyes, and then splashed his hands forward toward the opposite wall of the room.
The two small feathers left his fingertips like supersonic darts, hit the wooden wall with simultaneous "pings," and buried themselves into the wood panel where they stayed, vibrating, in the breeze of the overhead air conditioner, like miniature plumes.
"Marvelous," Ludmilla said. "Can I do that? Can I learn?"
"Only after much practice. Much time," said Chiun.
"I have much time," she said, pulling him back onto the pillow next to her. "And I want to learn everything you can teach me."
"And I will teach you," Chiun said. "Things you never even dreamed of before."
Later, Ludmilla had a wonderful idea. Her upset stomach had vanished, so why didn't she and Chiun drive out into the desert and look for a spring, then tell Remo they had found his magic spring. It would be a joke. A wonderful joke, she thought. And if Chiun wanted to change, he could; she would arrange for a car and driver, and meet him in front of the hotel in fifteen minutes.
Chiun looked at her and she could see in his eyes that he wanted to do this thing very much, so without even waiting for an answer, she patted his face again and walked with him to the door.
He stopped in the doorway and looked up at her violet eyes.
"You are a most beautiful woman," he said.
Ludmilla blushed and then closed the door behind him. She had things to do and she didn't need Chiun around. No fool like an old fool, she thought, as she went to the telephone.
Twenty minutes later, she and Chiun were sitting in the back of a Rolls Royce on its way out of Las Vegas on Boulder Highway. Chiun wore a thin black robe.
In the front seat was their driver, a pudgy mustached man, and two other men who, Ludmilla explained, were guides to the desert around Las Vegas. Each had a neck as big as the average man's thigh. They wore hats and stared straight ahead. Ludmilla's eyes looked up and caught the eyes of the driver in the rearview mirror.
Field Marshal Gregory Denia smiled at her. The courtesan had done her work well. First, they would finish this old man, and then even the score with the American, Remo. The courtesan had done very well.
Remo lost $2,350 playing roulette but won $4.00 in nickels playing slot machines before getting back to the hotel, where the first thing he saw was the crumpled note Chiun had dropped on the floor.
I must see you. L.
He would talk to Chiun about that. Intercepting a note obviously meant for Remo, and then just throwing it away. He steamed on his way up the stairs to Ludmilla's room.
There was no answer to his knock, but the door was open and inside, in an envelope, he found another note: this time for him.
Remo. I do not wish to see you again. The old one has shown me what true love is. I am heart and body the woman of the Master of Sinanju. Goodbye. Ludmilla.
Remo crumpled the note and dropped it. His brain whirling in confusion, he spun and looked at the room. The bed was unmade, and Remo could see that it had been used, but not for sleeping.
"Chink bastard. Dirty two timing conniving slant-eyed Korean fink," Remo shouted. He slammed his fist into the wall, splintering the wood panel, and then, the blood rising up in his temples, he walked from the room with a mission in his mind. He was going to find and kill Chiun. Search and destroy.
It took him five minutes to learn that Chiun and Ludmilla had driven out into the desert in a rented Rolls Royce and only five seconds to steal a car to follow them.
Minutes later, Remo was racing across the desert highway, his foot holding the gas pedal down to the floor, the stolen Ford a projectile, moving at 120 miles an hour down the straight as string two lane road.
And ten minutes later he saw the big Rolls Royce parked alongside the highway, and he saw footprints through the sand leading toward a small hill seventy-five yards from the road.
He turned off the key and skidded the car to a stop and was out, on the ground, before the car stopped rocking on its springs.
There were a lot of footprints leading through the sand but Remo was interested only in one pair-those of Chiun's sandals, which scuffed along in the middle of all the other footprints.
Remo took the hill in three giant strides. He was looking down into a natural depression, a bowl in the ground surrounded by an almost perfectly circular hill. Sitting in the sand, his black robe swirled about him, was Chiun. His arms were folded and he looked implacably ahead.
"Dink bastard," Remo shouted and ran down the hill into the natural amphitheater, before it occured to him to wonder where Ludmilla was.
"Rat bastard," Remo yelled again.
Chiun looked up. "I have waited for you."
"And so have we." The voice came from behind Remo. He turned and saw three men and
Ludmilla coming down the hill toward him. The three men carried pistols in their hands.
Remo looked from Ludmilla to Chiun, then back to the woman and the three men.
Two of the men stopped behind Remo and trained their weapons on him, while the third man, Marshal Denia, and Ludmilla walked past Remo and stopped in front of Chiun.
"Ludmilla," Remo called weakly. She did not respond. She did not even look at him. Denia did.
"This is a better catch than I hoped for. First the old man, and then you, American. The spilled blood of the Treska will be avenged."