"Go ahead," Remo said. "Kill the son of a bitch."
Denia cocked his revolver and pointed it at Chiun, who sat still only six feet away from him, his arms still folded.
"Chiun," Remo called. But Chiun did not answer, and Remo suddenly realized the truth. Chiun was going to let himself be killed.
"Chiun," he yelled again.
"Only one can save my life," Chiun said finally.
"I'll save it," Remo said. "I'll save it. Just for the pleasure of killing you myself, you two-timing fraud."
Chiun shut his eyes. "The House of Sinanju has lived on a frail thread for thousands of years," he said. "If it must be broken now by a Master I have chosen and I have trained, then these eyes will not see it. I welcome this Russian death."
As if to oblige, Denia raised his pistol at arm's length before him, taking aim at Chiun's forehead. Remo saw Ludmilla reach into her handbag and remove her cigarette case and begin to light a cigarette.
"I'll save it," Remo yelled. "I'm going to save it and then I'm going to wring your scrawny neck."
He lashed back with both feet, kicking up and out. He felt the backs of his shoes crack into two gunbearing hands. His own hands hit the sand and Remo pulled his weight up and forward, then slammed back with the toes of his feet into two throats. He knew without turning that both men were dead, and he used their throats for a toehold to break across the sand toward Denia and Chiun and Ludmilla.
"Gregory," Ludmilla said when she saw Remo coming toward them. Denia turned and pointed his pistol at Remo who stopped, ten feet away, apparently neutralized by Denia's gun.
"So these are the tricks of Sinanju," Denia said with a smile. "In some other age, American, I would have liked to learn them." He sighed heavily. "But this is not the time or the place."
He squeezed the trigger and fired a shot at Remo. At ten feet, it missed. Remo had slipped off to the left, and now he was standing motionless in a new spot. Denia fired again, and missed again, and now Remo was moving slowly across the sand toward him, high on his toes, scurrying, slipping, and sliding, and Denia fired again and again and again and… click! The revolver was empty, and Remo made one final move in, plucked the revolver from Denia's hand, and replaced it in the Russian spy's throat. It went in barrel first and Denia coughed, as if he had swallowed a piece of food down the wrong tube, and then he reached for his throat but the gun butt got in his way. His hand closed on it, and it looked as if he had just punctured his own throat with his own gun, and then he exhaled, a single loud hiss of air, and fell heavily onto his side in the sand.
Chiun opened his eyes and saw Remo towering over him. Remo rocked back and forth on his feet as if building up enough inertial energy to strike.
"You're dead, Chiun," he said. "You made love to her. My woman. How could you?"
"It was easy," Chiun said mildly. "She asked me to. She would have asked anyone to, if she thought they could give her a way to kill you."
Remo blinked, then looked from Chiun to Ludmilla. She shook her head at him. "He lies," she said. "He lies. He came to my room and took me by force. It was awful. Terrible."
Remo looked back to Chiun who still sat motionless in the sand. "Ask yourself, Remo. What are these Russians doing here? Who were they sent to kill? Who led them to you and to me?"
"Enough of this, Remo," Ludmilla said. "Kill this old fool and let us be off. In Russia, you can have a new life with me."
Remo hesitated. His hands clenched and unclenched.
"Do it now, or I leave," Ludmilla said. "I will not stand here burning in the hot sun waiting for a fool to make a decision." She flicked her gold lighter and raised it to the cigarette at her lips.
Remo looked down at Chiun. His hands were folded in his lap; his eyes were closed, but his face was tilted upward, and his throat was a target as open as an Irish drunk's mouth. A toe shot would take him out for good. Rip out the throat and leave him in the sand.
"I'm waiting, Remo," Ludmilla said. Remo still hesitated, and Ludmilla walked past him to the body of Marshal Denia. "If you won't do it, I'll do it myself." She picked up the empty revolver and turned to aim it at Chiun.
His left arm flailed out around his body, and the side of his hand came up, hit into the end of Ludmilla's gold cigarette holder and slammed it back into her throat. She looked at Remo with large violet eyes, made larger by shock and surprise, then she smiled at him the smile of sudden joy-but she still didn't have it right, and she died.
Remo dropped to his knees and buried his face on Ludmilla's body. He wept. Chiun rose to his feet and moved silently to Remo and patted him on the shoulder.
"She wanted only to kill you, my son."
With almost invisible pressure, his patting motion turned into a grasp that lifted Remo up from the sand and placed him on his feet.
"Come," Chiun said. Still holding Remo's shoulder, he walked him away toward the cars behind the small hill.
At the top of the hill, Remo looked down at the body of Ludmilla and his voice broke again.
"I loved her, Little Father."
"How long are you going to hold this against me?" Chiun asked. "Am I going to hear nothing but complaints for the rest of the afternoon?"
A week later, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, which had given the Secretary of State and the CIA Director a tough going-over behind closed doors, was called to the office of the President of the United States.
The President dumped out a manila envelope containing some two dozen passports. He looked around the room at the thirteen senators who sat in soft leather chairs facing his desk.
"Those are the passports of twenty-four American agents who have been killed since you clowns began meddling with our intelligence setup."
The chairman of the committee began to rise to protest. The President of the United States put a large sinewy hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into his chair.
"Sit still and shut up."
The President dumped out another envelope filled with passports.
"Those are the fake cover passports of the Russian spies who killed our men. They're dead now, too."
He looked slowly, around the room, meeting and holding every man's eyes in turn.
"Now you can make something of this if you want to. It's your right to do that. But let me tell you something. Mess with this and I'm going to hang all your asses on a garage door. When I'm done telling the American people how you were responsible for twenty-four murders, you'll be lucky not to be indicted yourself. For murder. You got it?"
No one spoke.
"Any questions?"
No one spoke.
Three days later, the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee decided unanimously that there was no substance to the reports of major espionage activity in Western Europe by the United States and decided to drop its planned investigation.