Chiun emerged from his room with trouble lines engraved in his flesh, and he strode right up to the hyacinth macaw.
“Say it again, bird.”
“There once were some nasty loud boys…” The bird recited the limerick again.
Chiun’s jaw trembled, like the face of a very old man.
“Little Father?” Remo asked.
“Him. He is awake. It is the warning the bird came to deliver, Remo. In his ancient city beneath the pacific seas he is no longer dreaming. Remo, he is awake!”
Remo’s alarm heightened. Chiun might be easy to irritate, but not to frighten, and right now he looked frightened. “Who is awake?”
“Him,” the bird squawked.
“Him.” Chiun nodded.
“Does this have something to do with Jack Fast?”
“The worst of the pack,” the parrot repeated.
“We never should have left him there,” Chiun said. “I knew what that place was when I read the markings on the stone with my fingers.”
Remo struggled to catch up. “You mean the underground river mouth where Jack Fast went in? Is that the place we’re talking about?”
“One of the communication channels. A speaking tube, transversing the crust of the earth.”
A speaking tube doing something through the earth. The concept collided unpleasantly with the concept of an ancient city under the Pacific Ocean where something was no longer asleep. Remo had dived the Pacific various times, but the memory of one dive haunted him still.
“Chiun, during my Rite of Attainment—”
The old man and the purple bird cocked their heads at him, wordlessly scolding him to silence.
“Yes, my son,” Chiun said. “It is him, but at that time he was sleeping. Now that he is awake, who knows what he might compel us to do.”
About the Authors
Warren Murphy’s books and stories have sold fifty million copies worldwide and won a dozen national awards. He has created a number of book series, including the Trace series and the long-running satiric adventure, The Destroyer.
Richard Ben Sapir worked as an editor and in public relations before creating the Destroyer series with Warren Murphy. Before his untimely death in 1987, Sapir penned a number of thriller and historical mainstream novels.
