"What for?" Remo asked, gripping the general by the eye sockets. His body contorted in pain, his useless arms flailing helplessly each time Remo yanked his head backward.
"To see—to see the sheik," Elalhassein groaned.
"Which sheik?"
"Which sheik," Chiun mocked, pulling his fingers out of his ears. "Remo, your stupidity is unfortunately even greater than your hatred of serenity. I see that as usual I must rectify this matter myself." With a gentle tug, he removed the general fr©m Remo's grasp and tossed him floating into one of the windows of the now-decimated house. Within seconds his body was riddled with the bullets of the Vadas-sar soldiers, his limbs jerking with their impact, his blood spurting in all directions.
"Silence!" Chiun screeched.
The soldiers stopped at once.
The sudden silence settled upon them caressingly. Chiun's eyelids fluttered, and a smile spread over his face. "Idiot," he said walking away, "there is only one sheik in Quat, and he is of the same name as his father and his father's father and all of the
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lowly, talkative, meat-eating ancestors before him." Remo jogged to catch up with him. "Well, if you don't mind, seeing as I don't happen to know every ruler who ever welched on a deal with Sinanju, how about letting me in on the sheik's name?"
"It is inconsequential. Throughout the centuries of their existence, the Quati could never afford the services of a Master of Sinanju. And led as they have always been by the sheik Vadass, they never
will."
Remo stopped in his tracks. "The sheik what?"
"Vadass. It is the name of that so-called royal family of camel herders."
Remo remembered the swarthy officers of Fort Vadassar, who spoke their strange language at the press conference, and he recalled the dying words of General Arlington Montgomery: "Vadassar . . . They're going to kill us all." He broke into a run. "Chiun, we've got to get to the airport," he said.
"Where are we going?"
"To Quat. Smitty was right. This army base is about as American as Omar Khayyam. Whoever this Sheik Vadass is, I've got a hunch he's pulling the strings of all these puppet soldiers."
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Twelve
The ancient walled palace -of Sheik Vadass contained one-thousandth of one percent of the country's population and 99 percent of its income, owing to a longtime national policy of taxation whereby subjects not in some visible stage of starvation were executed as traitors and their holdings confiscated. The policy was much admired throughout the rest of the developing world. At their annual meeting in the main casino in Monte Carlo, the International Association of Freedom-Loving and Non-Aligned Nations invited the sheik to attend and to address their members on agrarian reform and redistribution of wealth, some of them not yet having figured out a way to get every last coin in their nations. Sheik Vadass did not answer their request. The association passed a resolution calling hún a tool of imperialist capitalist Zionism. It ordered a copy of the resolution suitably inscribed and mailed to him, along with a private letter that said they would rescind the resolution if he came and talked to them the next year. He ignored the resolution and the letter. He ignored everything. Nothing came out of Quat. No
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export. No cash. No natural resources. Not even a breeze.
As Remo and Chiun approached the stone walls on camelback, their guide, a wizened old man dressed in only a loincloth, brought the beasts to a halt.
"We are near the entrance to the Sacred Palace of Vadass," the old man said. "I may go no further, lest I defile the perfect beauty of the palace with my presence. I beg to take my leave here, out of sight of the palace guard."
"I guess they'd grab whatever we paid you for the trip," Remo said.
The old man shrugged. "It is the law of the land."
"I am familiar with your laws," Chiun said. "That is why we are paying you with the contents of our traveling bags. They are filled with food." Chiun pointed toward the camels, laden with heavy lacquered trunks.
The man's face brightened. "All these, sire?"
"AU," Chiun said, smiling broadly.
"That's a nice gesture," Remo said.
"All but that red one," Chiun amended, "and the black one."
Remo and the old man unloaded the two trunks for Chiun.
"And the blue one."
"Is this yours, too?" Remo asked, touching a flat yellow box.
"Ah, yes. That is for my sashes. Also the violet."
The camel snorted, having been relieved of all but two cardboard boxes roped together across its back.
"The rest is yours," Chiun said grandly.
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The old man bowed again. "Many thanks, sire," he said and led the camels away.
"You know, Little Father, it's not exactly easy to sneak into a palace with five steamer trunks," Remo observed.
"Nothing is easy for the slothful."
"You're a real morale booster," Remo said, slinging the largest of the trunks over his shoulder before scaling the wall. He pressed his fingertips into the rough surface and edged upward with his toes, constantly shifting his balance to accommodate the wobbling of the trunk.
"Slow," Chiun said, clucking disapprovingly, "very slow."
"I'm doing my best, Chiun."
"And if a tribe of desert killers were to come running toward you wielding spears, would doing your best prevent them from attacking?"
"If, if, if," Remo said, reaching the top of the wall and sliding silently down the far side with the trunk. "How hypothetical can you get? You're a worrywart, Chiun."
Leaving the trunk on the inside of the wall, he scaled it easily. "If anybody came this way chucking spears at us, then believe me, Little Father, I'd come up with something." He hoisted the second of the large trunks over his shoulder and again began the arduous ascent up. the wall.
Chiun smiled. "I am pleased to hear your assurance," he said.
"Why?" Remo asked.
"Because here they come."
From the far end of the wall, a band of small brown men wearing loincloths and turbans and
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carrying long spears turned the corner and rushed toward Remo and Chiun.
"Oh, hell," Remo said.
"Just do your job. I will distract these hooligans."
As the first of the spears flew toward Remo, who was carrying a trunk across the top of the wall, Chiun jumped high in the air to intercept it with his forearm. With his leg, he kicked another spear harmlessly out of the way. The small brown men came closer, their weapons hurtling through the air. Chiun knocked them away easily, his robes billowing as he leaped to protect Remo from the metal-tipped spears.
"Couldn't we just leave one trunk behind and get into the palace? We could have room service pick it up later."
"Silence, lazy one. When the Master of Sinanju requires your suggestion, he will ask for it." With one hand, Chiun grabbed the last of the flying spears and turned it on the empty-handed warriors. They ran shrieking in the opposite direction.
Chiun poised the spear delicately between his fingers and let it fly with a supersonic crack that filled the air. It entered a brown back, slid through the man's body and continued in its course, impaling two others and depositing the bodies on two others with a bone-crushing thud.
As Remo carried the last of the trunks over the wall, Chiun charged the retreating band. Amid wans and dying moans could be heard the cracking and snapping of bones and joints as the bodies piled up in a formless heap. Within minutes, all that was left of the attackers was a bloody pool in the sand filled with random arms and legs and open, unseeing eyes.
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Then, lifting himself lightly off the ground, Chiun adhered himself to the wall and climbed up like a spider. He met Remo on the other side, where the desert had been transformed into lush greenery watered by sprinklers.