"But why don't we just off them?" asked Joan.
"Because it is written that all must be quiet while the typhoon roars."
She looked puzzled. "I know I'm not supposed to ask questions, but what does that mean? About the typhoon?"
"You have done well, so I will tell you. The typhoon that has now come is dangerous in any alley or room or building. That is why we stand here this sunny day in the middle of a football field. When one speaks to our typhoon, one does not send a telegram or write a letter or make a telephone call. He sends the message in the way it will be understood. A sign that another typhoon has passed. Perhaps a chip on a rock that could only be made by the same training. A fat man and a thin man to show that the extremes of weight are no problem. They are an offering, their lives are."
"And the dead animals?" Joan asked.
"That is a secret," said the Oriental with that same superior smile. "It is a revolutionary secret."
"And I'm sharing it. With a real revolutionary. Not just some talkers. I mean, I'm really in it."
"You are really in it," said the quiet Oriental. There was that smile again.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dr. Harold Smith sat before the console of the computer outlet in Folcroft Sanatorium, a vast estate on the Long Island Sound, whose employees thought it to be a research center-all the employees but one. That employee-Dr. Smith-could, by pressing his computer keys, pull from its memory banks information on all types of crime, domestic and international, that could threaten the United States. With a telephone call, he could place into the field hundreds of agents to gather information for CURE, an organization they did not know existed.
Now, as Smith sat before his console, he did not know what button to press or whom to call. He was bothered. Was he all right? Yesterday, he had thrown an ashtray at a secretary. And every call from Remo asked if he were all right. Today Remo had questioned him about the advisability of sending in other personnel to Patton.
"Why the hell couldn't you wait, Smitty? What's wrong with you?"
Well, he couldn't wait. The world was ready to take another major step toward peace with the signing of the antiterrorist pact, and any more terrorist action could shatter that peace. Dr. Smith had an obligation to everything he ever learned, everything he ever loved, to make sure that peace happened.
"I'll decide that, Remo," he had said. "I am feeling perfectly fine."
And then Remo had told him the riddle. It came from Chiun, who often spoke in riddles, but did this riddle really have a meaning? A typhoon is silent when another typhoon passes? What did that mean?
A buzzer sounded in Smith's desk. Smith removed the special phone from the top drawer and slumped back into his soft rocking seat.
"Yes sir," he said.
"Are congratulations in order?" the familiar voice asked,
"For what, Mister President?"
"Didn't your special man get to the headquarters of those terrorists?"
"Yes sir, he did. But we may not have eliminated the cause. We may just be in a dormant period with the terrorists."
"What do you mean?"
"I am told there will be no terrorist activity because . . . because one typhoon is silent when another passes."
There was a pause on the end of the line, then: "I don't understand that."
"Neither do I, sir. But it comes from one of our men familiar with this sort of thing."
"Hmmm. Well, at any rate, we have a hiatus?"
"Yes sir. I believe so."
"Good. I'll pass that on to our negotiator. Only four more days till the antiterrorist conference at the U.N. With luck, it'll be an in-and-out kind of thing. Sort of wham, bam, thank you, ma'am, and the world's airways are safe again."
"Yes sir," said Smith, annoyed at the allusion to sex. He had thought this President was above that sort of thing. Still, the President had great pressures on him in his quest for peace. Dr. Harold Smith must take a personal hand to make sure that nothing happened to foil that quest.
On a United States destroyer off the Atlantic coast, Colonel Anderson was greeted with congratulations by Colonel Huang and Colonel Petrovich.
Anderson dropped his briefcase on the green felt table in the ward room, and in a lacklustre manner took the offered hands. "We'll finish the agreements today," he said, "then check the language with our governments and meet the day after tomorrow to finish up."
"There will be no problem," said Petrovich, "now that this new terrorist mess has been cleared up."
"Yes," said Huang.
Anderson sighed and looked at both men, eye to eye, then asked: "What makes you think we've cleared it up?"
Petrovich smiled. "Don't be coy with us. You people stopped them dead. The hijacking last weekend must have been the first time you used your new system. We know it was the new wave of terrorists because they got that machine gun past your detection devices. We do have sources in your country, you know."
Huang nodded. "Now tell us how you did it?" he asked.
"Would you believe me if I said I do not know how?" Anderson said.
"No," said Petrovich. "Not a word of it."
"I might suspect you were telling the truth," said Huang, "but I wouldn't believe a word of it."
Anderson shrugged. "Well, since you two aren't going to believe me, let me tell you what you definitely won't believe. I have been instructed by my superiors to tell you this so you will be aware of what we are facing. I get it from the highest authority that this terrorist force is dormant. Only dormant, because something similar to it is functioning. Now hold on. Don't laugh so hard. This is what I was told. I was told that one typhoon is quiet when another typhoon passes."
Petrovieh. guffawed and slapped the table. He looked to Huang for support, but there was none. Colonel Huang was not smiling.
"The image you used was quiet typhoons?" he questioned softly.
Anderson nodded and even he smiled. But Huang did not smile, not even when the last few technical points on the accords were reached, not even when all three shook hands and congratulated themselves on a job well done, and separated amidst promises to meet two days hence with approvals on the language for the antiterrorist pact
Huang remained glum, even onto the plane to Canada, where he was to meet with his government's top political officer. On the light he did some calculating, namely whether to risk his career by relaying a fairy tale, an old tool of the Chinese emperors to create fear in their armies. Colonel Huang was not so far beyond reproach that he could relay what he suspected with impunity.
Huang gazed into the cloudless blue sky.
One typhoon is silent when another typhoon passes, he thought Yes, he remembered. He remembered very well. There was a village in Korea from which the greatest assassins in the world came. These assassins were employed by the emperors to keep the army in line. It was an old Chinese custom to have others do your fighting for you. The Revolution ended that. The Chinese did their own fighting now.
But in the olden times, emperors played enemies off against each other, and hired their real fighting men. And the men they hired knew that there was another force that would destroy them, should they fail to serve faithfully.
What was that village's name? It was in the friendly part of Korea. On the water facing China. Sinanju. That was it. Sinanju. The assassins of Sinanju-and the greatest were the Masters of Sinanju, one master each lifetime.
He had once visited the museum and gallery in the heart of what was once the Forbidden City. And there in a glass case was a seven-foot sword, and the legend read that it had been wielded by the Master of Sinanju. Not long ago, Peking had buzzed with the rumours that the Premier's life had been saved by just such a Master, using that very sword.