They fell back, fighting among themselves.
When the commotion had died down, Marc led his Zouaves into the Sorcerer's Chateau and down into Utilicanard, while the California Summer Vacation Musketeers and the Florida Sunshine Guerrillas stood picketed at all approach roads.
The smell in Utilicanard was very ripe. Marc had to pink himself just to keep going. The Zouaves took it in stride. They had come for a fight, fresh from their triumph at the Third Battle of the Crater.
When Marc got to the main control room he found drying vomit and smashed hypercolor controls. Frowning, he got on the satellite phone and reported to the first person who answered.
"Cheatwood is gone. And someone smashed the controls."
"Any idea what happened?" a gruff, frosty voice demanded.
"No. But there's vomit. Could he have greened himself?"
"Not in his own control room. Check the video logs."
Marc replayed the tapes until he saw Rod Cheatwood succumb to his own video screen. The flash of green in the tape was enough to make Marc feel a little queasy, but he held down the food he'd last eaten. It wasn't hard. Although train fare, it was French.
"Looks like the French acquired the technology," he reported.
"Was it a woman?"
"Yeah, looks like."
"Damn her eyes. She must have figured out how to make the orb operate. Okay, hold the fort. We're coming in."
"Sir?" said Marc. But the line was already dead.
So Marc Moise sat down in the chair before the main viewer, trying to reconcile the crusty voice that had spoken to him with the childhood memory of Uncle Sam Beasley.
Uncle Sam was coming here. But why? That hadn't been in Marc's premission briefing.
FRENCH MINISTER of Culture Maurice Tourette was the first to hear of the rout at Euro Beasley.
"Who?" he sputtered. "Who is responsible for this outrage?"
"According to reports," the informant told him, "the attackers were dressed after the style of Napoleon III."
"Napoleon III?" Tourette chewed the leathery inside of his cheek as he processed that bit of intelligence. This was absurd; therefore it could not be. But it was. Therefore, it was an American absurdity. And checking the latest Le Monde, he saw the photographs of what the French press were calling l'affaire Crater.
The soldiers had come from America, he concluded. They had come to further insult the French Republic. And for that they would pay.
Picking up the telephone, he put in a call to the general of the air army.
"Mon General, I have distressing news. But if you act in a timely manner, all might be saved. The cultural Chernobyl has been retaken. Perhaps this matter can be settled once and for all by turning it into a true Chernobyl. Do you, by chance, have any nuclear weapons at your disposal? Ah, you do. Very good. Now listen..."
THE HELICOPTER was jet black and skimmed low over the outlying farms and hills of Averoigne before settling into Euro Beasley.
Marc Moise watched it by manipulating the surveillance cameras. When the craft had settled, he was not surprisedbut still it was a shock-to see Bob Beasley step out of the helicopter, look around and help Uncle Sam Beasley from his conveyance.
Uncle Sam Beasley wore a white uniform with gold trim and shaking gold-braid epaulets that made Marc Moise think of an Italian admiral of the fleet. Clumping along on his silver peg leg, he returned every salute thrown at him by the other regiments whose forage caps were decorated by black felt mouse ears.
It was a ridiculous sight, but it filled Marc Moise with foreboding.
At least, he saw, Uncle Sam wore a white eye-patch over the place where his left eye should be. Marc didn't think he could stare into that strobing steel organ ever again ....
WHEN DGSE DIRECTOR Remy Renard heard the door to the security room open even though he had buzzed no one in, he whirled around anxiously.
The door came bouncing in, its plate-glass window fracturing merrily.
Dominique Parillaud was thrust in along with the captive Beasley operative, Cheatwood.
After them came two of the strangest individuals ever to intrude upon DGSE preserves. One, American and therefore a bit of an oaf, and the other very old and very Oriental.
"He has come for the satellite," Dominique cried.
"Yeah, I've come for the satellite," said the white oaf. "Where is it?"
"You will never wrest it from us," Remy Renard said, placing his body between the interloper and the great vault door.
The white American approached the door, after first picking Remy up by squeezing his elbows to his- hips and setting him off to one side like a coatrack.
Remy swallowed hard to keep down the ugly feeling in his stomach. He had never felt more helpless than at that moment. It was as if he were nothing to this man.
"That vault is eight inches thick," he sputtered. "The combination is known to but two men in this building and it requires two to open it. I am the only one with the combination here."
"It is thick," admitted the oafish American, scrutinizing the door with a perplexed expression.
"Then you realize the futility of even attempting to breach the vault door?"
"Yeah, it's too much for me," he agreed. "Wait here, Little Father." And he exited the room.
Remy Renard strove to relax. If he could just get through the coming moments, all would be well. Reinforcements would soon arrive. And there was no way these men could leave the building. Not unarmed as they so obviously were.
From down the hall came an awful cacophony of sounds. A punch press might have started the racket, but then a jackhammer sound blenders in. Plaster groaned and lath screamed protestations. A metallic lamentation followed-awful, tortured, indescribable.
Then came a rattling series of sounds that, if Remy Renard had not known better, he would have vowed could only have been coming from inside the impregnable vault. But the vault was soundproofed to noise, and the great door, the only way in, was firmly sealed.
When it all ended, the white American appeared in the door, spanking plaster dust off his lean, bare forearms.
When he was done, he opened his right palm for all to see, and the supreme idiot said, "I couldn't find any satellite, but I did find this."
And Remy Renard could not contain his gasp of astonishment.
The American was holding the orb of many potent colors.
"C'est impossible!" Remy gasped.
"C'est la biz, cheri, " the idiot said, grinning.
"We are going now," the ancient Asian told him coldly. "But I leave you with your life and this warning, which may be more valuable than your life."
"What could be more valuable that my life?" Remy blurted.
"The knowledge that the Master of Sinanju works for the Eagle Throne of America and will treat any further aggravation harshly."
Remy Renard was strong of heart and spine. But he felt the blood drain from his sturdy legs and he realized the truth of the old Korean's warning.
For although Remy Renard was prepared to lose his life for France, he wasn't prepared to lose France herself.
And that was the gist of the Master of Sinanju's warning, which hung in the dusty air of the vault room long after the Master of Sinanju and his train had departed.
When he heard no sounds of shooting or commotion, Remy Renard knew it was safe to step out of the stagnant puddle of his own urine.
He immediately got on the telephone to the president of France. This was a far graver matter than defending French culture. National survival was at stake. The minister of culture could be of no value in such a war.
Chapter 29
Outside DGSE HQ, Dominique Parillaud said, "You will never escape France."
"Don't say that," Remo said fervently. "I have to find a father I don't even know."