"I can tell," said Chiun, sniffing the air.
"Leave it alone," said Remo.
Chiun would not be deterred. "Soldier in skirts, I will say this only once and for your own good."
Zhava glanced at Remo, who shrugged. "This'll be the only thing he ever said just once. Pay attention."
"Pay attention," instructed the Korean, "to the age-old wisdom of Sinanju."
Zhava paid attention.
"There is no such thing as a perfect hamburger. There is no such thing as a good hamburger. There is such a thing as a poisoning, destructive, terrible hamburger. The book of Sinanju says, 'That which fills the Universe I regard as my body and that which directs the Universe I regard as my nature.' I do not choose to fill my Universe with hamburger."
"Very wise," intoned Remo.
"Nor do I choose to fill my Universe with useless television programs on reading, writing, and common sense."
"Those shows are not useless," Zhava cried. "Our children need to learn common sense." She turned in the seat to meet Chiun's cold hazel eyes.
"You have more than a dozen countries surrounding you, united in the hope of your destruction," he said. "You have nothing to offer the world but hope and love, so the world abandons you. Your children live in a desert, trying with all their hearts to make it a garden. You are a beautiful young woman who should be carrying a child and wearing royal robes. Instead, you carry a gun and wear the colors of the Army. And you talk to me of common sense."
Zhava opened her mouth to reply, then shut it tightly, looking straight ahead. Chiun looked out across the passing Negev. Remo drove the rest of the way to Sodom in silence.
On the southeast tip of the Dead Sea, they found the sulphur extraction plant, a town-sized site encompassing hundreds of square miles of piping, chemical tanks, mineral silos, transport vehicles, all visible, and a nuclear reactor with a fissionable center under twenty feet of prestressed, reinforced concrete, buried invisibly deep beneath the desert sand.
Remo and Chiun stood atop a dune five hundred yards from the first pipe.
"The young hamburger eater sits in the vehicle five miles away," said Chiun, "I have walked with you these five miles in silence. Why have we stopped?"
"Because we are here," said Remo.
"Where?"
Remo tried to figure out an explanation that Chiun would accept, then repeated, "Here."
That seemed to be enough. "That is good. Now what are we doing here?"
"We are going to check this place to see if it's secure."
"Why?"
"Because if it isn't, the whole world may be in trouble," Remo replied testily.
"And how are we to know if it is not secure?"
"By infiltrating it."
"That is truly most wise. I see now that I have walked these five miles with a true genius," Chiun said.
"There you go again. What is it, now?"
"If you succeed in infiltrating, the area is not secure. If you do not succeed in infiltrating, you will be dead. Tell me how you win this game."
Remo looked across the sands toward the sulphur plant. His widened pupils took in the early evening area, which looked as strange and bleak as a massive hunk of moon.
"Everything has got to be perfect for you," he said. "Petty, petty, petty."
Remo walked across the sand to the closest perimeter fence. Chiun shrugged and followed, muttering in Korean how even a Master could not create a tiger's fur from the pasty film covering a white man's body.
"This is probably an electric detector," Remo said of the first fence, looking at the obstructions further on.
"It detects electrics?" asked Chiun.
"No, it detects people through electricity," replied Remo. Fifty meters across the sand were evenly spaced metal posts, three meters apart from each other, but otherwise, unconnected by wires or steel crosspieces of any kind.
"Bah," said Chiun, "this is not a detector. Where is its magnifying glass? Where is its lollipop? It is certainly no American detector."
"You're thinking of a detective," said Remo. "Come on."
The American leaped easily over the fence.
"First I walk, then I am called names, now I am ordered about as if I were a Chinese servant. I will not go. You must lose all by yourself." Chiun settled into the lotus position outside the first fence.
Remo was about to argue, but then shrugged.
"Suit yourself," he said, walking away.
"Take as much time losing as you wish," came Chiun's voice. "I will see if the fence detects me by the time you return."
Remo walked toward the second fence, his eyes focusing one hundred meters beyond to the third major obstacle. It appeared to be a simple series of concertina wire-three rows of curled, barbed strands-connected by steel pyramids and backed up by what looked like a deep, metal slit trench. The kind used for troops with light armor.
But there were no troops that Remo could see, just a few small groups of construction workers dotting the area far beyond the slit trench. Since it was night and the workers were without several decades of Sinanju training, their own eyes could not be adjusted to see the thin, thick-wristed, American walking toward them in his blue shirt, tan slacks, and bare feet.
Remo noticed twelve transport dump trucks facing in his direction as well, when he stopped just outside the seemingly unconnected fence posts.
Remo raised his eyes to cover the sulphur plant itself, which sat like a huge, sleeping monster, another one hundred meters back from the loading area, its tentacle-like towers reaching into the sky.
Remo returned his attention to the second group of uprights. Along two sides were a series of carefully drilled holes, interspaced between highly polished, rectangular pieces of metal, fused at various angles to the supporting post. It looked like a personnel barrier that was yet to be completed.
Remo stepped back and looked over the entire area, trying to decide what to do. He could leap over the poles, but perhaps the rods were air detectors. He could lob a small stone or some sand between two uprights and see what happened, but that might be like standing in front of a pay cannon. He could simply walk through as if the poles did not exist, but that might have the same effect as interrupting Chiun during his soap operas.
As Remo pondered the situation, Chiun sat back beyond the first perimeter, watching his trainee's progress. He saw that Remo was preparing to leap over the mystifying obstacle. A wise choice, he thought. For the scene looked different in the Master's older, sharper eyes. Not only did Chiun see the uprights three meters apart from one another, but he also saw the criss-crossing light patterns of infrared laser light. Not only did he see trucks and workers, but he also saw the small arms weapons stacked in shadow under the truck's bodies, and the laced military boots that stuck out of the bottoms of their mechanic's overalls.
Remo did not think to check for the infrared light beams that bounced from pole to pole all along the line of the second perimeter, as he brought his right foot off the ground. With a simple flex of his left leg muscles, he was off the sand and floating through the air.
But the jump was incorrect. Chiun saw that. Instead of a simple upward leap, Remo had moved forward slightly, causing his left foot to push a small cloud of sand across the beams of dim red light just before he left the ground.
The only sound was of a bird chirping. The only movement, besides Remo's soundless landing, was Chiun's silent take-off.
The refinery exploded into life. The recorded signal of the chirping bird sent the workmen scattering. Suddenly, four high-powered, infrared searchlights beamed on from high atop the refinery towers, splashing the entire area with an eerie, bloody glow. Remo was picked out of the landscape like an ant in a bowl of vanilla pudding.
But only for a second. Then he was off and moving, so all the spotlights saw before six hydraulic lifts raised their mounted fifty-caliber submachine guns to a height of one-half meter above the sand, was a tiny Oriental in a golden kimono appearing to float across the sand toward them.