THE LATE-DAY SUN WAS HOT On Remo's back as he wandered up the broad sidewalk.
This section of town was far better than the part he'd been in earlier that day. It seemed that the criminal activity of the rest of Bachsburg wasn't tolerated near the main government buildings.
His stroll along the tidy, well-swept sidewalks was a balm to his troubled soul. He had almost begun to feel better when he stumbled on the first body.
The man was some kind of soldier. A long blade had slit his abdomen from sternum to pelvis. Dead organs yawned from the wide gash.
Blood ran like a sticky red river away from the palace gates. There it collected in dry pores in the concrete, soaking into the arid sidewalk.
Remo stepped around the still damp stain, peeking around the high brick column to which the open gate was attached.
More bodies were spread all around the mouth of the drive. The blade strokes employed against all these men were surprisingly clean. Almost as if...
A troublesome thought suddenly occurred to him. Frowning, he crouched beside the nearest body. There were deep lacerations in the man's neck but very little blood on the face of the wound. The blade had gone in and out fast. Blood loss had occurred after the body had fallen.
The cuts were clean. Too clean.
Standing, Remo's eyes darted left, then right. "What are you up to?" he muttered as he searched the immediate grounds. No one was around.
Stepping farther up the drive, he found the final proof he needed.
The headless body of a Citizen Force lieutenant lay near the empty guard booth. A rifle sat in three neat sections near the man's severed hand. His head was nowhere to be found.
"Dammit, Chiun, can't you ever give me a minute's peace?" Remo growled.
Bloodstained footprints led to the lawn. Twelve barefoot men. Even though he didn't see a trail, Remo knew with certainty that a thirteenth set of feet had followed that same bloody path.
"Smith is gonna go apeshit over this one." Scowling with his entire spirit, Remo stole across the lawn, following the path made by the skulking Luzu warriors.
ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF O. U. Queene was preparing to leave his small office in the East African presidential palace when the door burst open.
Looking up from his desk, he was startled to see a group of armed natives swarming into the room. Queene fell back in his chair.
"What is the meaning of this?" he gasped. He eyed their spears and machetes with dread.
The natives failed to answer. As Queene blinked in abject terror, the two men standing directly before his cluttered desk silently parted. Between them stepped a tiny figure in a green robe. The wizened Asian carried something in his long, tapered fingers. When Queene saw what that something was, he clapped a horrified hand over his mouth.
Chiun plopped Lieutenant I. P. Freeley's severed head onto a pile of paperwork. Dead eyes stared vacantly forward, a hint of last-minute terror etched forever in their darkest recesses. From within the black orifice of a mouth, a fat white tongue jutted out at O. U. Queene.
"Where is the evil one?" Chiun intoned.
"Oh, my ...oh my..." Queene blinked. He was staring into the hypnotic orbs of the dead lieutenant.
"Answer me!" Chiun snapped, slapping a palm to the desk. The severed head bounced.
"Oh, um, who?"
"Mandobar," Chiun said.
"Oh." Queene nodded. "He's, oh... He's not here. Election. New president. Um, Kmpali. Maintains a small office. But not here now. They're both gone."
Chiun whirled to the Luzus. "This one spoke the truth," he said, waving to the lieutenant's head.
"I can pencil you in for an appointment," Queene offered numbly, gathering up his blackbound scheduling book. When he reached for a pen, he found a lolling tongue. He recoiled. "Tell you what, I'll remember," he promised.
When the assistant chief of staff looked up hopefully, the old man and the Luzu warriors were gone. Unfortunately, they'd forgotten to take their decapitated head with them.
The political aide rose stiffly from his chair. He found a small towel and tossed it gingerly over the head.
On deliberate, plodding feet, he made his way to the bathroom where he proceeded to vomit up a year's worth of stomach acids into the gleaming white bowl.
THE TRAIL OF CITIZEN FORCE bodies led to a side door of the palace. Slipping through the massive door, Remo found three more bodies on the polished floor of the ornate foyer.
Again, he noticed the cleanness of the blade strokes. They were too precise for normal men. To Remo Williams, Apprentice Reigning Master of Sinanju, the incisions were disturbing on a level far beyond mere murder.
There was a time when Masters of Sinanju used weapons. But after the Great Wang-the first Master of the modern Sinanju age-weapons became obsolete. Never ones to throw away a potential moneymaker, however, some of the earliest Masters of the post-Wang age had sometimes sold some of the outdated weapons techniques to wealthy clients-this so that the buyer could feel as if he were getting some kind of lasting legacy from Sinanju. As far as Remo knew, this practice and the skills of those thus trained hadn't survived much beyond Sinanju's earliest contracts with Egypt and Phoenicia. Yet here it surfaced, a full continent away.
Another body steered Remo up the grand marble staircase. Aside from the ghosts of those slain, the palace seemed deserted. Remo followed the grisly trail up to the third floor. A few droplets of blood led him to an open office door. He found the missing guard's head peeking out from under a towel on a desk. Somewhere distant came the sound of violent retching.
"Okay, I give up," Remo grumbled from the doorway. "Where are you?"
As if in response, an angry shout issued from beyond the closed office window. Hurrying across the room, Remo found that the window overlooked a broad rear parking area.
He spotted Chiun instantly.
The Master of Sinanju and a dozen loinclothwearing natives were running alongside an L-shaped addition that stabbed out behind the palace. The group had fled the main wing of the building in which Remo now stood. The old Korean was obviously taking a slower pace so as not to outdistance his companions.
From his vantage point, Remo was able to see something Chiun and the natives couldn't. A phalanx of armed soldiers was sweeping across the lot from the other direction.
Alone in his upper-story office, the sound of desperate dry-heaving issuing from an adjacent bathroom, Remo had a moment's hesitation.
Chiun had abandoned him at the airport without so much as a backward glance. It'd be just deserts to leave him here. Let him and his pack of Johnny Weissmuller wanna-bes figure out a way out of this mess.
But though the impulse to abandon his mentor was strong, conscience got the better of him. "Ungrateful old geezer," Remo snarled as he snapped the seal on the bulletproof window.
The window rocketed up into the frame, embedding itself deep in the thick wood casing. Glass panes rattled as Remo scampered out onto the inch wide ledge beneath the window. He took off along it at a sprint.
Far below, the two converging groups had just encountered each other. Across the parking lot, the pop-pop-pop of automatic rifle fire rose into the humid air.
At the corner of the main palace wing, Remo's hands and feet snagged the inlaid white bricks. Using toes and fingertips, he descended rapidly to the ground. He was off in a flash the instant his feet touched the earth. The soles of his Italian loafers failed to disturb a single blade of grass as he flew after the Master of Sinanju. Gliding from grass to asphalt, he was halfway to Chiun before he was finally spotted by the approaching Citizen Force guards.
Bullets began whizzing in his direction.
Though the president was away, there were still many state vehicles parked in the lot. As Remo raced past a big sedan, trailing bullet holes peppered its side in his wake. Still more bullets shattered car windows, spraying glass onto empty seats.
Dodging flying lead with every step, Remo caught up with the Master of Sinanju in a small garden at the far edge of the parking lot.