"I was raised by nuns in an orphanage. I'm going to feel funny in the Vatican."
"Don't. Remember, the Borgias were once popes and we have worked there. Ah, Rome, who would have thought you would last so long," said Chiun, waving a hand at the city on the Tiber which had once ruled the world, and now was only bad traffic and picturesque marble remnants. And of course, the Vatican, the great Vatican, where once a fighting arena had stood.
Outside the large columns, Italian police and soldiers had sealed off the entire state-within-a-state. From St. Peter's, little groups of men could be seen hacking away at each other. Some wore striped pantaloons and velvet hats. They were the Swiss Guards, who protected the post. Once they had actually fought other little armies, but now they were only ceremonial.
Until, as Remo found out, the morning when they threw over their papal banners, shouted to hell with peace, and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a group of Turks brought in by a strange man with a muscled neck whose eves seemed to glow.
This they learned from the carabinieri, who warned Remo and Chiun not to enter.
"It's terrible, terrible what's happening in that holy site," said the carabinieri. "But we cannot enter."
"Why not?" asked Remo.
"The Vatican is another state. Someone has to invite us in. We have not been invited. And no one will do anything in there until the pope is free."
"Is he a prisoner?"
"We think so," said the carabinieri.
A head went rolling along St. Peter's courtyard, lopped off by a Turkish scimitar.
"Horrible," said Chiun.
The carabinieri covered his eyes. "Horrible," he agreed.
"Yes, amateurs making a mess of things. Well, that's to be expected with what's let loose. Come, Remo. This is not the way to enter the Vatican. You can just tell Mr. Arieson is inside. Look at that enthusiasm for a bad stroke."
The way to enter the Vatican was the way Augustus Caesar would enter the arena. "Through tunnels, protected from his citizens in case they rioted. These tunnels later became part of the catacombs of Rome.
The catacomb Remo and Chiun wanted was underneath a restaurant. Chum calculated where the entrance used to be according to his old lessons, to which, he stressed, he devoted himself as a child, unlike Remo, and sent a fingernail into old plaster. Vibrating it within the rhythms of the molecules, he collapsed the entire wall, to the despairing shouts of the restaurant owner, who had stored olives and garlic and fresh tomatoes down there in the basement. They were all ruined now.
"We're in service of the pope," said Chiun. "Send your bill to the Vatican."
Before them rising out of the rubble was a high entrance, larger than most modern doors. On either side of this entrance were frescoes of gods and goddesses making love, playing, and dancing. Remo noticed the clothes on the gods were quite skimpy. Chiun led the way, explaining the tale of the artist who painted these frescoes. In the palace of Augustus Caesar nearby, people were being killed. Everyone thought it was Augustus' wife, Livia, again with that great Italian attraction to poison. Actually, it was a minor assassin employing the artist as a conduit to the cooks.
The assassin knew the artist could buy his freedom, and was in love with another slave whose freedom he wished to buy also. So he used the artist for access to the palace. The House of Sinanju came along in the employ of Augustus, discovered the plot, eliminated the competition with ease, and brought the artist before Augustus.
Augustus, a wise ruler, understood the artist was only a slave, expected to be weak, and let him live. But the cook, a free man, he had crucified because more was expected of a free man than a slave.
"It is a beautiful little story," said Chiun.
"What's beautiful about a crucifixion?" asked Remo. The tunnels had a strange glaze from the underearth about them. It made Remo's skin crawl.
Remo saw an old-style fresco with fine color tones but crude lines. It reminded him of one room of the treasures of Sinanju. He had seen that room on his first visit to Sinanju. There were statues and jewels and gold, and then Remo remembered, it was the room that had the indentation in the mahogany floor. He tried to remember what had made that indentation. But he couldn't. When one has taken on four thousand years of accumulated treasure in one afternoon, everything tends to blur. Besides, never having received tribute, he didn't care about it too much.
They walked three miles under the Vatican and then Chiun turned into a doorway with stone steps leading steeply upward. Above them they could hear laughter, and screams and cries and the clashing of swords.
"Disgraceful," said Chiun. "But you have to expect this now."
They pushed through a wood-and-steel door at the top of the steps opening into a vast room where tapestries hung from the walls. Ornate furniture was placed a few feet from the walls and nothing stood in the center of the room where the inlaid pink and gold marble floor was covered now by the slime of blood.
Swiss Guards swung their halberds in wide, deadly arcs against a group of Turks fighting with scimitars. Sometimes a big-bladed halberd would strike clean and a head would go rolling, or an arm would be neatly severed. More often than not it missed, striking only a glancing blow, spilling more blood. The scimitar, less useful for arm-length fighting than the long-poled halberd, was very effective at close range. It could disembowel the guards right through their velvet blouses.
In the middle of this butchery Mr. Arieson sat, a big smile on his face, rubbing his hands.
"I love it. I love it," he said. And seeing Remo and Chiun, added: "Welcome to the selfish bastards of Sinanju. See what you'd like to deprive your fellowman of? I hate you bastards, always have."
"Okay, deal with him," said Remo.
"Not now. We've got to save the pope," said Chiun.
"Since when are you a Catholic?"
"We have a sacred and binding obligation to the chair of St. Peter," said Chiun. "We have promised the Borgias."
"Good folks, the Borgias," said Mr. Arieson.
"Sometimes," said Chiun. "And never when you liked them," and pointing to Arieson Chiun told Remo: "That is a killer. Now you know the difference between a killer and a true assassin."
Remo wanted to take one last try at Arieson's stomach, just on the chance that a blow would work this time, but Chiun pulled him along.
"Is he from some other house of assassins, Little Father?"
"Him? From another house? He has no respect for assassins."
"Could you just tell me who he is, instead of beating around the bush?"
"No. You don't deserve to know."
"Well, I don't care who he is. Just show me how to deal with him when this is done."
His Holiness was being held by a group of dark young men wearing fezzes with bright crescents on them. They called themselves the new Janissaries of Turkey.
There were twenty of them around the pope, parading their new power. His Holiness sat quietly in dignity made more awesome by the fact of the noise and threats from the Turks.
"We are the new Janissaries, and we are here to revenge the insult to our glorious fighters from battles past. We are here to revenge Mehmet Ali Agha, who stood his hand for us and our glory. In other words, pontiff, we will not miss this time."
The words were spoken by the leader of the group as Remo and Chiun entered the small audience room where the pope now sat chained to a little dark wooden throne.
"We never had much use for the old Janissaries," said Chiun. "Your Holiness, we are here. Glory to the Borgias, glory to their papacy, the House of Sinanju is here to honor its pledge."
The pope, who had suffered through the nightmare of seeing his own normally docile Swiss Guards become raving maniacs, delighted at the prospect of battle with the attacking Turks, now saw an aged Oriental in a black kimono with silver embroidery and a thin white man in black T-shirt and gray trousers begin playing with the Turks.
It was like a formal dance. A Turk would swing a scimitar and follow it into a wall, yet the elderly Oriental hardly moved. The white would skewer three men on their own swords and neatly lay them in a corner.
It did not look like a battle so much as two chambermaids cleaning up a room, picking up bodies, laying them down. The younger one seemed to do more of the stacking, complaining in English that he was always the one who had to do this chore. The older one seemed to make flourishes of his kimono for the pope's pleasure.