"You don't mean to tell us you've been around for thousands of years," said Anna.
"I'm not talking to you, girlie," said Arieson. "What about it, Sinanju boy? Take the deal. You get the treasure. All you people ever cared about was getting paid. Don't feel you have to show off for the girl."
"Remo!" cried Anna.
"I was still raised by the nuns. I was still raised American," said Remo. "No deal."
It was not an attack so much as an eerie light and voices from nowhere that lunged toward Remo. But Remo held the vase. He held the vase against the strange sense of flesh that was not flesh, energy that was more thought than energy, against hands that were not hands trying to take back the vase that had once been given in tribute to the Masters of Sinanju.
And then Arieson was gone and Remo had a war to stop.
It was not hard. Everything seemed to fall apart when Arieson left anyhow, and this time when Arieson was gone both France and Germany closed in on what they called their lunatic commanders, who instead of being considered saviors of the nations were both publicly called "lunatic disasters who never should have been given command of troops."
But Remo was left with one vase in the sunlight of a French field where ugly concrete lay too vast to be removed.
"I don't think Chiun's going to let me out of the marriage to Poo for one stinking vase, Anna," said Remo. "And I don't blame him. I had the treasure in my hands for a single deal for one more lousy war that these yo-yos probably would have loved to fight anyhow, and I let it go. I may have let Chiun down. I may have let down every Master in the line."
"Let me see the vase," said Anna.
Remo started to brush off the dirt before he handed it to her, but Anna, horrified, told him to leave the dirt.
"That's our chance. That's what I'm counting on. Arieson left the earth. I'm surprised he did so."
"Dirt is something you clean off," said Remo. "Chiun won't be happy he's getting only one vase back, let alone a dirty one."
"Dirt is what things are buried in. Dirt is what is peculiar to each place, dirt is what the greatest technological nation on the earth can read a speck of and tell you exactly where it came from."
"We have to go back to Russia?"
"Are you kidding? I'm talking about modern science. Your Harold Smith has at his disposal the greatest technological materials known to man. He's your best chance."
None of them talked directly to the scientist in the mass-spectrometry laboratory because that would have given him an inkling of whom he might be working for. Instead, through concealed cameras they watched as another scientist who thought he was working on a government grant for archaeological expeditions talked to the operator of the instrument. They could have gotten a report, but they didn't even want to wait that long.
Anna was amazed how all this could be accomplished in such secret openness. They did the watching in the back of a limousine, which had microscopic controls that gave this one brilliant man access to more technological power than perhaps any human being other than his president.
Anna appreciated how America had chosen well in Harold W. Smith, the taciturn lemon-faced head of Remo's organization. Harold W. Smith was not one to believe in the Red Menace. He understood her country as an enemy. He understood he had to use caution and stamp out its thrusts toward his own country, but he did not view Russia as the demon of the world. He was not one to start a war, but this man was sure to finish it.
Remo was bored with the spectrometry research and kept reaching a hand to her knee. Anna liked the hand on her knee but she did not want an orgasm while discussing earth samples with someone else in the back seat of an American limousine.
They were driving down the Merritt Parkway just outside New York City. The driver was sealed off by a solid soundproof glass shield. They could hear him but he could not hear them unless they gave him an order through a microphone. To the world it looked like a common luxury automobile where the inhabitants were watching television.
The impressive reading of particles in the laboratory was not done through some lens, but rather by bombarding the earth with electrons and reading the emissions on a printout.
They heard the technologist read the structure of the earth found on the vase.
The archaeologist-geographer punched the readings into a portable computer he carried. Both men were dressed as though they were about to go out and throw a Frisbee for a while. They looked so ordinary doing such an extraordinary thing, thought Anna.
She slapped Remo's wonderfully skilled hand again. "Please," she said.
Harold W. Smith blushed.
"Nothing," said Remo. "I wasn't doing anything. If I did something, you would feel this-"
"Remo!" shrieked Anna.
"Remo, please," said Smith, trying to avert his eyes.
"Nothing," said Remo, raising his hands as an innocent.
And then the findings.
The computer announced three places the earth could have come from, but Remo knew immediately that two were wrong. One was along the coast of Chile, and the other was a fishing village in Africa.
"I always wondered how they managed to move so much treasure and only find witnesses who saw it leave the village, while no one anywhere saw it arrive. I always wondered how Chiun could have sifted through North Korean intelligence without finding the men who had lugged it away. I always wondered," said Remo.
Anna and Smith said the third place was not only a brilliant site but also logical.
It was as brilliant as it was simple. Smith and Anna discussed Arieson as they all three drove to a small military airport outside of New York City. They had the treasure. Now to end the power of Mr. Arieson.
Cymbals of welcome reached Remo and Anna as they arrived at the junction of Sinanju One with Sinanju Two and Three, an area which looked like a large empty parking lot. It stopped at a mud path, Sinanju proper.
Chiun was waiting, too, squinting disapproval: "You have brought her here. Into your own village. A white. That white. The white you have consorted with," said Chiun, looking at Anna.
"You'll never guess where the treasure is."
"Of course I'll never guess. If I could have guessed, I would have found it."
"Do you think that is a nice hillock you are standing on, Little Father?" asked Remo.
"It overlooks the highway. Behind me, down the path into the village, I can see everything going on there. It is a perfect spot."
"And on the night the treasure was stolen, did not the North Korean intelligence operatives carry the treasure up this path?"
"It is the only way to get out of Sinanju. Why not? Don't try to escape the fact that you have brought that," said Chiun, pointing at Anna, "back to where you live, where your precious wife lives."
"I know about that marriage. It's not a real one," said Anna with a cold smile.
"And Remo said you were intelligent," laughed Chiun. "They tell that to all you girls."
"I believe Remo wouldn't lie."
"Believe what you want," said Chiun, "but you'll never know."
"Getting back to the treasure, Little Father, did it not seem strange to you that you could uncover none of the many men who hauled it away?" asked Remo.
"If they could have been found, I would have found them. As a precaution, obviously they were killed so they would not tell."