"I am not grateful," Chiun said coldly, "for I have returned to bitterness and ingratitude on all sides. Better that you had left me to bob like a dried apricot in the eternal Void than return me to such gracelessness."
"Perhaps we might work something out," Smith suggested.
Chiun's eyes squeezed into bitter blades.
"How?"
"I could forgive the debt, in return for your consultation on the Iraiti situation."
Chiun's eyes squeezed tighter. But for a lean, menacing glitter, they might have been closed.
"Is that not mixing your businesses?" he demanded.
"CURE can legally pay you a consulting fee, out of which you may repay Folcroft for your medical expenses."
"No," Chiun said in a firm voice.
"No?
"I must have double," said Chiun, his voice rising anew. "Double because I have endured the tortures of nurses who should be working in mines deep underground rather than attending one such as I."
"I would agree to that," Smith said coolly.
"Good. I must have several items from you, Smith."
"Name them."
"A brazier, the shell of a leopard tortoise, and the exact birth hour of Maddas Hinsein."
Harold Smith's gray eyebrows lifted in surprise. "Why do you need Hinsein's birthdate?"
"Because he is not dead," said Chiun, slipping back onto his pillow.
Chapter 3
Maddas Hinsein ran for his life from the baroque expanse of Arab Renaissance Square.
He was not alone. It seemed as if all of Abominadad were fleeing the square and the fury that had unleashed itself upon the world.
Twin furies, actually.
Maddas, tripping over the hem of his abayuh, craned his veiled face around to once again behold the terrible sight.
What his morose brown eyes saw filled him with a great dread.
The gallows that had been converted into a reviewing stand was now a shipwreck of splinters and rude boards. More frightening, one of the giant bronze forearms-cast from a mold of Maddas' own-had cracked asunder. The scimitar one huge fist clutched was balanced in the puny human-sized hands of the assassin who now wielded it as if it were a mere plastic swizzle stick instead of the ponderous product of the finest German swordsmiths.
It pointed straight upward, balanced, teetering. The blade began to descend. It swooshed like a jet taking off.
Under the blade stood Kimberly Baynes, nude, her broken neck tilted to one side, her eyes, once limpid pools of violet ink, now burning like balls of phosphorescent blood in an angry face that Maddas barely recognized.
They went wide as exploding suns as, hissing, the blade chopped down.
The ground shook. Sparks spit from the cracking concrete like a devil's anvil being worked. The blade rang like the mighty sword of Allah smiting the infidel.
And floating out from the vibration, a musical voice rang, mocking, insolent.
"Come, Shiva. This is no way to treat your bride!"
It was the voice of sweet Kimberly Baynes, and yet it was not.
She stood off to one side, her four arms lifting like a spider preparing to pounce upon its prey. Her small breasts shook.
The blade lifted again. It described a figure eight in the air, the flutter and swish of the fine blade impossibly loud as it cleaved the air.
This time it came in sideways, seeking her smooth neck.
Nimble and light-footed, Kimberly leapt to avoid it. The terrible edge whizzed under her. She alighted on all six limbs like a sinister sleek insect sheathed in human flesh.
"Lay down your sword, O Shiva," Kimberly proclaimed. "Kali claims you now. We will dance the Tandava and this land shall become the Caldron of Blood from which we shall both quaff mightily. "
The answer was an inhuman roar, loud, terrible, deafening.
It came from a man who wore a scarlet-and-purple costume that evoked images of genies, harems, and the Arabian Nights. His skin was a raw sunburned tone and his eyes burned like coals aflame. His thick-wristed hand balanced the other scimitar like a red ant carrying a twig.
The blade crashed down again. Kimberly dodged expertly.
This time it struck a prostrate figure in a green burnoose, chopping it in two. The separate parts of the body jumped into the sky.
The sight of his official spokesman, Selim Fanek-whom Maddas Hinsein had wisely arranged to take his place on the gallows-flying upward in two sections reminded the Scimitar of the Arabs of how this gold-haired vixen had betrayed him. Were it not for his own cunning, Maddas himself would now be flying skyward in pieces like so much cordwood. It was Fanek who had taken the traitorous fatal blow meant for Maddas himself.
He turned and resumed his run, a hulking figure in his feminine abayuh and black paratroop boots. He had to find sanctuary in this madness of betrayal. For soon the deadfall commands he had left with his trusted defense minister would be executed.
And he knew also that soon the American bombs would fall. Maddas Hinsein could live with the downfall of his people. But he, too, was on ground zero. And the Scimitar of the Arabs had a greater destiny to fulfill than becoming so much mulch. One that did not include ignominious death.
He had to find sanctuary.
A man stumbled across his path. He was an old one, with but a single yellow-brown tooth in his head.
"Allah forgive us!" the elder moaned. "For the sins of our wicked leader, we have been sent two demons to bedevil us."
"Curse you, old man!" snapped Maddas Hinsein, stomping out the pitiful man's lone tooth with the heel of a boot. "You are too weak to enjoy the triumph that lies before the Iraiti people."
Maddas plunged on, melting into the fleeing crowd.
Elsewhere in Abominadad, two frightened men were being carried along with the human wave escaping the carnage of Arab Renaissance Square.