Chiun waved the comment away. "The pope expressed great confidence in his Swiss Guards. No. He asked the House if it would consider extinguishing rival candles."
"The pope asked you to off his enemies!" Remo exploded.
"Must you be so crude? Not in so many words, of course. Certain delicate words were spoken like rose petals strewn on cobbles. A gesture here. A regret there. The meaning was conveyed even if the words were oblique."
Remo folded his arms defiantly. "I don't believe it."
"You are so naive."
"So that's it. You use the pope to stampede other rulers and he gets the big kiss-off?"
"There was one other matter."
And from the mouth of one kimono sleeve, the Master of Sinanju extracted a heavy crucifix of ornate gold.
"Look, Remo. Solid gold."
"He gave you that?"
"Not knowingly," Chiun admitted.
"You filched the pope's cross!"
"No, I collected an amount past due. For in the days of the Borgia pontiffs, a popish payment was missing a weight of gold. This is equal to that weight. If one calculates three hundred years' interest."
"What will he think when he finds his crucifix missing?"
"That his vaunted Swiss Guard are insufficient for his needs," purred the Master of Sinanju as he restored the trophy of the modern pontiff of Rome to his kimono sleeve and fell to enjoying the sights of the Rome of his ancestors as he was conveyed to Leonardo da Vinci Airport.
It was good to treat with true rulers again, as his ancestors had.
Chapter Twenty-five
When Lieutenant General Sir Timothy Plum was assigned to command UNIKOM, everyone said it was the end of his career.
He wasn't the first UN commander to fail magnificently in Bosnia. There had been a Belgian general before him. Much lauded by the poor beggars of Bosnia, he had been all but adopted by them. But he had gotten out before the Serbs had solidified their battlefield gains.
While Lieutenant General Sir Timothy Plum had commanded UNPROFOR, the UN Protection Force in the former Yugoslavia, United Nations personnel were routinely sniped at, deprived of their weapons, and held hostage while the power and international authority that backed him was routinely flouted.
Not that there was any help from the Security Council, NATO or, God forbid, Generalissimo War-War himself. The sodding bastards had made speeches while the Serbs cut the so-called blue routes to beleaguered Sarajevo, commanded UN relief trucks and APCs and made a mockery of civilized norms.
Seeing the nature of the game, Sir Timothy had decided two could play both ends against the middle. So when Serbian fire inflicted atrocities against helpless civilians standing in bread-and-water lines, Sir Timothy publicly blamed the victims for taking foolhardy risks for small reward. When the Bosnians defended themselves, he branded them as warmongers determined to prolong the conflict the rest of the world had tired of merely to prolong their lives.
These pronouncements garnered him no friends, except in Belgrade. But they did serve the very important PR purpose of lowering UN expectations.
So it came as a relief of sorts when, his tour completed, Sir Timothy—as his loyal troops affectionately called him—received orders to take command of UNIKOM on the disputed Iraq-Kuwait border.
It had been a peaceful border these past few months. The weather, while hot, was pleasant—if one discounted the odd dust devil stirring up the sand and dried goat dung. And best of all, there were no bloody Serbs with doubtful names like Ratko and Slobodan along with disagreeble manners to get up his nose. Or shoot at him, for God's sake.
Yes, the Kuwaiti desert was actually pleasant even if sand did fill one's boots and the outside world had all but written him off as an utter and complete nincompoop.
After two years in Bosnia, Lieutenent General Sir Timothy Plum had redefined his measure of success or failure. Success didn't include saving assorted Serbs, Bosnians and Croats—whatever they were—from one another, and failure wasn't a function of career advancement.
No, the simple, elementary truth was if one survived, one succeeded. Failure was lying facedown in the muck and slush of Eastern Europe with one's spine snapped in two by a .50-caliber round. That was failure.
Thus, a posting in Kuwait constituted an extended furlough.
"If one only didn't have to put up with these infernal wogs," he was telling his attaché in the cool shade of his pup tent not two miles from the Iraqi border, "I should say this was a sort of extended holiday. With scorpions."
"More tea, Sir Tim?"
"Thank you. Is it still hot?"
"Decidedly."
"Excellent," said Sir Timothy, holding out a blue china cup that had survived the Falklands, Northern Ireland, Sarajevo and would surely survive a quiet observer mission of indefinite duration.
"I say, does it ever rain in these parts?"
"Hardly ever."
"Dash it, I should enjoy a good rain now and again."
"Perhaps we might arrange one somehow."
"Oh?"
"We have pumps and hoses. And strong-backed men."
"If you consider Bangladeshis and Pakistanis men."
They laughed with polite restraint. There was no point in really enjoying their superiority, obvious as it was.
"Why is it, Sir Tim, that every one of these missions is oversupplied with wogs of all types?"
"Think about it, man. If there is to be a fight, it is better to command men one shan't miss if matters go awry. And if not, who better to do the donkey work than men entirely unfit for civilized soldiering?"
"I never thought about it that way. Oh, I say, I do believe this cream is a trifle sour."
"Hazard of war, Colin. Buck up. A bracing cuppa tea is far jollier than a Serbian mortar shell mucking up one's bivouac."
" 'Bivouac' Is that an American word?"
"Yes. I thought I'd try it on you. With all these Yank chaps tramping about, we shall have to learn their confounded tongue, will we not?"
"That's sensible. And what is the name of that unit who careened through here the other day?" the attaché asked.