"Either they found the trap," Latham ventured, "or they're in trouble."
No one moved to investigate.
It was the better part of ten minutes before a sudden hand reached up, like a drowning man returning to the surface. Smith's heart gave a leap. But the hand was encased in rubber. A rubber-encased diver's head popped into view next. The hand peeled the scuba mask back.
"We found something," the diver said tensely.
"What?" Smith asked, tight-voiced.
"It's coming now." The diver returned to the water.
He was back in less than a minute, joined by his teammate.
They bobbed to the surface in unison, cradling between them a small bundle wrapped in wet purple cloth. Flashlights came into play.
"My God," Smith said.
Reaching down, he touched a cold, bony thing like a slime-coated stick. It was as white as a fish's underbelly. The surface slipped under his grasp with appalling looseness, considering it was human skin.
Resisting an urge to retch, Smith pulled on the dead thing. Other hands joined. Using the heavy cable for support, the divers lifted their burden.
As they wrestled the soaking cold bundle to the floor, Smith saw that he had hold of a pipestem forearm. The hand attached to it was clenched into a long-nailed fist of anguish. The skin over the finger bones was hung slack and transparent. It reminded Smith of a boiled chicken wing.
"It was in the elevator," one of the divers muttered as he climbed out. The other joined him, saying, "He was in a fetal position. Just floating like a ball. Isn't that weird? He went out the way he came into the world. All curled up."
Harold Smith knelt over the body. The head rolled, revealing a face that was stark in its lack of color. The wrinkles of the Master of Sinanju's face were deeper than Smith had ever seen. The head was like a shriveled white raisin, the lips parted in a grimace, exposing teeth that looked like Indian corn. His hair clung to his temples and chin like discolored seaweed.
It was a corpse's face.
Still, Smith put one ear to the sunken chest. The wet silk was clammy. He was surprised that the muscles had not gone into rigor mortis.
"No heartbeat," he muttered.
"What do you expect, Colonel? He's been immersed for the last three months."
Smith looked back at the face.
"Just a body," he said huskily. "I came all this way just for a body."
Behind Smith's back, the others exchanged glances. They shrugged.
Silence filled the dim corridor deep in the sand.
Smith knelt with one hand over the body's head.
Under his fingers he detected something. Not a heartbeat-exactly. It was more on the order of a slow swelling, like a balloon. It stopped, or paused. Then the swelling retracted with studied slowness in the next breath.
Without warning, Harold Smith flung himself on the body. He threw it over on its stomach. Leaning one hand into the other, he began pumping away at the Master of Sinanju's back.
"Sir, what are you doing?" It was the lieutenant.
"What does it look like?" Smith hurled back savagely. "I'm doing CPR."
"That's what I thought," the other said in a small voice.
"Don't just stand there," Smith snapped. "You have a medic standing by. Get him down here!"
There was a moment's hesitation. Smith pushed again, using every ounce of his strength.
"Do it!"
The team broke and ran. They climbed the stairs like Olympic runners fighting to be the one to light the torch.
Smith threw himself into a rhythm.
He was rewarded by a sudden expelling of rusty water from Chiun's tiny mouth and nostrils. He redoubled his efforts, not stopping until the water slowed to a spasmodic dribbling.
Taking the frail shoulders in hand, Smith turned the body over. He found no heartbeat. Prying the teeth apart, he dug his fingers into the tiny mouth. It was like putting his fingers into the cold dead innards of a clam.
The tongue was not obstructing the windpipe, he found. There were no chunks of vomit or phlegm lodged below the uvula.
"Where the hell is that medic!" Smith called in the emptiness twenty floors down in the California desert.
"Here he comes now, sir," a diver offered.
The medic took one look and said, "Hopeless."
Smith climbed to his feet with arthritic difficulty and put his face into the medic's own. He spoke one word.
"Rescuscitate."
"Impossible."
Smith took the man's khaki tie in one trembling fist. He pushed the knot up to uncomfortable tightness.
"Do as I say or lose your rank, your pension, and possibly your life."
The medic got the message. He got to work.
A scalpel parted the fine purple silk of the kimono, exposing a chest whose ribs could be counted through translucent bluish-white flesh. The heart-starting paddles came out their box.
"Clear!"
He applied the paddles to the chest. The body jerked.
"Clear!" the medic repeated.