"This is Elena. He'll be gone in five minutes."
Then she hung up.
The nurse had never had anybody as important as a Lippincott on her floor before. On the other hand, no one had ever looked into her eyes like the thin dark-haired man who stood smiling in front of her. His eyes were deep pools of darkness, and they seemed to act like vacuums, sucking her emotion out of her, through her eyes, and she pointed down the hall toward Lippincott's room.
"Room twenty-two-twelve," she said.
"Thanks," Remo said. "I'll remember this."
"You're coming back, aren't you?" the nurse asked.
"Nothing would keep me away," Remo said. Chiun smirked.
92
"When?" the nurse asked. "You coming right back?
"Well, I've got a couple of things to do first," Remo said, "but then I'll be back. You can count on it."
"I work till 12:30. I get off then," the nurse said. "I don't live alone but my roommate's a stewardess for Pan-Am and she's in Guam or someplace like that. There's nobody at my place. Except me. And whoever I bring."
"Sounds good to me," Remo said. He took Chiun's arm and led him down the hall.
"This country is exceeding strange," Chiun said.
"Why?" Remo asked.
"The adoration from that girl. Why, with all the people in this country, most of them better looking than you and all of them smarter than you, why does she choose you to fall in love with?"
"Must be my native charm," Remo said.
"I would have suggested brain damage," Chiun said.
"You're jealous," Remo said. "That's all. The green-eyed monster has got you."
"One does not overly concern oneself with the doings of nincompoops," Chiun said.
Inside Room 2212, Randall Lippincott had the sheet inside his mouth. He was trying to bite his way through it.
Remo came to his bedside and took the sheet out of his mouth.
"You don't know us," he said, "but we work for your father. What happened tonight?"
"Sheets," Lippincott hissed. "Got to get them off me. Suffocating. Too much clothes." His eyes were
93
wild and flashing from side to side, blinking rapidly. Remo looked to Chiun and the tiny Oriental moved quickly to the bed and released Lippincott's wrist restraints. The man's hands, once freed, pulled the sheet from his body and then began to claw at the neck of his long hospital gown.
The gown separated as his pale white hands pulled off the buttons and he yanked the gown from his shoulders and lay naked on the bed. He looked around him, eyes darting feverishly, a cornered rat looking for an escape route.
"Heavy," he hissed. "Heavy."
"You are all right now," Chiun said. "Nothing will harm you." To Remo, he said softly, "He is most seriously ill."
"Heavy, heavy," Lippincott said again. "The air. Coming down. Crushing me." He began to flail his arms in the air above his head.
"What's going on, Chiun?" asked Remo, feeling helpless as he stood at the foot of the bed, watching the sick man.
"Some evil medicine has been worked on him," Chiun said. "Very evil."
Lippincott waved his arms as if trying to swipe his way through a cloud of summer gnats. Saliva dribbled down the side of his mouth. His pasty face turned blotchy, then began to grow deep red.
"What do we do?" asked Remo.
Chiun touched the fingertips of his right hand to Lippincott's solar plexus. He probed for a moment. Lippincott ignored him, as if he did not know there was anyone else in the room.
Chiun nodded to himself, then grabbed Lippincott's left wrist. The nailing arm stopped as if it had
94
abruptly punched into a pool of tar. Chiun looked at the inside joint of the elbow, then nodded toward Remo, who leaned over and saw the small pinprick of a hypodermic in the joint of the elbow.
Chiun released Lippincott's hand, which began swinging about his head again. His wispy white hair fluttering about his head, Chiun moved quickly. He touched a finger into the left side of Lippincott's throat. The arms continued to flail, the eyes to roll, the saliva to flow, but then the arms began to slow down and the eyes began to steady.
Chiun pressed for a few seconds more and Lippincott's eyes closed. His arms dropped heavily onto the bed.
"There is a poison in his body," Chiun said, "and it attacks his brain. All his motions have helped to pump that poison into his brain." "Can we do anything?"
Chiun moved around to the other side of the bed. "We must close off the brain so no more poison gets in. Then we can hope that his body can cleanse itself of the evil."
He pressed his fingers into the right side of Lippincott's throat. The man was already asleep, but slowly the red color began to drain from his face.
Chiun held the pressure for exactly ten seconds, then leaned across Lippincott's body to thrust his fingers into the millionaire's left armpit.
Chiun hissed under his breath. Remo recognized the Korean word for "live." Chiun pronounced it as an order.
Remo nodded as he saw that Chiun was closing off, one by one, the major blood vessels in Lippincott's body. It was an old Sinanju technique to pre-
95
vent poison from coursing freely through a victim's body. When Chiun had first explained it to Remo, Remo had called it a "touch tourniquet," and Chiun, surprised that Remo had actually understood something, had nodded and smiled. The pressure applications had to be done precisely, and in exact order, so that the major blood vessels that carried the poison were sealed off temporarily, but the auxiliary blood vessels still carried enough fresh blood and oxygen to the brain to keep it alive. In a surgical amphitheater, the procedure would have taken six medical specialists, a dozen technicians, and a million dollars worth of equipment. Chiun did it with his fingertips.
Remo had never learned the sequence but now as he watched Chiun work over Lippincott from throat to ankle, he saw for the first time the specific logic of it. Left side, right side, left side, right side, top to bottom. Sixteen points that had to be hit. And one error could cause almost instant death from oxygen starvation of the brain.
Without thinking, he said, "Be careful, Chiun."