"We can't stay here."
"We will not. You will leap, and lower the drawbridge so that I may enter in a manner befitting my suzerainty."
"Oh, come on!"
"No. You go on."
Shrugging his shoulders, Remo stepped back and took a running jump. At the edge of the moat, he gave what looked like a weak double kick. But he seemed to take wing.
Remo landed on his feet on the precarious edge of the drawbridge. Without pausing, he snapped out with the edge of his right hand. It shattered one restraining chain. The drawbridge quivered, but held. Remo went to the other chain and took hold of a fistful of links. He gave it a hard twist and the drawbridge slammed down, throwing up dust.
Remo was left hanging onto the broken chain. He released it and landed lightly on the still reverberating planks.
"How's that?" he asked, bowing and waving Chiun to enter.
Chiun frowned. "Was it necessary to break my chains?"
"You're welcome," Remo said sourly.
As they entered a stone-walled antechamber, they saw only suits of armor set in wall niches.
"I do not trust these guardians, Remo," Chiun said thinly. "Test their loyalty."
Remo went about, lifting visors. The suits proved to be empty.
"Satisfied?" he asked.
"No," said the Master of Sinanju.
"No?"
"They are ugly and will have to be replaced." He swept to the winding staircase and mounted it on sure, silent feet.
Frowning, Remo followed.
There was a honeycomb of chambers clustered at the highest point in the castle. One door lay open. Remo approached it cautiously. Cautiously, because he smelled the fresh, sour scent of human excrement.
A body slumped over a long conference table proved to be the source of the unpleasant odor.
Remo went to it, pulled it up in its chair.
"That's the guy!" he said.
"What guy?" Chiun asked, examining the dead face.
"The CEO of Beasley Corp. Whatever his name is."
The man's mouth hung slack. Stuck to his back teeth was a bright pink wad.
There was an open pack of Mongo Mouse chewing gum on the desk, next to a pocket dictaphone.
"Huh?" Remo said. "Smell."
Chiun sniffed the dead man's mouth delicately. "Almonds," he said.
"Cyanide. That's probably what killed Zorilla, too," said Remo, picking up the dictaphone. He fiddled with the rewind button until the device began to whir. When it had clicked to an automatic stop, Remo thumbed on the play-back.
The familiar but trembling voice of the Chairman of the Beasley Corporation began to vibrate from the tiny built-in speaker.
"This is the full confession of Eider Drake, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Sam Beasley Corporation. It all began with our third quarter of fiscal 1991 . . . ."
"A confession," Remo said, clicking the device off. "I'd better call Smith."
Harold W. Smith was changing in the Spartan privacy of his Folcroft office. He had not gone home. He had not slept, except in catnaps in his well-worn executive's chair.
Dawn was breaking over Long Island Sound as Smith replaced his gray trousers with an identical pair. His wrinkled white shirt came off his back and he struggled into a crisp white one. A fresh tie replaced the old. He examined his gray vest critically. It was still serviceable so he drew it on, patting the watch pocket to make certain his suicide pill was still there. It was.
Finally, he drew on his gray suit coat and returned to his still warm seat.
America slept. On the TV screen a test pattern sizzled. It was, unfortunately, a Spanish-language test pattern: the red-white-and-blue flag of Cuba and the words TELEREBELDE.
Havana had not yet relinquished its grip on South Florida airwaves, and the networks were perversely repeating the transmission in a desperate attempt to grab ratings.
Smith knew, because the President had informed him, that a surgical strike on a Cuban broadcast station was under active consideration in the War Room of the Pentagon. It would be justified not only in the name of the sanctity of U.S. airwaves, but as a tit for tat over the failed Turkey Point attacks.
At the moment there was a lull. But by afternoon-evening at the very latest-the next escalation was certain to take place. It was only a question of who would strike first.
And from Remo and Chiun, Smith had heard nothing.
A knock at the door and Eileen Mikulka, Smith's personal secretary, poked her head in. She saw an oblivious Harold Smith, looking as if he had just arrived refreshed by a full evening's sleep. Knowing how her boss detested any intrusion when he was concentrating, she quietly closed the door.
She saw he was working at his terminal again. It had always puzzled her. Sometimes it was there. Sometimes it wasn't.
She wondered if her starchy employer liked to play video games. Not a sheet of computer printout had ever crossed her desk. What could he be doing?
The blue contact phone rang and Harold Smith took it up.
"Remo. Report."
"Ultima Hora is history," Remo said.
"Good."
"Zorilla's dead-"
"Yes?"