The old man shook his head. "You cannot leave."
"Course I can," Remo disagreed. "I can ignore whatever they're going to do and go outside and sit in the grass in the shadow of that chunka-chunka scary rock. Bye."
He hadn't taken a single step for the exit when he heard the first shout in Russian behind him. It was quickly followed by a single gunshot. After that, pandemonium.
"Well, crap," Remo observed, slamming on the brakes. Placing firm hands to his hips, he spun. The seated Russian was now trying to claw his way across the panicking row toward the center aisle. In his wake came the gaggle of men who had raced up the aisle. A hulking member of the hit squad carried a smoking gun in his paw.
The single, ill-advised warning shot had sent a flood of concertgoers to the exits. The first wave was racing toward Remo and Chiun. The crowd broke around the unmoving men, crashing through the gleaming exit doors behind them.
Remo shook his head in disbelief. "They don't leave for Bobby Stone's Ricardo Montalban impersonation, but they stampede over one single gunshot?" he complained.
"Quickly," the Master of Sinanju pressed.
The center seats were empty by now. Chiun bounded from the floor. Toes barely brushing the top of one of the back seats, the old man launched himself forward.
With a resigned sigh, Remo followed, toe to chair to air. The two men propelled themselves to the fourth row down, spinning in midair. In a heartbeat they landed on either side of the pack of armed Russians.
The huge Russian with the gun was running along in front of the other five. Lumbering toward his fleeing countryman, he was startled to suddenly find himself staring down into a pair of hard, deep-set eyes. Halting, the SVR agent quickly twisted his gun, aiming it into Remo's face.
"Here's where I've got a problem," Remo said. "My country's falling apart, sure. No argument there."
As a pudgy finger squeezed the trigger, something went wrong. Instead of aiming toward the little American's face, the gun was now pointed in the opposite direction. The hulking SVR agent didn't have time to ponder the significance of this strange turn of events before the bullet fired by his own hand blew off the top of his Soviet-era head.
"But your country," Remo continued as he bounded over the falling mountain of flesh and into the next man in line.
The next Russian came up short, stunned by both his collapsing comrade and the stranger leaping over him.
"Now if we want to talk a real mess, that's the shithole to end all shitholes," Remo said as he planted a finger deep into the second man's occipital lobe. "I mean, rather than pester me, why don't you use this energy where it might do some good? Take a mop and a pail to the Urals and don't stop until you reach Iran."
When he crushed the third man's chest to jelly and found a fourth one beyond the toppling agent, Remo frowned. There were only six in all, and he was up to four.
"What, you sitting this one out, Little Father?" he complained loudly as he planted a gun deep into the next man's pumping heart.
Chiun didn't respond. The row was too narrow. Remo couldn't see the Master of Sinanju beyond the next two men.
With a punishing overhand blow, Remo sent the penultimate agent's head down deep into his thoracic cavity. Collapsing vertebrae clicked together like fastening Legos. His chin now nestled onto his sternum, the suddenly short SVR agent tipped forward onto the floor.
All that was left behind the man was one very shocked Vadim Zhdanov.
The Master of Sinanju was nowhere to be seen. When he realized he alone was left standing among his SVR agents and that a man who fit the description given by the director of the Institute was wading through the bodies of his team toward him, Vadim Zhdanov did the only thing he could do under the circumstances.
Gulping audibly, the Russian agent placed his own gun to his own temple and pulled the trigger. As the last body fell, Remo scowled. "Typical," he said to the man with the smoking hole in his head.
"He gets me all rah-rah worked up and then takes a powder."
Still frowning, he turned.
The crowd had all but dispersed. A few stragglers were pushing through the doors near the stage. Remo was grateful that there weren't any cameras aimed his way. Most were directed at the stage, but some were positioned to get audience-reaction shots. But the crew from the cable network airing the Buffoon Aid special had fled, as well.
At the end of Remo's row, beyond the line of fallen SVR agents, a man was sprawled across two seats.
Hopping from head to chest to head, Remo skipped across the bodies and approached Yuri Koskolov.
The single shot intended to warn had accidentally found a target. Lying back uncomfortably across the seats, the Russian was clasping a hand to his heart. His fingers were stained bright red. His skin was already growing waxy.
"What's your story?" Remo asked.
Yuri Koskolov shook his head in weak incomprehension. "I just vanted to see funnyman Jackoff Smirniv," he gasped.
Then he died.
Remo straightened. His brow had only sunk lower over his eyes.
"Russia," he mumbled in disgust. "What a country."
Expression still dark, he went off in search of the missing Master of Sinanju.
Chapter 13
The clandestine rendezvous was held in the broad daylight of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Boris Feyodov leaned back on a bench, his heels digging comfortably into the pebbled path. Hands folded and resting on his paunch, he watched the joggers as they ran by.
The retired general was glad he had worn a jacket. Though the sun was warm, the occasional gusts of cool, salty wind from off the Pacific chilled the air.
His tired eyes watched a young jogger approach. The girl was all of twenty-five, with a bobbing knot of natural blond hair, red shorts and a scandalously revealing tank top.
The sweating girl smiled at him as she ran past. Feyodov returned the smile, tracking her with his eyes.
Her smile was one of politeness. She wasn't interested in him. Couldn't possibly be. She had seen him looking at her and decided to give a dirty old man a cheap thrill.
As he thought of his age, his physical condition, his current career and the life that had somehow claimed all he had once been, the remnants of the smile he had offered the pretty young American girl slowly faded into the broad lines of Boris Feyodov's sad, sagging face.
A sudden stiff breeze made him shiver.
Feyodov was scowling at the cold when a dark shadow fell across him, blotting the sun. Eyes hooded, he looked up.
He saw little more than a bushy black mustache surrounded by a nimbus of brilliant sunlight. "This is the last of it," the man grunted by way of greeting. He pulled a thick manila envelope from under his black raincoat, handing it over to the seated general.
Feyodov silently accepted the envelope. As the man took a seat beside him on the bench, Feyodov opened the envelope, thumbing through the thick stacks of hundred-dollar bills.
He didn't count the money. He just wanted to make sure there weren't any old Pravda clippings padding out the payment. This customer had tried that once early on.
With a satisfied nod, the general turned his full attention to his seatmate.
Without the blinding sun as a backdrop, he was now able to make out the features of the man.
He had brown hair that was streaked with gray and a matching mustache that drooped over his thick lips. Bushy black eyebrows hung heavily over eyes that burned with the passion of an unapologetic Communist.