The Master of Sinanju was almost there. The tunnel was damp and cool, and he could feel it in his bones despite his robes. Ahead, chinks of light indicated a door not properly fitted. That light had been the only illumination in the blackness of the tunnel.
Chiun paused to listen. He heard nothing ahead of him, but after a space, he heard slow footsteps behind him. Not Remo. The Russian. He had escaped and followed the Master of Sinanju.
Chiun, all but invisible in the darkness, pushed himself against the earthen side of the tunnel and allowed the Russian to pass by him. Let the Russian blunder through the door on his own, if that was his wish. If he was not killed immediately, then Chiun would know that it was safe to proceed.
* * *
Seeing the old Korean disappear into the ground several hundred yards from the odd-shaped building, Pavel Zarnitsa naturally assumed that Chiun and Remo had both gone into the tunnel. He waited briefly, then entered the tunnel. The Americans would blaze the trail for him so he could safely follow.
The tunnel was black as a Politburo limousine, and Pavel was forced to feel his way along the walls, which seemed to go on forever until the vague outline of a door showed ahead. There was no sign of the two Americans. Good. They had already gone in. Now Pavel Zarnitsa would go in, too.
He put his shoulder to the yielding door.
The room was circular. Fluorescent lights flickered bluely from the ceiling, which gave the room something of the aspect of a hospital operating room. Or a morgue.
There was a small control console opposite the place where Pavel found himself. A figure was seated at that console, watching a television screen on which Remo Williams could be seen moving down a winding corridor. The figure was dressed in a long purple garment something like a monk's cassock but without the cowl. Above its collar rose the figure's head, which was a pinkish bulb twice the size of a human's and the color of the inside of someone's eyelid. Pavel could not see the World Master's face, who sat with his back to the Russian, but he did see the twin sets of spindly arms hanging uselessly from the armholes of the purple garment.
Two other arms— human ones— projected from the front of the garment to manipulate the console buttons.
Pavel eased forward, trying to make no sound. But he made a sound.
The World Master turned in his chair, causing his false arms to rattle like kindling. But Pavel wasn't thinking of them, or of the unearthly face that now faced his own. He was thinking of the familiar baritone voice that came from the slit mouth beneath the single fisheye set in the center of the World Master's pink face.
"Pavel! You fool. You stupid fool— you do not belong here!"
"Chuzhoi!" Pavel croaked incredulously. "What is this? What—"
"Idiot," the expressionless face said. "You have stumbled upon a GRU operation. The greatest of all time."
"No," Pavel said hollowly. "You cannot do this. Exploding a nuclear weapon in the United States is wrong. You—"
"You will not stop me," the other said, drawing a revolver. "I cannot allow you to interfere."
Pavel stepped back in shock. "You would shoot me? I am your brother!"
* * *
The ceiling changed. It was no longer smooth, Remo saw. Instead, for about six feet, it was perforated with hundreds of tiny holes. Beyond that, just visible around the bend, the ceiling was smooth again.
Remo became a blur, and thus sped through the danger zone before any of the acid that squirted from above could hit him. He looked back and saw the acid spatter and blacken the floor. Fumes curled up and reached toward him. Before Remo could move on, he saw another perforated section of ceiling revealed just ahead. It, too, began raining acid. And the acid formed puddles, which spilled in the direction of Remo's feet.
There was barely time for the fact that he was trapped to sink in when Remo heard the sound of gunshots through the walls followed by a trailing scream.
"Aiiieeeee!"
Chiun. That scream was Chiun's.
Remo ran forward three steps, putting him on an outside line, and let it carry him through the sheet metal wall. The wall screeched like the amplified sound of a nail pulled from wood as Remo's hands pierced it and bent it outward.
He was in the next corridor, really a continuation of the single spiral. Remo got back on the outside line, and tore through the next wall. He stumbled right into a trap. A hand grenade dropped from a ceiling trap by a string, which pulled the pin out.
Remo grabbed the grenade and threw it down the corridor and threw himself in the opposite direction. The explosion hurt his eardrums even though he'd remembered to open his mouth wide to equalize the pressure that might otherwise have damaged them.
Picking himself up, Remo went through the last wall as if it were a sheet of foil and found himself in the central chamber.
The first thing he saw was Chiun, looking horrified, standing with his back against one wall and looking down at two bodies lying on the floor. Chiun saw Remo.
"I think it is dead," Chiun squeaked. "I may have killed it, but I am not certain. Oh, Remo, isn't it horrible?"
Remo looked at the still form of the World Master, whose encephalitic head lay at too sharp an angle to his body for his neck not to be broken. A single fisheye stared up sightlessly, and the many arms, both human and not, which splayed from the creature's body made it look like some deformed spider.
Remo knelt beside the body, while Chiun all but jumped onto the console chair like a caricature of a woman who has seen a mouse.
"Is it dead, Remo?" Chiun asked.
Remo touched the pinkish head and felt the slickness of plastic. He pulled the head loose to reveal a human head whose strong features and black hair resembled those of Pavel Zarnitsa's— even in death.
"Relax, Chiun. It's only a disguise."
"Are you certain?" Chiun asked doubtfully. "But when he saw the truth, he shook himself and stepped forward confidently. "Why, of course it is a disguise, Remo. How could it not be?"
Remo ignored that and asked, "What happened here?"
"This Russian freed himself and followed me, but I tricked him," Chiun said, pointing to Pavel Zarnitsa, who was either dead or very close to it. "I let him pass before me. He surprised this— this insect— and they quarrelled. The insect shot him, and I felled the insect with a single blow to its neck. Then I saw its face..."
Remo went to Pavel Zarnitsa. The Russian was bleeding to death. He would not live long, but for the moment he did live.
Pavel opened his eyes. "He... is dead?"
Remo nodded.
"Is... my brother," Pavel said. "Chuzhoi... Zarnitsa. Younger brother... with GRU. You know GRU? He— he should have been KGB. Now... is dead. I am... dead, too. No? He called me fool. He is... fool. He would kill... own brother for stupid GRU plan... Listen. You must— must find warhead before—"
"I know where it is," Remo told him, coming to his feet. "I'm going to have to leave you."
Pavel closed his eyes. "I will be dead when you return."
"I know," Remo said. And he and Chiun left through the underground tunnel.
"The warhead's in Tulsa, Chiun," Remo said as they piled into the car. "We've got maybe two hours before it goes."
"You learned the snail maze?"
Remo nodded. "The trick is not to follow the path."
"Good. You have learned something for a change."