"Of course," Chiun said softly.
"It's some kind of force field," Remo said. "Probably a detection device to tell him we're here."
"I know what it is, you untrained monkey," Chiun said.
"How do we avoid it? That's the problem."
"There was once a Master Yung Suk," Chiun started but Remo interrupted.
"Now you're going to give me a history lesson? Now?"
"There are no new answers; only new questions," Chiun said.
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Remo.
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"It means that there was once a Master Yung Suk," Chiun said.
"Can we keep this one short before Terri dies hanging up there?"
"And Yung Suk was supposed to storm the castle of an evil prince. This was in Mongolia. Don't worry about the girl; I noticed she has very strong arms. And the evil prince knew an attack was coming and he had all his best soldiers atop his castle, along the walls, looking off in all four directions. And the prince had his spies about too and the spies found that the attack would come from Yung Suk and four of the best men of the village. So when five men came out of the woods surrounding the castle, a great cry and shout went up from the soldiers and they attacked and overwhelmed the five men and killed them."
"That's some freaking cheery wonderful story," Remo said.
"It is not over."
"What else?" Remo asked.
"And while the soldiers were laying waste these five, Master Yung Suk entered the castle from the other side and killed the evil prince and got paid and everything ended happily."
"What's the moral?" asked Remo.
"The moral is that armies and Englishmen see only what they have been warned that they might see. This Wissex upstart up there is expecting two. We will give him two and he will concentrate on two and then there will be a third and that will do the trick," Chiun said.
"There's only two of us. How are we going to be three?"
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Chiun stood up and stepped back into the darkness a few yards. Remo heard a soft wrenching sound as if a grave were giving up its cargo. A moment later, Chiun was back, his arms wrapped around a small eight-foot-high tree. He tossed the tree toward Remo.
"I get it," Remo said. "We use the tree to divert him and make him think it's one of us."
"At last the dawn," Chiun said. "Even after the darkest night."
"You want me to go with the tree?" Remo said. "How about you?"
"You already clomp around with enough noise for two," Chiun said. "You are much more believable imitating a crowd."
"Okay."
Chiun pointed Remo off toward the left side of the hill, and as the old man watched, Remo moved away into the darkness, lugging the tree, as silent as a wisp of air. When he knew that Remo could not see him, Chiun nodded his head approvingly. Some never learned to move. There had even been masters who were lead-footed; but Remo had learned in the earliest days of his training to center his weight, so he could move smoothly in any direction. One of the fairy tales Chiun had been told as a child was the story of a master who could run across a wet field and leave not a crushed blade of grass behind him. When he was growing up in his training, Chiun thought it impossible, a fairy tale, but now he thought that someday Remo might be able to do it. Perhaps even better than Chiun himself.
Chiun listened but heard nothing except the
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sounds of the night. No movement from Remo, not even the hiss of a breath, not even the rustling of a leaf on the small tree the young American carried.
And then Chiun drifted off toward the right side of the hill, above which hung the terrified form of Terri Pomfret.
"Here they come," Wissex said softly.
It was fully dark now and from Terri's point of view, Wissex's face was distorted in the green flickering light of a television monitor built into the table before him. The green light threw long fright shadows up across Wissex's face. Terri wondered how she had ever thought he was handsome.
Wissex looked at the screen and laughed softly at their crude attempt to deceive him. The screen was built into a television but it was the latest form of radar screen, picking up the movement of objects over the size of a child.
Four overlapping cameras that Wissex had mounted on the edges of the tabletop mesa scanned the area around the hill,
Wissex watched the movement of the two men on the screen. First one of them would dart forward, fifteen feet or so, close to the edge of the camera's range. Then the other would move forward, and join with the first. Then the first would move forward again. It was obvious to Wissex that they were trying to find a pocket of space that the cameras didn't cover.
Not a chance, he thought. He reached under the table and opened a small case from which he took a submachine gun. He clicked off its safety and set
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the first round into the chamber, then waited, his eyes watching the screen, as the two figures continued their unusual leapfrog motion toward the base of the hill. Only forty yards more and they would be at the bottom of the cliff.
They would have to climb up. And he would be waiting.
Remo tossed the tree forward fifteen feet and waited until it hit. Then he ran forward himself until he was on a line with the tree, then turned sharply to his right and moved over to the tree. He waited a few seconds, then tossed the tree forward again and repeated the maneuver.
Chiun should be at the base of the hill now, Remo thought.
Terri saw him as the moon came out from behind a cloud for a brief moment. It flashed on the dark purple of the kimono and she saw Chiun's face, looking upward, as he came silently up the stone face of the hill. She had been looking at that wall all day and it had been smooth and seemed impossible to scale, but Chiun was moving upward as rapidly as if he had been climbing a ladder.
She glanced over toward Wissex at the platform in the center of the hill but he had seen nothing. His eyes were still riveted on the television screen.
And Chiun was climbing.
Remo had reached the bottom of the hill. He dropped the tree and looked up at the smooth stone walls. If he went up, Wissex had only to
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look over the edge and he could pick Remo off like a wingless fly clinging to a wall.
He hoped Chiun's scheme was working and the Briton was still focusing his attention on Remo. Maybe ... if he kept that attention.