"Sort of an early warning system," Remo explained. Chiun mumbled under his breath.
Later when the lights were out and all was still in the room, Remo felt a draft, a faint motion of breeze. But he heard nothing.
Then he heard Chiun's voice. "Plates. Why not cow bells? Or flares? Or hire guards to tell us when they are coming? Tricks. Always he wants to use tricks. Never does he understand that the essence of the art is purity."
Remo still could not see him and could hear only Chiun's voice as Chiun took the plate out of the door and the other from the window and placed them silently on a small end table.
Remo lay on the bed in silence, barely breathing.
Chiun, satisfied now that both he and Remo were properly defenseless, curled up onto his straw mat in the corner and fell asleep almost instantly. But before he did he said softly, "Good night, Remo, for you are still awake."
"How's a guy supposed to sleep with all that racket?" Remo asked.
The attack came at 12:00:48 A.M.
It was preceded by one of Forsythe's men kicking over one of the garbage cans in the alley below the fire escape. The aide then used the can to stand on to grab the fire escape ladder which unloosened and lowered with the squeak of a ship grinding against an iceberg.
Forsythe however did not hear this noise. After having synchronized watches with two of his men who had remembered to wear them, he took the third assistant, named Al, entered the hotel through a back door, and went up the back staircase to the second floor. Moving along the hallway toward room 226, Forsythe brushed against a table and upset a vase of plastic flowers.
Forsythe left it where it lay and then waited with Al outside room 226. He stood in silence, clenching and unclenching his hands, feeling the blood course through to his fingertips. The fingertips were the key. They would tell him when he was psychologically ready to move. He rubbed his fingertips against the heels of his hands.
Inside the room, Remo said softly, "Are you awake, Chiun?"
"No. I am going to sleep through my murder."
"Why are they waiting out there?" asked Remo.
"Who knows? They are probably stroking their fingertips."
Forsythe finished stroking his fingers, glanced at his watch, and slowly inserted the key into the lock, fumbling with it slightly because his eyes were on the luminous dial of his battery-operated Timex.
Behind him, Al shuffled nervously from foot to foot, his weight centered first over his right foot, then over his left, having found by sheer instinct the only way possible for a human being never ever to be balanced.
Finally, the sweep second hand of Forsythe's watch reached the eleven. Five seconds to go. He took a well-worn .32 caliber pistol, used for countless hours on a practice range, from inside his jacket, then turned the key, pushed open the door and jumped inside. His aide jumped in after him. Forsythe stopped short and Al plowed into him, sending Forsythe stumbling a few steps more into the room. The room was illuminated now by the light from the hallway and Remo turned his head in Chiun's direction and shook his head in pity. Forsythe saw Remo in the bed, after recovering his balance, and sneered. He did not see Chiun, still curled up on his mat in the corner of the room.
Forsythe sneered again, waiting for his two assistants to come in the window, to trap his prey in a pincers movement.
There was silence in the room as everybody waited. Al stood by uncomfortably and wished that Forsythe had let him carry a gun. But Forsythe had insisted that the only gun on the mission be his.
They kept waiting. Finally, thirty-three seconds later by Remo's measure, there was a squeak at the window. All turned to look. The two agents were tugging mightily on the window from outside trying to raise it, but it was freshly painted and stuck fast.
"Oh, for God's sakes," said Forsythe.
"Listen, buddy," said Remo to Forsythe. "Is this almost a wrap?"
Remo's voice brought Forsythe back to his sense of duty and responsibility.
Satisfied that he no longer needed the men on the fire escape, he angrily waved them away. They leaned against the window, pressing their noses to the glass, looking in. Finally Forsythe raised both his hands over his head and waved them away, shouting, "Go home," unmistakably dismissing the two aides with wristwatches. They paused a moment. Remo could see them shrug, then they turned away from the window. A moment later there was the awesome screech of the ladder as it slid downward toward the ground. A minute later the screech was repeated as the men disembarked and the ladder started back up.
Forsythe watched until long after the window was empty.
"C'mon, c'mon, I don't have all night," Remo said.
"I suppose you want to know why you're going to die," Forsythe said, pulling his lips back to make them seem thin and sardonic.
"Sure would, old buddy," Remo said.
"Your death is required for the welfare of the United States of America."
"So that's what they mean by do and die," Remo said.
"Right," said Forsythe. Belatedly realizing that anyone walking down the hall might become suspicious if they looked through the open door and saw a man with a gun aimed at another man, he said over his shoulder to Al, "Turn on the light and close the door."
Al turned on the lamp on the table behind Forsythe and turned to walk toward the door.
"The door first," Forsythe said angrily. "Not the light first. The door first."
"Sorry about that, chief," said Al. He leaned back to the lamp and turned it off, then went in the darkness to close the door, planning to come back next and turn on the lamp again.
Forsythe sipped air in disgust. In the moment when both men were blinded by the flash of the lamp light, Chiun rose from his mat in the corner of the room and moved toward the door. When Al reached it, Chiun pushed him outside and hissed, "Go home. You are not needed," and closed the door, all in one fluid movement.
Al found himself on the outside of a locked door. He could not get back in without knocking. But if he knocked, the chief might be distracted and lose his control of the situation. He had better just wait quietly, Al decided.
In blackness now, with the door closed, Chiun moved behind the unseeing Forsythe and turned on the lamp.
"Good, Al," Forsythe said. "Now you got it right." He looked at Remo. "The old Chinaman's not with you tonight, I see."
"Oh, sure he is."
"Don't lie to me, fella. His bed's not been slept in."
"He sleeps on the floor in the corner," said Remo.
Forsythe followed Remo's arm to the corner and saw Chiun's mat there.
He nodded. "Went out, huh?"
"No," said Remo.
"Where is he?"
"Right behind you."
Without turning around, and smirking at Remo for trying such an old trick, Forsythe said over his shoulder, "Al, you see that old Chinaman?"
Al, out in the hallway, could not hear Forsythe, so he did not answer.