He smoked furiously, one eye half-closed in sly rumination. On his desk stood the gilt statuette confiscated from the American lama in the hope it was made of true gold. It was not. Still, Colonel Fang had decided to keep it. He had always dreamed of winning an Oscar.
Now who among his underlings could he inveigle to take the blame for the inevitable international storm?
AT THE FIRST SET of control doors, there was a PLA guard standing at attention, chin high, eyes all but concealed by his low green helmet.
The Master of Sinanju waved to those who followed to remain behind and then he padded toward the lone sentry.
The sentry heard nothing of his approach, of course. How could he? He was a dull-witted Chinese, and a steel helmet covered his unhearing ears.
So when the rifle left his clenched hands, skinning his trigger finger, the guard was quite surprised to look down and see an ancient Korean standing not two feet in front of him and below his normal line of sight, holding the rifle.
Snarling a pungent curse, the guard reached down to recapture his precious assault rifle. The rifle suddenly dropped from the old Korean's grasp to clatter on the stone floor. He bent at the waist.
This brought his helmeted head within the reach of those long-nailed fingers. One nail swept up and traced a quick circle, using the rim of the steel helmet as a guide. The guard never felt the sting of the nail that scored through skin and skull bone.
With a sound like a champagne cork popping, the top of the guard's head jumped straight up, helmet and all.
These sounds were strange in the guard's ears. A quick rasp against skull bone and the noise of a cork popping. The top of his head felt odd.
Something was wrong. He reached up to touch his helmet and felt something warm and throbbing like a great organ.
Then he saw his helmet drop into the line of his vision to join his rifle on the floor. The inside of the helmet was like the inner portion of a halved coconut. Except instead of white coconut meat, he saw raw red bone.
And he knew.
The stabbing fingernail that burst his pounding heart was a mercy.
Chiun took the iron key from the belt of the quivering Chinese guard and unlocked the control door. Then he beckoned the others to follow.
Squirrelly took one look and shut her eyes. Kula paused to claim the assault rifle. Lobsang sniffed, "It is wrong to kill"
"It is wronger to die at the hands of oppressors," retorted the Master of Sinanju.
Three times they encountered guards. Each time the Bunji Lama and her entourage were made to stay back until they heard an ugly sound as of a great cork popping. They learned not to look as they stepped over each fallen PLA soldier.
COLONEL FANG HEARD a hollow popping sound and sat up in his hard wooden chair. His precious cigarette was almost exhausted, so he snuffed it out on the bare desktop and went to the door.
Through the frosted glass in the door, he saw a short shadow. It looked Tibetan. No Tibetan should have been walking unescorted through Drapchi Prison.
He reached into his belt holster for his Tokarev pistol, unlatched the safety and debated with himself whether or not to shoot through the valuable glass. It had been exceedingly difficult to requisition a door with a frosted-glass panel from Beijing, so he decided against it.
Instead, he flung open the door.
There was no one standing there when the door stood open.
The shadow had been there a second before. He was sure of it. Startled, Colonel Fang shut the door. The shadow had returned. He flung open the door a second time. No shadow. No little figure. It was baffling.
He pushed his square head out of the door. The act cost him his life. Without warning, long-nailed fingers grasped his collar with irresistible force, pulling him down.
Colonel Fang felt something sharp run across his forehead, cutting a thin swath through the hair at the back of his skull. He heard a very distinct pop.
After that the strangeness became stranger still.
There was a bald spot in the back of Colonel Fang's head. He knew it intimately, having watched its progress over the past two years of his life through a facing arrangement of mirrors.
Like some discarded coconut husk, the unmistakable bald spot landed at Colonel Fang's booted feet, along with his scalp. It was, he thought with a nervous mental laugh, as if the top of his head had come off.
The thought stayed with Colonel Fang long enough for him to faint. He never came out of that faint because when his face smacked the floor, his brains slopped out of his exposed skull like so much scrambled eggs.
"YUCK!" Squirrelly said, stepping over the fallen colonel. "Couldn't you have done this in a more PG-13 way?"
"There is your telephone," said the Master of Sinanju, gesturing toward the dull black desk instrument.
"Great. Hang on."
Scooping up the receiver, Squirrelly dialed the country code for the U.S.A., then the Washington, D.C., area code and finally the private number of the First Lady.
The phone rang. And rang. And rang.
"She's not answering! What's the matter with her?"
"Perhaps she is asleep," Chiun suggested.
"She can't sleep! She's the First Lady. The First Lady never sleeps!"
"She is sleeping now," said Kula.
Squirrelly hung up the phone and placed the back of her hand to her forehead. "Let me think. Let me think. Who do I call? Not Julius. He'll want to dicker for a percentage. Not my mother. I wouldn't give her the satisfaction. I know, I'll call Warren."
The rotary dial whizzed, and the line rang only once.
"Hello," a bored voice drawled.
Squirrelly grinned in relief. "Warren! I knew you'd be awake."
"Squirrelly."
"The very same. And guess what? I'm in Tibet."
"I read that. How is it?"
"Not so hot. To be perfectly frank, Warren, I'm under arrest. But don't worry. I just escaped."
"Everyone should escape once in a while. Escape their insanity. Escape the taboos of an unenlightened age."
"I need your help, Warren."