"You have failed."
"Prison, then," Foxx shouted frantically. "I'll take prison. You can't murder me just for making one mistake, can you?"
"No," Halaffa said thoughtfully. "Guards, halt." The giants stopped in their tracks. Halaffa rubbed his chin, deliberating. At last he said, "You are right, Dr. Foxx. I cannot in good conscience have you executed for abandoning your mission. After all, I am a fair man. A merciful man. A man who treads in the steps of Allah to bring peace and prosperity to Zadnia."
"Thank God," Foxx whispered. He fell to his knees. "Praise be to you for a thousand years, Your Perfect-ness."
"So it is my decision that you shall not be shot tomorrow morning for making a mistake."
"Your Splendidness, Your Divinity ..."
"You will be shot for interrupting my festivities this evening. Good-bye."
"No! No!" Foxx screamed as the burly guards led him down the filthy stone stairwell into the dungeon, where rats picked clean the bones of those who had preceded him to the courtyard in which he would stand tomorrow.
After the crusted iron bars of his cell slammed shut, one of the beefy guards shook a finger at him. "Next time, wait till Monday morning," he said.
Chapter Eighteen
The pilot of the F-16 put on his best aviator's smile for his two civilian passengers as the sleek craft screamed over the Mediterranean.
"Sure sump'in' up here, idn't it?" he said in his aviator's fake Southern accent.
Chiun shrugged. "No movies," he said.
Remo focused in on the city of Anatola through the pilot's powerful binoculars. The mission. Don't think about anything but the mission now, he told himself. Posie was dead, and he might have been able to save her if... but don't think about that. It was over. She was dead. Period. From this distance, the city's white stucco walls and winding streets seemed almost washed clean of filth and dung and disease-bearing flies that were Zadnia's trademark the world over.
"Okay," Remo said. "You can park anywhere."
The pilot smirked behind his proteptive headgear. Civilians. Nonpilots. Well, who expected the lower forms of life to know beans from barnacles?
"Sorry, pal. That's Zadnia," he said.
"We know what it is," Chiun snapped. "Do you think we would fly in this noisy machine without even in-flight movies if we were going to Cleveland?"
179
180
"Fine," the pilot said, "but you can't land in Zadnia. They'll blow us up before we hit the ground."
"All right," Remo said. "That makes sense. Where do you keep the parachutes?"
"We don't have parachutes," the pilot said.
Remo shook his head. "And you'd probably iose our luggage if we had any. All right. How low can you take this thing?"
"Low?"
"Weil, of course, low," Remo said. "Low."
"Right down to wave top," the pilot said.
"You don't have to go that low," Remo said. "Anything inside a hundred feet or so is good."
"What for?" the pilot asked, even as he pushed the control forward and moved the plane down toward the blue waters of the Mediterranean.
"What do you think for?" Remo asked. "Are your belts fastened?"
"Yes."
"Good-bye forever," Remo said. He punched out the plane's canopy, and then spilled out of the plane in a tumbling free fall, that quickly turned into a smooth eagle-soaring toward the white waves below.
"Sloppy," Chiun said. He moved up in his seat.
"You're not jumping, too, are you?" the pilot shouted over the scream of the wind.
"If you'd rather land. ..."
"Can't." It was the CIA. It had to be the CIA. Some kind of nutty suicide mission, with these two ninnies the victims.
Chiun stood up.
"I wish you could take a chute," the pilot said.
"Keep your advice on my bodily functions to yourself," Chiun said, then slipped gracefully out of the
181
jet, his yellow robe billowing in the wind like a sail.
The pilot looped once to observe the final disappearance of his two former passengers into the Mediterranean. The brass was going to want a report-and-a-half on this one and the details would be important.
Somehow, he noticed, the old guy in the bathrobe had managed to bring himself to the same level as the thin guy in the T-shirt.
The pilot looped again, and came in close. The two men were talking. The old one was waving his arms and shouting, while the young one shrugged and pointed up at the jet. The pilot could hardly believe it. Here they were, sailing toward the ocean, and these two loonies were having an argument. Then, without even taking time to scream in panic, the two crazy civilians sank into the sea at precisely the same moment.
Well, that was that, the pilot said to himself. Maybe two nuts the CIA had to get rid of. They had guts, though, he'd have to hand it to them. Neither of them had shown a trace of fear when they augured in. It had been a death worthy of an aviator.
He climbed into the sky and out of sight. Twenty seconds later, two heads bobbed out of the sea. "No movies, no lavatories, no free cakes of soap, no tea, and a foul-mouthed driver on top of it all!" Chiun shrieked. "I have had better rides in New Jersey taxi-cabs. How can you subject one of my delicate sensibilities to such a primitive mode of travel?"
"It was the fastest way," Remo explained for the fourth time since they'd left the F-16.
"Hurry, hurry," Chiun grumbled. "You have cast aside all the pleasures of life in the empty pursuit of
182