It had made Gusev Balbek nervous not to have his blessed guns with him, but in the heat of the Arkansas day when he saw the familiar gleaming blue barrels and the worn shoulder stocks of the balanced and delicately precise friends that had enabled him to practice on targets farther away than most men could even see, he felt a sense of relief. After all these years, he was here, and he was going to do the job of his life.
"Rabinowitz comes to that platform every day to lecture the troops," said the sergeant who had been waiting with the guns. "He has an Oriental in a pink robe follow him around. If the Oriental gets in your line of fire, take him out first, and then Rabinowitz. Good luck."
"I don't need to take out anyone but my target," said Gusev.
"This Oriental guy is weird. Wears a sissy robe but can outdo anyone in the division at anything."
"Not now he can't," said Gusev, getting off the stretcher and preparing his old friends for the day's work.
When the sun was at its highest, Balbek could see a Jeep speed through the units of tanks toward the raised platform fifteen hundred yards away, down below the little hill where Balbek had loaded his guns.
He saw a robe flutter in the wind, but it was not pink but, rather golden. Beside the robed one was the sad face of the first man he would kill.
At this distance those eyes could not see Balbek, but Balbek, because of the extraordinary sight of all Tatar villagers, could see Rabinowitz. No one ever saw as far or as well as a Tatar from Kazakhstan. In fact, the eye charts from the Ministry of Health were considered a joke.
As the villagers told each other, "That extra foot or two of height all went into our wonderful eyes."
Balbek saw Rabinowitz wave to his troops. He heard the troops yell back. He did not know what was being said below him, but he did recognize a harangue and he saw the anger build up in the face of the troops. He could tell a general whipping up his men for a fight.
The gun barrel felt cool in Balbek's hand. The sights had been filed off long ago. They only helped people who couldn't aim. And they were always off. He had yet to meet a Tatar who couldn't pick up a gun and tell just by the feel how far the sights were off.
What one aimed was the path of the bullet. Not the sights. One used all the perceptions, not just eyesight, to aim. One sensed the wind on one's flesh, the dampness or dryness of the air, the way dust moved near the target. Taking all of these things into consideration, one allowed the course of the bullet to establish itself as one fired.
On the platform, Chiun saw the most curious thing. The Great Wang totally ignored a very obvious sniper in the surrounding hills. Why was he doing this?
He ignored the man as he aimed and fired, and he even ignored the bullet as it sped on its way toward his head. This Chiun could not understand. He would have mentioned it, but voices took too long to travel at these times. And then he realized the Great Wang must be testing him. But with such a simple test?
Of course, it was clear. The Great Wang wanted to see variations on strokes, perhaps a lotus deflection of one bullet, and a windstorm of the next, and the wide-handed fat raisin of the next.
Up on the hill, Gusev Baibek fired eight shots right at the head and heart of Vassily Rabinowitz, and eight shots went off target every time they got near. Soldiers were lying wounded around the platform, some ten feet away, some a hundred feet away, but no one on the platform was scathed as the sun-bright kimono danced in the afternoon heat, reflecting the sun like its most glorious star.
Balbek released the trigger and steadied his rifle. He fired again, and again the golden kimono blazed in the sun, and again someone away from the platform fell down.
"Great Wang," said Chiun on the platform, "how many deflections do you want?"
"Who's shooting at the soldiers?" asked Rabinowitz, who to Chiun looked and sounded like his revered Great Wang.
"The sniper, of course," said Chiun.
"Well, finish him already," said Rabinowitz, and by that Chiun knew the Great Wang had approved of Chiun's variations of strokes deflecting objects.
As the division was still digging in, Chiun made his way up the far hill, where he saw an obvious Tatar villager behind the rifle and asked him:
"What are you doing here?"
It was the first time in twenty-five years that Gusev had heard his native Raco Stidovian.
"I am here to kill Vassily Rabinowitz," said the stunned Balbek, also in the language he had not spoken since youth.
"You've developed a terrible accent," said the man in the golden kimono.
"How do you know Raco Stidovian?" asked Balbek.
"I am a Master of Sinanju. We work everywhere. How did a nice Tatar archer like you get involved with guns in America?"
"The Russians took me at an early age and forced me to do horrible things for them. They threatened my poor sick mother: They threatened to rape my sister and murder our entire village if I did not do their evil deeds for them," said Balbek.
"Good reasons to take up the gun," said Chiun. "A fine reason for you. Unfortunately, my fine Tatar, it is not really any sort of reason for me not to kill you," said Chiun. "Doesn't even warrant a second stanza."
The gun fired again from an arm's length away, and this shot was blocked even more easily than those fired from fifteen hundred yards. Gusev Balbek went into his last sleep before he could blink. He could not see that the killing blow was a swan's overlay variant of the basic thrust. When Chiun looked back toward the platform, he saw his Great Wang did not see it either. He was nowhere around. On the platform was Wang's friend Vassily Rabinowitz, good guy.
He was yelling:
"We have to get them before they get us. We can't put off the war any longer."
In the end, as a last resort, and only as a last resort, Ambassador Nomowitz gave in to reason. As instructed by Anna Chutesov, he arranged for a time and a place where Russia would bare its soul to the American defense establishment. He saw Anna open a large briefcase with page upon page of top-secret documents. He saw her give them to an American second lieutenant to pass out to American colonels and generals and admirals.
He heard secrets told openly. He heard her detail the purpose of the parapsychology village, even its defenses. And then he heard what he was sure had to be treason.
She told them about Matesev and Balbek. "Those are state secrets," whispered Nomowitz.
"You think they don't know about it'?" said Anna coolly.
And then to the American officers in the little conference room built like an operating theater with rows and rows of seats set one above the other, she said:
"Under the foolish assumption that we should have him and you should not, we attempted to get him back for ourselves. I am sure you all see how ridiculous that is, when you consider that the man can make anyone believe anything."
"Damned right, Russky, he's ours now. Thanks for telling us he's at Fort Pickens posing as a brigadier general. Hell, we'll make him a four-star general."
The American officers applauded loudly. When the applause died down, Anna asked: "And do what with him?"
"Keep him in case we need him against you."
"For what?"
"To blind your minds as you would have blinded ours."
"Have you ever been to a general staff conference of Russian officers?" asked Anna.
"We know what you do," said the general.
"Then you would realize there is not much there to blind. Essentially we are dealing with someone who cannot be controlled, and ordinarily that would be no problem. The man would go through his life getting pretty much what he wanted. Unfortunately, we made a mistake and tried to harness him. Which we couldn't do."
"Just because you couldn't, doesn't mean we can't," said the American general.
Anna smiled. "I guess I am the fool. I didn't see that you should be no different from us. Well, let me tell you I can get a hundred and fifty more just as good as Vassily Rabinowitz, and I won't. He's not a weapon. He's a direction, and it won't be your direction, at least I hope it won't. This man, because of crimes we committed against him, has been terrified into making an army. And frankly, he's going to make a damned good one."