This was the last straw for Chiun. The old Korean flapped around the rear of the car, coming up beside Remo.
"Forgive this one, Great Seer," Chiun spit. "He is a fool."
"Better a fool than a stooge," Remo countered.
Chiun bridled at the insult.
"This is a holy moment," Sun interjected. "It is not open for disbelievers."
"I don't know what kind of half-assed, get-rich-quick scheme you've cooked up," Remo said. "But there's no way you're going without me."
Remo felt Chiun move in closer. His steady voice chilled Remo to the icy center of his barren soul.
"Leave," the old Korean commanded.
Slowly, like the deliberate movement of a glacier through a mountain-rimmed valley, Remo turned to his teacher.
"Make me."
The challenge was given. Remo did not need to wait to see what Chiun's response would be.
Stepping sideways, the Master of Sinanju moved away from Sun and the limousine, keeping Remo in sight at all times. He circled until he felt that he was a safe distance from the man he had sworn to protect.
Careful to keep up his guard, Remo matched Chiun's moves, becoming the mirror image of his teacher. As they danced around one another, the limo melted farther and farther away.
The crowd of Koreans broke out around them, forming a concentric circle outside the much smaller center that was the two combatants. Even the two Korean leaders scampered back out of the waiting car to watch the inevitable fight. Only Sun did not trail them.
"You are a blasphemer," Chiun hissed as he circled Remo.
Remo shook his head. "He's a liar, Chiun. You know it on some level, I'm sure."
They were far enough away from the limo. Sun had still not followed them.
"He was a confidence man at one time," Chiun agreed hotly. "But are you so blind that you cannot see that is past? People change. The troublemaker Jew you so revere was a carpenter before the onset of celebrity."
"A carpenter isn't a bunco artist," Remo advised.
"No," Chiun admitted. "A bunco artist can sometimes make something of himself."
Still circling and without yet making a single move toward each other, the two men slid off the road and out onto the frozen mud of the rice paddy. Their curious and expectant entourage followed.
THROUGH THE SMOKY GLASS of the limousine, Sun watched them go. He had clicked the door shut after the crowd moved across the road. Now, as the huge group stepped out onto the broad wasteland, he bent over, collecting something from the floor.
It was the package he had retrieved from his private jet back at Pyongyang airport. Tucking the flat box up under his arm, he slid out the far side of the limo.
Stealing back down the long line of vehicles, he found the first jeep with a set of keys left inside. Climbing in, he glanced over to the field where Remo and Chiun and their crowd of followers stood.
They were far away. Largely blocked by a line of official North Korean government cars.
Smiling, Sun started the jeep. He pulled out on the side of the road opposite the crowd. He drove along the bumpy shoulder to the front of the line, nosing in front of the armor-plated limousine that he had never intended to take to the border.
Driving off, he saw briefly in the wide expanse of the Korean countryside the blood-red arena of his waking dreams. It flickered in like a mirage.
The wounded form of the Pythia hovered at the periphery of his consciousness. Although its cloak of yellow smoke seemed more faded than ever, there was a sense of satisfaction in the ancient spirit.
"You have done well," the voice in his mind rasped. "All has happened as I have foretold."
As he bounced down the long road to the Thirty-eighth Parallel, Sun felt his heart swell with pride. "And I will rule this united land?" he asked.
"Of course, my vessel," said the vision as it began to slowly fade. "Of course."
And if the demon force did not cloud his mind so completely, Man Hyung Sun might have detected the hollow tone of untruth in the words.
CAPTAIN YUN YONG GUN of the North Korean frigate Chosun had been defying orders for the better part of four hours.
The increased student activity in the South had brought some concern to the North. Captain Gun was supposed to be patrolling farther up the Korean Bay near Nampo, where the waters of the Taedong-gang flowed out into the Yellow Sea. It was part of the muscle flexing that had been going on in the North Korean military for the past several days.
Instead of sailing north, the captain of the Chosun was loitering farther south, in the North's territorial waters west of Haeju.
There he waited.
He smiled blissfully as the appointed hour approached, oblivious to the stares he was receiving from his men. It did not matter what they thought. Nothing mattered except the wisdom of the great holy man whose followers had shown him the proper path in life. His only regret was that he had not been able to share any of his revelations with the men under his command.
When the time came, Captain Gun ordered his men to begin the prelaunch sequence for two of the Free Rocket Over Ground old Soviet tactical missiles that had been adapted for use aboard the Chosun.
As his orders were followed, he fretted that the payloads of the two FROGs were conventional HE warheads and not nuclear. Nuclear would have been more fun. With atomic warheads, he would have been able to see the mushroom clouds from where his ship bobbed in the rough waters of the Yellow Sea.
When all was ready, Captain Yun Yong Gun personally entered the new target sites into the system. When his weapons officer pointed out that one of the sites was within the boundaries of North Korea itself, Gun pulled out his automatic and shot the man between the eyes. In the resulting confusion, the captain fired both missiles.
The frigate Chosun felt as if it would rattle apart as the two FROG 7s rumbled from their sleepy nests and arced up into the sky over the great black sea.
Captain Gun did not witness the majestic sight. As the twin infernos of tail fire were clearing the launch tubes on deck, he was already pressing the barrel of his automatic against his own temple.
The sharp explosion from the muzzle of his weapon was muffled by two things: Captain Yun Yong Gun's brains and the sound of the sleek missiles roaring inland.
THINGS HAD GONE FROM BAD to worse to something even worse than worse, and it still looked as if they had yet to hit rock bottom. At least that was Colonel Nick DeSouza's assessment of the Korean crisis.
He had been on the blower with the commander of U.S. forces in the region no more than ten minutes before. There was word out of Washington that the Pentagon was trying to come up with a scheme to clear all service personnel out of the DMZ. Of course, this would require more U.S. forces to be dropped into play. Ninety thousand, according to the report DeSouza had heard.
As was the case of late, the United States would beef up its forces and then lag behind to make sure everyone else was safely away. The UN, the Red Cross-even the damned Girl Scouts if there were any left in Seoul. All of them would be covered by U.S. service personnel. Only when it was strictly American asses that were left on the line would the U.S. ground troops be given the okay to bug out. Of course, by then there would probably be a full-scale ground war raging around them and there would be no escape route left.
Tension was high among the troops as he toured the last line of defense between the North and South. It was no wonder. It looked for all the world as if the DMZ was about to be overrun by both the North and the South.
The colonel looked back down the road toward the camp of the student demonstrators. Dusk had started to settle in, and with it came the inevitable bonfires. The figures skulking around the open flames seemed to be moving more purposefully. Or maybe it was his imagination.
"Calm down, Colonel," DeSouza muttered to himself as he tore his eyes away from the huge encampment.