"About two-"
"Wait," the ambassador demanded, raising a quieting hand. "Turn that down," he ordered.
The aide did as he was told. When the sound had been muted once more, they continued to hear the muffled gunshots. A moment later, Sok's heart sunk as he heard the frantic squeal of tires. Turning back to the TV, he saw the truck finishing up a crazed turn around a very familiar corner.
"They are here," the ambassador said, his voice dead.
"THE GATES ARE CLOSED!" Remo yelled as the truck screamed up to the North Korean embassy.
"They do not leave them open on a normal day," the Master of Sinanju pointed out. Gusts of air from the open windshield whipped fiercely at the gossamer tufts of hair above each ear.
"The guards have guns!" Remo shouted.
"Do they not always?"
"Not pointed at us!" Remo replied.
At least ten embassy guards were standing in the long driveway just inside the closed gate. Kalashnikov rifles jutted through the spaces in the tall wrought-iron fence, aimed directly at the nose of the approaching truck.
Remo's mirror had been picked off by a Berlin police officer. A big enough slab of glass remained that he was able to see the cruisers closing in behind.
"There's not enough time to stop," Remo warned Chiun.
"Do as you must," the Master of Sinanju conceded. "Just do not lose any of my precious treasure."
"That's the least of my worries right now," Remo said.
Turning the wheel sharply to the right, Remo jumped the truck onto the curb at an angle. The big vehicle tipped slightly to one side. Rapidly, he cut the wheel to the left. The vehicle leveled off as it raced across the sidewalk.
Beyond the gates, the eyes of the Korean embassy guards grew wide as the truck barreled remorselessly toward them. As one, the guards opened fire.
They did not have much time to shoot.
The truck crashed the gates a second later, scooping up four guards and flinging them roughly aside. The others scattered like flung jacks into the bushes as the truck flew crazily up the drive.
The brakes were hit the instant the truck struck the gates. Tires screamed in protest as the vehicle screeched toward the ambassador's residence. Black streaks of smoking rubber spread in crazy zigzags as the truck tried frantically to both stop and remain upright while doing so.
In the end, it could not do both.
Halfway up the driveway the big truck toppled over onto its passenger's side. Sparks popped and paint ripped away as the vehicle slid toward the ivy-covered brick walls of the Korean embassy.
Inside the vehicle, Remo and Chiun kept their bodies loose. The moment the truck hit the driveway, they met the impact with an equal repulsive force. They immediately joined with it. The two Masters of Sinanju floated as safely as babies in a pool of amniotic fluid as the truck skidded to a slow, determined stop.
A slight impact at the last moment indicated that the truck had tapped against the wall of the embassy building. Sideways now, Remo could see oddly vertical bricks piled up through the smashed windshield.
The sudden intense silence was filled almost instantly by the sounds of car after car squealing to a stop back beyond the blown-open gates of the embassy. Shouts in both German and Korean filled the air.
Sitting sideways on the upended truck seat, Remo Williams listened to the yelling voices outside. He had one hand braced against the roof of the truck. "We're not out of the woods yet," he commented. He glanced over to the Master of Sinanju-more a glance down than sideways now.
Beyond Chiun's broken window was driveway. The old Korean had braced one bony hand similarly against the roof.
"You did that on purpose," Chiun accused.
"Did what?" Remo asked, his brow creasing.
"You deliberately tipped this vehicle over onto its side." He looked at the pavement, which was framed in his window like some strange modern painting rendered in asphalt.
"Geez, Chiun, we've got more important stuff to worry about right now," Remo complained.
Scuffling footsteps sounded immediately outside the truck. For a moment, Remo thought that the Berlin police had dared to venture onto embassy grounds. But all at once, a familiar red face appeared in the remnants of the front windshield. Remo recognized Ambassador Sok.
"Sorry. We thought this was the McDonald's drive thru," Remo said with an apologetic shrug.
The Korean diplomat was very undiplomatic in his expression. Clearly, he would have found this whole incident more pleasing if Remo and Chiun had perished in the crash.
His face pinched disapprovingly as he rose wordlessly from his bent posture. Almost as soon as he was gone, he began shouting down to the gathered police. He spoke in English, the accepted international language.
"Diplomatic immunity! Diplomatic immunity! These are Korean diplomats and this is sovereign North Korean soil! Please to stay beyond fence!"
Sok's voice grew more faint as he hustled down the drive to the twisted remnants of the embassy gates. He was greeted with shouts and jeers from the Berlin police.
Somewhere far above, Remo heard a helicopter rattling loudly.
"Let's take stock, shall we?" Remo suggested heartily. "So far we've pissed off the Germans, the Koreans and-when Smith finds out about this-America, as well. All that for a few scraps of yellow metal. Whaddaya think?" he asked with growing sarcasm. "Was it all worth it, Chiun?"
On the seat below him, the elderly Korean turned a baleful eye up to his pupil.
"Yes," droned the Master of Sinanju simply, adding, "and I am not talking to you."
Chapter 5
"No way," Dr. Wendell, the surgeon who had performed the emergency procedure, had insisted. "I will not be a party to it. If you leave, it is with my strongest reservations."
"Listen to reason," suggested Dr. Styles, the general practitioner who had diagnosed the edema. But though he used his most rational tone, his words fell on deaf ears.
"Folcroft Sanitarium is more than suited to handle these cases," the doctors' patient had declared.
The doctors pushed hard for an extended stay-unusual in the modern era of "everything as outpatient" medicine. But this was an extreme case; the patient was at the sensitive time of fife when the seriousness of something such as excess fluid on the brain could not be overstated.
Already, while in the care of New York's Columbus-Jesuit Hospital, he had fallen once on the way to the bathroom. Of course, it had been the night after the operation and he should not have been out of bed in the first place, but their patient was determined.
"Determined to kill himself," Dr. Wendell muttered to Dr. Styles in the hallway prior to their last attempt to keep their patient in the hospital one more day.
He was running a big risk leaving, but their patient had made up his mind. Apparently, that was that.
Of course, he could suffer more dizzy spells that might cause him to fall down a flight of stairs. The fluid could build up once more. Most insidious of all, years down the road he might even develop a tumor at the site. Who knew? In such cases, it was always best to play it safe.