"Everything. Rifles. Handguns. Knives. Grenades." As he spoke, he touched various parts of his anatomy, from which hung the different weapons. "Even buU-whips," he said. "I've got everything."
"You would," said Chiun. "Use any or all of them."
"And what weapons will you use?"
Slowly, as if to display them, Chiun held his hands up in front of his face. "I always have my weapons," he said.
The woman was dressed in wraps of gauze. A veil of many layers covered the bottom half of her face. Her full breasts jutted carelessly through the wrapped white
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r
fabric as she undulated her way across the room toward Remo, her hips moving in the exaggerated sexual gestures of the belly dancer.
Her hands snapped noisily over her head, her arms moving seductively in a plane with the sides of her body.
Remo looked away from the window and said, "All right, Reva. What do you want?"
Reva Bleem kept dancing. "I want you," she said.
"You only want me because Fm going to make the world safe for Polypussides at fifteen dollars a gallon."
"That too," she said. She was sinuously menacing him now, rotating her hips in front of his legs.
"Reva, do you know that you're beautiful?"
"Yes. Many men have told me that."
"Then you believe me?" asked Remo.
"Yes."
"Then believe this. You've got as much sex appeal as a nosebleed."
She stopped dancing as abruptly, as if she had stepped on a handful of carpet tacks.
"But why?" she said. She put her hands on her hips and stared at Remo.
He reached over and lowered the veil from her face.
"I don't like ambitious women," Remo said. "Particularly when they're using me to further their ambitions."
"That's really punk, you know."
"I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. I don't want to be offensive, but I don't want you wasting your time."
He was back to looking at the soldiers drilling, shaking his head from side to side, more in pity than in anger.
"You will beat the old man tomorrow?" she asked.
"You'd better lay off that old man stuff," Remo said without turning.
"But you will win?"
"I don't know. I've got these thousand misfits. Chiun's got Fareem's horseback brigade, but led by Abdul the Bulbul Emir. Who knows? They may fight for-
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ever. Arabs are always doing that. That's why their wars last for centuries. Not because it's a holy cause. 'Cause neither of them can figure out how to win."
"But one of you must win. The anaerobic bacteria and the future of the world are at stake."
"Yeah. One of us will win about that. And where is it anyway? It should have been here by now."
"I don't know. You sure you wouldn't want me to make love to you?"
"I'd rather make love to a maple icebox," Remo said.
"Okay," Reva Bleem said. She walked toward the door, but then paused. "Can I go with you tomorrow?"
"Of course you're coming. You're going to be in the lead car with me. We'll take your car and your driver. I don't trust any of these camel jockeys."
"All right," she said. She opened the door, then paused again.
"But I am beautiful?" she asked wistfully.
"Yes, you are. Very beautiful," Remo said. After the door closed, he shook his head. Melody Wakefield trying to seduce his soldiers. Reva Bleem trying to seduce him. General Bull, who was nothing but a salesmen. An army that not only couldn't fight, it couldn't even march.
He'd bet that Chiun didn't have problems like this.
The entire village crowded around the sand arena where Chiun faced the giant redhead.
Sergeant Willie Bob Watson held an automatic pistol in his left hand. In his right, he held a loosely coiled bullwhip.
"You need a weapon," he insisted.
"Begin any time," said Chiun. His arms were folded across his chest, his hands buried deep in the billowing cuffs of his blue brocade kimono.
The sergeant looked toward Abdul, who stood next to his father. Ganulle had joined them.
"Go on," Abdul said. "Go on, go on."
Watson shrugged, and with an underhand flip spread
the bullwhip out in front of him. Then, with a snap of his right wrist, he coiled the whip up off the ground and whistled it by China's head, where it snapped only inches from the Korean master's ear.