Remo leaned over to whisper so that no one else could hear. "Chiun, these are Prince Wo's descendants. They're our enemies."
Chiun hissed back. "I know that."
"Then what are we staying here for? Let's book."
"That means leave?" Chiun asked.
"That means leave," Remo said.
"So we leave and what then?" Chiun asked. "Another day, another year and these people who would not pay their proper bill to Master Pak come to us again? It is better that we resolve all this now."
"If you say so," Remo said.
"I say so," Chiun said. "You go stand on the other side and keep your eyes open."
"Is there a leader? Why not just splatter him now?" Remo said.
"Because we do not know what will happen then. To act without information is to court disaster. The other side."
"All right," Remo said, and moved around onto the other side of the rectangular clearing which was marked at each corner by the large columns he had noticed earlier. The black cloths that covered the tops of the columns were still in place.
The young man whom Chiun had been talking to earlier was now standing in the center of the clearing.
He raised a hand for silence, got it, and announced in a clear voice: "I am Reginald Woburn the Third. I welcome you to the Wo family reunion. Let the fun begin."
As he stepped out of the clearing a brass gong somewhere was struck, sounding a deep-throated reverberation. A trio of high-pitched wood flutes lay down a sweet chord of melody. Cymbals crashed and the gong boomed again as a troupe of brightly clad Oriental acrobats came tumbling through the crowd and into the ring.
"The Amazing Wofans," the young man next to Remo said.
"If you're going to be my tour director, what's your name?" Remo asked.
"Rutherford Wobley," the man said.
"I thought so," Remo said.
He looked away in disgust and saw the Wofans spinning around the ring, doing handsprings and cartwheels, back flips and rolls. Their bodies flew through the air like bright blurs of color as they passed over and under each other like whirling tops in constant motion. While the area they had to work in was not large, they managed to sail through a series of interweaving patterns as complex as a spider's web made from pure energy and motion.
The pajama-clad performers grouped in the center of the ring and flipped themselves upward to form a human pyramid. They were good, Remo thought disgustedly, but he'd seen it all before. He wondered when they were going to start spinning plates on long bamboo poles.
The athletes dismantled the pyramid, rolling to the ground, to the applause of the spectators. Remo glanced across the clearing, looking for Chiun, but he could not see him.
The high-pitched piping of the flutes filled the air with a sound like a mournful wail. The cymbals crashed and then the gong again with its deep lingering echo.
The acrobats responded to the music. They flew across the ring, two, three, four at once, speeding smudges of color that seemed to defy the laws of gravity, tumbling over each other, seeming to pause in the air at the top of their leaps, working their way across the clearing. And then a blue-clad acrobat overshot the rest of the performers and came hurtling at Remo like a dive bomber.
It had started. Remo stepped to the side a halfpace and raised a hand. It looked as if he hadn't really done anything, maybe just waved to someone in the crowd on the other side of the arena. But the acrobat's feetfirst dive missed Remo completely, except where the Oriental's shoulder brushed the tip of Remo's outstretched hand. The contact was punctuated by the snapping sound of breaking bone, a whoosh of exhaled air and then a prolonged scream as the acrobat hit the ground. This time he did not bounce up.
Two more came lunging toward Remo. Red and green this time. Remo turned slightly, catching one with his shoulder blade and the second with his knee. He hoped that Chiun was watching because he felt that his technique was really good on the two moves. The acrobats' bellows of pained surprise drowned out the frantic warbling of the flutes. The red-and-green-clad men popped skyward like bubbles in a breeze. Like bubbles, they were broken when they hit the ground. From the corner of his eye as he turned, Remo saw Reginald Woburn yank the cord that dangled from one of the rectangleclustered poles. There was a blinding flash of light as a mirror on the pole picked up and reflected the brilliant intensity of the sun's glare directly into Remo's eyes. Remo blinked in surprise. As he opened his eyes again, he had to ignore the mirror because the remaining Oriental acrobats were coming toward him, with knives they had drawn from inside their clothing. Remo ducked out of their way and as he did there was another flash of blinding light. Then another. And another.
The harsh white light seared his eyes. Remo ducked away from the acrobats, into the crowd of people standing around the performance arena, his eyes screwed shut tightly. He opened them again, but he still could not see. The brightness had shocked his vision for a moment, and behind him, he could hear the yelling of the Oriental acrobats as they tried to get to him.
Remo fled, then stopped as a thin high voice rose above the sounds of a hundred different noises. It was Chiun's voice rising above the crowd. It sounded metallic and strained.
"Remo," Chiun wailed. "Help me. Attack now. Free me. Help."
His blind eyes burning, Remo lunged toward the voice. Eight steps he knew would bring him to it. But when he was there, all he felt was stillness. There were people there, poised and waiting. Remo could feel them, hear their breathing, sense the coiled tension in their bodies, feel the small movements they made even when they thought they were standing perfectly still.
But there was nothing in the spot where Chiun's voice had come from.
Behind him, Remo heard the voices of the acrobats moving toward him. And he caught the scent of perfume, a painfully familiar fragrance that stirred up far too many memories. It was Kim Kiley's perfume, rich and exotic, as individual as a fingerprint when it intermingled with the scent of her own body.
She was there and then there was another scent.
It was the smell of the tiny particles of residue that linger in a gun barrel after it has been fired. No matter how many times the gun was cleaned, the smell always remained for those with the ability to sense it.
Remo felt the air change again, heard the whisper of motion as a slender finger pulled backward slowly on a trigger. He wanted to yell "No" but there was no time, and instead his unspoken word turned into a thunderous roar of despair that shattered the stillness as Remo, sightless but unerring, reached out for the sound and brought his hand down on the white fragrant neck. He heard the dry-stick sound of snapping bone. Behind him, the acrobats were leaping toward him. He could feel the pressure of their bodies moving through the air.
But they never reached him. There was the sound of thump-thump-thump like three heavy stones dropped into a mud puddle. He knew their three bodies had ceased moving.
Suddenly, the air was clamorous with the sound of screams, shrieking and pounding feet as the crowd panicked and ran in all directions.
The searing pain of blindness still burned Remo's eyes. He groped for a moment in a world of white night, until he sensed the tall metal structure nearby. He had to turn off the lights; he had to see again; he had to find Chiun.
On the ground near the pole, Remo found a stone-cut glass tumbler dropped by one of the fleeing guests. He sensed its weight and then tossed it upward in a spiraling are.
He heard the shattering sound as the glass connected with its target. The mirror atop the pole smashed into a million crystalline fragments that rained down from the sky in a magnificent light show.
The other three lights still blinded him, but then he heard the glass of the lights breakpop, pop, pop-and a sudden darkness descended over the lawn. He blinked once and his vision began to return.
The first thing he saw was Chiun, turning away from having blasted out the three other lights with stones.
"You're all right?" Remo asked.
"All in all, I would have preferred Barbra Streisand," Chiun said.
Remo turned around and saw Kim. She lay next to Reginald Woburn III, the two of them stretched out amid a sea of glittering crystals from the broken light reflectors. To their left were the three last Oriental acrobats, their bodies twisted ungracefully in death.
Kim Kiley's perfect face stared skyward, her eyes masked by a pair of dark glasses. A pistol rested on the curled fingers of her right hand. Remo turned away.
"How did you know to kill her?" asked Chiun.
"I knew," Remo said quietly. "How did you know to kill him?"
"He was the leader; if we are ever to have any peace, he must go."
"You waited long enough," Remo said. "I was stumbling around there, not able to see, and you weren't anywhere."