Master Chiun had sensed the enemy before he covered half a mile on foot, then took time to sort the scents and general impressions that combined to let him know an adversary was at hand. He left the trail at once and moved wraithlike through the forest to pick up a second track that paralleled the first. The boots that trod this path were older, more run-down than those of Stockwell's expedition, and they were more numerous. He counted seventeen distinct and separate signatures along the way, including two men wearing sandals soled with rubber cut from blown-out tires. A smell of gun oil lingered on the air.
Chiun followed them that day, observed their progress, counted heads and weapons. They were Malay, with a couple of Chinese—the sandal-wearers—and their weapons, plus a motley sort of uniform patched up from camouflage fatigues and faded denim, readily identified them as guerrillas. Since he spoke no Malay, and the Chinese didn't use their native tongue, Chiun could only speculate upon their motive for pursuing Dr. Stockwell's party. Even so, their motive, while obscure, was clearly not benevolent.
Chiun considered falling on them from behind and winnowing the ranks, or traveling ahead to meet them on the trail, pretend to be an ancient, fragile pilgrim until they were close enough to strike, but he finally decided to do nothing for the moment. When in doubt, if there was no emergency at hand, a wise assassin limited his action to the gathering of information, all the better to react appropriately once his target was identified.
With that in mind, he broke off the surveillance and moved on to pick up Stockwell's trail. He shadowed Remo and the others on their first day's march and watched them from the overhanging branches of a great tree as they set up camp. Chiun considered stealing in to speak with Remo, when the others were asleep, but he had faith in Remo to detect the common enemy, and there was little he could add beyond a physical description of their foe.
And by that time, of course, the woman had begun distracting Remo from his task. She was a brazen hussy, little better than a common prostitute, the way she bared her flesh to Remo on such short acquaintance. Chiun couldn't decide if her seductive actions were deliberate, a piece of conscious strategy toward unknown ends, or whether she was simply what the white men called a slut, devoid of self-restraint and moral fiber.
Either way, Chiun had witnessed Remo's personal response with disapproval. The Master was prim, and he well remembered a recent attachment that had surprised him at the time… though he also knew that these days the young were promiscuous. Even then, it was not so much the fact that Remo chose to grant the hussy's wish—although Chiun had warned him more than once about the risks of sacrificing vital energy through sex, when he was on a mission for Emperor Harold Smith—as in his pupil's blatant disrespect for the time-honored methods of Sinanju.
Remo made no effort whatsoever to begin the mating properly, by seeking out the woman's pulse and forcing it to escalate. Maybe, Chiun thought, it was the memory of Jean Rice that hampered his style. He skipped some of the classic steps and duplicated others, stopping cold before he had completed even the most basic ritual for bringing female flesh to ecstasy. Chiun could not deny the woman's rapture even so, but he would have to speak with Remo later and remind him of the need to follow through in everything.
There was a moment when Chiun believed that Remo would detect him, watching from the darkness, but the woman managed to divert him with her supple body. She was handsome for a white, of course, but there was something in the pallid skin and too-abundant curves that put Chiun off.
Korean women were the best.
Next morning, after dining on a handful of cold rice, Chiun had checked on the guerrillas, found them breaking camp, before he hurried back to join the Stockwell expedition. If the enemy had plans to strike, he knew they would most likely wait for darkness, but it wouldn't hurt for him to scout the trail ahead. He would take care to leave the forest undisturbed and give the scientific party's Malay guide no reason to suspect another human being in the neighborhood.
When the attack came, if it came, Chiun would not be far away.
The stinking jungle had begun to wear on Lai Man Yau. Two days he had been waiting with his soldiers for the Yankee expedition to arrive, and now he had to track them at a snail's pace while they trekked into the Tasek Bera no-man's-land. It would have pleased him to attack the party and destroy them all—except, perhaps, the woman, who could entertain his men for several days before she died. Still, this was war, and Lai Man Yau was under orders. He would have to wait a bit, until the round-eyes found what they were looking for.
Beijing had been explicit on that point. A premature attack would ruin everything, and it would be considered treachery, deserving of a traitor's fate.
He could live on fish and rice, dried beef and fruit, for weeks if necessary. Long before that time, his enemies would either make their find or give up in disgust, and he would get approval for their execution either way.
It would be better, though, if they could simply find what they were looking for, deliver it to Lai Man Yau before they died.
Yes, that was how it ought to be.
Lai Yau was one of some six million ethnic Chinese living in Malaysia. He could trace his roots back thirteen generations, but he never saw himself as Malay. He would always be Chinese, and as a faithful son of China, he took orders from Beijing.
Six years ago, those orders had commanded him to organize a small guerrilla cadre, granting native Malays equal partnership, and to inaugurate a people's war of liberation that would ultimately doom the nation's constitutional monarchy, paving the way for a socialist regime patterned on the Chinese model. Everywhere throughout Malaysia, there were cadres much like his, intent on toppling the corrupt, outdated government in favor of a Beijing-type replacement. Communism might be dead in Russia and the mongrel states of Eastern Europe, but it was alive and well in Asia, with a program that demanded suitable respect.
The job at hand, as with so many missions ordered from Beijing, was long on orders, short on explanations. Lai Man Yau had been instructed to await the Yankee expedition, follow it and safeguard certain information that a spy within the party would provide when it was time. The information would be furnished to Beijing, the round-eyes executed. No provision had been made to spare the mercenary agent, once his work was done. Expecting Chinese gold, he would be paid in lead.
The ruthless plan appealed to Lai Man Yau. He only wished that it were possible to get the waiting over with, put it behind him and get on with killing round-eyes. That was still, would always be, his favorite sport.
It would have been so easy to surround their camp last night, move in with AK-47s blazing, rip the pup tents and their occupants to shreds before the round-eyes woke to recognize their fate. Or he could just as easily have taken them alive, interrogated each of them in turn until he found out what they meant by tramping through the Tasek Bera with their pitiful safari.
The Americans were crazy; everyone knew that. But they were also clever, crafty. Lai Man Yau dismissed the media reports of living dinosaurs as a pathetic, simpleminded cover for the expedition's true pursuit—whatever that might be. His masters didn't share their knowledge with a simple soldier in the field. It was enough for them that he showed up on time and did the job he was assigned to do, without complaints or questions. If he failed, there would be punishment in store. If he succeeded, then success would be its own reward.
Sometimes, before he fell asleep at night, Lai Yau thought he could understand the Western profit motive, as corrupt as it might be. Material possessions were an opiate, much like religion, but he understood why they were so addictive. Money, houses, fancy cars and women would appeal to most men if they were not educated in the dialectic that explained how such things spoiled man's days on earth. Lai Yau knew all the arguments by heart, and even he wasn't immune to cravings of the flesh.