“I can’t tell you. It would ruin everything!”
And then, Wylings experienced it again, the pain of a thousand hells—the reprisal of a Sinanju Master angered.
Chapter 37
They left him in the carriage, and they left him alive. Slipping unseen from the golden coach, they blended into the crowds who were disappointed at being unable to see inside. The curtains were now drawn back, just a little, on each side, and the people caught just the briefest glimpse of their new king. He was sitting in the carriage, watching the world go by. His waving hand had to have gotten tired.
The elevated walkway was sparsely traveled, and in fact most of the city was empty of pedestrian traffic as the Londoners gathered in homes and pubs to watch historic events unfolding.
“That’s a lot of people sitting around watching a slow-moving stagecoach,” Remo observed.
Chiun replied by vaulting lightly over the side rail of the walkway and vanishing. Remo leaped after him, his feet touching down on an irregular, broken stone wall, part of a small complex of ancient Roman ruins nestled on grassy lawns.
“Begin searching this place quickly!” Chiun said. “It is in a high crevice!”
Remo stepped down into gap between a pair of freestanding stone walls, his eyes piercing the shadows and the bricks and the hollows in search of the thing Wylings described—a thin steel tube inside of plastic outer casings, with a small black charge adhered to the end. The blast was designed to discharge the nanobots in a deadly mist that would carry far on the breeze.
It was difficult to picture the device. When they found the first one, they would know what to look for.
It occurred to Remo he was looking in the wrong place. He was in the center of the ruins. Wylings would have put the device somewhere that he would have been able to reach when he paid his ha’penny and was roaming the grounds like any normal sightseer. He wouldn’t have tried sneaking into the off-limits interior of the ruins.
Remo made his way out of the craggy corridor and stood examining the grounds. All Wylings said was that it was in a high crevice in the ruins.
His eyes wandered to the admissions hut. It was also of brick, but constructed in the past century or so. It stood beside the gated entranceway.
“Why are you wasting time when time is so precious?” Chiun demanded as he slipped like a shadow among the alcoves of the ancient labyrinth.
“There.” Remo bounded down from the bricks and across the lawn. In a high crevice in the brick building, just under the eaves, was the plastic container he had spotted. He withdrew it with care as Chiun arrived alongside him.
“Heat must be used to destroy them,” Chiun said. “Remove the metal tube from the plastic. Create heat with friction.”
Remo looked at him.
“It is not the first time I have had to destroy these same entities,” Chiun explained.
“Oh, really?”
“Do it.”
Remo used his one long fingernail to slice the plastic housings away as if they were sandwich wrap being cut by a straight razor. He held the cool steel tube in his hands, feeling the movement of liquid inside. He began to rub the surface with his finger. He adjusted his skin contact to minimize the friction against his flesh while the friction against the steel increased and the surface became hotter. In moments he could feel the bubbling of the solution inside the tube, and he allowed it to boil a full minute.
Then he gingerly unscrewed the two halves of the steel tubes and revealed the glass tube inside. There was clear liquid and tiny specks of floating crystal.
“They are dead,” Chiun said. “But that is one of four.”
“Can we cover the entire city before Wylings arrives at Buckingham Palace?”
“We should have ended his miserable life,” Chiun said angrily.
“We can’t take the risk of not finding all of them, Chiun. Until the nano-things are cooked—and I mean all of them—Wylings has to stay alive.”
Chiun didn’t agree, but he didn’t disagree. “Then let us find them!” And he was racing away through the ancient city of London.
Chapter 38
James Wylings couldn’t move. The carriage ride through the streets of London seemed endless. He was paralyzed, so that he could not even shift a little from this exact sitting position, and his bruised derriere was in screaming agony.
Soon enough, the time would come for the weapons to receive their signal. The Masters of Sinanju knew it. They would return and they would be forced to release him, and then Wylings would once again be the one making the demands. They would not trust their torture to force him to send the correct code, would they?
Or would they find the weapons and return before the top of the hour? Unlikely, he thought. Even just one of those devices had the power to wipe out two million people. That kind of power was true mastery.
“Hey, Yer Majesty, lookit what we found.” Suddenly, they were back. The Masters of Sinanju were inside the carriage on either side of him, and the curtains were drawn tight.
“Your coward’s weapons are disabled,” the old one reported. He pulled his arm from the sleeve of his robe and displayed four glass tubes. There were little specks of glass floating in them. The nanobots were melted.
“Oh, damn!” Wylings said, and noticed he could speak again.
“I was going to ask you about the others,” Remo said. “But I don’t think I need to.”
“You do not?” Chiun asked.
“The other weapons are scattered around the world in my colonies,” Wylings reported. “Sixteen of them remain. You will never find them all.”
“Noisy contraption you have here,” Remo said. “But not too noisy.” He pulled Wylings’s briefcase out of the felt-lined drawer beneath the seat. It was thin and covered with a rich, dark leather. “Pretty sloshy. Are you packing Red Bull?”
Remo opened the briefcase. “I count sixteen plastic containers,” he announced. “But they’re not energy drink.”
“They certainly are not,” Chiun said.
“I’d say Mr. Wylings has used all his bargaining chips.”
“I believe Mr. Wylings had best be prepared,” Chiun said. “He must be presented properly to Her Majesty the queen.”
The world was watching as the gold carriage closed in on the grand drive, where it was to be received by the queen herself. A hundred uniformed security men were stationed in the street, on the buildings and flanking the queen’s honor guards. None of them knew what to expect. Few were briefed as to why this insecure reception ceremony would even be permitted.
The ceremonial carpet was laid out from the street and between a stern double column of Grenadier Guards, divested of their firearms but chosen for their ability to fight hand to hand. They were armed only with ceremonial glaives. They were supposed to look strictly ornamental, but the guards were instructed to be ready to lay down their lives for the queen. The glaives, however, would be useless in a fight—long poles with short, curved blades mounted atop. Packed so tightly together that their shoulders touched, the Grenadier Guards would have no room to use such weapons. Truth be told, none of them knew what to expect.
Even the media was given contradictory and confusing statements as to the purpose of these events.
The crowd grew hushed as the long line of Sir Wylings’s standard-bearers appeared, and then they heard the clopping of many hooves. The procession made its way between the police barricades, and the brilliant gold carriage came to a stop. Her Majesty the queen stood atop a rise of steps and waited—only she had an uninterrupted view of the gathering.