"Bring this telephone and we will call him. I wish to hear this man's voice, and he hear my promise of his death."
The cellular phone was brought and the batteries replaced. The phone rang almost at once.
Captain Yokang answered, saying, "This is Yokang." "Captain Yokang," a warm, generous voice stated. "I have been calling at thirty-nine-second intervals for over forty-eight hours without a response."
"I have lost the gold," Yokang said simply, looking the Master of Sinanju full in the eyes.
"Clarify, please."
"Its true owner has come to reclaim it."
"Then you are already dead."
The white night tiger snapped the phone from his hands and said into it, "And you're next on the hit list."
"Could I interest you in ten times the gold you have just seized in return for a nonaggression understanding?" the warm voice wondered.
"No," said the white.
"Give me that," said the Master of Sinanju.
Into the phone he said, "I would not consider this offer for less than twenty times the amount of recovered gold."
"Chiun! You can't make deals with him. You don't even know who he is."
"I am your Friend," said the telephone voice.
And simultaneously the eyes of the Master of Sinanju and the white night tiger locked and dilated in recognition. They knew Comrade. There was obviously more to this than met the eye, Captain Yokang realized with a start. Inwardly he cursed himself for a fool. He had been a tool of larger powers all along and had played an exceedingly difficult hand badly.
"Where can this gold be found?" the Master of Sinanju was asking, suspicious voiced.
"Do we have an understanding?" asked Comrade.
"No understanding is possible until the teeth of the Master of Sinanju have tested the gold for softness and purity."
"I regret I am not in a position to ship the gold, currently being short of staff."
"We will come to the gold, then."
"Without an understanding, this would be poor business," said Comrade.
"Then prepare for your last hour, for Sinanju will hunt you down if it takes until the stars fall from the sky like salt."
"Can I get back to you on this matter?" said Comrade, and the connection was terminated.
The Master of Sinanju seized the telephone in birdlike hands. He stared at it as if to curse its very existence. His fingers squeezed. Plastic shards popped off, and the casing actually smoked as it broke and imploded into a blob of electronic parts.
The cellular phone went overboard with a distant splash.
Then the Master of Sinanju turned the cold, naked force of his baleful gaze on Captain Yokang Sako, who swallowed once and pulled out his trump card.
"You would not harm the son of Yokang Dong."
"I would send you back into the womb of your dog of a mother, if it would undo the calumny of your birth, cur of Hamhung."
"My father was commander of the naval forces that surrounded the village of your birth in a protective ring of steel, safeguarding it from the invasion craft of the hated Eighth Army. This despite the incessant bombing of the imperialistic U.S. Air Force. Many times did he tell me that without his courage and zeal, the village of Sinanju would be overrun and burned to the ground by the heartless American fleet."
The words had come tumbling out in a violent rush, stumbling into one another. But at last they were out in the morning light for the Master of Sinanju to weigh and measure and Captain Yokang to await his just verdict.
The Master of Sinanju stood there as if rooted in shock. That was a good sign. Yokang was certain of it. Evidently the Master did not dream that Yokang's very father had saved Sinanju from utter destruction. No doubt his gratitude would be boundless. Certainly his life would be spared. He thought that perhaps he might even be allowed to keep a small portion of the gold. No more than two or three ingots. He dare not request this, of course. But if it were offered to him, he would accept with graciousness. In the memory of his valorous father and not for himself.
Behind the Master of Sinanju the white night tiger was shaking his head in a most disconcerting manner.
It was as if Yokang had somehow said the wrong thing....
His face like a bone that had oozed up through the parchment of his tight face, the Master of Sinanju stepped up to Captain Yokang Sako.
A fingernail his eyes could not see even as a blur swept up and speared his Adam's apple. His tongue was impelled from his mouth. And the other index fingernail of the Master of Sinanju's hands sheared it off at the root.
"That, for your lying father," spat out the Master of Sinanju.
Captain Yokang Sako looked down at the squirming red piece of meat that had been his tongue and tried to scream. The sound started deep in his belly but encountered an obstacle in the vicinity of his larynx, and, of course, there was no longer a tongue to carry it past his teeth.
He did, however, manage a respectable bark.
Then the fingernail in his throat ripped downward once in a hard slashing motion.
His sternum cracked like plastic. He could hear it distinctly, the sound traveling through his skeletal system. His abdomen split open, and the bowels and stomach, no longer held in place by a retaining wall of muscle, spilled out and down to join the dying tongue that had somehow betrayed him.
The weight of his escaping belly seemed to drag the rest of Captain Yokang Sako to the slippery-with-blood deck, but it was not that. Only the sudden loss of blood and vital energy.
Captain Yokang Sako lay down on the malodorous bedding of his innards, and his last thoughts were bitter ones.
If only the U.S. sub commander had told the truth.
Remo supervised the loading the gold onto the destroyer Juche. When it was all done, he and Chiun left the frigate SA-I-GU and watched from the rail of the destroyer as the assembled vessels of the North Korean Navy slowly and methodically used the SA-I-GU for target practice, sending it to the bottom of the Yellow Sea.
With its scurrying crew still on deck.
A few survived. They were the unlucky ones. Some of them bobbed in the bitterly cold water for nearly an hour while their fellow seamen used them for rifle practice.
Chapter 31
Harold Smith was running virus-check programs on every U.S. bank computer system he could enter electronically.
Each time the program assured him the infected system was not infected. Or at least no longer infected.
If it was a virus, it had the ability to conceal itself from the most sophisticated checking programs ever devised. Or could somehow hide itself from detection and purging. Smith found no computer code that might be viral in nature.
Of course, Smith could not be sure that his own system was working properly enough to execute the virus-check program effectively.
But he continued trying. It was Sunday afternoon and the ticking of his Timex was like a steady knell of doom.
A flashing on-screen prompt informed him of an important news story coming off the wire. Smith brought it up in a corner of his screen.
THE GOVERNMENT OF NORTH KOREA
HAS ANNOUNCED THE FINDING OF THE
WRECKAGE OF THE MISSING U.S. SUBMARINE HARLEQUIN IN THE WATERS OF
THE WEST KOREA BAY. RESCUE OPERATIONS HAVE BEEN COMPLETED. A TOTAL OF FORTY-SEVEN SURVIVORS IS KNOWN. ACTING PREMIER KIM JONG IL IS OFFERING OFFICIAL APOLOGIES FOR THE SINKING AND IS PREPARED TO REPATRIATE THE SURVIVORS UPON INSTRUCTIONS FROM WASHINGTON.
Smith leaned back in his chair. Remo and Chiun had come through. But it was a minor victory in the face of a looming catastrophe far greater than the loss of the Harlequin.
Smith picked up the blue contact telephone. Dialing the country code for North Korea, he punched out 1-800-SINANJU.