"Great Wang," said Chiun on the platform, "how many deflections do you want?"
"Who's shooting at the soldiers?" asked Rabinowitz, who to Chiun looked and sounded like his revered Great Wang.
"The sniper, of course," said Chiun.
"Well, finish him already," said Rabinowitz, and by that Chiun knew the Great Wang had approved of Chiun's variations of strokes deflecting objects.
As the division was still digging in, Chiun made his way up the far hill, where he saw an obvious Tatar villager behind the rifle and asked him:
"What are you doing here?"
It was the first time in twenty-five years that Gusev had heard his native Raco Stidovian.
"I am here to kill Vassily Rabinowitz," said the stunned Balbek, also in the language he had not spoken since youth.
"You've developed a terrible accent," said the man in the golden kimono.
"How do you know Raco Stidovian?" asked Balbek.
"I am a Master of Sinanju. We work everywhere. How did a nice Tatar archer like you get involved with guns in America?"
"The Russians took me at an early age and forced me to do horrible things for them. They threatened my poor sick mother: They threatened to rape my sister and murder our entire village if I did not do their evil deeds for them," said Balbek.
"Good reasons to take up the gun," said Chiun. "A fine reason for you. Unfortunately, my fine Tatar, it is not really any sort of reason for me not to kill you," said Chiun. "Doesn't even warrant a second stanza."
The gun fired again from an arm's length away, and this shot was blocked even more easily than those fired from fifteen hundred yards. Gusev Balbek went into his last sleep before he could blink. He could not see that the killing blow was a swan's overlay variant of the basic thrust. When Chiun looked back toward the platform, he saw his Great Wang did not see it either. He was nowhere around. On the platform was Wang's friend Vassily Rabinowitz, good guy.
He was yelling:
"We have to get them before they get us. We can't put off the war any longer."
In the end, as a last resort, and only as a last resort, Ambassador Nomowitz gave in to reason. As instructed by Anna Chutesov, he arranged for a time and a place where Russia would bare its soul to the American defense establishment. He saw Anna open a large briefcase with page upon page of top-secret documents. He saw her give them to an American second lieutenant to pass out to American colonels and generals and admirals.
He heard secrets told openly. He heard her detail the purpose of the parapsychology village, even its defenses. And then he heard what he was sure had to be treason.
She told them about Matesev and Balbek. "Those are state secrets," whispered Nomowitz.
"You think they don't know about it'?" said Anna coolly.
And then to the American officers in the little conference room built like an operating theater with rows and rows of seats set one above the other, she said:
"Under the foolish assumption that we should have him and you should not, we attempted to get him back for ourselves. I am sure you all see how ridiculous that is, when you consider that the man can make anyone believe anything."
"Damned right, Russky, he's ours now. Thanks for telling us he's at Fort Pickens posing as a brigadier general. Hell, we'll make him a four-star general."
The American officers applauded loudly. When the applause died down, Anna asked: "And do what with him?"
"Keep him in case we need him against you."
"For what?"
"To blind your minds as you would have blinded ours."
"Have you ever been to a general staff conference of Russian officers?" asked Anna.
"We know what you do," said the general.
"Then you would realize there is not much there to blind. Essentially we are dealing with someone who cannot be controlled, and ordinarily that would be no problem. The man would go through his life getting pretty much what he wanted. Unfortunately, we made a mistake and tried to harness him. Which we couldn't do."
"Just because you couldn't, doesn't mean we can't," said the American general.
Anna smiled. "I guess I am the fool. I didn't see that you should be no different from us. Well, let me tell you I can get a hundred and fifty more just as good as Vassily Rabinowitz, and I won't. He's not a weapon. He's a direction, and it won't be your direction, at least I hope it won't. This man, because of crimes we committed against him, has been terrified into making an army. And frankly, he's going to make a damned good one."
"No problem for us," said the American. "Problem for you. "
"Really, do you want a war with us because one man has nightmares about what we did to him?"
"No comment," said the American general, and the others applauded.
Anna Chutesov shrugged.
"Well, I hoped you would be smarter. Nevertheless, I wish you luck in getting control of him. And if you ever figure out what you're going to use him for, please let me know."
Back at the Russian embassy, Nomowitz was furious. "You gave away Russian secrets to their officers."
"That is not the mistake I made," she said. "The mistake I made was telling them where they can find him. Now they will go down there to Fort Pickens and everyone who goes down will join his army. He's only getting stronger. "
"A sworn enemy gets stronger and you don't worry."
"Of course not. I know what to do. I know his profile. He will win his war, we will be duly impressed, and then we will give him what he wants."
"What's that?"
"We'll leave him alone and let him play with the American army as he would have played with ours. I told them the truth."
Of course, she hadn't. She just didn't want any more interference from back home, as she now worked on how she might be able to destroy Rabinowitz. For she was sure once this man had a taste of war, he would never want to give it up. She had read his profile back in Russia. Which made her even angrier that anyone would have been so stupid as to take him from his sleepy village of Dulsk to the parasychology clinic in the first place. She wished she could meet one man who used his mind. Apparently, in the last few days Rabinowitz had become assassin-proof. And that was just what she was afraid might happen if they sent their best people against him. But in this case, knowing who they had, and knowing what they didn't have, she was sure it was someone else who had tried to kill the hypnotist. If she knew who, she just might be able to give him something to help. But who in America was there? And who also understood what had to be done?
Harold W. Smith knew the moment Chiun's box had been destroyed. The worst had happened. And when he tried one slim hope of a chance of begging Remo into the mission, he got the strangest response from Remo.
Remo couldn't care less. He was talking to someone dead for forty-two hundred years.
Smith went home and from an upstairs closet removed his old army .45. He had not personally killed anyone since the Second World War. He knew he could not kill Chiun, but he also understood that Chiun thought him a sort of fool, and Chiun had never known Smith to lie.
He just might be able to lie this one time, first to Chiun, then to Rabinowitz, and then with one bullet do what the greatest assassins in the world had failed to do. He set the computers to self-destruct if he did not return.
The incredibly sensitive information in CURE computers could not be allowed to survive him. The organization had done its work over the decades, and now, rather than harm the country he loved, he would make sure his work would disappear with him.
Before he left he made one last phone call to the President. "Sir, as you know, the Russians were after this man. Precisely because of that, we enlisted, as you know, our special people to stop the Russians. Second, now we have a danger in this one extremely talented man. He is incredibly dangerous. He has taken over at least a division as far as I know, and maybe more. I think he is going to start a war. I don't know why, but we have lost one man already, and the other is inoperative at this time. I am going myself. If I fail, you will not have the organization to serve this country anymore, but then again, no one will get hold of our vast store of information either. It will be secure."