"Good luck, Smith. I know you'll do what's right," said the President.
At Vistana Views, Wang, sitting on a stool out in the kitchen while Remo prepared rice, asked him if the phone call had been from the American employer.
"Yeah. He's going to play cowboy with this hypnotist."
"And you're going to let him go alone?"
"Sure," said Remo. "It's his life. It's his country."
"Think you're pretty tough, don't you, Remo? You and Chiun. You're so much alike. You both have an infinite ability to lie to yourselves."
"I'm not lying, and I'm not like Chiun."
"Oh, but you are. That's your great secret. That's why you fight and that's why you love each other. What is the matter with you two?"
"I thought when I got to see the Great Wang I would get answers to my questions. That's what Chiun promised. Did he lie?"
"No. You're just getting the answers you don't like. You're just like him, you know, but slick enough to cover it, so that most people think you're sane. You're a lunatic, Remo. Name me one thing you like that you give yourself."
"I like to be left alone," said Remo.
"That's the biggest lie you've told me so far," said Wang, bouncing from the seat to the rug.
Wang assumed a simple stance, feet flat, arms at his sides, appearing defenseless.
"All right, Remo is not like Chiun. Let's see what you can do. Let's have it."
"I'm not going to fight you," said Remo.
"You won't hurt me. I've been dead thousands of years."
"For someone who's been dead so long, you certainly made the floor bounce with your body."
"You and Chiun have an obsession with weight. You don't have to be skinny, you know. C'mon, paleface, let's see what you can do."
Remo threw a desultory blow at the stomach, but carefully enough that he was not off balance. The air swished as he brought back his hand.
"Just like Chiun. If it isn't your way, you don't want to play."
Remo wanted to see just how solid the Great Wang was, and he knew that he could at least get a hand on the man. He might not be able to defeat him, but he certainly could touch that flabby belly.
And he did, without Wang making one move to stop him. Remo's arm went right through into the coldest center of the universe and he screamed with pain, as Wang laughingly told him Chiun had tried that too when they had met, when Chiun achieved his highest level.
"Got to say this for you two. You and Chiun have got the cleanest blows of all the Masters of Sinanju. Like father, like son."
Chapter 11
On the morning of May 11 three American columns under the command of a general some believed to be a reincarnation of General George Patton and others believed was their favorite commander, or father, or mother, or anyone close, invaded the newly liberated country of Sornica in Central America.
Sornica was newly liberated because after forty years of living under one-family rule, which was modestly oppressive with an army no larger than a police department, it was now ruled by a People's Council which had built a major army with major weapons, and was totally oppressive.
In the old regime, if one did not like the dictator, one could say it, but do little more. One could make a living, change jobs, marry whom one wanted, and if one didn't like it, one could leave.
The basic difference with the new Sornica was that no one was allowed to not like it. The newspapers which had published negative stories against the old oppressive regime, were now allowed the same freedoms. They could publish negative stories about the old regimes. When they published negative stories about the new People's Democratic Socialist Republic of Sornica, the enraged people shut it down.
The people were General Umberto Omerta, who was of the people, for the people, with the people. Anyone against Omerta was an enemy of the people. Therefore when he sent his newly expanded police force to close down the newspaper and beat up the editors, something that never happened under the old oppressive regime, it was the people responding to the outrage.
The people made sure anyone speaking against the regime changed their minds. They stopped people speaking openly against the regime within the borders. They also stopped people leaving, as was a tradition in liberated countries.
No one dared ask if it were the people doing the arresting, executing, and spying on reactionary elements, traitors, and running dogs of America. No one asked if they, too, were not people. That would have been treason and brought up the ugly answer that if it was the people these reactionaries were against, they had to be something else. And that something else was untermenschen, a system used by Nazi Germany to categorize some people as less than human, a system which used gas ovens to take care of those who were deemed subhuman.
But the reason Sornica was invaded this May morning was not because it murdered its own nonpeople or kept them imprisoned and had its children spy on their parents. It was not because Sornica ran several training camps to help other like-minded folk liberate their neighbors from mildly oppressive regimes.
Sornica had eighteen companies of Russian soldiers and technicians stationed on their soil. And it was these companies that the reincarnation of George Patton, everyone's favorite commander or parent, the man who sometimes walked around cleverly disguised as a Russian immigrant, wanted to destroy.
Rabinowitz understood that if he could demolish the best troops Russia sent abroad, they would respect him. It made no difference if he killed them or treated them as prisoners. What the Russians understood was power. If he could show he was powerful they would leave him alone. It was not by accident that the only treaty the Russian communists ever kept with scrupulous precision was that with Nazi Germany. It only ended when the Nazis invaded them first instead of Great Britain, which the Russians were hoping for.
Hearing the guns fire, feeling the power of his tanks churn through the mud that was called a road in Sornica, Rabinowitz felt a strange sensation. While he desperately minded being killed by people personally putting their hands on him, and despised being chased, gunfire set off a special thrill within him. He dashed to the front of his columns. He cheered on his best commanders. He stood in open fields with shells falling around him to curse those who did not keep up with the rest of the column.
By midday the best Russian armor lay smoldering in the plains and jungles of Sornica. The ever-deadly Russian helicopter gunship, the Hinds, had been lured into attacking what appeared like light armor vehicles and infantry, only to be demolished by the hand-held rocket launchers he had refused to let his troops use on the first gunships in the area. When the Hinds saw no rockets beneath them, Generalissimo Omerta threw in his entire fleet to enjoy the carnage. And at that time, and only at that time, were Rabinowitz' troops allowed to use their rockets, a perfect defense against the gunships. The Hinds were caught strafing en masse and went up like firecrackers above the battlefields of Sornica.
"I fear only one thing, Chiun, and that's to be killed by hand. I never want someone's hands on me again," said Rabinowitz, turning to his bodyguard, who was dressed in the black battle kimono used by the Masters of Sinanju when standing near an emperor who had taken the field.
"But how, Great Wang, could you be killed by anyone's hand?" asked Chiun.
"You never know," Chiun heard the Great Wang say. "But it's your job to see that it doesn't happen."