There were twenty men on the island now, Royal Guard and U.S. agents. But the U.S. agents weren’t really U.S. agents, the Royal Guard was loyal to Pakir, and it was time for him to dispose of the Emir.
The only person who was not included on his side was the Princess Sarra. He hoped he wouldn’t have to have her killed, too. He had plans for her.
It would have all been done before this, but it had taken time for Pakir to make his arrangements with the new revolutionary government of Bislami.
And then that idiot magazine had run those advertisements seeking people to kill the Emir, and those two real U.S. agents had come to the island. These were the only loose ends.
He had tried to dispose of those agents, the American and the Oriental, and had failed. And he had tried to get rid of whoever it was who would take the contract to kill the Emir. He couldn’t afford to have anyone else running around, charging their island, taking credit for assassinating the Emir. But he had not been able to contact that man to put him away.
So there was no more time to waste. Tonight was the night the job had to be done.
Once it was over, the fake U.S. agents would just simply disappear. The United States would have to talk to the world about the murder of the Emir and the disappearance of almost a dozen U.S. agents. The world wouldn’t buy it. It would simply look to the world as if the United States had killed the Emir and then killed the men who actually pulled the trigger.
It would serve everybody’s purposes. Pakir could collect for the assassination from the new revolutionary government of Bislami and from the Russians for both the death and the embarrassment of the United States.
And he… and perhaps the Princess Sarra if she decided to be reasonable… would live the lives of the very wealthy. Perhaps in South America. Or Switzerland. Or anywhere. There were very few doors, national or otherwise, that were not open to a man with ten million dollars.
It was time.
The Emir stirred in bed. He opened his eyes for a moment, then closed them again, trying to drift back into sleep. Sleep was all he had left. And then death. He was helpless now to affect his own fate. If the many groups with a price on his head did not get him, the cancer would.
It was probably best this way. Sarra could go on to live her life. His friends in the United States, even though they had abandoned him in his hour of need, would be rid of a national embarrassment.
And the Emir would be removed from pain.
It was probably best.
Princess Sarra stepped through the doorway into her brother’s room. He slept peacefully, and she sat by the side of the bed, in a chair, waiting… for what? For him to die? She felt helpless and wondered why she had come. Was it because she had pleasured her body with Remo earlier that day, and now felt guilty about disporting herself while her brother was the target of both killers and disease?
· · ·
The helicopter had landed them on the New Jersey shoreline and a power boat was waiting to speed them to the island.
As they alighted at the main dock, Remo observed: “No one around. They’re supposed to have somebody on this dock to check visitors.”
“Perhaps they were not expecting guests,” Chiun said.
“And perhaps they are discussing what to do about these guests,” Remo said.
Chiun nodded. They heard the sound simultaneously. Footsteps, someone running through the brush from the main house. When he broke out into the open, they saw who it was.
It was Randisi, the top federal agent on the island. Or the man who played the part of Randisi.
He ran up to them, apparently out of breath and somewhat wild-eyed. Remo ran through Smith’s description again in his mind. Randisi, Smith said, was 35, six-foot-two, two hundred pounds, with salt and pepper hair. This man was almost 50, five-foot-eight, fat, with red hair.
“They’ve taken over the house,” he gasped, grabbing Remo by the shoulders. “The Emir is in danger. You’d better hurry.”
“You’re Randisi?” Remo said.
“Yes.”
“You’re right,” Remo told him. “We shouldn’t waste any time. We should get right down to it.”
“Right.”
Remo reached out and touched the fake agent on the back of the neck, where the spinal column enters the skull and is the most vulnerable. It snapped and the man fell at his feet, dead.
Chiun was already moving to the house. Remo quickly got to his side. “If they sent him ahead with that phony warning, they’re waiting for us to come running right up to the front of the house,” he said.
Immediately, they circled off, through the brush, to come around to the rear of the large four-story mansion.
As they passed the side of the house, they saw three men with suits, armed with automatic rifles, crouched near the pathway leading to the front of the house.
“Quietly,” Chiun warned.
Remo nodded. If the Emir was still alive, any sign that Remo and Chiun were coming to his rescue might mean his immediate death.
They cut back in behind the three men. When they were only two feet away, Remo pursed his lips and hissed.
“Psssssst.”
The three men turned around. Remo and Chiun struck at the same time. Remo took the man on the right. Chiun handled the one in the middle and the one on the left. Without a sound, the life was crushed from their bodies.
“Four,” Chiun said.
“Smith said there were twelve federal agents on the island. And we saw eight Royal Guards. There’s at least twenty,” Remo said. He looked up, then hissed to Chiun: “There’s two up on the roof. I’ll go up and work my way down. You start down here and work up. One of us’ll get to the Emir before they have a chance to kill him.”
Remo went to the rear of the house. The building was brick and the thin indentation of mortar between the old, red bricks was enough for him to get finger and toe holds as he started up.
He went up the side of the building like an upside down film of a drop of rain running down a window. The secret was in the pressure; the body had to keep the pressure concentrated inward, into the center of the stone, and if the pressure were strong enough and concentrated enough, it overpowered the normal pull of gravity that would yank someone back down to the ground.
As Remo went over the top of the roof, he saw the two men, members of the Royal Guard, looking over the front brick wall toward the ground.
It would have been easy to throw them over.
Easy but noisy. And silence was everything now, if they were to keep the Emir alive.
When he was behind them, he tapped both men on their shoulders. They turned. In a blink of an eye, both dropped to the roof. Remo caught their rifles before they hit the rooftop with a clatter, and carefully laid them down.
Six down. Depending on what Chiun was doing below.
An unlocked trap door opened to the floor below. Remo dropped through it, right into the middle of two more guardsmen who were holding a ladder, getting ready to climb up to the roof.
The men looked at Remo for a split-second before reacting. It was a split-second too long.
Eight down. Remo caught the ladder before it hit.
Remo was alone on the fourth floor. Two floors down was the Emir’s bedroom. Remo wondered if Princess Sarra would be with her brother.
Chiun had started in the front door, just as four men had walked out of the house. Each of them carried an automatic rifle.