The day of the explosion at Ranch Ragnarok was the day he began having the visions.
They were bizarre, surreal images. Waking dreams.
There was the great plain. As vast as time and space itself. A sky so red it was as if it had been painted in thick daubs of blood. Ground as bloody as the sky above. And sitting in the center of the lonely battlefield, a single morose figure. A patch of yellow. Beckoning. Always beckoning. Calling out to Man Hyung Sun.
He had been chosen. He did not know why, only that he had been selected above all others.
The spirit was frail. The visions strong at times, weak at others. It took many months to realize what was being communicated to him. During this time, he did as the mysterious, dreamlike figure suggested. More Sunnies were indoctrinated into the faith. The sailors aboard the U.S.S. Courage, some New York police officers, some South Korean student protestors, as well as several other individuals-the importance of all of whom was unknown to Sun. He merely did as the spirit commanded. Still, he did not know where to locate this strange force. It took him a great deal of soulsearching to find out.
When he was finally certain, the reverend had dispatched his Sunnie servants to find Michael Princippi and to find the urn of the Pythia the exgovernor had carried away from the ruins of the ranch in Wyoming.
Sun needed only to come in contact with Princippi to know that the former governor had been ignoring the signals being sent to him by the Pythia. The essence of the spirit was strong within the sneaky technocrat. The Pythia had been trying desperately to seek his aid, but Princippi had ignored it. Sun was not like the ex-governor. He had heeded the call.
It was glorious. Once the urn of yellow powder was in his possession, the waking dreams were far more powerful. There was someone else in his mind at all times.
The Pythia was stronger when Sun was near the urn, but once he had accepted the essence of the ancient offshoot of the Greek god Apollo within him, not a moment passed wherein he did not feel the presence lurking within him.
It was fitting. In Greek mythology, Apollo had driven the chariot of the sun across the sky. His fractured essence had sought out one called Sun.
In his first moment of complete possession, Sun had been given a vision by the Pythia. A gift to reward him for his loyal service. Blessed with the ability to foretell the future, the yellow spirit had let Sun see himself in the very near future. He would be a king. The nation he had fled in ignominy would be his to rule over. There would be no North, no South. It would be complete. Whole. Under the iron fist of Man Hyung Sun.
Sun loved that vision, lived for it. It was like a drug to which he had become hopelessly addicted. He longed to see it now, as he stood on that desolate plain in his mind.
THE PYTHIA SLUMPED before him. A strange combination of yellow cloud and human features. Only in this place of unreality could the images be remotely reconciled.
"I grow weaker still," the Pythia lamented. The voice that rattled up the spirit's throat was a pathetic rasp.
"The Greek who ignored your entreaties is no more," Sun offered, as if to cheer up the ancient spirit.
"Do you think I do not know? It is I who told you of his treachery." Squatting in the misery of its own yellow smoke, the Pythia shook its head bitterly. "The time I wasted on that Greek. If my master were here, if my strength were greater, he would not have ignored me. My power was once feared by man. I am a shell of what I once was."
Sun seemed uncomfortable. "You are a powerful seer," he said. He tried to think of something that would bolster the Pythia's flagging spirits. "My 900 line is ringing off the hook," he offered suddenly.
At this, the Pythia looked up at Sun. There was a scornful expression on its bronzed face.
"Vengeance propels me, though my spirit longs for nothingness," the Pythia intoned. "It is time."
"For what?" Sun asked.
"Time to crush my enemies."
Sun's heart raced. The Pythia had prophesied to him that his time of ascendancy would come immediately on the heels of the final defeat of the men from Sinanju.
"What do you wish for me to do, O Prophet?"
"The young one is already in place. Your minions have done well to draw him into my trap."
"Thank you, Great Herald," Sun said proudly.
"It is time to bring the old one there, as well."
Sun's face clouded. "I thought it was your wish to keep them apart."
"It was. It no longer is. The time has come that we should bring them together." The Pythia smiled. "And set them against one another."
And as the Pythia went on to describe its plan to the Reverend Sun, the cult leader could not help but smile, as well. Their deaths-and his future-were all but assured.
CHIUN WAS SITTING in his balcony sunroom, which overlooked the grounds of Sun's estate, when the reverend knocked on his door once more. The Master of Sinanju bade the cult leader enter.
"I have been meditating," Sun said, sitting across from Chiun on the balcony.
The Master of Sinanju did not bother to mention that the all too familiar stench of Sun's after-shave had preceded him into the room yet again. Every time Sun meditated, he came back smelling like a French brothel. His breathing shallow, the old Korean merely nodded.
"I have had a revelation," Sun continued. "It is time."
Sitting in a lotus position on the floor, Chiun had not yet opened his eyes. He did so now.
"Time for what?" he asked, not daring to allow hope to betray his studied tone. The answer sent his soul soaring.
"Pyon ha-da is upon us," Sun said. "As is my moment of greatness. We must return in haste to the land of our birth so that I might be allowed to ascend to my proper place as leader of unified Korea. I wish you to be at my side."
Chiun rose from the floor like a puff of thin smoke. "It will be my joy to safeguard your holy life, Seer of pyon ha-da," the Master of Sinanju intoned, squeaky voice chiming with undisguised joy. The bow he gave to Man Hyung Sun was reverential.
Chapter 25
The student activists of the South were more difficult to get through than the whole of the People's Defense Forces of the North from Pyongyang to the demilitarized zone.
In his U.S. Army jeep, Remo Williams had to dodge bricks, bottles, rocks, sticks and just about anything else the "peace-loving" student demonstrators found to throw.
As he was racing through the streets of Seoul, someone hurled a Molotov cocktail onto the hood of his speeding jeep. The bottle crashed with the sound of shattering china, and the gasoline mixture splattered orange flames back across the windshield. Remo drove through the fire.
Riot police were out in full force. White helmets protected heads while thick transparent face shields extended down to bulletproof vests. Kevlar gloves and blast-resistant shields completed the rest of the armor the police had been forced to wear over their jumpsuits.
From the look of the debris field that was the streets of Seoul, the demonstrations by the students had taken a bad turn during the previous night. Charred cars lined the road, some still sending plumes of acrid smoke into the clear winter-blue sky.
Remo weaved his way through students and police alike, arriving relatively unscathed at the South Korean National Assembly building.
Roving packs of students could be seen wandering between buildings and cars. They looked like the irate villagers out of an old horror movie, determined to rid the local castle of an evil scientist. All they needed were a few pitchforks and some torches to complete the image.
Remo prayed that for now his vehicle would be safe from the students. He didn't plan to leave it there long.
He abandoned the jeep by the side of the road. At a run, Remo flew up the stairs and into the big building.