And on pallets, all around the outside walls of the room, were stacked gold bullion, bar after bar, one-hundred million dollars worth, the total wealth of the nation of Scambia.
Nemeroff giggled. Asiphar was in for a surprise. Talk about a president's hundred days. There would be Asiphar's hundred minutes. He would become president and the country would instantly become bankrupt. So? What was wrong with that? It happened to all African countries eventually. Nemeroff was just speeding up the process.
And soon-despite that Remo Williams and that Oriental and that woman-despite all them, the crime families of the world would have new leaders and they would listen when Nemeroff spoke. Scambia would still be under crime's flag.
And someday, the Russians and the Americans might want missile bases here. What if they were willing to pour the wealth of their lands into this godforsaken island? This room could be filled with gold again and again, and again and again Nemeroff could drain it.
He turned and called to his men. "Set up a line," he said. "Begin to pass out these bars. You, get in there and start," he called to the supervisor.
Still trailing the jackhammer behind him, the man came into the small treasury room-into its darkness-and then it was dark no longer. Suddenly the overhead lights glared and glinted sharply off the gold, bathing the room almost in sunlight. Nemeroff blinked sharply, squeezing his eyelids together. When he opened them, at the end of the room, sitting on a stack of bullion, was the British woman and the man he had known as PJ Kenny.
The two gunmen entered the presidential office. The president's blue leather chair was turned away from them, facing the window. It rocked gently back and forth.
Both men held guns in their hands and one raised his, but the second man raised a hand in caution. Not at this distance. Wait.
They walked softly across the heavily-padded carpet to the President's desk.
They smiled at each other. A breeze. Walk up to him, one from each side. Two bullets in the head. No sweat.
They drew near the presidential chair. Their guns came up. The chair slowly swung around and smiling at them, looking from face to face, was not the President, but the wizened parchment face of an ancient Oriental.
In the corridor Asiphar waited. Then he heard two shots.
He unsnapped his holster and ran toward the President's office.
Inside the door, he stopped. The two gunmen stood alongside the President's chair, but their bodies were contorted and twisted. In the chair sat an aged Oriental in blue flowing robes, who looked at Asiphar as if he recognized him. He raised his hands toward Asiphar across the room, and as he released the two gunmen, they fell to the floor softly.
The old Oriental stood up. His eyes burned into Asiphar's. The vice president looked at the two dead men on the floor, first in horror, then in puzzlement. He looked up again at the old man, as if he would find an answer in the Oriental's face.
He reached for his pistol.
The old man said, "They missed," and then he was over the top of the desk, in the air, coming toward Asiphar, and the last words Asiphar heard in the world were: "But the Master of Sinanju does not miss."
He never got his gun from his holster. His heavy body hit the carpeted floor with no more sound than suet falling on a mattress.
From inside a closet door stepped President Dashiti. He looked at the two dead gunmen. At dead Asiphar. And then at Chiun.
"How may I repay you?" he said softly.
"By giving me some method of transportation home besides a helicopter."
Far away, as if from miles away, came the sound of tiny cracks. Chiun heard them; recognized them as shots. Wordlessly, he was gone from the President's office.
"Get him," Nemeroff shouted. He stood aside and men poured through the tunnel into the treasury room.
Remo sat unconcernedly on the gold bars, humming.
Three men-four, then five-poured into the small room. They stood, waiting, as their supervisor, holding the jackhammer under his arm as if it were a rifle, advanced toward Remo and Maggie, his lips twisted in a thin smile.
Remo waited, then reached up a hand and flipped the switch, plunging the room into darkness again.
Nemeroff tried to see into the darkness, but could not.
Then the room was filled with the awful roar of a jackhammer, but as quickly as it started, it stopped. Then it started again, and there was a scream.
"Did you get him?" Nemeroff called.
"No Baron, he missed. My turn now." It was the voice of the American.
The dark room was illuminated briefly by the flashes of gunfire. In the stroboscopic pulses of light. Nemeroff watched an eerie tableau of death. The American held the jackhammer under his arm. Nemeroff's men fired at him. But he was never there. More shots. And then fewer. In the flashes of light, he saw that men were falling, screaming, struggling as they were impaled on the jackhammer like bugs.
Nemeroff fled.
He ran along the tunnel toward the sunlight. He jumped up out of the trench and broke in a dead run for the field, where his pilot had already begun to warm up the helicopter's engines.
In the treasury room, Remo dropped the jackhammer. There was no one left.
Through the dark, his cat's eyes looked toward Maggie, who still sat motionless, atop the pallet .of gold.
"Maggie. You all right?"
"Yes."
"I'm going after Nemeroff." He headed toward the sunlight. Maggie got to her feet and followed him, trailing at her side the .45 calibre automatic she still had not fired.
Nemeroff was already in the helicopter and it was lifting from the ground when Remo came out into the sunlight. He heard Maggie stumble behind him and turned to help her.
Behind him, the helicopter rose, and then swooped toward them. Remo pulled Maggie up onto the street next to the sewer trench, then turned. Overhead, roaring at them came the helicopter.
Dammit, he thought, Smith'll bust my balls if I let him get away.
Then shots came from the helicopter, plinking the pavement around Remo, and he heard one thump softly next to him. As he turned, Maggie fell onto the roadway. Blood poured from a wound in her chest. The .45 dropped from her hand.
The helicopter hovered overhead, thirty feet off the ground, and shots rained from it, showering the ground with lead, as Nemeroff fired at Remo.
Remo ignored him and looked at Maggie. She smiled once and died.
He picked up the .45, wheeled and fired. He missed. Nemeroff, seeing the weapon in Remo's hands, remembering his marksmanship told his pilot to fly off.
The bird hovered, then its motor changed pitch, as it began to pull away.
Chiun came around the corner of the palace. He saw Remo, holding the .45 with both hands at arm's length, squeezing a shot at the helicopter which was moving away.
It was out of .45 range now.
Chiun ran up and took the pistol from Remo's hands.
"The Jesus nut," Remo shouted. "It holds the rotor blades on. Got to get it."
Chiun shook his head sadly. "You will never learn," he said. "The target that lives is the target that gives itself to the marksman."
Almost casually, he aimed the automatic in the direction of the fleeing helicopter. He extended his right arm, holding the .45 and gently the barrel of the gun transcribed a circle in air, and then a smaller circle, and yet a smaller circle.
"Shoot, for Christ's sake. They'll be in Paris," Remo said. The helicopter was two-hundred yards away now, hopelessly out of range.
And still Chiun's arm rotated the .45 in ever-tightening concentric circles, zoning in, and then he squeezed the trigger. Once.
He dropped the gun, turned his back on the helicopter, and knelt alongside the girl.