He squeezed the wheel harder. All right, he said to himself. Let him try. Remo had been a good student. He was a Master of Sinanju too and he could do most things as well as Chiun. He would fight the old man. Chiun was a great Master, but more than eight decades of his life had come and gone. Remo could win. If he attacked first, he could--.
He covered his face with his hands. He could never attack Chiun. Not on anyone's orders. Not for any reason.
But he could run. The thought flashed through his mind like a rocket. He could tromp on the gas pedal of this car and speed off, keep going until he reached the Atlantic Ocean, and then hop a steamer and hide out in the mountains of some obscure country. He could run and hide and run some more, run until there was no place left to go.
The rocket of an idea dulled and fizzled. Remo was not trained to be a fugitive. He had spent ten years with the Master of Sinanju so that he would also be a Master, and a Master did not run.
There was no alternative. Chiun would have to kill him, as he was bound to do.
And in the end, Remo thought, it didn't matter anyway. The most important part of him had already died.
He turned the engine back on and pressed the pedal to the floor and headed toward Hernandez.
sChapter Fifteen
In the pitch dark of a cloudless night, just before the first hint of dawn lightened the sky, Harold Smith raised his infrared binoculars to his face. The area outside Hernandez was flat and barren except for scrub grass and a few mangy bushes.
Buell would be there to see the fight; Smith knew that. And the only place to be sure to see it was from the top of the extrusion of rock that jutted up from the floor of the field. Up there, Buell would have safety and a vantage point. Smith put the night glasses away and walked toward the rock. It would be his job to make sure that Buell had no such safety.
He walked slowly around the large rock. When he was finished the first finger of dawn was tickling the sky. He could climb it. With a lot of effort, he could climb it and get to Buell.
But he wouldn't be able to climb it fast enough to save Remo.
Smith went back to his room and checked the Barsgod again. The shells were the size of shotgun shells, designed for guerrilla warfare. One strike anywhere near Buell would send enough shrapnel flying to take him out. It was all the edge Smith would need.
He tucked the gun and shells beneath his pillow and tried to sleep. He could use the few hours of rest, he knew. He was not a young man and whatever edge the Barsgod gave him could be evened out by the disadvantage of his slowed reflexes.
But after an hour of tossing and turning, he knew it would be useless. He would not sleep. Maybe he would never sleep soundly again. What he was about to do to Remo Williams would forever deny him the sleep of the innocent.
How did it happen? He asked himself again and again. Smith was not an assassin. He was an honorable man. Yet everything he had ever done to Remo had been a criminal act. He had chosen Remo for CURE because Remo had no one and nothing. And he had taken Remo's identity and his dreams and his life and had forced him into service, sending him into dangerous situations without a thought, all because Remo had been trained for the work. He had seen to it that almost every friend Remo had ever made was eliminated to protect the secrecy of CURE. And now he had ordered the final ignominy for Remo Williams. He had commanded the closest friend Remo had ever had to kill him.
How did it happen? How? When had Remo ceased to be a man to Smith and become only a tool of the organization? When had Smith forgotten that Remo, others, were human beings, not just cattle to be prodded around?
But he knew the answer to that. Human beings had ceased to matter on the day that Smith accepted his responsibility to the United States of America. In the long view, Remo's life was a small price to pay for the safety of the world.
The predawn grayness blossomed into a California sun and Smith was still awake. He wondered briefly about Chiun, but Chiun was the same kind of man Smith himself was. Chiun knew his duty and he would perform it and then he would return to Sinanju to live out the rest of his life as the venerated old man of the village.
He would also, no doubt, lie awake to the end of his days, thinking of Remo.
Smith sighed and sat up, passing his bony hands over his face. Duty was a stupid word, a stupid concept. Smith had always hated ideologues and had never thought he would be called upon to sacrifice a friend for an idea, even so lofty an idea as world peace.
How long would such a peace last anyway? he asked himself angrily. Just until the next maniac with the means to start global war came along? Until the next group of fanatics decided to sacrifice the human race for some obscure cause? What good was duty when it made a killer of you?
He walked to the window, all his anguish as meaningless as dust in the wind. He didn't have to call it duty. You could call it sanity or patriotism or mercy or sacrifice or even murder. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that it had to be done and he was the one who had to do it.
Smith felt comfortable with despair. He had lived his whole life doing the right thing and he would go on doing the right thing until the day he died. And that, he knew, was the reason his life was so bare and empty.
Understanding that, he was finally able to sleep. His last thought was to wonder where Chiun was.
* * *
Unseen by Smith, Chiun had spent the night at the site of the coming battle. Wearing mourning white, the old man knelt on the bare ground in the dark and lit a candle.
It was chilly, but he did not feel the cold. He lifted his eyes to the starless cobalt sky. He prayed for a sign. To all the gods of the east and west, he begged for a release from his obligation to kill his son. For Remo was no less than a son to the old man, no less than the heir to all the knowledge and love and power Chiun had accumulated over his long lifetime.
"Help me, O gods," he said in a hoarse whisper.
And he waited.
He thought of Remo and of the legend that had brought them together, the tale written in the ancient archives of Sinanju that a Master of Sinanju would one day bring to life a dead night tiger who walked in the form of a white man but who was, in his true incarnation, Shiva the Destroyer. Remo, the man, was only the outer flesh of the sacred soul within. Chiun could kill the man, but what mortal-- even the Master of Sinanju-- could dare to kill Shiva?
"Help me, O gods," he said again.
The candle went out.
Patiently he lit another. A Master's word in contract was as binding as an inscription in stone. He had given his word to Smith, in exchange for enough wealth to feed the entire village of Sinanju forever.
But Smith did not know what he asked. He did not know the legend of Shiva. Men like Harold Smith did not believe such things. They only believed that the word of the Master of Sinanju was good.
"Help me, O gods," Chiun said for the third time.
A strong breeze blew out the candle again. There was no other sign.
Chiun let the candle remain extinguished. He sat alone in the dark, alone, silent.
He wept.
sChapter Sixteen
Marcia was looking at the outside world through a periscope from inside the hollow hill.
"It looks like a beautiful day," she said and giggled. "A great day for the world to end."
Buell nodded and slicked back his slicked-back hair.
"But I don't want you to just do it," she said.
"What do you mean?"
"I don't want you just to do everything and then tell me it's all done. I want to see it. Step by step," she said. "I want to see and know everything you do."