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was work.
Fun was observing hand-to-hand fighting by his selected operatives in the sand
pits outside of Marseilles, where any blood spilled would be soaked up
instantly.
Fun was watching a good Danish counterintelligence operation wither in Eastern
Europe because it lacked support. The joy was picking the month it would
founder.
De Lyon came by this love of his work not by some quirk but by blood. His
ancestors had been the most ferocious of Frankish knights, the first royalty
to side with Napoleon. They had been warriors not by greed of, conquest, but
by love of the fight.
Thus did de Lyon that dark night have to pretend joy before his men at the
fortune coming his way. To this trim, arrogant noble, all the fortune meant
was that he wouldn't have to worry about money for his lifetime, which was
something he wouldn't worry about anyhow. But the men always liked the show.
"Twenty-two million American dollars. Hah, it will pay for a liter of wine or
two, or a woman or two. Or if it is the right woman, one woman on a shopping
spree for an afternoon."
The men laughed. De Lyon was about to order drinks for them to salute their
good fortune, a ten-minute act of grace before he could get back to an
interesting African situation on his desk. Then he saw it.
At first he was not sure he saw anything. It was a darkness in the hallway,
moving beyond the open door. Since he did not hear it, he assumed it was a
fleeting aberration of his eye. Certainly nothing could move in this house
without his own men knowing and reporting it.
But the wine did not come. He sent one of his men out to hurry along the
steward. The man did not return. De Lyon checked his buzzer system. It worked,
but no one answered it.
"Come, there is something strange going on," said de Lyon. The two operatives
unholstered their machine pistols. They made a sandwich of their commander as
they left the room, looking for any possible trouble.
It was in a hallway that de Lyon finally saw the darkness. The darkness was a
robe, and the count's men fell like pitiful stalks of wheat to movements he
could not even see. He only knew they had to have happened when the heads
rolled on the hallway floor.
"You," said the apparition in a French so ancient that de Lyon had to
translate from the older Latin. "Where is my treasure?"
De Lyon noticed the trunk of a nearby body twitch as the heart pumped out the
last blood from the open neck. The head looked dumbly at the ceiling farther
down the hall.
The apparition had the face of an Oriental. Its voice was high-pitched.
"I have stolen nothing," said de Lyon. Where were the guards? Where were the
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safety devices?
If he had not smelled his own fear on his breath, he would have thought he was
dreaming. But could a person hear a language he did not understand in a
dream?
"Franks steal everything. Where is the treasure?"
"I cannot help you," said de Lyon. He noticed that the strokes this man had
delivered were apparently so fast that the nerves in the dead man's hands,
still on the machine pistol, had not been activated. A useless hand on a
useless body on a useless gun. He stole a short look behind him. The trailing
man had also been taken care of. Head gone.
De Lyon sensed that if he could reach that gun, he could put many bullets into
the darkness before him. His sense of the fight was overcoming his initial
fear. A de Lyon had been confronted. And de Lyons never lost.
He would have to get the gun in such a way as not to look as though he was
attacking. There was a small derringer tucked inside his evening robe, but he
chose to ignore that. He would use it for another purpose.
"One should not steal like a tawdry thief, Frank," said the man. De Lyon saw
the face was old.
"How did you get in here?"
"A thief's home is always a hovel. You may tell me where the treasure is
now."
"I would love to," said de Lyon. "May I give you my personal gun as a sign of
surrender? It is quite valuable and a treasure itself."
"You have sold my coins. Where is the rest of my treasure?" said Chiun. He
would use this man to carry it back to his village. The House of Sinanju had
not taken slaves for over three thousand years, but this Frank would be
enslaved before being given over to someone else for the lowly task of
execution. The House of Sinanju were assassins, not executioners.
"Ah, the rest. Of course. Please take this," said de Lyon. He handed over his
derringer with one hand as he seemed to bow toward the darkness which now was
clearly an old man in a black kimono. He would shoot off the stranger's knees,
and then begin his own questioning.
The old man, for all his awesome talents, made a foolish move. He took the
gun, exposing his midsection and allowing de Lyon to get the machine pistol
with the other hand. In a motion so smooth as to be the envy of swordsmen from
generations past, de Lyon put the machine pistol to the kimono and began
firing.
It was a silent firing. The gun was broken. He started to throw it to the
floor, but the machine pistol would not throw. De Lyon had lost control of his
hand. It was his hand, not the pistol, that was broken.
And then the pain began, a pain that knew his body better than he did. Pain
that came when he lied, and left when he told the truth, and then pain that
would not stop even when he told the truth.
"The coins were a gift. A gift. I do not know where they came from. Yes,
millions of dollars' worth and yet a gift. We did not find out who sent
them."
The man, of course, was telling the truth. That was the sadness of it. It was
a thing to ponder. They were tribute coins from Alexander. Not enough to make
up for all the good markets he ruined by removing his kings of the West to his
control, the reason the young Greekling Alexander did have to die.
As, of course, did the Frankish lord who spoke the good French so badly.
He had dealt in stolen goods. And with his good hand, the Count of Lyon wrote
out a promise that he regretted having dealt in the treasures of Sinanju. Then
he was allowed to join his ancestors.
When the body was found, secrecy was immediately installed around the whole
episode. SDEC's sister intelligence factions, the Deuxieme, most noticeably
investigated every aspect of the killings in the house. The fact that the
check was not stolen. The strange manner of death of both de Lyon and his
men.
They were sure, in their final report to the President, that there was a link
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between the sale of the coins and the death of the director of the SDEC,
strange because so many in the international scene had tried to kill him, and
now a peculiar personal matter had done him in.
They were sure it was the personal matter of the coins because the same
strange word appeared both in the note and on the ancient coins themselves.
The word was: "Sinadu."
In the note, a Latin inscription. On the coin of Alexander, a Greek one.
Having recovered the coins, Chiun accepted the services of the North Korean
government that flew him back to Pyongyang. At the airport was an honor guard
led by Sayak Cang, the Pyongyanger who knew the true history of Korea.
There had been no calls, he reported, from the man called Remo, but the number
established for the House of Sinanju had indeed been transferred to the man
called Smith.
"And was there any other word? Did the man called Remo read your wonderful
little truth?"
"The man called Smith gave no information about anything."
"He is white, you know," said Chiun. He said nothing else as he silently
brought the coins by car to the village on the West Korea Bay. There in
silence he returned the coins to the great house of many woods, the house that
had held the tributelof centuries. And there he placed the coins in their [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]