The Best of the Destroyer by Warren Murphy

Author:Warren Murphy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

7

THERE had been trouble at the Busati Airport. According to the army detachment continuously assigned to Air Busati, largely to prevent the planes’ tires and wheels from being stolen, seven large lacquered trunks were missing from the baggage terminal, and fourteen soldiers were unaccounted for.

The periodicals’ stall had also been ransacked. It was believed that a riot had occurred in the stall because of the extensive damage, yet there were not enough people at the airport to cause such a riot. In fact, the only people there who were not Busatians were a white American and an aged Oriental, who had vanished along with the soldiers and the lacquered trunks.

“Do you think it is true?” asked General Obode of his personal valet, a fellow Hausa.

“About the riot?”

“About everything.”

“You mean the East and the West, father and son?”

“Yes,” said Obode.

The valet shook his head. “The Loni are in their mountains and there they shall stay. We should have no fear of a heartless mountain band. Especially now that you have begun to give them positions in the government. They shall not rise again. Fear not.”

General Obode thought a minute. “Draw another $10,000 from the Ministry of the Treasury and deposit in my Swiss bank account,” he said.

Meanwhile, across the Busati plains, a caravan plodded toward the mountains. Seven trunks on the shoulders of fourteen soldiers bobbed along the line, the sun glinting off their lacquered exteriors.

In front of this line marched the Master of Sinanju and Remo. Remo was furious.

“You’re a damned two-faced sonuvabitch,” he said.

“A contract is a contract,” said Chiun. “A preceding unfilled contract always takes precedence over a more recent one. It is only fair.”

“You’re talking about a contract over two thousand years old. The House of Sinanju didn’t even exist then, damned two-faced sonuvabitch.”

“Name-calling no more obviates a contract than a few years here or there.”

“This thing dates back before Christ. A few years. A few years, Little Father?”

“It is you who choose to date things from the time of Christ, not the House of Sinanju. We have an unfilled contract, paid for, mind you, paid in full. It was from the year of the ram. Or was it the year of the rat?”

“Probably from the year of the two-faced sonuvabitch.”

“No matter. It was before the year of your 1950s or was it 1960s when the House of Sinanju agreed to train something dragged in off the streets, as a stopgap measure in lieu of a real assassin.”

“May your autographed picture of Rad Rex be burned,” said Remo.

Chiun looked back at the trunks and said something to one of the soldiers in what Chiun had explained was a Loni dialect. By the tone of the voice, Remo could tell Chiun was reminding the soldiers that the trunks contained valuables, probably that the first trunk contained the picture of Rad Rex, the star of As the Planet Revolves, and in case of emergency, it should be saved first.

It had shocked Remo when he had first heard Chiun speak this Loni tongue.

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