Sykes and Dolan looked at each other. Wylings was one of their own, a British gentleman who feared nothing and no one. He was also an extremely careful man, with a nose for avoiding trouble. When Wylings became worried, there was a reason to worry.
“Brings to mind what happened in Ayounde, doesn’t it?”
“In Ayounde?” Dolan queried. “That was simply the Ayounde national police putting up a fight. Our boys put them to rights. We still took Ayounde.”
“You heard the rumors out of Ayounde, gents. The people are saying it wasn’t their own police at all, but a pair of white men.”
Dolan chuffed haughtily. “A pair of unarmed white men, no less, Wylie. One of them as old as time, in a long Oriental shirt of some kind, another man in a T- shirt. There’s no way a pair like that could have offed our boys in the grand prix racers. They were mounting flamethrowers, machine guns, you name it.”
Dolan added, “Besides, we own Ayounde. Sir Michele Rilli has the place firmly under his thumb now, and nobody is going to do a damn thing to take him out of there. Sir Frenchie’s one of the most popular celebrities in the world and he’s known to be a favorite of the queen’s.”
Sir James Wylings nodded somberly. “One thing you don’t know, lads. Sir Rilli himself reported back to me a few hours ago. It was the first time we could get a secure call since he took the government palace in Ayounde. He reported the same thing the people in the streets of Ayounde reported.”
“What?” Dolan yapped. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not. He was watching it all from the pickup chopper. He saw those two. He said the same thing. One old man, looking small and dressed in bright colors, but moving fast. He says that old man stepped on one of the armored cars and brought it to a dead stop. The next thing he knows, the old codger smashes the cockpit shield with his bare hand, and when he pulls it away, there’s blood all over the place. Later on he found out the man’s skull had been squashed.”
“Bare-handed?” Sykes laughed.
“The younger man was doing the same kind of thing. Running like the bleeding wind. They said he was dodging the flamethrowers and even dodging gunfire.”
“Gunfire.” Dolan seemed to swallow the word.
“Rilli thinks it was these two blokes who wiped out all the armored attack racers,” Wylings said. “By hand.”
“That’s crazy,” Sykes said, trying to be dismissive and sucking on his glass to get the last few drops of Scotch.
“Sir Rilli is convinced that these two men would have stopped the coup, just the two of them, if Rilli’s chopper hadn’t taken the ministers when it did. Stroke of luck, that, he calls it. Says if their plan had been different, and they hadn’t been able to lift those hostages right off the ground, Rilli is convinced all of them, himself included, would have been wiped out by the assassins.”
“Assassins,” Dolan said.
“And that sounds awfully damn similar to what happened in Jamaica, lads,” Wylings finished up.
“Wylie, listen to yourself,” Sykes said. “You can’t believe any of it. It’s ludicrous!”
“Rilli’s a pompous bore, but he’s not stupid,” Wylings said. “He saw what the Ayounde people saw. The mercenaries who survived gave Rilli similar accounts. Two men, no weapons, and one of them old as the hills and Chinese to boot.”
“Korean,” corrected Dolan.
When Wylings looked at, Dolan, his chum was as white as a sheet. “Mother of Mary, Dolan, are you ill?”
“I’m not sick.”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Not a ghost. Something out of a fairy tale.”
Sykes and Wylings looked at each other and Sykes said, “You sound mad. What are you talking about?”
“Sinanju.” He shrugged. “Sinanju.”
Sykes stood up straight, looked down his long square nose and declared, “Dolan, you
“You remember the stories of Sinanju?” Dolan asked. “Remember what old Gerold used to tell us about the Masters?”
“Of course I do! I remember when we used to play Sinanju in your gardens,” Sykes answered hotly. “Gerold was definitely out of his mind.”
Sir Gerold was Dolan’s paternal great-grandfather, and indeed he had been as old as dirt when the three of them were boys who played vigorous games in the large, professionally maintained ground of Dolan Manor.
“Remember what prompted the old man to tell us about Sinanju?” Dolan asked.
Wylings was pouring them all a fresh round, a way of covering his new nervousness. He was not a nervous man, but his hands were visibly shaking. “It was the incident with the roses, right?”
“It was,” Dolan said. “We sliced them to pieces, as I recall. We were pretending we were knights of old, fighting the invading French.”
“Mongols,” Sykes corrected.
