The light of the Seoul afternoon filtered through the intricately carved jade and brought the skull gleaming to life. It was like some precious emerald, filled with the grinning spirit of an ancient phantom of evil.
Ragyapa gasped. His gunman lowered his rifle.
'Put it down,' Ragyapa hissed at me. 'They will see it.'
'If you don't want anyone to see it, you must come out here and take it. And bring Lady Ahn with you…' I gestured at the demonstrators behind me. '… or I disappear into their midst.'
Ragyapa nodded, greed overcoming him. 'Yes. Yes. Keep it lower. I will be right there.'
He barked some incomprehensible order. From the darkness a hand emerged and handed him a white cloth. Hurriedly, he unraveled his turban, exposing his hideously scarred bald head. Then he wrapped the white bandana around his forehead and slipped off his coat. Suddenly, he had transformed himself into someone who, in the confusion of the afternoon, could pass for a student. I saw his plan. Once he had the jade skull, he could slip it under his arm and disappear into the vast legions of student demonstrators.
Okay by me, as long as he turned Lady Ahn over to me first. After that, we'd try to capture him in order to keep our promise to the nun. But Lady Ahn came first.
Ragyapa strode forward, tugging Lady Ahn after him. I lowered the skull and held it in front of my chest, hoping the M-l marksman would think twice before pulling the trigger.
Moving my eyes as little as possible I searched for Ernie. Where the hell was he?
About ten feet from me, Ragyapa stopped. He shoved down on Lady Ann's shoulders. Like a trained dog, she knelt at his feet.
Had he broken her will? After days of torture, it could happen to anyone. No matter how strong.
'Now,' Ragyapa said. 'The jade.'
'Let her crawl forward.'
'First you place the jade skull on the ground between us.'
I thought it over. Probably as good a deal as I was going to get. And if Ernie popped a slug into the rifleman in time, maybe I'd even live through it.
'Okay,' I said.
I had just set the jade down and Lady Ahn started to crawl forward when two things happened simultaneously. I heard a great grinding of gears and a woman's scream. Off to the left a vehicle careened through the dense crowd. Demonstrators, screaming, dove out of the way.
Over to the right, the officers in charge of the riot police had apparently become fed up with the students badmouthing their president. With helmets and face screens, shields and batons, the ranks of the riot police pressed forward. A Roman legion clearing the rabble.
Ragyapa snapped his head between the converging riot police and the madly rampaging vehicle.
Suddenly, I realized what it was. Ernie's jeep. But it wasn't Ernie at the wheel. It was Herman the German, holding his hairy arm high over his head, still handcuffed to the roll bar.
Somehow, he'd managed to scoot over far enough to wedge himself behind the steering wheel and start the engine. The chain welded to the floorboard was still preventing him from steering, but Herman didn't seem to care. Every time he ran into something-a lamppost, the wall of a building, an iron railing leading to the subway-he backed up, stepped on the gas, and rammed forward. Like that, turning the wheel only a few degrees at a time, he had managed to zigzag all the way down the hill.
The radiator of the jeep looked as if it had been chewed by an iron-fanged dinosaur.
Herman butted into the last obstacle between him and Ragyapa: a stone pedestal that during normal afternoons supported a traffic cop. He rammed into it, backed up, turned the wheel as much as he could, then stepped on the gas again. This time he cleared it.
Making a long graceful loop, he swung through the crowd. Students cursed and leapt out of the way. The jeep picked up speed. Suddenly I realized what he was doing. He was heading right toward us.
I dived toward Lady Ahn and tried to lift her to her feet. As I did so a bullet rang out and ricocheted on the pavement behind me. The M-l rifleman.
Meanwhile, the students had been preparing their response to the slow-motion onslaught of the riot police. In about a half dozen spots, flames ignited amongst the crowd of students. Upon a barked command, burning wicks attached to bottles filled with gasoline catapulted gracefully through the sky. Three crashed into the helmets of the riot police; each exploded on contact.
Whistles blew. Enraged, the riot police charged forward.
In the yoguan, I heard the sharp, compact blast of a. 45. Ernie! Three, maybe four rounds.
As I lifted Lady Ahn to her feet, no more M-l bullets exploded in our direction.
Ragyapa screeched and stumbled and crawled toward the jade skull. Lady Ahn seemed to come alive. She wrenched herself away from me and lunged for the skull. Using her foot, she tried to shield it from Ragyapa's grasp. His fingernails scraped along her leg like claws. She screamed and recoiled against me. Herman and the jeep were heading straight toward us. I pulled her back, out of its path.
'Let me go!' she screamed. 'The jade! I must have the jade!'
But it was too late now. Ragyapa was clutching the ancient skull like a football. He scrambled to his feet and looked back at the jeep.
I could see Herman's eyes. The flesh around them was contorted in rage. The mangled fender bore down on Ragyapa.
At the last second Ragyapa dived, rolled, and bounded back to his feet. Herman ground the gears with a great gnashing of iron, backed up, turned the steering wheel, and started after Ragyapa again.
Clutching the skull, Ragyapa took off like a hunchbacked football player. Herman roared through the crowd in his mad yet graceful arcs. People leapt out of his way. The battle between the riot police and the student demonstrators was in full force now. The noise was deafening. I'd tumbled down a rathole into hell.
'The jade!' Lady Ahn screamed. 'The jade!'
I slapped her. 'The hell with the jade. We don't need it.'
At the moment, I was most concerned with getting out of there alive. Molotov cocktails were flying, the riot police were moving inexorably forward swinging their heavy batons, and behind them loomed the beetle-backed cavalry of the riot control armored personnel carriers.
A torrent of water lashed out into the crowd. Water hoses. A jet stream swirled past us, knocking us down. I yanked Lady Ahn to her feet again.
'Come on!'
Lady Ahn could barely walk. Ahead, I saw the canvas top of the jeep caroming madly through the crowd. We moved after it. I saw Ernie running out of the yoguan. Somehow, he spotted us above the sea of bandanaed heads.
When he reached us, blood pounded through the veins of his neck and his face. 'I offed me a motherfucker!' he reported.
'The guy with the M-one?'
'Yeah.'
'And the others?'
'Scattered.'
'We have to get out of here.'
Ernie looked at me as if I were mad. 'What about the nun?'
I stopped. 'Shit! I completely forgot.'
'Come on,' Ernie said. 'There's still time to save her.'
I started to move after him but Lady Ahn held me. 'You go. I will stay here.'
We were pretty far from the riot police. She'd be fairly safe. 'Okay,' I told her. 'But keep moving toward that line of buildings. Get out of this area.'
'Yes,' she said. 'I can do that.'
My fingers lingered on her cheek. Then I ran after Ernie. She worried me. I knew she'd been hurt, and hurt badly, by Ragyapa and his boys. But she was still beautiful. And as soon as she'd gained her freedom, she'd regained that spark of dignity that she always carried with her.
People weren't even paying attention now to the fact that we were Americans. With the riot police on the rampage, everyone was too worried about his own safety to worry about us. The students were tough, well
