By Eminent Domain

Destroyer 124: By Eminent Domain

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Chapter 1

Sometimes, if he scrunched up his eyes tight enough and concentrated really, really hard, he could almost taste the warm apple pie. Other times it was roast pork, hot from the oven and spitting delicious, mouthwatering fat. This day, the last day of the rest of Brian Turski's young life, it was freshly baked chocolatechip cookies.

In his mind's eye, they were baked to perfection. Not cooked so much that they were brittle. Just soft enough that when they were broken in two, the chocolate formed drooping, gooey threads between the two halves.

He took a deep breath, savoring the remembered aroma.

The smell that flooded his nostrils was that of diesel exhaust and commingled human body odors. And the cold.

Here, cold was a living thing-assaulting all the senses at once. You could see it, taste it, smell it. On a still night, when the snow fell, you could hear it. Each flake hit like frozen thunder. Mostly, though, you could feel it. Seeping through boots and gloves. Leeching deep into bone.

It was the cold Brian had to deal with every day. His wife's cooking-including her trademark chocolate-chip cookies-was a million miles away.

Brian opened his eyes. He was in the back of a truck. Fifteen other men were arranged on two benches around him. They were bouncing along a rutted rural road.

"Your wife's cooking again, huh?" grunted the man beside him. Like Brian, he was tall and thin, his strong arms hidden beneath his heavy parka.

Brian nodded glumly.

"Why do you torture yourself?" his seatmate asked.

More than once, each one of the men in that truck had asked himself the same question. The answer they invariably gave was that it put food on the table and a roof over the heads of their families. For eight months each year, they trudged out into rural Alaska during the long, dark months of winter for the same reason the surgeon went to the hospital or the baker went to the bakery. It was their job.

"If you live in Alaska more than two years, your feet will be frozen in it." So went the old saying. For Brian Turski, frozen feet were just part of a bitter reality.

Insulated boots stomped the floor for warmth as the big truck drove along the rough access road. Another dry winter had yielded little snow in this part of the Last Frontier. Patches of white dotted the land. When the tired old truck finally rolled to a squeaking stop, brittle scrub grass crunched beneath the tire treads.

Cold steel doors popped open on a featureless plain. A stiff breeze-like icy fingers-curled inside the vehicle. As he stood, Brian pulled his hood over his long, matted hair, knotting it beneath his whiskers with freezing fingers.

There was only one native Alaskan in the group. He had the broad, flat face of an Aleut, with eyes that were weather-battered slits cut deep in dark flesh.

The Aleut was first out of the back. Brian followed, with the others filing rapidly out behind.

The wan light of perpetual dusk painted the landscape in an otherworldly gray. The men ignored the sallow sky.

On the sleeves of their matching parkas, each man wore the APSC insignia of the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company. The same logo adorned both sides of their truck.

Daylight was already at a premium. Their foreman-a burly, urgent man whose once delicate skin had been ravaged by years of exposure to the hostile climate-rounded to the back of the truck from the cab.

"Chopper spotted the break over that rise," Joe Abady said, pointing with his chin as he tugged on his Thinsulate gloves. "We've got maybe a couple of hours if the generators hold. You all know what to do. Let's do it fast."

A second truck had trailed the first. The men hurried over to it. Tools and ladders were hauled out onto frozen ground. Plastic canisters were dropped beside them. The sharp smell of gasoline sliced the cold air.

Two men struggled to haul the generators from far back in the truck.

"Can't we drive around?" one panted as they lowered the second generator to the road.

"Access is too far down," the foreman explained gruffly. "We're doing this the old-fashioned way." Brian Turski and three of the others hefted up the bulky portable generators. The rest of the men gathered the tools and the gas. They left the welding tanks to Joe Abady.

The foreman hooked a pair of leather straps around his shoulders and shrugged the big tanks onto his broad back.

With Abady in the lead, the group of twenty men struck off across the tundra.

Twenty yards off the path, the plain turned to hill. Brian Turski's breath was labored as he struggled under the weight of the generator. The hill had seemed gradual from the road but quickly grew steeper with each labored step.

"I'm not hauling this back," Brian panted.

"You wanna carry these?" Abady asked. The strain of the welding tanks stretched his leathery face.

"What I want is homemade apple pie," Brian said. His heart was straining in his chest. His lungs felt as if they'd been rubbed raw with sandpaper. "Or chocolate-chip cookies."

The words burned his hoarse throat.

Sweating and cursing, the men crested the hill. As soon as they reached the summit, they saw the problem.

The floor of the long, narrow valley below was stained black. Towering above the ground was a massive pipe that stretched in either direction. And in the side of that pipe, an angry hole was like the open mouth of Hell itself.

Moans rose all around.

"Swell," one man complained at the sight of the spilled crude oil. "We're gonna need a vacuum truck up here."

"Already on its way down from Wiseman," Abady said, not breaking stride. "Let's move it, ladies." Hitching up his tanks, the foreman began to pick his careful way down the far side of the hill to the wounded section of the massive Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

TEN MINUTES LATER, crude oil swamped Brian Turski's boots as he eyed the gash in the pipe.

"That's not from stress," he said to Joe Abady. "They only saw the spill from the air," the foreman replied with a frown. "Not this."

"Looks like someone took an ax to it," Brian said. Still frowning, Abady glanced down the broad ravine. Some of the men followed his line of sight. The pipeline slithered off like a great fat snake in either direction. To the north it was a straight run into the nothingness of the Alaskan wilderness. To the south it twisted around a bend in the ravine and was gone.

The forty-eight-inch pipe was built on raised pipeline support members that looked like field posts for Titans. Here and there below the pipeline were dark, uncertain patches and bits of brittle scrub. A few broad streaks of windswept snow hugged the ravine walls on either side.

"Just a rupture," Abady announced gruffly. "Probably froze, then popped. No one'd be stupid enough to come out here except us. Let's get to work."

With the drop in pressure that signified a rupture, the line had been shut down. Twelve pumping stations and two million gallons of crude oil sat idle until repairs could be made.

Stepping carefully through the thick pool of oil, Brian headed for one of the support members. As he walked he cast a casual glance down the ravine. And froze.

Something had moved.

It was subtle, ghostly, caught more with his peripheral vision than anything else. But though his eyes had almost ignored it, his brain wouldn't let them.

He squinted into the distance.

Nothing. No movement, no anything. Just the land and the sky and the pipeline that ran between them. For Brian Turski, an eerie silence descended on the ravine. The grunts of the men behind him faded to silence.

After a moment he grew less certain. He was about to chalk it all up to his imagination when the air seemed to coalesce. A shape suddenly appeared from the drab landscape where a moment before there had been nothing.

Brian didn't have time to give voice to his shock.

The instant the figure appeared, there came a flash of brilliant orange.

The bullet struck Brian Turski in the right side of the chest, spinning him. His feet went out from underneath him, and he went sprawling into the pool of black oil. Crude flooded into his gaping mouth. Another shot, followed by another.

Brian pulled his face up, spitting thick oil. The pain in his chest was blinding.

Joe Abady was sliding to a stop next to him, a nickel-size hole in his forehead.

Men screamed and ran. Another flopped on his side in the oil pool, blood streaming from his open mouth. More gunshots crackled off across the desolate Alaskan wilderness. And all around, bodies fell.

A few men tried to clamber back up the hill. Bullets found backs. The pipeline workers slipped and rolled back down to the valley floor.

Back near the pipe, panicked and bleeding, Brian struggled to get up. His arms were too weak, and he dropped back to the ground.

The oil was thick on his clothes, filling his mouth and nose. Spitting, he flopped over onto his back. Using the heels of his boots and pressing one hand to his bleeding chest, he slid back against a metal support member.

The gunfire had stopped.

The dead lay all around him. Steam rose from gaping wounds and slack mouths.

To Brian Turski, they were already a distant thing. As if he were viewing the landscape through a fuzzy telescope. His legs were growing numb. Already there was no feeling in his right arm. He let it flop to the ground.

Something rose before him.

It was as if the tundra had come to life. The figure was streaked with whites and browns.

Others appeared behind it. Phantoms of earth and snow.

No. Not ghosts.

Crude oil caked one eye. Squinting with the good one, Brian Turski peered at the figure.

His dying lips formed a surprised O.

It was just a man. The blurry figure carried a smoking automatic rifle. The other white-and-brown shapes became men, too. They fanned out around the area, kicking over bodies with the toes of their boots.

Sitting in the shadow of their leader, Brian took his last deep breath.

This time, he didn't smell the cold or the crude or the hint of blood carried on the frigid air. He smelled chocolate-chip cookies. Hot out of the oven. With the gooey brown chips that burned his numb fingertips.

A growl.

The man above Brian was speaking. The pipeline worker didn't understand the language.

Tasting chocolate, Brian looked up.

An angry rifle barrel stared down at him.

It didn't matter. Death could come and claim him if it wanted. Brian had finally gotten his wish. His belly warm and full, he gently closed his eyes.

He was already dead before the bullet popped his head open like a paint-filled water balloon.

As his body slumped into the pool of black slush, the shadows slipped away. One after another the stealthy figures disappeared, swallowed up by the Alaskan wasteland until all that was left behind were the bodies of the dead and the endless, desolate wind.

Although Brian Turski hadn't understood the words that were the last to reach his living ears, the language was not new to the Last Frontier. If he had understood them, they would only have confused him in his final moments of life.

For the actual words spoken by Brian Turski's killer-loosely translated-were a notice of eviction.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he stared out at the world of the living through a dead man's eyes.

There was a time when Remo would have fought the notion that he was dead. For a long time he had insisted that his dying was nothing more than a ruse. After all, he breathed and walked and ate and loved just like the next nondead man.

But with the passage of time came a realization-like a hole finally worn through rock by a single, remorseless water drip. In spite of his early protestations, Remo one day realized that he was not like the next man after all.

Yes, he breathed. But it was not a process that involved gasping lungs straining to supply oxygen to a sluggish bloodstream. Remo breathed with his entire body. Every cell alive, alert and aware.

He walked, but it was without the effort of normal men. Remo's gait was a comfortable glide that flowed naturally. Entirely unlike the rest of the human race, which seemed always to move as if it were wading through wet concrete.

His diet was no longer loaded with fats and sugars-slow poisons all. The food he ate was specific and minimal. Just enough to fuel the perfect machine that was a body in tune with the forces of the universe. The last thing-love-was something that definitely no longer had a home in the soul of Remo Williams as it did for other men. Not that he was incapable of the emotion. Far from it. It was just that his profession didn't exactly lend itself to the notion that he might one day link arms with the woman of his dreams and go tripping tra-la through a field of summer daisies.

Remo was an assassin. Trained by the Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju-the most deadly line of assassins ever to ply the trade. Feats seemingly superhuman were just a day at the office for the men from Sinanju.

In days gone by Masters of Sinanju dodged hurled spears and rocks. These days it was bullets. All the same.

Sheer walls were just things to climb. Fortresses were built from match sticks. Armies, merely toy soldiers.

The skills displayed by Sinanju Masters involved muscle and brain and bone. Breathing, conscious and unconscious thought.

Remo had long ago stopped trying to figure out exactly what made him different from other men. Better would have been the word his teacher used. Remo didn't think he was better. Just different. Of the world, yet apart from it.

And so Remo had one day realized that the man he had been was, in fact, dead after all.

Even though acceptance for him had been a long time coming, it had been far easier for the rest of the world to come to terms with the death of Remo Williams. Part of the reason for that was the grave on which he now sat.

The headstone was a simple no-frills number. Just a granite slab with a plain carved cross and his own name etched into the smooth, cold surface. The edges of the letters had begun to wear with age.

Remo had rarely found the need to visit what-to the world-was the final resting place of Remo Williams. There were only two other instances where he had stood above this grave and contemplated its significance.

Six feet below the spot where Remo now sat was a body. Little more than a few scattered teeth and bones by this point in time. Some faceless indigent who thirty years ago had unknowingly become Remo's stand-in so that Remo might be free to pursue his new calling.

America had been at a crossroads. Social and political upheaval were threatening to tear the nation apart. Down one path led anarchy. Down the other, a police state. In order that the republic could survive, a third option had to be tried, a new and treacherous trail blazed.

A new agency was created by a young President who would himself become an eventual victim of the incipient anarchy that plagued his nation. Called CURE, the organization would work outside the strait jacket that was the United States Constitution in order to preserve the very document it subverted.

The existence of CURE was known to only four men at any given time. Remo was one of those four. And in order that the secret be preserved, all traces of his former existence had been eliminated, including his life itself.

Framed for a murder he did not commit, honest beat cop Remo Williams had been sentenced to die in an electric chair that didn't work. Only when he awoke in Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York-the secret home to CURE-had Remo learned the truth of what his lifework would be.

After a rocky start, he had accepted his destiny fairly easily, all things considered. He had even agreed with the bulk of the rules governing his behavior as set forth by Upstairs. At least in principle.

It made sense that he should never again try to visit the nuns from St. Theresa's Orphanage, where he had been raised. Ditto his fellow cops from the old precinct. But one of the things he was absolutely never supposed to do was come to Newark's Wildwood Cemetery and sit on the frozen ground and stare at his own headstone.

Two out of three wasn't bad.

In his defense he had a lot on his mind these days. And although most people wouldn't have the opportunity to know it, sometimes your own grave was the best spot to sit and sort through life's real important stuff.

It was the third week of February, and already most of the winter snow had been chased away. In another month it would be gone completely, wiped from the landscape by warming sun and drenching rain. The exposed ground was brown and cracked. Leaves from autumns past rotted to compost at the sturdy concrete base of the nearby wrought-iron fence.

The surface leaves were frozen stiff. Remo could smell beyond them, to the rich loam being born beneath. Deeper still, he could feel the worms twist in their winter slumber. High above the ground the soft scent of pines carried to his nostrils. His sensitive ears registered the flicking movements of the farthermost wind-tossed needles.

So was it to be trained in Sinanju. Even in the dead heart of winter, the world was still a vibrant living thing.

Although Remo was aware of all that was going on around him, he did not allow it to distract him from his thoughts.

He was trying to sort through something. Just what exactly, he had no idea. He thought it might have something to do with his last assignment.

A few days ago, Remo had been sent to California to pull the plug on an old Soviet superweapon that had somehow fallen into the hands of a group of radical peaceniks. That the first thing they had done upon acquiring such a device was blow the hell out of everything they aimed it at was an irony completely lost on these aging pacifists.

While on this assignment Remo had been stunned to encounter an old flame, a beautiful Russian agent who had also been sent to defuse the situation. Bumping into Anna Chutesov after more than ten years would not have been so shocking had Remo not thought her dead. She wasn't. And as was the case with most things in Remo's life these days, complications had ensued.

Sitting alone in Wildwood Cemetery, pale white moonlight shining down across his shoulders, the cold wind snaking around his lean frame like the tendrils of some invisible beast, Remo pictured Anna Chutesov.

The real Anna had looked pretty much the same as he remembered her, yet it was her younger face he now summoned.

She came to him in his mind's eye. Icy blue eyes, blond hair, strong cheekbones. An ageless beauty. There was a time when he thought he loved her. Now she was just another face.

Nope. The something he was after didn't have anything to do with the Russian agent.

He placed her mental image carefully aside.

It was a frustrating process. There was something he felt he should know, something he should do. Yet the more he tried the more certain he was that he was just forcing it further and further away. But it was important.

The feeling that there was something big looming on the horizon had first come to him in California. It was a moment come and gone. Now it was like trying to remember a dream.

After leaving California two days ago, there had been a brief side trip to Russia in order to take care of some unfinished business. He had only returned to U.S. soil late the previous afternoon.

Once he'd landed in New York, Remo had sent his teacher back to Folcroft while he came out to the cemetery alone. To think.

Afternoon had long since bled into the postmidnight hours, yet Remo felt no closer to an answer.

Maybe it was nothing. His life hadn't exactly been a piece of cake lately. And according to a source he didn't really care to think about at the moment, it was only going to get worse. Maybe that's all this was. An unconscious concern for what might be.

After a few more minutes of trying to chase an inchoate thought around his brain, he finally threw up his hands.

"Ah, hell," Remo grumbled.

With a feeling of deep frustration he unscissored his legs and rose to his feet.

Even though he had sat in the same position for more than ten hours, there was no crack of bone or strain of tired muscle. With just a simple fluid motion he was up.

Dark eyes read the name etched on his headstone one last time before he turned abruptly away.

He had taken not a single step before he heard a sound.

The creaking of a gate. Hurried footfalls scuffed a gravel path. Hushed, nervous voices carried to his ears.

Remo's internal clock told him that it was 2:37 in the morning. Not a likely time for anyone to be paying a visit to the grave of a departed loved one.

Curiosity piqued, he took to the path. On silent feet he followed the sounds of the voices.

The path led through a knot of sighing pines and up a short incline. By the time Remo came to the top of the hill, a fresh sound had reached his ears. It was a grinding of stone on stone followed by a heavy muted thud.

Dodging moonlight, Remo came up beside a granite angel. The statue's wings were folded back, and the fingertips of its delicate hands brushed together in eternal prayer.

Ahead, more headstones dotted the landscape. Remo saw three figures slipping between the distant headstones.

Although it was dark, Remo's eyes took in enough ambient light to make it seem as bright as midday. The three intruders were older boys. Probably no further along than sophomores in high school. Breaking away from his companions, one of the boys crouched and vanished from sight. Remo heard a sharp rattling noise, followed by a faint hissing. Remo recognized the sounds.

As he watched, the other two walked up to a big grave marker. Giggling nervously, they planted their shoulders against its rough side. Grunting at the effort, they shoved the stone off its base. It thumped heavily back to the cold ground. Panting happily, they moved on to the next grave.

The dark lines of Remo's angular face grew hard. Leaving his stone angel to her private supplications, he darted across the frozen ground.

Delicate crusts of ice had formed on the surface of the few patches of snow that yet clung to the ground. Where Remo came in contact with them, the soles of his loafers didn't even crack the crystalline veneer.

The boys failed to notice his approach. He halted a few yards from the trio of vandals, a shadow among shadows.

As he'd suspected, the crouching boy held a can of spray paint in his hand. He was in the process of painting a dripping swastika on the front of a big stone marker.

While the first boy worked, the other two laughed anxiously as they put their backs against another headstone.

Unseen by the trio of youths, Remo's face grew cold.

Increasingly this kind of desecration was becoming common. In years gone by it would have been big news if a cemetery was vandalized. Certainly statewide. Maybe even nationally. Now it barely rated a blurb on the local news.

Remo decided that it was high time someone spoke up for all the voiceless dead out there.

His expression more fixed than any name carved in granite, Remo slipped through the shadows toward the boys.

"Hurry up," one of the youths urged, laughing. He already had his shoulder braced against the next stone in line. His companion quickly joined him. As before, the two boys pushed in unison.

Although they put all their weight against it, this time something was different. This time when they shoved, the headstone seemed to shove back.

With a pair of startled grunts, the two boys toppled over onto their backs. The wind rushed from their lungs.

"What're you doing?" the kid with the spray can asked when he saw the others rolling on the ground. Not terribly imaginative, he was painting yet another swastika.

"Something pushed us," one of the others said, getting to his knees. There was a slight quaver in his voice.

With a frown the first boy stopped spraying. He looked to the headstone the others had been working on.

It was just an ordinary hunk of rock. All around was nothing but shadows and wind and swaying pines. They were the only living things at Wildwood Cemetery.

"Don't pussy out," the first youth growled at the others. He returned to his spraying.

The two kneeling boys glanced at each another. "You must've pushed me," one accused.

"What the hell do you mean?" challenged the other, his nerve returning. "You pushed me."

They scurried back to the headstone.

The frozen ground at the base of the stone seemed suddenly to have gone all brittle. One of the boys felt the ground crack beneath his right foot. With a jolt, he sank ankle deep in the earth. When he tried to pull his foot out, it wouldn't budge. It was only then that the honor set in.

"C'mon, hurry up," his companion groused. He had his back braced against the stone.

The second youth refused to move. He just stood there, his foot stuck up to the ankle in a gopher hole. When the boy at the grave marker glanced up, he found that every last drop of blood had drained from his friend's face. A look of fear like none he had ever before seen in his young life had flooded the boy's features.

The silent youth's lower lip stuttered in place. It was as if he were trying to speak but couldn't.

With an angry expression the second boy straightened. "What's the-" He sniffed the air. "Dammit, did you piss your pants?" he demanded.

Before his friend could manage to respond, the angry youth felt the earth grow brittle beneath him. His own foot abruptly cracked through the frozen surface. The first hint of concern had barely brushed his soft features when he felt something cold and unseen wrap around his ankle.

It felt like a hand.

His face grew ashen. He tried to scream but no sound came. And suddenly the world turned upside down and the two boys were flipping backward onto the frozen ground.

The boy with the spray can glanced over once more. "What the hell's wrong with you fag-"

The words died in his throat.

As the three boys watched, frozen with fear, the ground before the haunted headstone cracked and split apart. Clods of hard-packed dirt fell away. And with an unearthly silence that seemed to dull the beating of their very hearts, a dark figure rose slowly up into the chill night air.

The ghost was dressed all in black. His T-shirt and chinos were shadows that enveloped his lean frame. The face was like an accusing skull, with eyes set so deep in their sockets they seemed little more than empty hollows into an angry soul. A bare arm extended, finger unfurled. The specter pointed accusingly at the three terrified youths.

"Boo," said Remo Williams.

That single spoken syllable was the key that unlocked three frozen larynxes. In horrified unison the three boys let out a chorus of bloodcurdling screams.

Hearts thudding, synchronized by fear, they tried to run. The ghost appeared before them.

"Keep it down," Remo said. "You wanna wake the dead?" As he spoke he tapped a spot in the center of two foreheads. Two of the vandals promptly went as rigid as any stone angel.

The third boy suddenly felt the spray can pop from his fingers. So panicked was he, he hadn't even realized he was still holding it. His mouth was wide in shock. Remo took it as an invitation.

"Dead people have simple wishes," Remo instructed as he stuffed the spray can into the youth's mouth. "Really, all we want is to be left alone."

He jammed the can so far back that the little plastic button compressed against the soft tissue at the back of the boy's throat. With a muffled hiss, clouds of black paint began discharging from both of the boy's nostrils.

As the can hissed, Remo considered. "Maybe some flowers once in a while. A wreath at Christmas. That'd be nice. After all, corpses have feelings, too. But it's guys like you that take all the fun out of being dead. I mean, how would you like it if me and my friends zombied our way into your houses in the middle of the night and started knocking over your Nintendos and spray painting crap on your personal computers?"

"Fffsssss!" said the boy with the paint can in his mouth. With plumes of black paint coming from his nose, he looked like a snorting cartoon bull.

"That's right, you wouldn't," Remo nodded. "Well, we dead people aren't any different than you, except we waste less space."

The can fizzled empty. Remo pulled it out of the kid's mouth, tossing it in some bushes. Wet paint drizzled black from the boy's slack mouth.

"Now, here's what you're gonna do," Remo said. "When you leave the cemetery, you're going to flag down the first cop car you see and you're going to confess to what you did here tonight. Then you're going to pay for every last bit of damage. If your parents are like all the others these days, they're gonna try to blame your actions on your buddies, your schools or the NRA. You are not going to let them do that. You are going to stand up for what you did, and you are going to make it right. If not, the next time I grab one of you jerks by the ankle, I won't stop pulling until you've got the room next to mine in the Motel Hell. Got it?"

His darting finger tapped the foreheads of the two paralyzed youths. As one, the three boys nodded numbly. Three sets of knees knocked audibly.

"Good," Remo said. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to go knock over some furniture and rattle some chains at Dan Aykroyd's house. It's all pretty childish stuff really, but if it keeps him from making Ghostbusters 3 it's worth it."

With that he slipped into the shadows and was gone. It was as if the night had swallowed him whole. For a moment the three boys just stood there. Eyes wide, burning from the cold. Their panting breath curls of white in the chill winter air.

All at once they seemed to reach some inner decision.

Wheeling around, they ran for all they were worth. Screaming in fear, they stumbled out of the cemetery gates and raced down the cracked sidewalk. Feet pounding, they quickly disappeared from sight.

Once they were gone, Remo slid out from behind a concealing knot of pines. He turned in satisfaction at the grave from which he'd appeared.

There was a man-size hole in the ground behind the headstone. Remo had only had to burrow a few inches below the surface to come up on the far side of the stone.

He knocked the clods of overturned earth back in the hole, tapping them down with the sole of his loafer.

"It might not be what I was after, but it still felt good," he said in satisfaction. He turned from the grave.

Out of respect for the dead, he didn't start whistling until he reached the street.

Chapter 3

The ancient Bell UH-I Huey raced along the jagged length of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Swirls of snow flew up in its frenzied wake.

Eleven nervous men lined the rear of the helicopter. Although they all wore bulky headsets, the radios in most of them didn't work. The headphones were to dull the eardrum-rattling noise of the screaming rotor blades.

Anxious eyes stared out the scratched windows. Below the belly of the racing Huey stretched the pipeline. It ran eight hundred miles down from the wastes of the north. Most people thought it followed a perfectly straight line from point A to point B. Not so. The huge pipe had been built in staggered sections to allow for certain elasticity during earthquake shocks. From the back of the Huey, it looked as if some giant vandal had taken great strides south, twisting the pipe as he went.

Right now, most of the men in the chopper would have preferred a giant. At least it would be something they could see from a distance. What they were actually after was unknown.

Something had happened somewhere down there in the Alaskan wilds. Something that warranted pulling a group of trainees from their exercises.

One of the men pressed a gloved hand to his headset. He'd found that he could get it to work sometimes if he pushed the loose wire trailing into his right earpiece.

"Sir, do you know what this is all about?"

Most of the men couldn't hear the question. The ones who could strained to listen to the reply. "Some kind of problem with some pipeline workers," Major Race H. Fordell replied over the scratchy headset. Their commanding officer was staring down at the pipeline.

"Couldn't the Guard check it out?"

The Major shook his head. "We were closest."

"Lucky us," another man mumbled.

Since his microphone was broken, the words were swallowed up by the howl of the rotor blades.

The First Civil Support Battalion had been conducting training exercises near the Chandalar River 150 miles north of Fairbanks when the call came. They were scrambled and soaring east in ten minutes.

The pilot was ordered to give it all he had. The vibrations were so great some feared the Huey might start rattling apart around their heads.

The men in the helicopter weren't true soldiers. Some in the Alaska State Defense Force had some service training, but many did not. Even though the ASDF was considered a military force-to be deployed during state emergencies-the civil servants of the ASDF really existed as backup to the Alaska National Guard.

In the back of the chopper, shaking hands wiped sweat from nervous brows.

A matching patch on each man's sleeve depicted a swimming wolf. Above was the legend 1st Bn, and below were the letters ASDF.

The Seawolves were based in Juneau. Only sheer dumb luck had plunked them down in the middle of nowhere this day. At the moment none of the men was feeling terribly lucky. A few of them jumped when the pilot's urgent voice crackled over the headphones.

"I think you'll want to see this, Major."

Major Fordell hopped from his seat and swept to the cockpit.

"What have we got?" Fordell asked tightly. He was already scanning the forward terrain.

"Down there, sir," the pilot said, pointing. "Dead ahead."

Squinting, Major Fordell spotted a cluster of trucks. They looked like toys. Bunched together, they sat cold and alone on the pipeline access road. A fat hose ran from the back of the last truck, vanishing over the hill that ran parallel to the road.

"Vacuum truck," Fordell said. "Those are the guys who radioed in." He pointed to the hill. "Let's see where they went."

Nodding, the pilot swept across the abandoned trucks and up the face of the hill. The instant they'd crested the top, the pilot felt his fingers tense on the stick.

"Sir," he whispered, his voice low with sudden shock.

Beside him, Major Race Fordell's mouth thinned. His unblinking eyes showed not a flicker of emotion. In the valley below them the pipeline stretched like a metallic serpent. Underneath its massive support members, dozens of bodies lay scattered like abandoned dolls.

Hovering over the hill, the pilot cast a frightened eye at the Major. In the back of the Huey the men had taken sudden sick interest in the gruesome scene below.

"What happened, Major?" the young pilot asked. Race Fordell's expression never wavered.

"That's what we're here to find out," he said flatly. "Take us down."

Nodding numbly, the pilot aimed the chopper for the valley floor. At Fordell's orders, he touched down just long enough for the eleven men in the back to spill out. Skids had barely pressed to frozen ground before the Huey was once more airborne. Buzzing like an angry insect, it soared off down the valley in the direction opposite the one from which it had come.

The hum of the rotor blades faded to silence. Alone on the ground, the eleven ASDF men picked their careful way around the dead.

Stepping cautiously through the pool of crude oil, Major Fordell squatted near a pair of bodies.

Joe Abady was flat on his stomach, his chin resting on the black ground. Almost as black as crude oil, blood had frozen to the hole in his forehead. Near the APSC foreman, Brian Turski lay on his side, his head gaping wide from a single, point-blank gunshot. Wordlessly, Major Fordell stood.

There was no sign of anyone else in the area. They'd detected no other vehicles on the flight up. Snowfall had been too low this winter for snowmobiles. The chopper was searching now in the other direction. If the pilot could turn up nothing from a visual sweep, that left only two possibilities. The hostiles had either been airlifted out, or they were still in the area.

The ASDF men were looking everywhere, clustered tightly around Fordell, their rifle barrels fanned out. "This was an ambush," the Major said with certainty. He kept his voice low. "We're looking for foxholes, burrows, trapdoors. Stay alert. Let's move." Swallowing their fear, the men spread out across the narrow valley floor. Their eyes trained on the ground, they began moving south.

Major Fordell studied not just the ground. Every now and then his eyes flicked up to the pipeline. It hung above their heads, big and menacing.

A few hundred yards from the massacre they found nothing. Some of the men were allowing the first slip of relief to hiss from between their chapped lips. Major Fordell remained tense. As he walked along the frozen ground, his eyes and ears were alert to everything around him.

There was no doubt in his mind this had been an ambush. The hole in the pipe back there was manmade, designed to lure the pipeline workers into a trap.

Could be whacked-out environmentalists trying to shut down the pipe. Hell, maybe it was agents of OPEC trying to screw with domestic oil production. No matter who it was, there was no way they were going to get past Major Race Fordell.

A flash of movement to his left drew the Major's attention. For an instant the air seemed to gel into a fuzzy solid. The instant it did, Major Fordell felt a rough tug at his hands.

His gun disappeared.

Just like that. Disappeared. Vanished as if sucked into a parallel dimension.

His fingers clenched empty air.

Panic flooded his hollow belly. Before he could even give voice to his shock, before he could alert his men, Fordell felt a blinding pain crack the side of his head.

He dropped to the seat of his pants, stunned. When he grabbed at the injured area, his gloved fingers returned slick with blood.

"Major, what happened?" a nearby ASDF soldier asked worriedly. His young voice suddenly dropped low. "Oh, God."

Nursing shock, Fordell looked up woodenly.

His gun had reappeared. It was clutched in the hands of a swirling figure. The barrel was aimed at Major Fordell.

The Major tried to blink the figure into focus. He wasn't sure if it was head trauma or something else, but it seemed impossible to see the man clearly. Then all at once the intruder seemed to snap into reality.

The strange figure wore winter combat fatigues. A matching ski mask covered his face. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of black goggles. The gun aimed at Fordell's face never wavered.

Whoever he was, his intentions seemed clear enough. Race Fordell wasn't taking any chances. "Shoot him!" the Major yelled.

His men ignored the order.

Still sitting on the ground and staring down the barrel of his own rifle, Major Fordell glanced at his men. What he saw made his heart freeze in his chest.

There were more of the commandos. All around. Dozens of them. They had somehow stepped out of the air to ambush Major Race Fordell and his ASDF weekend warriors.

"Oh, God," repeated the young soldier nearest Race. He was frozen in place. Three commandos stood like somber sentries before him, their guns leveled at his chest.

A twitch of movement came from the commando standing before him. Eyes darting, Race Fordell saw a gloved finger tighten over a trigger. His trigger. His own damn gun was about to kill him. Cold fury flooded his blood-streaked face.

"Shoot them, dammit!" Major Fordell ordered an instant before a bullet from his own gun ended his life.

As the Major fell, the rest of the commandos opened fire. Guns crackled. One by one the ASDF men fell.

Panicking, some men threw down their weapons and flung up their hands. They were slaughtered where they stood.

The few Alaska State Defense Force men who tried to defend themselves found their targets impossible to track. They always seemed to be everywhere other than the path of the bullets.

The commandos disappeared and reappeared. Some abandoned guns for knives, materializing next to a terrified ASDF man just long enough to slit his throat.

When there was only one ASDF man left standing, the slaughter abruptly ceased.

The Alaska State Defense soldier had already thrown down his gun. He stood whimpering and defenseless, as the crowd of masked men formed a circle around him. He didn't even hear the hushed words from the commandos. Didn't see the crowd part. Didn't notice the lone man who strode into their midst.

The last arrival was dressed like the others, save one distinction. He wore no mask.

His features were delicate enough to be considered pretty. His eyes were powdery brown mixed with flecks of red. Although he was young, his closecropped hair was prematurely white. He had the confident, graceful stride of a gymnast. With a perfect economy of motion, he stepped up to the last ASDF man.

The soldier was babbling incoherently. His eyes were unfocused as he stared blankly at the ground. The white-haired commando paused before the man. He cast one pale eye around the circle of faceless soldiers.

All at once, his hand shot out. So fast did it move, most there could not even follow it.

The side of the white-haired man's flattened palm met the Adam's apple of the last soldier. There was a wet thwack as the ASDF man's head left his neck.

With a thud the head hit the ground. The body joined it a split second later.

The white-haired commando gave the decapitated body a single look of disdain. A sneer still on his delicate lips, he turned.

The others parted in quiet reverence.

As the lone commando walked away, a single word muttered by one of the masked men trailed behind him.

"Mactep," a man in the crowd said in awe.

And as if in response, the white-haired man vanished from sight.

Chapter 4

Remo drove aimlessly the remainder of the night, arriving back in Rye a little after seven in the morning. The lone guard at the security shed didn't even glance up as Remo steered his leased car through the main gates of Folcroft Sanitarium. He drove up the gravel drive and parked in the employee lot next to the rusty old station wagon of his boss, Harold W. Smith. He was heading for the side door of the ivycovered brick building when he spotted something out of the corner of his eye.

Folcroft's rear lawn rolled down to the rimy shore of Long Island Sound. An old boat dock extended into the water. On the most distant plank stood a solitary figure.

The old man was so frail it seemed as if the gentlest breeze would send him spinning like a colorful pinwheel into the cold water. But despite the buffeting gusts that blew in from the Sound, the wizened figure remained fixed in place. His back to the shore, he stared out across the water.

Pausing in the parking lot, Remo studied the tiny figure on the dock for the briefest of moments.

"Do I want to open myself up to this or do I sneak inside?" he said under his breath.

Since he knew he'd been heard arriving-in spite of the seeming disinterest of the old man on the dock-he decided against ducking inside. On sure feet he glided down the gentle back hill and onto the dock. At the far end he paused next to the tiny figure.

"This a private party or is everyone invited?" Remo asked Chiun, his teacher and Reigning Master of Sinanju.

The elderly Korean continued to study the whitecapped waves. "It is a free country," he replied, his singsong voice uninterested. "Stand wherever you like."

At only five feet tall, the old Asian's head barely reached Remo's shoulder. He wore a simple gold kimono that flapped like a wind sock around his bare ankles. His hands were tucked far inside his voluminous sleeves.

Two tufts of yellowing white hair clutched to a spot above each shell-like ear. His age-speckled head was otherwise bald. The skin was like tan rice paper left to dry on his ancient skull. Fine veins showed like a map of crisscrossing blue roads beneath the delicate surface.

The two men stood staring at the water for a few long minutes. Remo's thoughts were of his California trip and the lost thought his mind could not seem to retrieve.

Beside him, the Master of Sinanju sensed his pupil's frustration. He turned his birdlike head to Remo.

"You have had no luck remembering that which you have forgotten?" Chiun asked quietly.

Remo seemed surprised by the question. He looked down into his teacher's upturned face.

"How'd you know?" he asked.

"Please, Remo," Chiun clucked dismissively. "You always wear whatever you are thinking on that sandwich board you call a face. I have been tempted at times to stand you out beside the highway and rent it for advertising to that cowburger-frying clown. Now, what is it that troubles you?"

Remo bit his lip thoughtfully. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "You ever go in a room looking for something and then when you get there you forget what it is, you were going in there for? That's what I feel like right now."

A bony hand appeared from the Master of Sinanju's kimono sleeve. With the tips of his long fingernails he stroked the thread of beard that extended from his pointed chin.

"Hmm," he mused softly. His youthful hazel eyes turned back to the water. He said nothing more.

"That's the best you can do?" Remo asked. "Hmm?"

"It is all I can do," Chiun said. "The path you are on must be walked alone."

Remo's face grew troubled. "What do you mean?" he asked cautiously. "Do you know what this is all about?"

Chiun appeared insulted by the question. "Of course," he sniffed. "I am the Master of Sinanju. What is more, you know what it is about, as well." The old man's tone was ominous. Remo had heard that same tone before. He whirled on his teacher.

"Oh, cripes, not again," Remo said, his face sagging. "Is this the start of some new ditfrimmy Sinanju ritual? 'Cause if it is, I'm throwing in the towel before it even starts."

"Too late," Chiun said. A stiff wind caught his thin wisps of hair. "It has already begun."

Remo shook his head. "I don't believe this," he muttered. "The worse thing is, every time one of these cockamamie things comes up, you tell me it's the last one and I believe you. I'm like Charlie Brown and you keep pulling away that goddamn football every time. So what do I have to do this time? Journey to the center of the Earth and battle the mole people? Go for a swim in the Big Dipper? What?"

"Nothing so difficult or so easy," Chiun replied. He held up a hand, halting further questions from his pupil. "And now is not the time."

"That's easy for you to say. You don't have some melting-ice-cube-of-a-thought slipping around your head."

Chiun's face softened. "Do not try so hard, my son. Put it aside. When it is time, it will come."

Beside the old man, Remo rolled his thick wrists in frustration. The advice his teacher was giving him seemed impossible to follow. His body, his spirit, everything seemed to be screaming something at him. He didn't know how to ignore it. Yet he trusted the Master of Sinanju more than anyone else he'd ever known. If Chiun said to put it aside, the old Asian had to be certain it was the right thing to do.

With great effort of will, Remo forced the troubling thoughts from his mind.

The tension slipped slowly from his shoulders. Chiun noted the change in his pupil's bearing with a nod of approval.

"Now, on to more-pressing matters," the tiny Korean said, his voice growing serious. "I assume by your hesitation before entering Fortress Folcroft that you have spoken to Smith?"

Remo frowned. "Not since I called him from London on our way back from Russia. Why, is something up?"

Chiun pursed his wrinkled lips. Troubled eyes gazed out upon the icy waters.

"That is for the Emperor to say, not his assassin." Remo's brow furrowed.

"Great. More intrigue. I'll go see him now. You coming with?" He was turning to go when he felt a bony hand press his wrist.

"You say you have not spoken to Smith since before you bundled me in a taxi like some nuisance fishwife and headed off to sulk alone?" Chiun asked quizzically.

"Yeah," Remo admitted cautiously.

"If you did not know why you should hesitate before entering Smith's palace, then why did you hesitate at all?" His hazel eyes had grown accusing.

Remo exhaled a heavy sigh. Though the air was cold, his warm breath was invisible as it slipped from between his tightly parted lips.

"It's just-" He paused, gathering strength. "It's just you looked like you might be in a mood, that's all," he said. "You were standing all alone back here in that me-against-the-world pose. I figured it might be safer to tiptoe inside and hide under the bed." He held up his hands. "But it's okay. I assumed wrong. Mea culpa. Now, let's go see what Smitty wants."

This time when he turned to go, the hand that latched on to his wrist was less gentle.

"Mea culpa," the Master of Sinanju echoed. "How appropriate you should use that phrase, given your recent association with the hooligans of Rome."

Oh, God, why did I even open my mouth? Remo asked himself. Aloud, he said, "Good one, Little Father. Ouch. You zinged me but good. Come on, I'll race you inside."

"Why?" Chiun asked, his voice growing pitiful. "Is it garbage-collecting day? Are you in a hurry to throw my meager belongings into the refuse? I beg you in advance to please spare me the lash, Remo, for I am old and frail. It will take me some time to haul my trunks out to the curb."

"Okay, couple of things wrong with that. For one, you're as frail as an avalanche. On top of that, I'm the one who's always had to lug those trunks of yours around. Until a couple of weeks ago, I didn't even think you knew where the handles were."

Chiun held a weak hand to his heart. "As usual I suffer your abuse in silence."

Remo raised a skeptical brow. "For the amount of abuse you claim I dump on you, I'm surprised the Department of Social Services isn't kicking in the door and trying to stick you in a foster home."

The Master of Sinanju shook his head morosely. "I will not be taken in again by your false promises, Remo. When you said recently that others would give me a home to replace the one I lost, I, in my innocence, believed you. I know better than this now. Whoever these Fosters are, they will not put a roof over my aged head. And at the risk of being flogged for my insolence, I find it exceedingly cruel that you would test my trusting nature with the same lie twice."

On their recent trip to California, they had briefly visited a charity event that was being held to raise money for the homeless. The Master of Sinanju had decided that, since he was currently without a residence of his own, the first deed passed out should go to him. Things had not worked out the way he wanted them to, and he had returned to the East Coast emptyhanded.

"I never told you anyone was giving you anything," Remo said firmly. "In fact, I'm the one who told you they wouldn't give you a house."

Chiun raised his button nose in the air. "That is not how I remember it," he said with certainty.

"Big surprise there," Remo said, rolling his eyes.

"I suppose you will next tell me that someone else is to blame," said Chiun. "You have been doing much of this passing of the puck lately. Ever since you and your Roman playmates set fire to Castle Sinanju."

"Oh, boy, here it comes. I did not burn down our house," Remo insisted. "Those Mafia guys did it all by themselves. I've even got an airtight alibi, for chrissakes. I was out eating supper with you."

"Yes, dining while the Romans burned," Chiun droned. "However, that does not erase the fact that you have admitted your own foolishness led them there."

Remo had heard this one before. Unlike in the past, this time he had a response.

"I've copped to that one," Remo nodded. "But I've been doing some thinking about that night. If you hadn't tried tipping that waitress with counterfeit money, we might have gotten home in time to stop them."

Chiun's eyes saucered. His hands clenched to knots of ivory bone. The very air around him stilled. "Are you now saying it is somehow my fault?" he demanded coldly.

"No," Remo insisted quickly. "What I'm saying is it's the fault of whoever programmed the traffic lights that kept us from getting home faster. It's the chef's fault for being too slow in the kitchen. It's as much anyone else's fault as it is mine. I did not burn down our house. End of story."

As quickly as it came, the fight drained from Chiun. "Of course you are right. You are always right." His fragile shoulders rose and sank pitifully.

Remo had known the old con artist long enough to recognize the pose he now struck. He had guessed it as soon as he'd spotted the Master of Sinanju from the parking lot. Chiun was angling for something.

"Why the shift to self-pity mode?" Remo asked warily.

"I am attempting to cope with my great loss," the wizened Asian said. Cold mist from the Sound kissed his leathery cheeks. "There are stages to such a thing, Remo. The first is fear, which neither you nor I experience. The next is denial." His voice dropped low. "You are steeped in that at the moment," he confided.

"I'm not denying anything," Remo sighed.

"Thank you for making my case," Chiun said. "As for the rest, they are unimportant. I have reached the final phase. Bitter acceptance." A pathetic sigh seeped from wrinkled lips, and his shoulders rose and fell once more.

Remo shook his head knowingly. "I know how this game is played," he said. "You haven't accepted diddly. You're up to the bargaining phase, and you know you can catch more flies with moping. So what do you want? And I'm warning you ahead of time, if it's a house you're after we're not getting an eye-sore like the last one."

Although he had grown used to their home of ten years, he wouldn't have picked it himself. Chiun and their employer had gone behind his back to purchase Castle Sinanju.

This time Chiun's gloomy expression was genuine. "Is there more than one Basilica Julia?" the Master of Sinanju lamented. "Where in the Forbidden City did the Chinese build another Palace of Heavenly Purity? Show me Egypt's second Temple of Karnak, that they would have another in the event disaster struck." He shook his head sadly. "There are no two gems alike, Remo. There was only one Castle Sinanju. My beloved home is gone forever."

Remo shared the old man's loss.

"I miss it, too, Little Father," he said gently. "Believe me, I'm not doing cartwheels down the hallways now that we're stuck living in this loony bin again." He glanced at the back of the big building.

Folcroft was a throwback to another age. To the right of the rear loading dock, two stories up, a picture window of mirrored glass reflected tired sunlight.

"I'm sure Smitty isn't thrilled with us being here, either," Remo continued. "That's probably what he wants now. To send us packing. Speaking of which, he's probably having a spaz attack right now if he sees us out here like this. I better go see what he wants."

Turning, he headed up the rickety old dock. Expression thoughtful, the Master of Sinanju kept pace. Not a single warped board so much as creaked beneath their combined weight. They hit the shore and began mounting the hill.

"It is possible after your audience with Smith that you will be the one who wishes to leave," Chiun said cryptically.

"Why?" Remo asked. "He is kicking us out, isn't he?"

"Not at all. He has opened the gates of Fortress Folcroft wide for us," the old Korean said. "A decision fraught with risk given your questionable associates of late. There are other forces at work here."

"I bet," Remo said doubtfully. "Look, Chiun, I don't think Smith is too hepped on the idea of us getting another permanent home right now. We kind of made a scene on our way out of town with the last one. It even made the local news."

"We were not seen by any television cameras."

"Maybe not, but we were known around the neighborhood. People saw us off and on there for ten years. Then came the fire and us turning up missing afterward. Even though it's only local, I'm sure people are still talking."

"Any interest will soon wane."

"Probably," Remo said. "But you know how Smith is. He doesn't like us here any more than we like being here, but until the heat dies down he'll want us close enough to keep tabs on. If he is planning to kick us out, my guess is we've already got rooms in the seediest no-tell motel right here in Rye."

At the top of the hill now, they struck off across the short stretch of parking lot toward the building. Chiun's black sandals made not a sound as he padded thoughtfully beside his pupil.

"Necessity has forced us to find temporary lodging in this village," the Master of Sinanju said. "But Rye is Smith's home, not ours."

"No argument there," Remo said.

Beside him, Remo caught a flutter of golden silk. One of Chiun's hands appeared from his sleeve like a cobra from a snake charmer's basket. A shiny pamphlet was clutched in his tapered fingers.

"I am glad you agree," the old man said, his voice laced with cunning.

"Why?" Remo asked, stopping in his tracks. "What's that?"

A blissful smile cracked Chiun's walnut-colored skin.

"Our new home," he replied.

With a sinking feeling, Remo took the pamphlet. On the front, cheerful white letters read: Making Maine Your Own. Even as he was reading the words, Remo was shaking his head emphatically.

"No way," he said firmly. "I told you already, I'm thinking someplace hot. Florida. Hawaii maybe. Someplace with palm trees and sunburns and bikinis held in place by nothing but dental floss and wishful thinking."

"There are doubtless streetwalkers in Maine," the Master of Sinanju droned. "Besides, your soul cries not for scorching climes. It begs you to return to the mild temperatures of the land of your birth."

"That'd be Newark," Remo said, deadpan as he flipped through the pamphlet.

"Pah," Chiun snarled. "I speak not of the shell in which you walk and rut and speak ill of your betters. I refer to your blood. This place hearkens to your ancestral home of Sinanju."

When he glanced up, Remo's eyes were hooded. "And that's supposed to be a selling point, right?"

The pamphlet was gone, plucked from his fingers in a flash.

"Of course, O Visigothic one," Chiun said. "And since we cannot live in the true Sinanju, we must settle for the nearest available facsimile."

"That'd be the Rye city dump," Remo said blandly. "The rats can double for the people. Course, the rats won't try to stick a shiv in our backs and steal our teeth while we're sleeping."

The pamphlet vanished up the old man's sleeve. "We will discuss this later," he said. He headed for the side door of the sanitarium.

"There's nothing to discuss," Remo insisted. "I'm not being bamboozled this time. I am not-repeat not-moving to Maine."

He yanked the door open. Chiun preceded him inside.

"It reminds me of home," the old man said wistfully.

"In what way?" Remo asked as they mounted the stairs. "The remoteness? The rocks? The freezing winters that last all summer? Help me out here. On second thought don't, because it doesn't matter. No Maine, no way, no how."

"Your lips say no, but your soul says yes." Chiun nodded wisely.

"Stop saying what my soul wants, dammit," Remo snapped in frustration. "I don't even know what my soul wants these days."

Chiun took special note of his pupil's troubled tone. Unseen by Remo, the old man's face darkened in sympathy. He grew silent as they exited the stairwell on the second floor.

Together, they walked down the hallway of Folcroft's administrative wing.

Smith's secretary looked up from her desk as they entered the outer room.

Eileen Mikulka smiled at Chiun. "Back again so soon?"

Remo shot his teacher a quizzical look, but the old man's eyes remained locked dead ahead.

"Dr. Smith said you should go right in," Mrs. Mikulka advised before returning her attention to the papers on her desk.

Wordlessly, Chiun preceded Remo through the inner-office door.

The room beyond was drab and functional. As they entered, a gaunt, white-haired man who sat behind a big desk across the room glanced to the door.

"Hey, Smitty," Remo said, bored. "I'm back. And in case you were wondering, capitalism hasn't made Russia stink any less, and I was afraid to use the bathroom at the airport for fear of getting contact syphilis."

"Ah, Remo," Harold Smith said, a hint of anxiety in his lemony voice. "I saw you out back."

"Three cheers and a tiger for you," Remo said. "You figured out how to use a window."

His senses were telling him something odd about the room. There was an extra heartbeat inside.

As Chiun padded calmly across the room to Smith's desk, Remo peeked behind the still open door.

He was surprised to find a young man in a business suit sitting on Smith's worn office sofa. The stranger smiled nervously up at Remo.

Remo shot a look at Smith. "Who's this goomer?" he asked, jerking a thumb at the man on the couch.

"Mind your manners," the Master of Sinanju warned in Korean. He had taken up an imperious sentry pose next to the CURE director's desk.

Remo raised an eyebrow at the old man's admonishment.

Smith cleared his throat. His chair squeaked as he sat up straighter.

"Remo, allow me to introduce Mark Howard," Smith said, gesturing across the room to the man near Remo. "Mark has assumed the position of assistant director of Folcroft."

The door was still open. Remo let it slip from his fingers. It closed with a soft click.

"Of Folcroft," Remo said flatly.

Smith leaned forward, shaking his head slowly. He tipped his face down, peering at Remo over the tops of his spotless rimless glasses.

"Of CURE, as well," the older man said gravely. And as he stood near the door, the CURE director's shocking words echoed like dull thunder in the stunned brain of Remo Williams.

Chapter 5

Beside Remo, Mark Howard climbed to his feet. The young man wiped nervous perspiration from his palm before offering Remo his hand.

"I look forward to working with you, Remo," Howard said, his youthful voice tinged with worried excitement.

Remo was coming rapidly back around. He looked, stunned, from Smith's serious face to the Master of Sinanju's mask of stone. He paused just long enough to glance at Howard's outstretched hand before looking back to Smith.

"What the hell is this all about?" Remo demanded.

"Remo!" Chiun scolded. He bowed apologetically to Howard. "Forgive my son's rudeness, Prince Mark. He was raised in a poorhouse where he had to fight the other urchins for crusts of bread. I advise you to do what the rest of us do and just ignore him."

"Ignore this," Remo said.

"Of course, sometimes it is easier to do than others," Chiun told Howard through tightly clenched teeth. His eyes shot daggers at Remo.

"You mean to tell me you knew about this and you didn't tell me?" Remo said to the Master of Sinanju.

"Master Chiun met Mark formally last night," Smith explained. "You would have, too, had you returned to Folcroft after your assignment was through."

"I had some thinking to do," Remo said. "It sure as hell didn't have anything to do with this." He stabbed a finger at Howard. "When did that happen to us?'

"Apparently, things were set in motion before the previous President left office," Smith explained.

Remo threw up his hands. "That's enough for me. This is wobble-bottom's revenge for not making him and his wife Mr. and Mrs. Kingfish of Siam for life, isn't it? Well, let's get this over with and kill him right now."

He took a step toward Howard. The young man stepped back worriedly, almost tripping over the arm of the sofa. He had to grab the back of the couch to keep his balance.

"Remo, stop it," Smith commanded.

The order wasn't necessary. As Mark struggled to regain his balance, Remo stopped dead. His deep-set eyes narrowed.

"I know you," Remo said slowly as he studied the young man's wide face.

"Yes," Smith said from across the room. "You met him several weeks ago during the Raffair business."

"We encountered Prince Mark at one of the lairs of your iniquitous Roman friends," Chiun supplied. He quickly offered Howard an apologetic bow. "It is to my eternal shame that I did not recognize your regal bearing straight away."

Remo snapped his fingers. "Miami," he said. "You were the doofus who didn't know which end of the gun the bullets came out of." He wheeled on Smith. "He's CIA, Smitty."

"Formerly CIA, yes," Smith replied.

"There's no formerly CIA," Remo insisted. "Not unless they started installing Brain-O-Matic 2000s in their agents when they issue them pink slips. They go in stupid, come out stupider."

"I wasn't a field agent," Howard interrupted. There was a growing edge to his tone.

"Got that right," Remo scoffed. "You should have seen this joker, Smitty. He actually made the rest of those Maxwell Smarts at Langley look like they'd know their spyglasses from their elbows."

Sighing, Smith rubbed the bridge of his patrician nose with arthritic fingers. "I didn't think this would be easy," he said wearily.

"He is stubborn, as well as rude, Prince Mark," Chiun explained. "But in spite of his many-" his eyes grew hooded as he stared directly at Remo -many many character flaws, he has served his emperor faithfully for years."

"Um, about that," Howard said, his voice vaguely troubled. "Emperor, prince? Are these terms...?" His voice trailed off.

Howard's implication was clear.

"This oughta be good," Remo said. He flopped back on the couch, his arms spread wide across the back.

The CURE director fidgeted uncomfortably in his seat.

"They are not my idea, if that is your concern," Smith said, his gray face flushing with embarrassment. "Sinanju Masters are effusive in language and devoted to title. It eventually became easier to accept the honorific than to argue against its use."

"Perhaps, Emperor Smith, a clearer delineation is necessary now with the arrival of the prince regent," Chiun mused, stroking his beard pensively. "How would you feel about His Royal Highness, Smith the First?"

Smith's face sickened. "There is no need to change at this juncture," he said quickly.

"Yeah," Remo agreed. "Especially since the Campbell Soup Kid here won't be around very long."

"Remo," Smith said evenly, "like it or not, Mark has been installed here as assistant director of CURE. Given that simple fact, he will be here for the foreseeable future."

"Nope," Remo said, shaking his head. "Last CIA guy a President sent in to take over almost blew the whole shooting match and nearly got us all killed in the bargain. I say a corpse in time saves mine. You'll agree soon enough."

"That individual was NSA, not CIA," Smith reminded him. "And this situation is different. In that instance my taking ill caused the President to install a new CURE director. In this case the President simply wishes to have someone in place should something happen to me."

"Dr. Smith?" Howard interrupted, concerned. "The President never told me he sent someone else in to run CURE."

"It was a previous President," Smith explained. "Years ago."

"May I ask what happened to him?" Howard questioned.

"That is not relevant," Smith said tersely.

"Got cooked to death in that very chair," Remo said, nodding across the room to where the CURE director sat.

"Remo," Smith warned thinly.

"What?" Remo said. "Weren't you gonna tell him what he's gotten himself into?" He leaned forward on the couch. "Guy before that got a pen stuck through his head," he offered conspiratorially.

"That is quite enough," Smith snapped.

"Hey, I'm just letting junior know he's not in Kansas anymore. This is the big leagues, Baby Huey."

Howard would not be baited. "I'm aware of what goes on around here, Remo," he said. But there was a troubled undertone to his words.

"Sure, you are," Remo droned. "Smitty," he continued, "why are we bothering to go through the motions like this? I mean, is all this even legal?"

"Pah," Chiun scoffed, dismissing Remo's words with a wave of one bony hand. "Legalities are for the peasantry. They do not apply to emperors or handsome princes." He smiled at Howard.

"That is not true, Master Chiun," Smith said gravely. "At CURE we are governed by a set of very strict guidelines." He leaned back in his cracked leather chair. "There is nothing in our charter that explicitly prohibits this," he said, steepling his fingers to his chin. "After all, I was appointed by a President forty years ago. That a later President would appoint a second in command at CURE does not violate our founding principles. And I had recently begun to consider the possibility that I might one day be replaced. I assumed that it would be after my death, but it makes more sense this way rather than bringing someone to the job cold."

"Why?" Remo asked blandly. "He's just gonna be leaving that way. Cold, stiff and with a really surprised look on his face."

Although Smith's lips pursed unhappily, it was Howard who broke in.

"I know this is hard for you, Remo," Mark said reasonably. "The three of you have worked as a team for a long time. I can see how you'd see me as an intrusion."

"Buddy, intrusion is way down the list," Remo said. "I mostly see you as a waste of space with just a smattering of pain-in-the-ass tossed in for good measure."

A dark thundercloud crossed the Master of Sinanju's leathery face. In a swirl of silken robes he swept around Smith's desk.

"You will excuse us, O Emperor, but your humble servants have taken up enough of your precious time. We will leave you and your young princeling to the work of governance."

"Yes," Smith agreed, his flint eyes trained on Remo. "Perhaps that would be wise."

Chiun gave a curt bow. "Move, lout," he barked, kicking Remo's feet.

With a deep sigh Remo pushed himself up from the couch. Before he'd even stood, a bony hand seized his bicep.

"Come, loudmouthed one."

"Yeah, yeah," Remo muttered.

Like a child being led to the woodshed, he allowed the old man to guide him to the door. Before they'd reached it, Remo paused abruptly. When he turned back there was a look of sincere concern on his hard face.

"Are you okay with all this, Smitty?" Remo asked quietly.

Across the room, the CURE director seemed lost behind his big desk, a wasted figure propped up from another age. Behind him, the one-way picture window overlooked the cold waters of Long Island Sound. A fitting backdrop to the thin, gray man. In that instant Smith had never looked so old.

"It will work out for the best, Remo," Smith promised, giving a tight nod. His bloodless lips were drawn into a grimace that could have been either a smile or indigestion.

"I agree with Dr. Smith," Mark Howard said. "I think we all just need a period of adjustment."

"Tell me how well you've adjusted when they're tying on your toe tag," Remo said, annoyed. He winced as a long fingernail ground into his lower back.

"You have made enough friends today," Chiun whispered harshly. He popped the door and propelled his pupil into the outer office. The old man whirled rapidly on the others. "This is truly a momentous time, about which poets will be inspired to write odes and songsmiths will compose joyous anthems," Chiun sang. "May the wings of a thousand doves echo the celestial chorus that heralds this, the first day of your new great dynasty. All hail Emperor Smith and his heir, Prince Howard."

With a formal bow to the two men in the office, he backed from the room, pulling the door shut behind him. The bolt had barely clicked in the frame before he was whirling to face Remo.

"What is wrong with you?" the old man snapped in Korean.

"Me?" Remo growled. "What's wrong with you?"

At her desk, Eileen Mikulka's wide face grew anxious. She couldn't understand the language the two men were arguing in, but whatever they were saying didn't sound good.

"It was your behavior that was inexcusable," Chiun accused, his hazel eyes burning. "And in front of Smith's lackey, no less. How do you expect to curry favor with him when your every word is an assault?"

"Hmm. Let me think about that one," Remo said, tipping his head in mock thought. "Oh, yeah. I don't."

Spinning, he marched out into the corridor. The Master of Sinanju flounced after him.

"Are you so resistant to change?" Chiun asked, bouncing along at his elbow. "You cannot be blind to Smith's age."

"You're a lot older than him and you do okay."

"Even you are not so stupid, Remo," Chiun said. "Everything that is not Sinanju is less than Sinanju. Smith, while an adequate emperor, is just a man. We need to think about a contingency plan if the unthinkable happens."

"Unthinkable means you don't think about it."

"One of us must think once in a while," Chiun said. "May the gods have mercy on us if that someone is you."

They were at the fire exit. Remo stopped dead. "Always the goddamn mercenary," he muttered. Chiun's back stiffened.

"I do what I must to feed the people of Sinanju," he sniffed. "And they are fortunate that they have me to rely on. If it were up to you, we would be sending the babies home to the sea, their bellies swollen with hunger."

"I got news for you," Remo said. "It already is up to me. Half the gold that goes to those fat-faced freeloaders is my paycheck. Anytime now they're gonna be all my responsibility, so back off."

For an instant, Chiun seemed to expect more from Remo, but the younger man merely turned away.

Remo slapped the fire door open, ducking into the stairwell. Chiun slipped through behind him.

"The coffers of Mad Harold are deep," Chiun argued, his voice growing subdued. "Given his health, we cannot afford to squander every opportunity to dance attendance on his heir."

"Tell you what. You dance-I'll sit this one out."

"If you cannot be pleasant at least remain silent," Chiun said. "I will curry favor with him."

On the ground-floor landing Remo paused. "You're amazing, you know that?" he laughed mirthlessly. "You're the one who's always beating me over the head with the scrolls of Sinanju. You're always going on about tradition this and the lesson-of-Master-that, but the minute your mood of the moment doesn't gibe with your so-called sacred history, you chuck five thousand years of Sinanju precepts into the fire in exchange for cold hard cash." He crossed his arms. "Or have you forgotten about Wo-Ti?"

The wrinkles of Chiun's face grew very flat. "What of him?" he said dully.

"'No Master of Sinanju shall serve a succeeding emperor,'" Remo recited by rote. "Wo-Ti got that from getting stuck serving two pharaohs in a row."

The flesh around the old Korean's mouth tightened. "I will not be given a lesson in Sinanju history by you," Chiun intoned, his voice steel.

"Why? Because I'm right and you're wrong? Wo-Ti's lesson has been passed down from Master to Master for centuries, but when the bank account gets threatened we just conveniently shove it to one side and slap on a set of blinders. Problem solved. But there is still a problem, Chiun, and you know it. What's more, I know it, because you're the one who hammered it into my skull." He exhaled hotly. "Just forget it. I'm outta here," he snarled.

His final word delivered, Remo spun away from his teacher. He shoved the outside door open and strode angrily out into the morning light. When the door slammed shut, the walls of the stairwell shook from the force.

Alone on the landing, the Master of Sinanju remained fixed in place. His face unreadable, he studied the door through razor-slitted eyes.

In another, younger time Chiun might have been furious at such an outburst from his pupil. But things were different now. Remo's emotions were not his own. The younger Master of Sinanju had encountered too much difficulty of late. And there was the promise of more looming just over the horizon. Remo's anger was in part due to his frustration. His spirit understood that something momentous was coming, but his mind could not yet see it.

This was only part of why the old Korean could not be angry at Remo for having the temerity to quote the lesson of Wo-Ti to him, the Reigning Master.

Chiun could not rebuke his pupil for his insolence because in his heart he knew that Remo was right. As Reigning Master, Chiun was custodian of the most sacred teachings of Sinanju. Yet in that moment Remo had proved himself the better guardian of the traditions of their ancient discipline.

In the wan light of the stairwell, Chiun's thin beard quivered. His hands were clenched impotently at his sides.

After a long moment he turned away from the door. Stone-faced, the old Asian padded down the stairs to the basement. To be alone with his troubled thoughts.

Chapter 6

It was a room without sunlight. Cold and shadowy. Four rows of weak yellow lights were caged by rusty steel grates. Many of the bulbs were burned out. The few that remained illuminated the water-damaged ceiling in uneven patches. The ceiling of the cavernous gymnasium was so high the lights hadn't been replaced. For years they'd been allowed to wink out, one after the other. A tiny galaxy of dull stars heading inexorably to extinction. To the utter, consuming dark of nothingness.

There had been windows at one time. But that was long ago. To see the sun now, imagination had to be employed to remove the bricks that had been stacked on the sills.

The perpetual night of this room was fitting, For the individual who sat alone on the dirty floor in that big, drafty space, there was no sun. For Anna Chutesov, there was only the darkness.

Somewhere in the distant bowels of the building, men worked. Anna could hear them from where she sat. Scratching like rats in the walls of the Institute.

The Institute. The greatest secret to be carried over from the ashes of the old Soviet Union.

For years it was not like this. Not only would strangers not be allowed to enter this, one of the most secure buildings in all of Moscow, but they would have been shot in the attempt.

All was different now.

Anna didn't bother to go check on the men who scurried from room to far-off room. There was nothing left to hide.

Well, that was not entirely true. But the most damning secrets left within the walls of the Institute were secure enough, hidden in two places. In the safe in her office and in the brain of Anna Chutesov herself. And so the men worked and Anna sat.

She was a stunningly beautiful woman. Her high-cheekboned features, eyes of ice-blue and a fringe of honey-blond hair were the perfect camouflage for the mind within. Anna's looks could draw men like moths to a flame, but it was her intelligence that kept them coming back.

Right now, Anna's keen mind was trained on but one thought. How long had it been since the world had collapsed?

Was it three days? A week? She couldn't even be sure precisely when it occurred. Couldn't pinpoint a moment. She only knew that it had happened during her ill-fated trip to the United States.

For a time in the last great days of the Cold War, Anna Chutesov had been one of the Soviet Union's top agents and adviser to a succession of Soviet leaders. Though professionally she had always been at the top of her game, she retired from active field duty under a very personal cloud. On her last mission some thirteen years ago, Anna faked her own death and went underground. After her return from the West, she assumed a top-secret post back in Moscow. She became head of the mysterious Institute.

And there she worked in darkness, squirreled away from the prying eyes of a world that thought her dead. But her years in seclusion didn't last. Despite her plans, circumstances forced her back into the field.

She recently journeyed to America to eliminate a former Russian general whose crazed actions threatened to expose one of the most dangerous and shameful secrets in her country's recent history. The mission was fraught with peril, and eventually brought Anna face-to-face with the very thing that had caused her to flee her former life.

While in California to track down General Boris Feyodov, Anna bumped into Remo Williams, an American agent with whom she had once had an intimate relationship.

Anna had always harbored a fear of seeing Remo after all these years. She assumed he would be unforgiving of, even hostile to, her deception. But to her surprise he was remarkably accepting. Especially given the fact that it was because of him she had feigned death so long ago.

Anna soon came to realize that Remo had changed in their years apart. It was a subtle thing that he himself probably didn't see, but he had a self-confidence that was absent before. He'd always been cocky. Aggravatingly so. But now he had the self-assuredness to back it up.

No, in her mission to stop Boris Feyodov, the worst thing wasn't seeing Remo again. The most terrible, frightening thing happened thousands of miles away-here, in Moscow. In the big concrete Institute building.

Upon her return, Anna found the building open wide. The chains that wrapped the main gates, which were meant to be locked in perpetuity, were cut.

Fortunately, the Institute had a reputation in the surrounding neighborhood of Kitai Gorod. It had sprung from the dying days of the Soviet empire when mobs demanding freedom had taken to the streets.

At that time all government buildings were coming under attack. Though the nature of what went on inside was unknown, the Institute would not be spared. But when angry crowds began to swarm the streets outside, demanding an end to seventy years of failed Communist rule, something strange began to happen. People started dropping dead.

There were no soldiers visible or bullets fired. The windows to the building were sealed, preventing the use of more exotic weapons by the faceless men hidden away inside. But still the bodies in the street piled up.

Some in the mob feared gas or some form of chemical weapon. Most dismissed this as unlikely, for whatever it was seemed to kill indiscriminately. A man would drop dead while his friends on either side were spared. And so an explanation was quickly decided on by the people of Kitai Gorod, The big sinister building with no windows and a chain around the only door was quite obviously haunted. During the days of civil unrest that brought an end to the Soviet era, the mobs began to cut a wide swath around the Institute and the deadly spirits that dwelled inside.

Anna had always found the superstitions embarrassing. Such ludicrous notions were the reason much of the world saw Russia as a backward nation. But when she returned three days ago to find the gates wide open to the street, she was thankful for the big ugly building's reputation. These days an open door in Russia was an invitation to looters and squatters and virtually everyone else in this crumbling, lawless society. Fear of the supernatural was the only thing that kept the people from sneaking in through the open door and stealing the nails from out of the very walls.

Not to say there was nothing to be afraid of at the Institute. It was only the fear of a building that she found ludicrous. After all, a building was just a building. For Anna Chutesov, the true thing to fear was that which had escaped into the world through that wide-open door.

After getting over her initial shock at the security breach, Anna realized she had to report this terrible news. On a good day it was a risky proposition to attempt to use the Moscow telephone system. On this day it could have been suicidal. Anna sped to the Kremlin.

She was ushered into a paneled conference room that would have been stylish in the early 1960s, but was now hopelessly out-of-date. She had left that old-fashioned room only one hour before. The president of Russia still sat at the desk where she'd left him, a celebratory vodka bottle at his elbow. His sharp eyes smiled up at Anna Chutesov.

"Ah, you have changed your mind," the president slurred. "You have decided to join me for a drink after all."

He fetched her a glass from a silver tray.

"No, sir, I have not," Anna had announced crisply. "I have come to report a danger. Perhaps the greatest threat to ever face our country."

The president's thin eyebrows rose skeptically. "Russia has faced down many threats," he said. "The Tartars, the Troubled Times, the Narodnaya Volya. The worst threat ever was stopped by you yourself just this week."

Anna didn't bother to explain to him that the things he had named from Russia's history were far worse than the recent events that had occupied her in America.

He waved his empty glass. Anna noted how small his fingers were. Like a child's.

"If this is your attempt, Anna Chutesov, to increase funding to the Institute, I am sorry to say that it is not possible. There is no more money to be found in all of Russia. Despite your stellar work in this crisis, you already receive a generous part of the secret budget."

Anna shook her head. "This is not about money," she insisted. "Only an idiot would use a crisis of this magnitude to attempt to extort a budgetary increase."

The president neglected to mention that he was forever hearing complaints from cabinet officials, each one declaring a greater crisis than the last, each assuring the president that this whatever-it-was crisis could only be solved by more money. Directed, of course, at each official's own agency.

He didn't say any of this because he was speaking to Anna Chutesov, one of the brightest minds he had ever encountered. Not only would she already know all this, it wasn't in her nature to state anything other than cold, hard facts. That was part of her appeal as an adviser.

Despite his earlier reservations, the president sat up straighter. He set his glass to his desk with a click. "What is wrong?" he asked.

"Only the worst crisis to befall our country since our earliest wars with the Byzantine Empire."

As those dire words were sinking in, she quickly informed him of her discovery at the Institute.

"I scoured the entire building before coming here," she concluded urgently. "They were nowhere to be found."

At last beginning to grasp the nature of the problem, the president of Russia touched his tongue to his thin upper lip.

"As I understand it, you kept them confined for years. Perhaps they have gone to visit friends or family members. It is possible they will be back."

"No," Anna said firmly. "They were not prisoners. They were allowed several weeks of leave every year. And they knew where the special entrance was. The fact that they did not use it is not insignificant. Furthermore, the fact that the chain was broken and the gate was left open was a sign."

"From whom?" the president asked.

Anna shook her head gravely. "I do not know," she replied. "For security purposes there were no cameras inside, so I don't know what happened during my absence. I only know that which I found upon my return. And it puts not only me in danger, but you and the previous two occupants of your office, as well, for they knew of this. It is not an understatement, sir, to say that with them on the loose, our nation is at risk like never before."

But although the president appeared to understand the problem, he did not-could not-grasp its full enormity.

"World War II, Anna Chutesov," he said, shaking his head. "There were Germans within spitting distance of Moscow. That was a true threat to Russia. This cannot possibly be compared to the great dangers of our history."

But Anna's ice-blue eyes never wavered. "If that is your attitude, Mr. President," she insisted ominously, "you do not truly understand the peril we now face."

And with no further way to impress the gravity of this situation on the president of Russia, Anna gave up. She returned to the empty Institute building to sit in the shadows on the floor of the musty old gymnasium and listen to the workmen far away.

As she was staring into the dusty corner, she heard the sounds of voices approaching. Two men came into the gym from the dark hallway. They carted with them an old dresser lying atop a rusted bed. Another man followed in their wake. The pushcart he rolled before him was stacked high with eight surplus Red Army footlockers. The wheels of the dolly squeaked as it rolled past Anna.

"Are you certain of this?" one of the men carrying the old bed asked Anna. He was no more than fifty, but looked eighty. Such was the toll taken on the human body and spirit in the modern Russia. The veins in his swollen nose were broken from years of too much drink.

Anna didn't even look up. She was staring somewhere near their shoes. She nodded.

"All of the beds, bureaus, nightstands. Take it all," she said darkly.

Anna didn't bother to tell them that she had removed and burned anything incriminating from the footlockers. Nor would they care. She had picked these men at random from the streets and offered them all of the furniture inside the Institute free of charge. They were eager to get the pieces out of the building and to the bazaar before she changed her mind.

Hurrying through the gymnasium, they headed out the far door. It led to the underground parking garage, which fed out to the street through the gate that was no longer locked.

As they were carting their prizes away, another man entered from the interior door.

He didn't move like the men with the furniture.

There was no huffing and puffing and stomping of feet. He walked with a more confident glide, like that of a ballet dancer. Indeed, he had been drafted from the ranks of the Bolshoi.

When he stopped before her, Anna's eyes rose reluctantly to meet his. He was thin and short, with delicate features and a slightly receding hairline.

"I may have found something," the man offered hopefully.

Anna didn't bother to mention how unlikely that was. It was too soon. No one-not even a man-would be fool enough to show his hand this quickly. "Yes, Sergei?" she asked with a reluctant sigh.

"It is a news story from the Internet. A number of men have turned up dead in Alaska. Oil pipeline workers and soldiers. Their killers are unknown."

Anna considered his words. As she was thinking, the three men returned from the street. They wheeled the empty dolly into the gymnasium.

"More, Sergei," Anna said. "We need more than that."

The young man seemed to want to say more, but the three men with the cart were passing by. Sergei kept his mouth shut until they had squeaked back through the door into the main building. Once they were gone, he turned back to Anna.

"There is more," he promised. "There was a helicopter pilot who dropped off the soldiers. When he came back to retrieve them, he claims to have seen an army of ghosts."

This got Anna's attention. Blinking, she looked up at the young man. "Explain," she insisted, her voice flat.

"He swears they were there, and then they were not," Sergei said excitedly. "He saw a group of soldiers briefly from the air, then they-poof-vanished from sight."

Anna's face steeled. Her jaw firmly clenched, she scampered to her feet.

Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps whoever was behind this was dumber than she thought. Or mad to tip his hand so soon. One thing was certain: if this was genuine, whoever was responsible was most definitely a man. No woman on Earth would ever be so big a fool.

"Show me this story," Anna Chutesov commanded.

And her strained voice was filled with equal parts hope and dread.

Chapter 7

So as not to lose the respect of the men under his command, Colonel Robert Hogue made a supreme effort to not vomit on the Eskimo's head. It wasn't easy.

As a young private, Hogue had served in Vietnam. He had seen plenty bad back then. But that was long ago. The inaction of the intervening years had dulled the horrors of youth. Time was apparently a great healer, even for a set of tired eyes that had seen as much as Colonel Robert Hogue's.

The rural town of Kakwik, Alaska, was bringing it all back with a vengeance.

The houses in the remote Eskimo village on the shore of the Yukon River were little more than steel drums. Fingers of thin black smoke still curled from chimney pipes, tickling the snowflakes that slipped down from the pale pink clouds. And all around the squalid village, the dead jutted from freshly fallen snow like gutted ice sculptures.

Colonel Hogue had nearly tripped over the first body as he and the eighty National Guard troops under his command were marching past the isolated town. The discovery of that one half-frozen corpse had led them here. Once in Kakwik, their routine maneuvers suddenly turned deadly serious.

Two dozen bodies were arranged in a gruesome tableau alongside the main road of the village. Stomach cavities were split open and throats were slashed. Blood froze black. Dead eyes, pried wide open, stared unseeing at the troops as they passed. Snowflakes collected on lash and lid.

At the sight of the bodies, a few of the National Guardsmen lost their lunch in the newly fallen snow. Colonel Hogue forged on, fighting his own urge to vomit.

The bodies along the road had been arranged as if for review. Near a particularly dilapidated home, Hogue noticed another body, separate from the rest. He cautiously left the road, ducking between a pair of corpses.

The kitchen door was open on the nearest battered tin house. It looked as if the old man who lived there had been shot as he came out the door, then fell down the four wooden stairs of his small porch. Whoever had arranged the other bodies had simply forgotten him there.

The Colonel bent to examine the old man.

The Eskimo wore a pair of tattered red long johns and orange socks. Fresh snow, like a scattering of pixie dust, dulled the dark colors.

"Check the homes," Hogue barked as he stooped over the body. "And stay sharp."

Ever alert to danger, the National Guardsmen dispersed, moving in packs from house to house. As the men began fanning out, Hogue turned back to the lone body.

The Eskimo's milky white eyes were frozen glass. A single tap would shatter them into a million fragments. With his head tipped to one side and his arm extended, the dead man seemed to be staring at something. Almost begging understanding from beyond the grave.

With a frown Hogue got down in the snow next to the body. He followed the dead man's line of sight. "What the hell?" Hogue whispered to himself. Climbing back to his knees, he crawled around the body.

The dead man's blue hand extended to the base of the stairs. Colonel Hogue pulled out a flashlight. Lying flat on his belly, he directed the beam under the bottom step.

"Damn," he swore softly.

"Colonel?"

The voice came from above. Hogue rolled over onto his shoulder. A sergeant stood above him, his curious face framed by a drab ski mask.

"Take a look at this," Hogue said worriedly. Confused, the sergeant got down on his belly, crowding in beside the Colonel at the base of the steps. He followed the yellow flashlight beam that Hogue shone on the wood.

The sergeant grunted in surprise.

"It looks like this man was trying to leave a message," Hogue said. "My guess is he didn't die right away and he heard his killers while they were doing that." He nodded back to where the rows of frozen bodies welcomed the stout of heart into Kakwik. The sergeant frowned as he studied the bottom step. A shape had been drawn in wet blood-now frozen-on the wood. A simple rectangle sat on a shaft, bisected at the midpoint by an arc.

"What do you think it means?" the sergeant asked.

Hogue shook his head. "It doesn't look like anything to you?" he asked leadingly.

"Well, sir," the sergeant said reluctantly, "I don't wanna sound like a paranoid product of the Cold War, but that looks like a hammer and sickle to me. I must be wrong, though. The Russkies haven't had a stake in Alaska in more than a hundred years."

Before the sergeant could even finish, Colonel Hogue was scurrying back to his feet, a fresh sense of urgency to his ruddy face. The sergeant had confirmed his worst fears.

"Get the men back here," he ordered urgently. "Get them back here now."

A sharp noise in the distance was followed by an angry shout. Hogue felt his stomach sink. He wheeled around.

The first gunshot was followed by others. The men under his command were yelling in panic.

The Colonel was helpless to stop it. Alone in an isolated Alaskan village facing an enemy from another age, Colonel Robert Hogue felt the youthful ghosts of Vietnam pounce from the recesses of his frightened brain.

And as the devil danced, Hell erupted anew on the slumbering streets of Kakwik.

Chapter 8

His meeting with Smith went on for another hour after Remo and Chiun had left. When Mark Howard finally glanced at his watch, it was closing in on 9:00 a.m.

"I hate to interrupt, Dr. Smith, but I'll have to get going soon if I'm going to make that flight."

He was sitting in a hard, straight-backed chair across the desk from the CURE director. Smith looked at his own trusty Timex.

"I had not realized it had gotten so late," he said. Gripping the edge of his desk, he rolled back his chair. "Here is your identification." He took a laminated tag from his top drawer and slid it across the desk. "There will be no problem gaining admittance, especially at such a hectic time as this. Do your work quickly and get out. Once you are done, return to Folcroft immediately. Do not attempt to contact any old acquaintances while you are there."

"I understand," Howard said with a tight nod.

He half stood from his chair, leaning over to take the ID card. As soon as he'd gotten to his feet, he felt a sudden rush of blood to his head.

"Whoa," Mark said, grabbing on to the edge of the big black desk for support.

Smith's gray face puckered in concern. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"Yes," Howard nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just stood up a little too fast, I guess." He shook the dizzy sensation away. "I'm sorry, Dr. Smith, but what were you saying about Alaska?"

Smith frowned. "Excuse me?" he asked.

"You said something when I was getting up, didn't you?"

"No," Smith said. "I did not."

A flush seemed to grow faintly in the young man's wide face. The generally confident demeanor he had displayed over the past few days seemed to erode before Smith's eyes.

"Oh," Howard muttered, vaguely flustered. "I just- Oh, okay." He picked up the ID, stuffing it in his breast pocket. "I'll...I'll give you a call when it's taken care of."

Across the desk, gaze suspicious, the CURE director pursed his lips. "If you do not feel equal to this, I can go myself," he said slowly.

"No, it's fine, I promise," Howard said, inching toward the door. "Besides, I don't think Remo is too crazy about me. It'd be safer for me to leave town for the day. I'll let you know."

With a reassuring smile he left the drab office. Once Smith was alone, a dark notch formed behind the bridge of his glasses. His new assistant's sudden odd behavior probably wasn't anything to be concerned about. It could be chalked up to nerves. After all, this was all still very new to him. And his earlier encounter with Remo doubtless hadn't helped.

Dark expression fading, the old man booted up his desk computer. Banishing thoughts of CURE's personnel, Harold W. Smith quickly lost himself in the more manageable-and thus more agreeable-realm of cyberspace.

IN THE TIDY outer office of Smith's secretary, Mark Howard breathed a heavy sigh as he slumped back against the door.

Luckily, Mrs. Mikulka wasn't in the room. He tried to gather his fragmented thoughts.

He wasn't sure what had just happened in there. Something had come to him. A strong sense of... Well, of what he didn't know. Not exactly, anyway. His mind now clearing, Mark checked his watch. He wouldn't have to leave to catch his plane for another twenty minutes. There was still time to do a little digging.

Mark pushed away from the door.

"Damn spider-sense," he muttered to himself. Leaving the room, he hurried down the hallway to his office. To see what-if anything-was going on in Alaska.

Chapter 9

Blind panic blazed like wildfire across the snowy streets of Kakwik. Forty of Colonel Robert Hogue's men had been slaughtered in the initial attack. The stink of blood swamped the frozen air.

As the dead multiplied, those still living loosed blind bursts of automatic-weapons fire into empty air. There were no targets to hit. Between the shadows and the snow and the perpetual gloom of the swollen twilight sky, Hogue and his men were fighting ghosts. At first it was gunfire. Blinding flashes like focused lightning screamed from out of the thinning snowstorm.

Barking orders all the way, Hogue and his remaining National Guard troops sought refuge behind the tin walls of the Kakwik hovels. Crouching, frightened, they waited as the gunfire stopped and silence descended once more on Kakwik.

The sergeant who had recognized the old hammer-and-sickle design squatted behind Hogue.

When the silence lingered too long, the two men peeked around the side of the house. Light dribbled onto the main drag from the shanty homes. Steam rose from freshly killed bodies.

"Maybe they're-" the sergeant whispered. Hogue threw up a silencing hand. His ears were trained on the Alaskan night. For an instant he swore he'd heard the crunch of a foot on fresh snow.

A blur of movement. Something flashing through the snow just before his eyes. Almost simultaneously came a startled intake of air from the sergeant.

Hogue's head snapped around. One of the sergeant's eyes was open wide in shock. The other eye was nowhere to be seen. In its place was a dripping cavity where an invisible knife had plunged deep into brain.

With a hiss of air, the sergeant flopped to the snow. And as he fell, the slaughter began anew.

Men screamed and bodies fell, trails of blood staining snow to red slush.

Guns vanished, yanked from hands by invisible demons.

No. Not invisible. As Hogue watched in impotent horror he saw a masked man here, another there. Spiraling, pivoting. Always away from gun or bayonet.

In no time the forty remaining soldiers were cut to twenty, then ten. When the white-haired man with the red-flecked brown eyes finally appeared from the dwindling storm, ten had become four. Including Colonel Hogue.

A terrified soldier lunged screaming at the apparition. His head bounced to the ground as his body made a beeline for a snowbank.

Colonel Hogue couldn't believe how fast the stranger had moved. His eyes had barely registered the death of the first soldier before the other two were rushing forward.

Another lost his head.

For an instant while the latest body dropped, the white-haired man seemed to lose his footing on the snow. But if that was the case, he quickly regained it.

The final Alaska National Guard soldier was thrusting with his bayonet when he became aware of a lightness to his hand. He quickly realized that the lightness stemmed from the fact that he no longer had a hand. His wrist now ended in a raw stump. His hand, still clutching his knife, lay in the snow at his feet. The soldier had no time to ponder the horror of what had just transpired. As he stared down numbly at his own severed appendage, he was finished off with a punishing blow to the forehead.

As the crumpled body fell, the white-haired young man turned slowly to Colonel Robert Hogue. Behind him came the others, dressed now in snow-white fatigues. Black goggles and ski masks covering their faces, they swarmed in like ants around their queen.

The Colonel backed against the nearest shanty, breathing puffs of frightened white steam into the cold air.

"Who are you?" Colonel Hogue demanded. The white-haired man smiled.

"I am the Master," he said in an accent that was unmistakably Russian. "You need know me by no other name. I have been sent to give you notice that your days of sowing decadence are over. Tell those who hold your leash that the Soviet Union has reclaimed Russian America." His eyes took on the demented glint of a zealot. "Long live the new Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik," the Master said coldly.

And as Colonel Hogue felt his blood run to ice, the white-haired Russian flashed a toothy smile.

In spite of his great fear, the Army Colonel couldn't help but notice that this fearsome fighter with the flashing deadly hands was, at least in one small way, a typical Russian. Even after ten years without communism, with access to all the bounty the West had to offer, there apparently still wasn't one damn toothbrush or tube of Crest in the whole godforsaken Bolshevik country.

Chapter 10

Mark Howard gained entry to the White House through the Old Executive Office Building. He followed subterranean corridors to the main mansion.

Men and women swarmed busily all around him. Some were hired guns who were still on hand to help with the transition from the previous administration, but most had the fresh-faced, starry-eyed look of political ideologues.

With his bland young Midwestern face, Mark fit right in. No one gave him so much as a second glance on his way through the labyrinthine tunnel system.

He clutched a small black valise tightly in one hand. It looked neither new nor old, just ordinary. His knuckles were clenched white, and the handle was slick with sweat.

His first visit to the White House had been just a few weeks before. That was as a CIA analyst, when he had gone to the West Wing for an Oval Office meeting with the outgoing President. This time everything was different: his purpose, the President, the agency Mark worked for, even his identity itself. The laminated ID tag Smith had issued him was clipped to his jacket.

The tag identified him as a telephone company official with high security clearance. The badge looked real enough. Mark hoped it was good enough to fool the pros.

Heart thudding, Mark followed the memorized route to the small West Wing elevator. A Secret Service agent stood at the closed door, a white wire threaded from collar to ear.

Mark did his best to hide his anxiety as the agent carefully studied his ID. After a glance at the nervous young man before him, the agent handed back the card.

"Open your bag, please, sir," the agent said. If he was suspicious, it didn't show. His voice was perfectly modulated, with not a hint of inflection.

Mark obediently thumbed open the tabs on the valise.

As the Secret Service man picked through the materials inside, Mark clipped his tag back to his jacket. After a perfunctory search, the agent handed the bag back.

"Left off the elevator, sir," he announced as he pressed the button. The elevator doors slid open. "Another agent will be there to accompany you."

"Thanks," Mark said with an anxious smile. Bag in hand, he stepped onto the car.

The agent followed him with his eyes. "First time at the White House?" he asked abruptly.

Mark was surprised at how easy the lie came.

The young man exhaled. "I guess it shows, huh?" Howard said.

The Secret Service agent nodded. "Sometimes I still find it intimidating," he offered. As the doors slid shut there was just a hint of a knowing smile.

Once the doors were closed, Mark took a deep breath. The car whisked him up to the First Family residence.

The agent downstairs was wrong. When the doors slid open there was no one waiting for Mark. An order to abandon the family quarters had been issued to all Secret Service personnel on this floor. The command had come from the highest level at the Treasury Department. All agents were to stay out for two hours while national-security experts updated the White House satellite system.

Of course it was a lie. Feeling like the only man inside the most famous residence on Earth, Mark followed the wide, empty corridor to the Lincoln Bedroom.

Going to the nightstand next to the bed, Mark opened the bottom drawer. He pulled out a cherry-red telephone that sat inside. Unclipping the cord from the back, he placed the phone on the bed.

Mark drew the cord through a hole in the back of the drawer and followed it to a silver wall plate behind the bed. Detaching the other end of the cord from the wall, he quickly retrieved a screwdriver from his bag. Removing the phone jack plate, he replaced it with a blank one.

There would be no problem with someone removing the plate at a later date and tapping into this line. Once he removed the phone, the line had already been rerouted. The Lincoln Bedroom phone line was now officially dead.

Dropping the old plate and cord into his bag, Mark picked up both bag and phone.

Where he'd placed it on the bed, the dialless red phone had left a square imprint in the quilt. Sticking the phone up under his arm, Mark smoothed the wrinkles flat with one hand.

He glanced around the nightstand area. Everything appeared to be as he left it. He crossed to the door. Casting one last look at the stately room that during the Civil War had been President Lincoln's cluttered office, Mark hurried out into the hallway. Unfortunately, in his haste to leave the Lincoln Bedroom, he collided with the man who was rushing into the room from the hall.

When the two men collided, the President of the United States went one way and Mark went the other. With a grunt Mark fell against the door frame. He lost the red phone from under his arm. It struck the floor hard, the receiver spilling off the cradle. The bell inside gave a muffled tinkle as the phone bounced across the carpet.

The President had fallen to his backside. Lost in thought, he had been hurrying along with his head down. He seemed shocked that anyone was in the residence.

"Oh, it's you," the leader of the free world said.

"I'm so sorry, sir," Mark apologized. He hustled over, helping the President to his feet.

"What are you doing here?" the President asked.

He spotted the red phone on the carpet. "Where are you going with that?" he demanded.

"You requested that the phone be moved to your bedroom, Mr. President," Howard said nervously.

"Oh. That's right," the President said. "Well, hurry up and get it hooked up. I need to talk to your boss."

Fumbling the receiver back into the cradle, Mark scooped up the phone. With the President in the lead, the two men hurried down the hall to the presidential bedroom.

According to Dr. Smith, the phone had been in this room years ago. Even through various renovations and several administrations, the CURE director had been careful to issue circuitous orders that the old wall jack not be removed, lest it become necessary to reuse the old line.

Howard found the blank silver plate behind the bed. He reversed the process from the Lincoln Bedroom, installing a female plate on the wall. He ran the line through a hole in the back of the nightstand's bottom drawer before plugging the red phone back in.

Mark lifted the receiver to test.

There was no dial tone. For an instant he thought he'd broken the phone when he'd dropped it, but an abrupt ringing sounded on the other end of the line. It was answered before the first ring was over.

"Yes," said the lemony voice of Harold Smith.

"It's me," Mark said. "The phone's been moved."

The President held out an impatient hand. "Let me have him," he insisted.

"Very good," Smith said to Howard. "I have already deactivated the line into the Lincoln Bedroom. Please return-"

"Um, Dr. Smith," Mark broke in, "there's someone here who wants to speak to you."

The President was already pulling the phone out of Howard's hand. "Hi, Smith," he announced. His laconic nasal voice was eerily reminiscent of his father's, who had served as president a decade ago. "I realize we just got through that mess in Barkley, but there's something my advisers just mentioned that might need to be checked out by you folks."

"Yes, Mr. President?" Smith asked.

The President sat down on the edge of the bed. "As I understand it, there have been a number of deaths," he said seriously. "Now, as much as it pains me to say this, that's not what has me most worried. It's the oil. After the trouble with skyrocketing prices last year, we can't afford to have anyone tampering with - domestic production."

"What is the problem, sir?" Smith asked.

"This is where it gets dicey," the President admitted. "We've got an eyewitness account, but I don't know how credible it is. Some helicopter pilot or something. His story is pretty crazy sounding. But no matter what, it's clear that someone, for some reason, has disrupted the oil flow through the Alaska Pipeline."

Kneeling on the floor, Mark Howard had been gathering up odds and ends into his bag. At the mention of Alaska, Mark's grip tightened on the screwdriver in his hand.

Before leaving for Washington, he had spent as much time researching as he possibly could. As it was, he had barely made his flight on time. For the little time he had managed to put in, he had come up empty.

Mark had hoped to do more searching once he'd returned to Folcroft. Now it seemed it wouldn't be necessary.

As he finished cleaning up, he listened carefully to the President's side of the conversation.

Apparently, there was a crisis brewing in Alaska after all. Mark only hoped that Harold W. Smith wasn't as attentive to detail as he seemed. With any luck, the CURE director would not even remember that Mark had mentioned Alaska that very morning. And if he did? Well, Mark would have to cross that bridge when he came to it.

As he knelt on the bedroom floor of the President of the United States, Mark only hoped that if the time ever came where he had to make a confession-his honesty wouldn't get him a one-way ticket to a Folcroft rubber room.

Chapter 11

Remo spent the long day driving aimlessly through the streets of Rye. When midnight came, he parked by the shore. For hours he stared blankly at the endless black waves of Long Island Sound.

At this point he no longer expected illumination for whatever it was that vexed him. Chiun had told him that enlightenment would arrive in its own time, and he trusted the old Korean on that count. But this knowledge alone wasn't enough to suspend the nagging feeling that he'd forgotten something of great importance. And this latest baggage certainly wasn't helping matters any.

Lately, everything seemed a complication for Remo. Smith's new assistant was just more piling onto the mess that had once been Remo's life.

It wasn't Mark Howard's involvement in the organization that was the problem. Remo had told the young man about the two others who had, at different times, briefly taken charge of the agency. But there were two more who had played roles at CURE in the past. Conrad MacCleary and Ruby Gonzalez had each assisted Harold Smith in different ways at different times. Remo had thought they were both okay. It was what Howard represented that most bothered Remo. Change.

He wasn't ready to deal with it. Didn't want to think about it. Yet lately his life kept stubbornly coming back to that one word.

Alone with his thoughts, he stared into the waves of the Sound. Only when the light of dawn began to streak the sky did Remo realize he'd sat in his car all night.

With a troubled sigh he turned the key in the ignition.

He returned to Folcroft in the wee hours. Smith had not yet arrived for work when Remo parked his car and headed inside. Sneaking downstairs to his quarters, he was relieved to find the Master of Sinanju still asleep. The nightly buzz saw that was Chiun's snoring issued from beyond the old Korean's closed bedroom door.

Remo slipped through the dark communal room and into his own bedroom, shutting the door gently. He kicked off his loafers and settled to his simple tatami sleeping mat.

For a few seconds he listened to the soft sounds of Folcroft.

Nurses walked distant hallways. Toilets flushed and water sloshed through ancient pipes. Muted rumblings and bangs came from the cafeteria as the staff began the breakfast ritual. All these sounds carried to his sensitive ears. The same sounds might have been made at the sanitarium that fateful day three decades ago, when an idealistic young beat cop had awakened to a new life and a new identity.

In the quiet of his room, Remo took some small comfort in the timeless sounds of that old brick building. Embracing a rare moment of peace, he closed his eyes and allowed his body to drift off to sleep.

Ten seconds after he shut his eyes, the snoring in the next room abruptly ceased.

"Oh, crud," Remo groaned.

The light in the communal room snapped on, spilling under Remo's closed door.

Reaching up in the dark, he pulled a pillow from the unused bed that had been there when he moved in. He wrapped it around his head, pressing it tight to his ears.

No sooner was the pillow in place than the clanging began. Chiun banged around the stove for a time, slamming pots and rattling pans. After a few minutes Remo couldn't take it anymore.

"I'm trying to sleep in here," he complained loudly.

"Oh, is that you, Remo?" Chiun's disembodied voice called back. "When you did not come home last night, I assumed you had moved out."

"Very funny," Remo said. "You heard me come in."

"I thought that some vagrant flimflammer had won your room from you in one of the all-night gambling houses you frequent while prowling the mean streets."

"I wasn't gambling, I was thinking," Remo muttered.

"Believe me, the way you think, it's gambling," Chiun called knowingly. The banging resumed. Remo took some encouragement from the fact that the old Asian was still talking to him. The way he'd left things yesterday, Remo had been sure he'd be getting the silent treatment for the next six months. Moreover, it seemed as if Chiun wanted Remo to get up. This became clear when, over the course of the next forty-five seconds, the wizened Korean dropped the heavy cast-iron teapot seventeen times. "A for effort, Little Father," Remo grunted, unwrapping the pillow from his ears. He rolled to his feet.

When he opened the door, he found the Master of Sinanju fussing with the small boom box that sat on the counter of their shared kitchenette. The old man raised a dull eye.

"Oh, you are up," Chiun commented.

"It's hard to sleep with you reenacting the Battle of the Bulge out here," Remo said. His eyes instantly alighted on the low kitchen table. Spread across the taboret were a dozen real-estate pamphlets. "Oh, brother," he exhaled.

Chiun followed his gaze. "Ah," he said, nodding. "I left those there, as you requested."

Remo offered him a gimlet eye.

"I didn't ask for those, so don't try to Gaslight me on this one, because I'm not in the mood."

"I am not surprised. After catting around all night, it is a wonder you can lift your head at all."

"It wasn't through any choice of my own," Remo said to himself as he gathered up the pamphlets. With a flourish Chiun spun from the small stereo. As the device squawked to cacophonous life, the old man plucked the pamphlets from his pupil's hand. "I will put these away for later," he said.

"Make it much later," Remo said. "And I'm already up. No need to torture me by playing Wylander Jugg."

This was the country music singer for whom the Master of Sinanju had recently developed a fondness. On the counter Wylander continued to yodel from the unlucky speakers.

"You would deny me this one pleasure? After all I have done for you and all you have done to me?"

"You bet," Remo said. He winced as Wylander tried to stretch her larynx for a note hopelessly out of reach.

"Too bad for you," Chiun said. "Breakfast is in ten minutes. Wash your hands, for I suspect I know where you spent your night." He turned to the stove. Remo did as he was told without argument.

As he washed up in the bathroom sink he heard the sound of Smith's car wheezing and coughing its way into the parking lot far above. The old station wagon seemed to worsen with every winter, yet it continued to hang on.

Remo did his best not to read too much into that idle thought. Drying his hands, he returned to the kitchenette.

Chiun was tapping rice into a pair of stoneware bowls with a wooden spoon. Two wedges of orange sat on each of their place mats. Remo took note of the fruit slices with a puzzled frown.

Their training limited them to a diet of rice and fish and, less often, duck. Vegetables were infrequent and fruit which was high in natural sugar-was hardly ever eaten.

"Why fruit?" Remo asked, kneeling at the low table.

"I have not had any in several months," Chiun replied. "And you cannot remember the last time you had any at all."

Remo's frown deepened. The old Korean was right. He couldn't recall.

Placing the pot of rice on a pot holder, the Master of Sinanju knelt across the table from his pupil.

As they ate, the rising winter sun warmed the sleepy ivy-covered building on the shores of Long Island Sound.

Remo was grateful that Chiun didn't try to engage him in conversation.

The Master of Sinanju knew his pupil well. The few cross words they'd exchanged the previous day hadn't been taken to heart. This meal was a gift. A balm for the troubled soul of his adopted son.

Remo was actually starting to enjoy the moment when he heard the hurried footsteps approach from the hall.

Because of one arthritic knee, Harold Smith tended to favor one leg over the other, although it was undetectable in his gait to anyone but Remo and Chiun.

The person in the hall had no such problem. Whoever this was, it wasn't Smith.

Remo assumed it was someone on the regular Folcroft staff, until the person stopped outside his door. A sharp knock.

Remo was enjoying his meal too much to be bothered.

"We're not here," he called.

"Remo?" a hushed voice said. "Remo, it's Mark Howard."

Remo's face soured. "We're even more not here," he said to the closed door.

But it was too late. Across the table from Remo, the Master of Sinanju's thin, venous eyelids fluttered wide.

"Please, by all means, honor us with your presence, Prince Mark," Chiun sang happily, rising like a puff of delighted steam. "Be civil," he hissed at Remo just as the door opened and Mark Howard's worried face peeked inside.

The young man took special note of Remo, still kneeling on the floor at the taboret, his back to the door. Standing at the table, Chiun bowed deeply.

"Welcome to my humble chambers, sweet prince." Howard nodded as he closed the door.

"Good morning, Master Chiun," he said anxiously.

"Your blessing is at once superfluous and inadequate," Chiun assured him, "for your being here with us does itself make a good morning great."

"He's not frigging Tony the Tiger," Remo complained.

It was as if Chiun didn't hear. "See, Remo," he said to his pupil. "Look and learn from a real nobleman. A true prince of the realm, he understands instinctively the value of his royal assassin, bowing and offering blessings on my day. Though barely weaned, he knows well the lessons of proper approbation."

Remo didn't turn around. "Not seeing. Caring even less," he said as he continued to eat.

His eyes trained warily on Remo, Mark took a few tentative steps into the main living room.

"I hate to bother you so early, but there's a situation in Alaska," the young man began.

"A most grave matter," Chiun intoned solemnly.

"Possibly," Howard said. "The details aren't entirely clear yet."

Chiun nodded, his wrinkled face a deeply concerned frown.

"Still, how considerable must this potential danger be for the future master of Fortress Folcroft to descend from his lofty perch rather than dispatch a footman. Your somber mien does augur great risk to the Eagle Throne and to the precious Constitution, which we are sworn to defend. Speak, dear prince, of the threat to our one lord, Emperor Smith."

Howard seemed somewhat put off by the Korean's flowery words and tone. "Um, it actually started a couple of days-"

Chiun's face suddenly brightened. "Do you want some tea?" he interrupted.

"What? No. No, thank you."

"I would like some," Chiun said firmly.

The Master of Sinanju promptly spun away from Howard, marching over to the gas stove.

Howard stood alone in the center of the room. "Um," he said uncertainly, clearing his throat.

"Go on," Chiun encouraged as he began fussing like a mother hen at the stove. "Your every word is a drop of rain upon the arid land of unworthy ears." In the cupboard now, he made an unhappy clucking sound with his tongue. "Have you seen my cup?" he asked Remo.

"Nope. There's a bunch more in the cupboard, though."

Chiun clearly wasn't happy with the idea of using an inferior teacup. He began scouring all the cupboards in the kitchenette.

Mark could see he wasn't making progress with the Master of Sinanju. Reluctantly, he turned his attention to Remo.

"There have been several-"

Remo didn't let him get any further.

"Save your breath, Howdy Doody," he said. "I don't go anywhere unless Smith says so."

Chiun had found his favorite cup. He returned from the stove with it steaming full of tea.

"That is true," the old Korean said, sinking to the floor near the table. "We are contractually bound to Emperor Smith and to Smith alone. However, do not let that stop you. You have such a lovely speaking voice. Very commanding, don't you think so, Remo?"

"We have any more rice?" Remo asked.

"Dr. Smith is the one who sent me to get you," Mark said, exasperated.

"Although your voice suddenly sounds strained," the Master of Sinanju said, concerned. "Are you sure you would not care for some tea? It is very soothing." He took a thoughtful sip.

"Can you two even hear me?" Howard asked.

"I'd like some," Remo said to the Master of Sinanju, ignoring Howard.

Chiun raised his cup to his wrinkled lips. "It's all gone," he said.

HAROLD SMITH WAS scanning Mark Howard's most recent computer records-one curious eyebrow raised-when his office door sprang open. He glanced up as Remo marched into the room, his face a scowl. Chiun swept in beside the younger Master of Sinanju. Behind the two of them came Mark Howard.

Howard's youthful face was flushed as he closed the door behind them.

Before Remo could even speak, Chiun was interrupting.

"O gracious wholeness, Emperor Smith, who rules with virtuous majesty from within the mighty walls of Fortress Folcroft, Sinanju bids you good morning," he announced.

"Will you can that dippy ding-dong sucking-up already?" Remo said impatiently in Korean. "Smitty's indifferent to it, and the twerp's more weirded out than he is impressed by it."

"I am doing that which is necessary," the old man replied in the same tongue. "Young princes like to hear pretty songs, especially when they are directed at the throne they one day hope to occupy."

As the Master of Sinanju sank cross-legged to the floor, Remo turned his full attention to Smith. "Okay, what's the deal, Smitty? I think the kid was trying to ship us off to Alaska."

"That's not entirely true, Dr. Smith," Howard said, crossing the room. He angled the chair in front of the CURE director's desk so that he could see all three men.

"That is correct," Chiun interjected. "For he left out the part where I respectfully informed our young sire that we obey neither princes nor presidents. Sinanju is yours to direct and yours alone, Emperor."

"That remains true, Master Chiun," Smith nodded. "Our hierarchical structure is as it has always been. I merely asked Mark to get you because of a strange situation that is developing in Alaska. The President has filled me in on the broad details."

"Were not the details of females the concern of the roly-poly billhilly who preceded the current pretender to the crown?" Chiun asked.

"Figure of speech, Little Father," Remo said, sinking to the floor next to his teacher. "What's the story, Smitty?"

Smith placed his hands to his desk, his fingers interlocking. "Over the past few days there have been multiple attacks on both civilian and military targets in rural Alaska," the CURE director began. "The first was a group of Alaskan pipeline workers. The next was a state defense force team. They were slaughtered to a man by an enemy that, until yesterday, had not shown itself." Smith seemed to grow uncomfortable. "At least not in such a way that I would be willing to trust a lone eyewitness account."

"Why?" Remo asked. "What was it?"

"A small army," Mark Howard supplied.

Remo had been doing his best to ignore the young man. "Good," he said. "Send in our big army. I'll be at the tattoo parlor."

He rose to a half squat but felt the pressure of a single bony finger on his thigh. With a sigh he dropped back to the floor.

"You're lucky I'm not in a body-cleaning mood," Remo said in a voice so low only the Master of Sinanju could hear.

"The first armed unit was put in place by helicopter near the murdered pipeline workers," Smith resumed. "When the pilot returned, he saw what he has termed a, er, ghost army."

"Ghost?" Remo asked. He shot a look at the Master of Sinanju. The old Korean had grown more attentive.

Smith nodded gravely. "He described a group of men who stood briefly among the dead as he flew over. He claims that, as he watched, the men vanished from sight. Fearing some supernatural force, he fled back to Fairbanks."

"Sounds to me like he's got a couple of bent rotor blades," Remo said.

"Quiet, Remo," Chiun admonished. His alert hazel eyes were locked on Smith.

"My first impulse would be to agree with you, Remo," the CURE director said. "However, the ambushed ASDF unit wasn't alone. They were involved in joint exercises with the Alaska National Guard and the Army. A National Guard unit consisting of eighty men met a similar fate in the rural town of Kakwik. The sole survivor of that attack described a group of men who could hide in the open and kill at will."

"Hmm," Remo mused. "That sounds like us, doesn't it, Little Father?"

Chiun addressed Smith, not Remo. "We once encountered an invisible man," the old man said. Remo was struck by the worry in his tone.

Smith nodded. "I considered that, too. But tests with the midnight-black paint were discontinued years ago. It was found that the molecular cohesion broke down over short periods of time. And we are not dealing with individuals who can hide only in darkness. Apparently, they can conceal themselves in daylight. Or, given the locale and time of year, partial light."

"You ever hear of ghosts that can kill, Chiun?" Remo asked.

"Well," Howard offered, reluctant to interrupt the comfortable dynamic of the three men, "it's obviously not ghosts, Remo." He waited for someone to agree with him.

Remo ignored Howard. His full attention was on the Master of Sinanju. Even Smith remained mute. Troubled, Howard turned his gaze to the old Korean.

His face unflinching, Chiun avoided Remo's eyes. "I would travel to this province alone, Emperor Smith," he announced levelly. "There is no reason for Remo to accompany me."

Remo's brow dropped. "Like fish," he said. "Why? What's wrong?"

"There is nothing wrong other than the fact that you are an obdurate contrarian," Chiun replied, his voice low. "Reserve one plane ticket, Emperor," he said, rising to his feet.

Remo got up, too. "Nothing doing. Make that two."

Chiun shot him an evil look. The old man's lips formed a razor-thin line of angry frustration.

"Sorry, Little Father," Remo said. "For you to get so jumpy, something must be wrong. If you won't spill the beans, I'm not letting you take off on your own. Two tickets, Smitty," he said emphatically.

"I'm not certain what your concern is, Master Chiun, but it is too soon to make any assumptions," Smith said reasonably. "We could merely be dealing with some kind of new technology at work here that allows these men to remain unseen until the moment of attack."

But the old Korean slowly shook his head. "It is not too soon," Chiun said, his voice ominous. "It is long overdue."

And the look on his face was such that both Smith and Remo knew enough at this point not to press further.

Remo exhaled. "Okay. Dead end there for now."

He returned his attention to Smith. "We'll find out the skinny on your ghost guys, Smitty. And I'm gonna keep a good thought that they're with the Eskimo branch of the Crips or the Bloods. I've been up to my fanny in ghosts lately."

"Actually," Smith said seriously, "if the lone survivor of Kakwik is to be believed, they are of a corporeal nature. It would be more accurate to say they are lost in time." His lips pursed unhappily. "He swears that the men who attacked his National Guard unit were Russians."

Remo blinked. "You're kidding, right?"

Smith shook his head. "Moreover, he seemed to think they were Soviet-era Russians. According to his eyewitness account, they were mired in the iconography of that time."

Remo threw up his hands. "Great. Perfect," he said in disgust. "Twice in one week. Geez Louise, Smitty, what is it with them? Is it the fuzzy hats? The 800-proof grain alcohol they pour on their Brezhnev-Os? How many times we gotta rub their noses in it before they stop pooping on the red, white and blue carpet, for chrissakes?"

"The Russia connection has not been confirmed," Smith said quickly. "Although those seeds have been planted, they may have been done so as a smoke screen." As he spoke, his hands sought the edge of his desk.

"Yeah, well, it better not be them," Remo said as the CURE director began typing at his special keyboard. "I've pasted enough hairy-mole and double-chin snapshots in my Memories of Pottsylvania scrapbook lately."

"I have arranged a military flight to Alaska for the two of you," Smith said. "It will be faster than a commercial airline. A taxi will be arriving at the main gate in fifteen minutes. It will take you to your rendezvous with an Air Force transport. Begin in Kakwik. That is the site of the-most recent attack."

"Fine," Remo said, his expression still displeased. "But I'm warning you, if I see one more Eastern Blockhead this week, I'm not responsible for my actions."

Remo was turning to go when Howard broke in. "That's it?" the young man asked, confused. All eyes turned to him. "It just-it seems like there should be more. At the CIA-"

"Love to stick around and hear how you, Larabee and the rest of the Control guys escaped from Camp Gitche Gumee Noonie Wa-Wa," Remo cut in, "but we've got big-boy work to do. C'mon, Chiun."

The Master of Sinanju was still deep in thought. Offering only the slightest of nods to the director and associate director of CURE, he padded quietly out the door.

Once they were gone, Howard turned back to Smith, a questioning look on his wide face.

"There is no need to weigh them down with minutiae," Smith assured him absently. The older man was fussing at his keyboard once more."

"If you say so, Dr. Smith," Howard said. "If we're done here, I'll be in my of-"

"Please sit."

Mark was halfway out of his chair. The coldly precise words of the CURE director froze him in place. It was clear by his tone that something was wrong. Unsure what he'd done, Mark slowly lowered himself back to his seat.

Behind his desk, Smith had taken on the disapproving look of a strict boys-school headmaster. His mouth pinched in a thin frown, he scanned his monitor briefly before raising his eyes to meet Howard's.

"How did you know of the situation in Alaska yesterday?" Smith asked. His gaze never wavered.

Just a moment's hesitation. "Well, the President-"

"You knew of it before you left for Washington," Smith interrupted. "I have been going over your computer records. You used the time just before leaving for the airport to search for any anomalous activity there. What's more, in our meeting yesterday you suddenly seemed to think that I had mentioned something about Alaska when I had not. Now, under different circumstances I might assume you were involved in whatever is happening there. However, you are well above average intelligence. You would know that I have full access to your computer. And it seems highly improbable that, were you involved, you would blurt it out in front of me. Therefore, I must conclude that you are innocent but were somehow still possessed with the knowledge that something was wrong. So I will ask you again, how did you know?"

The CURE director's eyes were hard gray truth detectors, boring straight through to Mark Howard's soul.

Mark considered lying. After all, he had successfully done so on this topic for almost his whole life. But he could not escape the penetrating gaze of Harold W. Smith. Shoulders sinking, Howard shook his head.

"I don't know how," the young man said, exhaling. "I just had a feeling."

Smith's lemony face grew interested. "Explain."

"I really can't, Dr. Smith," Mark said. "It came to me while we were talking yesterday. Just a sense that something might be wrong. I wanted to check to confirm, but I couldn't find anything before I went to Washington. Then Kakwik happened, and it turned out I was right. But I still don't know how it came to me in the first place."

Smith didn't see anything deceptive in the younger man's body language. He seemed certain of what he was saying, yet simultaneously frustrated by his own claim.

"It came to you," Smith said evenly. "Are you suggesting that this is some form of psychic phenomenon?"

Howard's head snapped up. "No, sir," he insisted. "It's just some weird thing that happens sometimes."

"You are saying that this is not the first time?" Howard's reluctance seemed to return. "No," he said hesitantly. "I've been able to do it a long time. It's sort of a sixth sense, I guess."

Smith considered Howard's words. "It is possible that your mind simply works differently," he ventured after a thoughtful pause.

Mark's face showed cautious relief. "You believe me?" he asked.

"When I was your age, I probably would not have," Smith admitted. "However, I have seen enough that I no longer dismiss such claims out of hand. How do these episodes manifest themselves? In words? Images?"

"Both," Mark said. "Sometimes neither. With that Raffair business a few weeks back, it was mostly newspaper articles and on-line stories. It's sort of an instinct that directs conscious thought."

The CURE director nodded. "If you indeed possess such an ability, I would assume that this is precisely the case," Smith said. "Every minute of the day, the human subconscious is bombarded with much more information than it could ever possibly process. A natural filtering absorbs data that is necessary while at the same time disregarding that which is not. Perhaps your subconscious is better able to detect what others might ignore. It then forces the data up into the conscious realm in what you describe as a sixth sense."

Howard offered a wry smile. "I've been through all the possible explanations before, Dr. Smith," he said. "That one's always been the most comforting. It still doesn't go far enough, though."

His brow creasing, Smith leaned back in his chair. "That will be all for now," the older man said. "However, if you have any further insights that might be considered out of the norm, do not keep them to yourself."

Mark nodded. "Yes, sir," he said. As he got to his feet he was now clearly relieved. "Thanks, Dr. Smith."

He was at the door when Smith called to him. "And, Mark, it would be wise if you did not share your intimate involvement in the Raffair matter with either Remo or Master Chiun. They lost their home during that assignment. Since it was you who initially called attention to the criminal activity at that time, I would not want them to ascribe any misplaced blame to you."

Howard gave a lopsided smile. "You and me both," he said, and slipped out the door.

When the door had closed and he was alone once more, Smith took the arms of his battered leather chair in both gnarled hands. He turned slowly.

Beyond Folcroft's sloping rear lawn, Long Island Sound sparkled in the winter sunlight. Smith gazed at the water without seeing. Lost in thought.

Lately, he had been contemplating more and more the end of CURE. For Harold W. Smith, that end would bring down the final curtain on a life that had been almost exclusively dedicated to country.

In the watch pocket of his gray vest was a coffin-shaped pill. When his last day as director of CURE finally arrived, that small capsule would insure that any secrets Smith possessed would die along with him. And, Smith had generally assumed, CURE as an agency would die, too.

But in the past few days the world had changed dramatically. And with it, for the first time in a long time, Harold Smith felt a touch of unaccustomed optimism. It was possible that he and his agency would no longer die together. CURE's life span could conceivably be open-ended.

With that realization came a surprising irony. For a long time now, Smith had been exhausted. His advancing years and the constant pressure of his demanding job had been taking their toll. But these past few days had been different.

Oddly, the addition of Mark Howard to the CURE staff seemed to be having an invigorating effect on Smith. He could feel it in his stride, in his mind. Smith still felt the pains in his joints and the inevitable slowing down that came naturally with age, but it was not the distraction it had been these past few years. With a protege, Smith now had a new purpose: to impress on Mark Howard the seriousness of their work here at Folcroft.

Nothing at CURE could be taken lightly. Smith had been a relatively young man when he was first drafted into the agency. A CIA analyst like Howard, Smith was about to retire from the intelligence game to take a position teaching law at Dartmouth, his alma mater. But history beckoned and Harold Smith heeded the call. His life before that time had not been without difficulty, but it turned out that it was only a prelude to what was to come. Only when he became director of CURE did Smith finally feel real pressure.

At first the task to save America seemed insurmountable. But eventually he found the help he would need. The moment the Master of Sinanju stepped off that first submarine so many years ago, things changed. When Remo was shanghaied into the organization not long after, CURE seemed complete. The secret agency had lucked into a tight group of three men who, by an amazing quirk of fate, complemented one another.

But perhaps it wasn't luck after all. Mark Howard seemed possessed of a gift that could be a positive boon to the organization. Smith was not a religious man. Such ideals would be hypocritical for someone who had sent so many to their deaths. Yet part of him could not help but wonder if there was some larger force at work here, guiding his agency, his nation.

If Mark Howard was to succeed, he would need a strong hand to guide him. There was much the young man had to learn. And much Harold Smith could teach him.

Smith's eyes came sharply back into focus. Out beyond the one-way glass of his office window, the February wind continued to tear at Long Island Sound.

Although in the winter of his own life, Smith no longer felt the beckoning of the waves.

With a steely resolve, he spun back around. Surprised at the renewed vigor in his own arthritic fingers, Smith attacked the keyboard at the edge of his desk. He was quickly absorbed in his work.

Behind him, the comforting siren song of the Sound faded to silence.

Chapter 12

A yellow cab brought them from Rye to the airport in White Plains. Thanks to Smith's string-pulling, an entire runway had been shut down. An Air Force transport squatted like an impatient bird at the far end.

At Remo's direction, their driver steered them through a gap in the chain-link hurricane fence and out to the waiting plane. The driver had barely slowed before they were out of the cab and scampering aboard the plane. Before the taxi had even left the tarmac, the aircraft was screaming skyward.

The Master of Sinanju had remained silent since they'd left Smith's office.

Over the years, Remo had cataloged sixty-two distinct variations to the old Korean's silences. Most of these fell under different subheadings in the overall ticked-off-at-Remo category. This was different, however. This was the Master of Sinanju's contemplative silence, which was always the most worrisome because it usually had to do with something else and only marginally reflected the old man's customary irritation with Remo.

Remo let it go on for twenty more minutes. The airport had long disappeared behind them, replaced by wispy clouds and featureless land, when he finally opened his mouth.

"I know you're probably cheesed off at me for countermanding you back there," Remo said, "but I wasn't gonna let you fly all the way to Alaska by yourself. Plus we don't know what's even going on there."

The Master of Sinanju didn't turn his way. "Speak for yourself, white man," he said, his voice flat.

"Okay, so you know," Remo said, exasperated. "Why don't you let me know so that we'll know? That sound like a plan to you, or are you gonna leave me in the dark till we get there?"

Chiun considered for a long moment. Finally reaching a reluctant inner decision, he turned to face his pupil.

"You are avatar of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction," the old man began, "the dead night tiger made whole by the Master of Sinanju."

Remo had heard this many times over the years. Chiun had been convinced for ages that Remo was the fulfillment of some ancient Sinanju legend.

Even though Remo had experienced too much in his life to totally discount the claim, he still found some small comfort in offering at least token resistance to Chiun's assertions on the subject. To do otherwise would be to accept something that Remo preferred not to even think about.

The younger man shook his head. "Chiun, I-" he began.

"Do not argue," the old Korean cut in, his tone sharp.

Remo could see by his severe expression that his teacher would brook no argument. "Sorry, Little Father," he said quietly, sinking into his seat.

The hard lines of Chiun's wrinkles softened. "Your Masterhood was prophesied by no less than the Great Wang himself," he resumed. "He of the Sun Source, the first Master of the New Age. Wang said that a Master would find among the barbarians of the West one who was once dead. This Master, who we now know is I, would prepare his disciple for the coming of Shiva."

"I heard all that before, Chiun," Remo said. "What's it got to do with Alaska?"

"You heard only part of the story. Wang also spoke of the time of hardship, when Shiva's avatar would be put to the test." He folded his hands in his lap, and his voice took on the familiar cadence of instruction. "'And in this time will be reborn one of the dead, but beyond death, of the Void and not of the Void, of Sinanju, yet not of Sinanju. And he will summon the armies of death and the war they wage will be the War of Sinanju, the outcome of which will decide forever the fate of the line of the Great Master Wang and all who have followed him.'"

By the end, the old man's voice was barely a whisper. His wrinkled lips puckering in a frown of concern, he waited for his pupil's reaction.

Remo carefully absorbed the Master of Sinanju's words.

"You think this is happening now?" he asked quietly.

Chiun nodded. "I have seen the signs," he intoned. "As have you, for it was prophesied to you that you would face hardships in the coming years. Some have already occurred, others have yet to pass. Yet this is the time. Your time."

Though he felt for his pupil, the wizened Asian didn't let the emotion seep to the surface. His face was etched in stone.

Remo's own expression had darkened. He dropped a frustrated hand to his knee. "Well, ain't that just a turd in the water tank," he exhaled. A sudden thought came to him. "Hey, wait a minute. You just said you think this is what's going on now. This dead, undead whoever-he-is leading his corpse army to wipe out Sinanju."

Chiun nodded. "The false Master is to be of Sinanju, but not of Sinanju. Although it is unclear the form the armies of death will take, you yourself said that these beings Smith spoke of appeared to have abilities similar to our own. They appear and vanish at will. Those who have seen as would say the same of us."

"Okay, so what the hell did you think you were doing running off by yourself?"

The old Korean's eyes flicked to the window. "I was not certain," he said, smoothing a wrinkle in his brocade kimono. "Nor am I now. Rather than waste all our time, I thought it would be wise to first reconnoiter alone."

"Baloney," Remo said. "You were trying to protect me."

Chiun arched an eyebrow. "Someone has a high opinion of himself," he sniffed. "If you must know, what I was trying to do was give myself a few hours of time alone. Since moving into Smith's palace, you have been underfoot every waking minute of the day. I was welcoming the solitude afforded by this trip. And then you had to come along and ruin it all with that big nosy mouth of yours."

"Right," Remo mumbled, crossing his arms. "I believe you about as much as I believe all that bilge water you were pumping up what's-his-face's blowhole."

Chiun's hands retreated to his kimono sleeves. "I will say whatever is necessary to garner the goodwill of Smith's heir," he said.

"No kidding," Remo said blandly. "I'm surprised you weren't volunteering me to wax on, wax off his car. Which reminds me. After the way I left yesterday, I figured you'd rip me a new one when I got back this morning. I'll probably live to regret asking, but you wanna tell me why? Maybe I can do whatever it is I did again."

The old man's face was flat. "That is extremely unlikely," he said.

"Why?" Remo asked. "What'd I do?"

It was clear from the way he shifted in his seat that the Master of Sinanju did not welcome this direction in their conversation. Chiun looked not at his pupil, but dead ahead. When he spoke, his voice was low.

"It is possible, Remo, that you were correct," he said. Each word had to be bitten off. His jaw trembled at the painful admission.

At first, Remo had no idea what to say, so shocked was he by the tiny Asian's statement. He blinked. "Oh," said Remo.

"Oh," he repeated.

"Oh," he said a third time after a prolonged pause during which he still had no idea how to respond. "Oh," he said, suddenly more brightly than the first three times. "What was I right about?"

Chiun gave him a withering look. "How many opportunities have you ever had to be right in your entire misspent life?"

Remo frowned. He could remember being right lots of times. So many times that he couldn't narrow down this particular time.

Glancing over, Chiun saw the confusion creeping into his pupil's face. The old man rolled his eyes impatiently.

"I am referring to our discussion about the Master Wo-Ti, imbecile," he said.

"Oh, that," Remo said, nodding. "I know I was right about that one." He scrunched up his face. "Hey, not only was that one of the many times I've been right, but for those of you keeping score at home, that makes you wrong."

"I did not- Will you wipe that stupid smirk off your face? I did not say that. I believe in this instance we were both correct."

"Nope," Remo said firmly. "You're not gonna square that circle. I'm the one who's right this time. You said so yourself. And as soon as we get back home, I'm calling the Guinness people to see if they'll put it in print."

"If they did not give you an entry for the world's biggest feet or for that summer squash you call a nose, I doubt they would be interested."

"Didn't mean it that way," Remo said. "I meant put you in for finally admitting it. So, when was the exact moment you realized I was right? Was it at the actual moment I was right, or did it come later, a few minutes after I was right?"

Chiun's brow was a flat line. "Will this craft never land?" he complained, leaning toward the window. Western New York State was far below.

"We've still got a ways to go," Remo said.

Fussing unhappily with his kimono, Chiun sat back in his seat. "You may suspend your selfcongratulations for the duration of this trip," he grumbled. "There is little enough room in here for your other comically swollen features without having to surrender space to your swelled head. I merely meant that in interpreting the scrolls of Sinanju it is possible the conclusion you reached was correct."

Remo wasn't buying it.

"It's right there in black and white," he insisted. "'Sinanju will never serve a succeeding emperor.' That was the lesson of Wo-Ti."

"There is more than just that to the story," Chiun said. "In foolishly agreeing to safeguard the life and throne of Pepi II for all of that pharaoh's natural life, Wo-Ti was stuck in Egypt until Pepi died at the age of ninety-six. Afterward, Wo-Ti's successor declared that Sinanju does not guarantee life, but only death. This could be considered the greater part of his lesson. If so, he has his legacy and we would be safe to dispense with that other trivial part."

"I think Wo-Ti would have something to say about that," Remo warned. "When I met his spirit a few years back, he was under the impression that the 'no successor' lesson was the big one."

"Wo-Ti has been dead for three thousand years," Chiun clucked. "He has likely not kept up with the modern demands of our ever changing craft."

Remo shook his head. "This reeks of a dodge, Little Father," he said. "I know you've cooked the books before, and most of the time I didn't care because I didn't really think it mattered. But this one's too big to let slide. We work for Smitty until he's gone. After that, we're done and that pimple-faced twit assistant of his can go pound sand."

"We have just had this discussion recently," Chiun said. "America is the only nation that can afford both of us."

"Well, maybe we should-I don't know-maybe we should split up, then. Find two countries next door to each other and go there. I'll take England and you can have France. We'll holler insults across the English Channel. Or maybe we could just go home for a while and veg out."

"Home where?" Chiun said suspiciously.

"To Sinanju," Remo said. "I could go baby shopping for an apprentice. You could lock yourself away like Monty Burns in that bank vault you call a house, counting and recounting every nickel Smitty's ever sent you. It'd be fun."

"When, Remo, did you develop this affection for Sinanju?" Chiun asked, his hazel eyes hooded.

"I haven't," Remo said. "I can't get all gaga like you over a pile of shit-smeared rock. But if we're checking out options, we have to consider them all, because tradition dictates that we can't work for Smith's successor."

"And who is the current guardian of our traditions?" Chiun asked haughtily.

Remo opened his mouth to answer, but stopped abruptly. "Wow," he said, blinking surprise. "Deja vu."

"What is wrong?" the Master of Sinanju asked.

"Huh? Oh, nothing," Remo said. "I just flashed back to California. That thing that I ought to remember, but can't." He shook his head in an attempt to dislodge the strange sensation. "Weird. I almost had it, I think." He glanced at the Master of Sinanju. "You sure you don't wanna tell me what this is all about?"

Chiun shook his head. "I have spoken too much as it is, my son," he said. "It will come in its time. As for returning to Sinanju, I may do so to visit, but at this stage in my life, to move back there for any extended period of time would be to move back there forever. And I am not yet ready to enter that final phase of my life."

The old man closed his wrinkled eyelids, settling in to sleep for the rest of the long trip to Alaska.

Remo shook away the residual effects of this latest odd episode. Whatever was trying to break through, he hoped it did so soon. "Smitty's helper is a drip," he offered.

"Sinanju has worked for worse," Chiun replied, his eyes still firmly shut. "I could tell you stories about Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia that would whiten even your fair skin. As long as their gold takes proper teeth marks, nothing else matters. Now get some rest."

His final command delivered, the old man fell asleep.

When the snoring started a minute later, Remo hardly heard it. His troubled eyes were directed out the window. His thoughts were far away.

Beyond the glass the gossamer clouds continued to slip silently by.

Chapter 13

The cold wind carried a faint odor from the vast Pripet Marshes and across the wide, cracked tarmac. Even the frigid Russian winter wasn't cold enough to keep the stench down. In the summer the smell was powerful enough to make a strong man retch. Anna Chutesov ignored it.

Sergei stood behind her, the hems of his coat flapping in the wind. Fanned out around him were five others.

Six men. All that was left.

The men moved, stopped, even seemed to breathe in unison.

A warm hood was pulled up tight over Anna's blond hair. Her hands were stuffed deep in the pockets of her down parka. Blue eyes impatiently scanned the sky above the vast tracts of empty land that abutted the airfield.

"This is absurd," she muttered as she checked her watch for the twentieth time.

When she spoke, Sergei shifted guiltily. She shot him a deeply displeased look.

Only after she had read the news report he had found online had the young man reluctantly admitted something to her. It turned out to be an item of vital importance that he, in his stupid male loyalty, had kept from her far too long. Not wishing to betray the others, Sergei had waited to tell her with whom they were truly dealing.

The terrible truth only fueled Anna's fear.

Behind Anna and her Institute-men, an abandoned flight tower scraped the sky. An empty barracks squatted below it.

The airport buildings were all in various states of decay. Tar paper hung from roofs in sheets. Broken windows howled forlornly in the gales. Chunks of concrete littered the ground where once had trodden the boots of many a Red Army and Soviet air force soldier. On the field, wind whistled through the rusting hulks of three old MiG-23s.

The old base was a shadow of its former self. Anna would leave it to the poets and the hard-line zealots to draw from its condition whatever conclusions they might like to make about the Russian nation as a whole.

Anna's ride sat near the flight tower. The remodeled Kamov helicopter, called a Helix in the West, resembled a giant wheeled fish. Above the fuselage, two rows of silent rotors-both upper and lower-shuddered in the desolate wind.

Anna's ice-blue eyes continued to impatiently rake the weak white sky.

To the west was Poland. Northeast was Moscow. And farther east well away from Russia and its former client states-was the place where Anna Chutesov should be.

"Men," she muttered to herself.

The moment she said the word, her ears tickled with the distant hum of a plane engine. With darting eyes she found the aircraft. The Ilyushin was a tiny speck in the sky.

Anna crossed her arms tightly. "It is about time." It took an agonizing few minutes for the big aircraft to land. The Ilyushin bounced across the ruts and holes in the runway, finally rolling to a stop near the tower. The pilot didn't cut the engines.

Anna ran across the tarmac to the waiting plane. Sergei and the other men ran with her, cold, silent shadows.

The Russian presidential plane was nothing like America's Air Force One. The poor Ilyushin looked to be on its last legs. The fuselage was dull and grimy. The tires were nearly bald. A thin, almost invisible stream of white smoke slipped from the starboard nacelle. The pilot had been assuring Russia's worried president for weeks that white smoke wasn't anything to worry about. They could go all the way through the various shades of beige to black before it became necessary to take the plane in for expensive servicing. Fuel drizzled to the tarmac from a pinhole leak.

As soon as Anna reached the plane, a door popped open behind the left wing and a retractable ladder extended. She kicked the bottom rung so that the metal ladder locked in place and scurried up. At the top a hand reached out and helped her inside.

The man's copilot uniform was faded and worn. Ragged threads hung from the cuffs. Since he hadn't been paid in three months, he had recently been forced to sell his insignia to some visiting American teenagers to buy food.

"That way," the copilot said, pointing.

Anna had already pushed past him. Even as her entourage of six began boarding the plane, she was hurrying down the aisle to the lounge.

The engine sounds were muted inside. Wind buffeted the plane, rocking it from side to side.

She found the president of Russia sitting in a tatty seat. The seat belts had apparently been stolen from the presidential plane. Cords of nylon clothesline hung in their place.

There was very little that ever surprised Anna Chutesov. But when she saw the two men sitting with the current Russian president, she felt her brow sink.

One was a big man. Tall, with no neck and a large belly that seemed to go from pelvis to chin without taking the time to form a chest. In comparison, the other man was small, although his wide cherub's face and rounded body gave him the appearance of a teddy bear come to life.

Both men had led Russia at different times. The smaller one had accidentally taken the country away from the Communists. The larger one had-through corruption and mismanagement-turned it over to criminals.

The latter man had escaped the presidency when no one was looking on New Year's Eve of the new millennium with a presidential pardon and a pair of suitcases crammed to overflowing with American foreign aid. His looted wealth had done nothing to remove him from his path of personal destruction. His skin was waxy, and his crown of white hair crashed in great uneven waves across the top of his big head. Around his ankles three empty vodka bottles rolled with the jostling movements of the wind-tossed plane.

The two former leaders along with Russia's latest president looked up as Anna entered the lounge. The current president quickly got to his feet. "Forgive us for being late," the little man said. "It is not easy to get away these days. I do not believe introductions are necessary." He held a small hand out to the other two men.

The bigger one wasn't even paying attention. He was rooting around with one paw under his frayed seat for a fresh bottle. This apparently required all his concentration. He bit down on his jutting tongue.

The other ex-president answered for both of them. "We know Anna Chutesov well," he said soberly. The man scratched his forehead. Even though it was warm enough on the plane, he still wore a hat, pulled down low. Just the bottom of his world-famous winestain birthmark could be seen peeking out from under the wool. The part that Anna could see looked as if it had mutated somehow.

"I decided to check with my predecessors after our last meeting," the current president explained to Anna. "They convinced me that the danger might be greater than I originally feared. For all of us. I have extended presidential protection to them both, for Russia cannot run the risk of appearing weak. If something were to happen to them, it could open us up to even more dire security threats."

Anna didn't bother to tell him that, short of a full-scale nuclear war or a comet flattening Moscow, they were already facing the greatest threat imaginable.

"Presidential protection is an empty phrase," she said. "What we need goes beyond mere words." As she spoke, the first of her entourage began filing into the lounge. The men were so silent Anna had not heard them. She knew they were there only by the look of relief that bloomed on the face of the hatwearing former president.

The current president raised an eyebrow, as if he had expected more.

"Are they good?" he asked.

"They are trained," Anna replied.

"They had better be," the ex-president with the hat said. "It is bad enough when vandals can break into your house in the dead of night and permanently disfigure you. Now I find out my life might be in danger." His pudgy fingers scratched once more at his birthmark.

When his hat shifted, Anna could see that the mark now resembled the number one.

"Forgive me, Mr. President," Anna said frostily, "but I would remind you that it is you who started us down this road more than ten years ago. Pandora's box has been opened now, but you are the one who made certain it was full."

The former president bristled. "Do not forget your contribution in all this," he growled.

Anna's spine stiffened. "I won't," she said. "Nor could I if I tried."

The current president wasn't interested in squabbling. "These men will accompany us back to Moscow," he said, indicating Sergei and the other five. "Four will guard me. I will assign one each to the two of you."

The big bear of a man was oblivious. He was draining dry a half-filled vodka bottle. A shaking hand tapped the last drops onto his eager, bloated tongue.

When the hat-wearing president objected to the inequitable division of guards, Russia's current leader shook his head angrily.

"It is your fault we are even in this predicament," the latest president snapped. "You started us down this road to insanity."

"What I did was for the sake of national security," the ex-president argued.

Anna had heard enough. "Every stupid thing that has ever been done in Russia has been done in the name of national security," she said impatiently. "And I do not have time for this. These are the men you requested. Do whatever you want with them. I am leaving."

Only Anna Chutesov could get away with speaking in such a way to one-let alone three-Russian heads of state.

She turned from the three politicians.

"Be careful," she advised Sergei and the others, knowing the foolishness of the wasted words even as she spoke them.

She hurried through the men and down the side aisle of the plane. At the still open door, her foot sought the ladder. When she turned to climb down, she found that the president had hurried out behind her.

"You still have some new recruits, do you not?" Russia's diminutive leader asked. "You should bring them with you."

Anna almost laughed in his face. The poor fool still didn't understand.

"I will go alone. Skachkov might still listen to me. Where he goes, the others will follow."

Across the crumbling tarmac, Anna's helicopter pilot saw her on the ladder. The wobbling rotors of the Kamov spluttered to life.

"And if he does not listen to reason?"

"Then, Mr. President, we are in real trouble," Anna said somberly. "For the only two men who might be able to stop him will want an explanation, and they will not stop until they get one. And they, unlike Skachkov, have never had any particular loyalty to Russia, its politicians or its spies."

Her final word delivered, Anna began to descend. The president quickly disappeared inside the plane. Anna had barely reached the ground before the ladder was being pulled back inside. The ladder vanished and the door thudded shut. The plane began to taxi almost immediately.

As Anna ran toward her waiting helicopter, the Ilyushin's engines whined in pain and the four big turboprops began to drag the plane slowly forward. Accelerating rapidly, it reached the end of the runway by the time she made it to her helicopter. Engines screaming, it was pulling into the air as she climbed aboard the Kamov. A thin stream of white smoke trailed the presidential plane into the cold sky. Anna's helicopter rose from the battered runway a moment later. As the Ilyushin banked toward Moscow, the helicopter turned east.

A military flight in Tambov would bring her as far across Russian Asia as the Kamchatka Peninsula. Another Kamov would be waiting for her there.

Settling back in her seat, Anna Chutesov pulled off her hood and stuffed her hands in the pockets of her heavy coat.

The three Russian politicians had been given the illusion of safety. Anna Chutesov had no such illusions.

She was flying into the grinning teeth of Death himself. And though she had cheated him before, she had her doubts that she could succeed this time. After all, if she was right, this time Death would come to Anna Chutesov wearing a familiar face.

She closed her eyes. Despite the din of the rotor blades, Anna quickly fell asleep. For the time being, there was nothing else for her to do.

Chapter 14

Instead of offering an igloo control tower and a terminal staffed by walruses and polar bears, the Fairbanks Airport proved to be as modern as any Remo had ever visited.

Outside, the climate left a lot to be desired.

"It's kind of chilly," he commented as he and Chiun walked through the parking lot to pick up their rented Jeep. "I think we might be underdressed."

The cold wind made the hair on Remo's bare arms stand on end. He looked down at his flimsy cotton T-shirt and tan chinos. His pants flapped in the subzero wind.

The Master of Sinanju nodded agreement. "Our current attire would be sufficient for a short trip," he said. "However, we do not know how long this will take. We should plan for an extended stay."

They were at their rental car. Remo popped the locks with a button on the key chain.

"Got you covered," Remo said as they climbed inside the Jeep. "Two sets of Admiral Bird casual outerwear coming up."

Trailing cold exhaust, the rental headed out into the streets of Fairbanks.

BOOTSIE KLEIN WAS talking on the phone behind the counter of the clothing store where she worked in downtown Fairbanks when the bell over the front door tinkled to life.

As she took a good look at the pair walking in off the street, she dropped her voice low.

"I've gotta go," Bootsie whispered to her girlfriend. "No, I'll tell you later.... Yeah. Bye."

She quickly hung up the phone.

"Can I help you gentlemen with something?" she asked the two men.

It was clear that she could. When Bootsie had driven to work that morning, the digital thermometer on the bank had read eight degrees.

The old one wore a yellow kimono that looked as if he'd swiped a pair of curtains from a Chinese brothel. The young one was dressed to unload shrimp boats in Key West, not traipse around the streets of Fairbanks.

"Hi, Boobsie," Remo said, reading her name from the tag on her ample chest. "We need some winter gear. Something to keep us from freezing to death for a couple of days in the tundra. What do you think, Chiun," he said, turning to the Master of Sinanju, "windbreakers?"

"The lining cannot be too thick," Chiun sniffed. "My precious pores must be allowed to breathe."

"You got windbreakers?" Remo asked Bootsie, leaning his bare forearms on the glass countertop. "The early-spring kind, with the liners?"

"You're kidding, right?" Bootsie asked.

"Oh, and we're gonna need hats," Remo added.

"I, um, think your friend's already found one he likes," Bootsie suggested, pointing. "I'll have to check out back for windbreakers."

As the sales clerk ducked through a nearby door, Remo glanced over to the Master of Sinanju.

"Oh, brother," he muttered.

Chiun was standing at a narrow door mirror. Nestled over his bald head was a red plaid winter hat. Long flaps hung down like lazy dog's ears. Happy hazel eyes peeked out from under the pinned-up brim.

"Should I even try to talk you out of it?" Remo sighed.

"Of course, Remo," Chiun replied. "You may do so after I have convinced you to trade in that undergarment you wear as a shirt for a proper kimono." He wiggled his head. His hat flaps flapped.

"Figured I'd be on the losing end," Remo said. He leaned back on the counter to wait for the saleslady. Bootsie returned a few minutes later with a pair of spring jackets. By then, Remo had a plain wool ski cap for himself on the counter.

Chiun immediately plucked one of the coats from the young woman's hand. His arms vanished, turtlelike, up the sleeves of his kimono, dragging the jacket inside. With a few wiggling contortions, he slipped into the windbreaker. His bony hands reappeared a moment later.

"Pay the woman, Remo," he commanded. Spinning, he marched out the front door.

Remo had tugged on his own coat. It was a snug fit around his thick wrists.

"Did you mean what you said?" Bootsie asked as she rang up both coats and hats. "Are you really going outside the city dressed like that?"

Remo stuffed his hat into his pocket. He pulled out his wallet.

"You bet," he said, slapping a credit card on the counter. "And if we find a nice ice floe, a certain lucky someone might just be taking a one-way Eskimo cruise."

Bootsie's face darkened. "That's not a very nice thing to say," she scolded as Remo signed for his purchases. "He seems like a nice old man."

Remo's eyes met hers. "Who said I meant him?" Dropping her pen to the counter, he turned and left the small store.

REMO PICKED up a map from a gas station rack and called Smith from a pay phone. Between the map and Smith's directions, he was able to find the rural route to the Kakwik settlement.

Word had spread of the massacre, keeping highway crews from clearing the road after the recent storm. Luckily, a strong wind had blown snow to both shoulders. Remo's Jeep sped up the middle of the lonely road.

At one point, a crooked sign sprang up from a snowdrift to announce that Kakwik was five miles away. Remo saw something else printed in an unfamiliar language just below the English words.

"What'd that say?" he asked as they raced by the sign.

Chiun's face was bland. "How should I know?"

"I thought you were Sinanju's universal translator," Remo said. "You know every language known to man, including two dozen that everyone else has forgotten about."

"Languages, yes," Chiun admitted. "However, that was nothing I recognized. Those scratches were no doubt caused by a passing bear sharpening his claws."

"Didn't look like Gentle Ben scratches to me," Remo said. "Probably some kind of Eskimo dialect. Since I never saw any piles of whale blubber stashed away back in Sinanju, I guess the natives here never needed to hire an assassin."

The Master of Sinanju tugged at his hat flaps. "I have truly gone from one barbarian land to another," he grumbled.

Three miles shy of Kakwik, an Army blockade rose from beyond a pile of drifting snow. A few trucks and military jeeps were parked across the road

Remo stopped his rental near a wooden sawhorse. A young soldier hurried to the driver's-side window, an M-16 clutched to his chest.

"This area is off-limits, sir," the soldier announced.

"Remo Leiter, CIA," Remo said, holding up a laminated card for the soldier's inspection.

The young man looked from the ID to the two men in the car. Remo wore only a light windbreaker. Beyond him Chiun was playing with the flaps of his hat. He was holding them out like wings while making vrooming airplane noises.

"He's CIA?" the soldier asked.

"You bet," Remo said. "Right now he's practicing for his spy school pilot's exam. Makes you feel confident that America's ready to face the counterintelligence demands of the new century, doesn't it?"

"Rat-a-tat-tat," said the Master of Sinanju, as he and his hat strafed the dashboard.

The skeptical soldier found an officer who confirmed Remo's identification. Ten minutes later the two Masters of Sinanju sped up the main road to Kakwik.

There was really only one real road in town. The rest were merely glorified driveways. The main drag ran up between a pathetic collection of rusty tin huts.

The snow-clogged road became impassable at the edge of town. Remo and Chiun left their Jeep and continued on foot.

The fires inside the dilapidated homes had long ago burned to ash. The huts had grown cold in the day since the massacre. After Colonel Hogue's escape from town and the incredible story he had related of events there, federal and state authorities had descended on Kakwik like a human blizzard. Somberfaced men picked around bodies that lay frozen in the snow.

Some of the tin homes were doubling as makeshift morgues. With no need for refrigeration, some of the dead had been removed from the snow and stacked inside.

There was enough carnage still outside for Remo and Chiun to get a sense of what had happened. As they walked along, Remo noted a few of the National Guard corpses.

"Looks like you can breathe a sigh of relief, Little Father," he commented. "These guys were shot. Since we don't use guns, no Sinanju ghost army to worry about."

The tension on the old man's face never faded. "And if you would use your ears half as much as you use your mouth, you would have heard me say that the one who is to be of Sinanju but not, will summon the armies of death. The prophecy does not say that they themselves will be of Sinanju, nor of what form they will even take."

"Oh," Remo frowned. As he spoke, he noted a group of men clustered near the side of a small house. "Looks like the fun's over there."

He and the Master of Sinanju headed for the crowd. A middle-aged man with an FBI tag spotted them as they approached. "Hold it," he ordered. "You can't be here."

Remo flashed his CIA ID at the FBI agent.

"Any idea what happened?" Remo asked as the agent studied first Remo's identification, then the clothing the two new arrivals wore.

"Not really," the FBI man said. "Nothing beyond what you probably already know. The only witness is an Army Colonel. He was kind of out of it when they found him. Kept saying something about a Russian ghost army. I don't think we can put much stock in that. Aren't you guys cold?"

Remo didn't hear him.

There was an outdoor oil tank behind the nearest house. A body lay beside it. Leaving Chiun, Remo crossed over to the dead man. He crouched next to the body.

The man's head had been removed. It had rolled through the snow until it was facing the tin wall of the hovel.

"Uh-oh," Remo said quietly as he peered at the neck stump.

"Yeah," the FBI man said, walking up beside Remo. "A real mess. There's a couple like that. Weird thing is, there's no one from the other side dead. All this mess you'd think some of our guys would have taken out at least a couple of theirs. I'm thinking that whoever did this might carry off their dead and wounded with them."

"Or maybe their dead are already dead," Remo said grimly. He ignored the puzzled look the FBI agent gave him. "Chiun," he called.

The Master of Sinanju had been studying the ground around where the greatest concentration of men were working. He padded quickly over to Remo.

"What do you make of this?" Remo asked worriedly, gesturing to the decapitated corpse.

Chiun cast a wary eye at the body. "This was accomplished with a single stroke," he pronounced.

"No tools, right?" Remo said. "It looks to me like it was done by hand. And I don't know many people who can lop off a head with a single palm stroke, present company excepted."

Chiun nodded thoughtful agreement. "Here," he beckoned ominously.

Leaving the baffled FBI agent, Remo crossed with Chiun to the spot where the old man had been studying the snow. A long fingernail extended, aimed toward two separate sets of tracks that hadn't been stomped on by authorities.

Remo saw that one pair was deep and clumsy. A normal man's tread. It was the second set that made his stomach sink.

They were light. Virtually invisible to the untrained eye.

The faint footprints seemed to have danced and moved around the victim, hiding in every blind spot that would have been offered by a moving opponent. With footwork like that, the dead soldier whose boots had made the deeper impressions would never have even seen his killer.

More tracks touched the snow near the first: Many more kissed the periphery of the killing field.

There were only two men on Earth capable of such subtle movements. At the moment, they both were staring into the tracks of a killer who, though unknown, remained disturbingly familiar. With a sinking feeling, both men now knew without doubt that they were facing an enemy in control of an army trained in a deadly art forged in blood on the rocky frozen ground of a tiny fishing village on the West Korean Bay.

Chapter 15

Remo looked up from the tracks. His eyes as he stared at the Master of Sinanju were dull. "I don't know about you, but right now I'm feeling real nostalgic for the day our house got incinerated," he exhaled. "Guess this clinches it. We're dealing with a bunch of guys trained in Sinanju."

Chiun nodded seriously. The earflaps of his winter hat bobbed in the chill air. Alert hazel eyes scanned the area.

The desolate town of Kakwik was a slaughterhouse at the top of the world. And somewhere out there lurked an enemy with knowledge of the most deadly killing art to ever brush Earth's frail mantle.

"Hey, what about the Dutchman?" Remo asked suddenly.

The Dutchman, whose real name was Jeremiah Purcell, was one of the most dangerous adversaries Remo and Chiun had ever faced. Skilled in the ancient art of Sinanju, he had spent the past decade in a coma, confined to Folcroft Sanitarium's security wing.

"I checked on him before we left," Chiun replied. "He is still asleep in Smith's dungeon."

"So this is somebody new. Swell," Remo grumbled. "The tracks lead that way," he added as he dragged his ski cap out of his pocket, pulling it down over his ears.

The footprints headed away from the investigators, threading between two tin houses. Others had fallen in line with the path of the leader. Though not as lightfooted as their leader, they were far more graceful than ordinary men.

"We better get a move on," Remo announced glumly. "Another few hours and we'll lose them completely."

Even to their trained eyes, the tracks weren't easy to follow. Wind pushed the powdery snow.

The FBI agent in charge watched the two men wander off alone, their eyes downturned as if following some invisible trail. Shaking his head, he returned to his work.

The two Masters of Sinanju passed between the last hovels at the edge of the tiny village and continued into the snow-blanketed field beyond. In the deceptively close distance, blue snow-capped mountains held up the sky. Nearer, snow-brushed hills rolled up from the vast plain.

They lost the tracks at the midpoint to the low hills. Punishing wind had erased all traces of the men they were following. Rather than turn back, they forged onward.

Four miles out of Kakwik, the faint trail became visible once more at the mouth of a narrow gorge. By now there were only ten of them. At some point on the plain, the others had to have veered off in another direction.

Up ahead, a small range of frozen hills rose from the canyon floor. Beyond them, a thin thread of smoke touched the sky. Exchanging tight glances, Remo and Chiun scampered up a hill, assuming a cautious crouch near the top.

In a shallow canyon below, white shapes scurried around a small fire.

The Master of Sinanju's face grew worried. "They are spirits," he hissed.

With narrowed eyes, Remo studied the figures below. At first glance they did look ghostly. The ten men wore off-white jumpsuits. Masks of cream white covered their faces.

Training his ears on the valley below, Remo quickly found the supernatural give way to the painfully ordinary.

"Unless somebody's changed what makes ghosts tick, those are just guys, Little Father. At least the last ghost I met didn't have a heartbeat."

The Master of Sinanju tipped his head, listening to the sounds of the valley. Ten distinct heartbeats carried to his sensitive eardrums.

"They live," Chiun said in soft surprise.

"Live, breathe and stink like Russians," Remo said, his face fouling at the scent that had just carried to him on the breeze.

Chiun had caught the distinct odor, as well. Abandoning all pretense of stealth, he rose to his full height. His lips puckered in displeasure.

"If they are not spirits," he said, planting hands to hips, "why are they dressed to make us think they are?"

"Winter camo," Remo suggested, getting to his feet, as well. "It'd give them an edge in the snow."

"True Sinanju does not rely on parlor tricks to deceive the eyes of men," Chiun dismissed. "Therefore this whatever-it-is is false and stolen." He hiked up his kimono hems. "Come, Remo," he declared. "These brigands are already dressed for the Void. Let us dispatch them to the place where thieves dwell eternal."

He started down the hill. Remo ran to catch up. "We save one for questioning," Remo insisted.

"As you wish," Chiun said with crisp impatience. Eyes of hazel doom were directed on the men around the fire.

Their last words carried to the group of commandos. Ten sets of black goggles turned to the hill.

If there was shock beneath the masks, it didn't show.

Remo and Chiun hit the valley floor at a sprint. Near the fire, the ten ghostly figures jumped to their feet. A few managed to grab guns. Almost in unison, all ten shifted their weight just as Remo and Chiun caught up with them.

To any other eyes on the planet, it would have seemed as if they'd disappeared into the ether. Remo proved to the nearest man that he could still see him. He did this by planting the barrel of the man's own AK-47 deep into the center of his masked face. Both mask and face puckered. The man reappeared, harpooned on the end of his gun.

"Peek-a-boo, I see you," Remo said as he tossed the body onto the fire. Sparks shot into the air. Near Chiun, a white-clad figure threw out a sloppy power thrust, palm forward, fingers curled.

The cobwebs of Chiun's mouth drew tight at the affront.

"You dare?" the Master of Sinanju cried, his voice flirting with the fringes of outrage. A downward stroke of his own arm severed the offending hand of the commando. As the hand fell, a long talon slid deep into the man's occipital lobe.

The soldier fell like a cold white fog.

A thrill of panic coursed through the remaining eight.

One man tried to shoot Chiun. His smoking gun joined his steaming severed arms in the snow. "That is how Sinanju deals with thieves," the Master of Sinanju proclaimed, swirling into the midst of the men.

Near Remo, one commando attempted a familiar Sinanju attack stance. One balled hand floated like a feathery mallet before his blank white face.

"This one's not so crummy, Chiun," Remo called as he dodged a lightning blow.

When he missed his intended target, the man's shoulder snapped from its socket. He fell screaming to the ground.

"Okay, so I've seen better," Remo mused as the Russian rolled in agony in the snow. "But the pantry shelves ain't exactly stocked these days. Maybe I should keep him. In ten years he might be able to learn something."

"Take a Russian for a pupil and I will disown you," the old Korean warned.

Razorlike fingernails swept across a nearby pair of black goggles. Gashes raked the plastic. The eyes beneath popped like viscous balloons, sending streams of milky inner ocular fluid streaking through the air.

"Why?" Remo asked. "Hasn't there ever been an alcoholic Master of Sinanju before?" With a sharp toe to the forehead, he finished off the commando with the dislocated shoulder.

"Do not be ridiculous," Chiun snapped, eliminating the blinded soldier in the same way. "And pay attention."

Another soldier leaped into the fray.

Remo made an effort not to be distracted by the poetry of movement that was Sinanju. It had been a long time since he'd seen anyone other than Chiun or himself ply the art.

When the commando attacked, Remo bent back at the waist, his spine forming a backward forty-five-degree angle as a sweeping hand attacked the spot where his chest had been.

Another shoulder was dislocated as the commando's forward momentum carried him over Remo. Muscles and tendons strained and snapped, and he flew face first to the snow.

"These guys know about two moves," Remo frowned. A pirouette ending in a crunching loafer heel to the back of the prone man's head sent the soldier to sparkling eternity.

"It is two more than they have the right to know," Chiun replied, advancing on the next man like a vengeful dervish.

The latest soldier shed his goggles in panic. His eyes grew wide at the old man's approach. A muffled shout issued from the flexible white mask that covered his mouth.

Chiun's flashing fingers flew at the commando's neck. With nails strong as a lion's claws and as delicate as a surgeon's scalpel, he pierced the soldier's throat. A sharp twist snicked the spinal cord in three separate places.

His strings cut, the soldier dropped limp to the snow.

As displaced snow rose sparkling into the air, Chiun was already bounding over the corpse.

Behind him three men were charging Remo. Frightened now, they'd abandoned their basic Sinanju training. Knives drawn, they lunged in unison at Remo's flimsy windbreaker.

Before they could make contact, a thick-wristed hand flashed forward. The side of Remo's flattened palm snapped three successive knife blades.

"Lesson number one," he instructed as the shards of tempered steel rocketed skyward. "Weapons cheapen the art."

The three men slammed on the brakes. Eyes invisible behind goggles stared blankly at their naked knife hilts.

"Lesson number two," Remo continued, aiming a single index finger straight in the air. "Don't look up."

One of the men numbly followed Remo's finger rather than his advice. The returning knife blades shredded his upturned face to hamburger.

There was a sharp intake of air from the remaining two as their bloodied comrade slipped from between them. Panicked heads twisted back to Remo.