Disloyal Opposition

Destroyer 123: Disloyal Opposition

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

PROLOGUE

The explosion heard round the world came a full fifteen years before Boris Feyodov would become a whore. On that great day in January 1986, he gave no thought to betraying his country or the great socialist cause, nor to spreading his legs to the capitalist dogs of the hated West.

Indeed, when the Russian general saw the beautiful white cloud from the explosion on his small monitor, he was one of the few people on the face of the planet who realized the triumph it represented for the Soviet Union over the mewling, complacent Americans.

The grainy image of the blast was transmitted live via satellite to the many Japanese television screens that ringed the cramped control room buried beneath the frozen ground of the Sary Shagan Missile Test Center in Kazakhstan.

As the big white cloud expanded, shooting milky streamers into the blue sky, a cheer went up in the small room.

"Perfect!" exulted a white-coated scientist. The thick glasses Viktor Churlinski wore were at least twenty years out of date by Western standards. He eagerly adjusted the glasses on his blunt nose as he spun in his seat to face the standing general. "It went exactly as expected, comrade General," he boasted proudly.

Pieces of the test craft streaked toward the ocean. "Impressive." General Boris Feyodov nodded. Though it was warm in the small room, Feyodov still wore his heavy greatcoat. His huge peaked Red Army hat brushed the low ceiling as he leaned back from the console.

"It is more than impressive, comrade General," Dr. Churlinski insisted. "The curvature of the earth would make this impossible for most. Even the Americans cannot do this at the moment."

So excited was he, the scientist failed to notice the flicker of disdain on General Feyodov's harsh face.

"We have bounced the stream off the atmosphere itself," Viktor continued. "And to hit a moving target seven thousand miles away? It is-" he shrugged "-well, it is more than just impressive."

Viktor spun from the general to his team of scientists.

Men were slapping one another on the back. One had smuggled in two vodka bottles. Drinks were poured and congratulations filled the cramped room.

As the scientists celebrated their achievement, the ringing of the wall telephone went unnoticed to all but General Feyodov.

It was the hotline. There was no doubt that someone from Moscow was calling with congratulations. When the general answered the phone, he was surprised to recognize the voice on the other end. He began to offer a rare smile of satisfaction. But his face froze abruptly.

As he listened to the speaker, the color drained from the general's face.

"But, comrade-" he questioned.

The argument he was about to offer was cut off. With a final order, the line went dead.

When he hung up the phone, General Boris Feyodov seemed suddenly drained of life. The excitement in the bunker was such that no one noticed. Picking up the receiver once more, Feyodov dialed a number on the base. After a few hushed commands, he hung up the phone again.

No one in the bunker noticed the hard scowl that had settled on the fleshy face of the Red Army general.

The party went on for several minutes before the knock came from the hall. Slipping silently from the celebrants, Feyodov stepped over to the sealed metal door of the chamber. Pulling it open, he gave a sharp, angry hand gesture.

Only at the sound of marching boots did Viktor Churlinski and the rest look up. Their exultant faces fell.

Six Red Army soldiers had filed into the room, forming a line on the far side of the consoles near the door. Their youthful faces were etched in stone. And, to the horror of the gathered scientists, their rifles were raised.

A single vodka glass slipped from sweating fingers, smashing on the concrete floor.

Viktor's face held a look of horrified bewilderment. He shook his head in confusion as he turned to Feyodov.

"Comrade General?" he asked fearfully. General Feyodov did not answer the terrified scientist. He stood at attention beside his men, eyes locked on the far wall.

For an agonizing moment, no one said a word. The only sound in the tiny room was the frightened breathing of the huddled scientists. Finally, Feyodov lowered his gaze. With agonizing slowness, his eyes sought those of Viktor Churlinski. In the brown depths of his unflinching orbs, General Feyodov offered something close to an apology.

The general took a deep breath. The scientists watched expectantly. "Fire," ordered General Boris Feyodov. And chaos erupted in the room.

A bullet slapped Dr. Churlinski square in the forehead, burrowing deep into his brilliant brain. Bits of hair-mottled gray matter splattered onto the console behind him.

The other men were shot in the chest and face. Those who tried to run were shot in the back. Flowers of crimson bloomed on white lab coats.

The metallic stink of blood flooded the underground bunker.

A stray bullet crackled into the face of a monitor, sending blue sparks and glass shards into the room. "Watch the equipment!" Feyodov growled as the last body sank to the floor.

Leaving the soldiers near the door, the general strode into the room.

Viktor Churlinski was sprawled back on a console, his glassy eyes staring ceilingward. Feyodov dragged the dead man by the collar, dumping him to the cold floor. Stepping over the corpse, the general inspected the shattered monitor.

The damage was superficial. It would not have affected the primary systems. Seeing that everything else had survived intact, he ordered the soldiers from the room.

As the men marched back through the door, Feyodov crossed the room. He would shut off the power from outside.

Before closing the door on the grisly scene, Feyodov cast one last look around the bunker.

The bodies of Viktor and the others were a minor distraction. His dark eyes were drawn to the computer consoles. The image of the explosion he had helped cause was being replayed by the American news services on several of the monitors.

The world would forever after call the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger an accident. General Boris Vanovich Feyodov knew otherwise.

With a hard tug, Feyodov closed the heavy iron door.

He would not open it again for another decade.

Chapter 1

The socialism that governed Barkley, California, was the cute Western variety where the windows of all the organic bakeries and herbal garden shops were always full and everyone kept their lawns trimmed to a city-council-mandated one and onequarter inches year-round. If it was true that every ridiculous fad to sweep America first began in California, those same fads had first been born on the politically correct streets of the college town of Barkley.

Barkley was the undisputed Mecca for the counterculture, both old and new. On the carefully swept sidewalks of its tidy tree-lined streets, hippies could still be found in all their tie-dyed, potbellied splendor. Aging beatniks prowled the byways in black turtlenecks, bongos tucked under arms. Youths pierced and tattooed represented the new avantgarde.

Couples in bell-bottoms berated neighbors for destroying the planet with Huggies while earnestly washing the cloth diapers of their lone "experience" child under the spray of the front-lawn sprinklers. Men who thought the internal-combustion engine represented the single greatest threat to the world pedaled rusting ten-speed Schwinns to work. Women with filthy bare feet and furry legs lashed themselves to trees that had a date with the chain saw.

The main streets of Barkley were potholed obstacle courses. Someone had noticed a few round rocks at the bottom of one of the holes and instantly declared that they were cobblestones from the days Spain ruled California. In an act of misguided historical preservation, the holes were left to widen. After scented candles and hemp underwear, shock absorbers were one of the best-selling items in town.

The Barkley Historical Society wasn't quite sure what it would do once all the cobblestones reemerged. After all, they were a sign of Spanish imperialism, as well as the subjugation of indigenous peoples. The head of the society thought the townspeople could pry them up and throw them at Antonio Banderas's car if he ever came to town.

A reed-thin woman in her early forties, she was picturing herself hurling a rock as a stunned Melanie Griffith looked on. The woman wore a glimmer of a smirk and a muumuu that looked as if it had been dragged through every historically significant ditch in town.

No one noticed the pleased smile on her face. The rest of those gathered in the small auditorium in Barkley's city hall were too busy discussing the two most significant things to descend on their hamlet since Fritz Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro made a campaign stop there back in 1984.

"How are things going with Buffoon Aid?" asked an overweight man who sat on the dais at the front of the hall. As he spoke, he continued to eat from the container of ice cream on the table before him. The man's own image was plastered across the side of the carton.

Before a hostile takeover that had cost him his business, Gary Jenfeld had been half owner of the famous Vermont-based ice cream company Zen and Gary's. His partner, Zen Bower, sat in the chair next to Gary.

After losing the company that still bore their names and likenesses, the two men had slinked bitterly across the country, settling in the socially conscious town of Barkley.

"Everything's cool, you know," drawled a black woman who sat down the main table from Zen and Gary. She pushed a string of dirty cornrows from in front of her dark glasses.

Yippee Goldfarb was an actress, comedian, producer and middle box on the syndicated game show "Tic-Tic-Blow!" For someone with not an ounce of discernible talent, her success was incredible even by Hollywood standards.

"I got my boys Leslie and Bobby comin' in tonight," Yippee said laconically. "Home Ticket Booth will be beaming us coast to coast via satellite for the next three days."

At the mention of the cable network, Zen offered a thin, knowing glance at the rest of the council. "Good," he said with an efficient nod. Zen began shuffling through his notes so they could move on.

"Uh...a little snag," Gary said. As he bit his lip, dollops of melting ice cream dripped down his coarse beard. "It's about Huitzilopochtli." He raised his hands to ward off the council's sudden worried looks. "The statue's fine," he said quickly. "You can see it if you lean this way."

Gary leaned far to the left.

Long windows lined one wall of the room. The dusty venetian blinds were twisted open. A dark, looming shape-taller than the city hall itself-could be glimpsed through the slats. Fat and tall and menacing, the slab of rock seemed to swallow up sunlight. A dark shadow cast from the huge statue fell like an ancient blight across the windows.

From this angle, a single black eye-as big as a small car and carved in angles of pagan fury-glared at the men and women in the crowded auditorium.

"Four stories of rock-hewn Aztec scariness towering over the main square," Gary winced, shuddering. Chunks of brownies were like brown grout between his yellowed teeth. "The statue's not a snag, per se. It's just that we got a call from Fox News about it this morning."

A ripple of concern passed across the stage. "How did they find out about it?" Zen asked.

"Don't know," Gary replied. "They didn't say. Maybe from some blabbermouth National Review reader over at the university. Anyway, they wanted to know if, since it was the Aztec sun god, we planned on sacrificing any hearts to it. I think they might have been yanking me."

Zen's face fouled. "That's ridiculous," he snarled. "We shelved the heart-sacrifice proposal months ago." His narrowed eyes found a few people in the back row who stubbornly mixed paper and plastic in their recycling bins. "For now," he added under his breath. More loudly he said, "I hope you told them the statue's just a link to the true, nonwhite, original gods of this hemisphere."

Gary nodded. "Then I steered them to the Buffoon Aid benefit. Oh, but I did mention how the kids of Barkley are pledging allegiance to Huitzilopochtli. But they're offering flowers, not hearts. I made that clear."

A hand shot up in the front row. It was Lorraine Wintnabber, chairperson of the Barkley Historical Society. As her dirty arm stabbed high in the air in an unintentional duplication of the Nazi salute, the woman scrambled to her feet.

"No flowers," she insisted.

Men on either side leaned away from the ripe smell rising from her exposed underarm.

Even Zen didn't seem to have patience for Chairperson Wintnabber. Thanks to her one-woman pothole crusade, he was on his tenth set of BMW shocks in as many months.

"What's wrong with flowers, Lorraine?" he asked with a sigh.

"They're living things," Lorraine snarled. Her filthy neck craned out of her muumuu. "'Pick' is just a euphemism for 'kill' when you're a flower. I for one do not think that it's good for the children for us to teach them horticide."

"I hadn't thought of that," Zen frowned. He bit his cheek. "I suppose we could use fake flowers."

Lorraine's arm Sieg Heiled once more. "Not plastic," she warned. "They have to be made from biodegradable paper."

Zen nodded reluctantly. "You're right," he sighed.

"Super," Lorraine enthused. A soiled notebook appeared like magic from the sleeve of her muumuu. "How many hundred should I put you down for?"

The next few minutes were spent haggling with the only woman in town licensed to produce handcrafted biodegradable flowers. It was finally decided that eight hundred was the perfect number that would satisfy the powerful Aztec god Huitzilopochtli without siphoning too much of the budget from the annual Kent State Reenactment and Flea Market.

"I'd better get started on this right away," Lorraine announced to the room when they were done. Notebook clutched in her grimy hand, she hurried from the auditorium.

At the back door, she bumped into a man who was just striding into the hall. Too busy at the moment to accuse him of contact rape, Lorraine scurried around him and was gone.

Far up on the stage, Zen noted the appearance of the new arrival with a flicker of approval. His lips curved to form the superior smirk common to political-science majors and devout Marxists.

The crowd failed to notice the stranger as he took up a sentry position near the door.

"Now, on to the most important item on the agenda," Zen announced from the stage. "I am pleased to finally announce that your council has been doing extensive secret work on the whole United States of America problem. I am sure that most of you had resigned yourselves to living under the oppressive boot heel of the fascists in Washington for the rest of your time on this polluted planet. I am pleased to report, however, that as far as Barkley is concerned, the American century is finally over."

There were sighs of relief around the hall, accompanied by a smattering of applause. "Thank Gaia that's over with," one man muttered.

Zen held up a staying hand and the noise died away.

"I can't go into all the details at the moment," he said. "But I can tell you that we have recently acquired the means by which Barkley can at last declare its independence from America. We will become the first socialist state ever to exist on this benighted continent. We will shake the pigs in Washington from their fat complacency, collapse their fragile police state and signal to the rest of the world that the Revolution has finally begun."

His voice had taken on the strains of a revival meeting preacher. Throwing his arms wide, he gestured to the back of the room.

"And though your council deserves most of the credit, a small measure of our newfound liberty must go to a true hero of the People's cause. My fellow Barkleyites, I give to you the man who will help deliver us to our utopian paradise, Barkley's supreme military commander!"

All eyes turned to the man in the back of the room.

The old soldier was clearly uncomfortable with the sudden attention. As the crowd broke into applause, his back stiffened. The buttons of his Red Army uniform strained to the bursting point from the motion.

The uniform no longer fit as it once did. In the past fifteen years, his flat stomach had given way to a middle-aged paunch. Soft streaks of silver lined the dark hair that peeked out from under his hat. But the one thing that had not changed was the eyes.

Flat brown eyes looked out across the sea of blissful, dimwitted faces. A notch formed in his brow. As the applause grew soft with confusion, then fell to silence, General Boris Vanovich Feyodov looked from one corner of the room to the next. When he was through scanning the crowd, he turned from the room and was gone. Back out the door to the People's Hall.

A few more feeble handclaps trickled to silence. On the stage Zen Bower hid his anger with clenched teeth. He leaned over to Gary Jenfeld. "For what we're paying him, he'd better stop jumping at every shadow," he whispered.

Giving only passing thought to what might make his Russian general so twitchy all the time, the retired ice cream man quickly turned his attention back to making reality from his great socialist dream ...and America's nightmare.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he had lost faith.

It wasn't so much a religious thing, although he didn't know anymore if he towed the orthodox line like the nuns back at St. Theresa's Orphanage, where he'd spent his formative years. Experience had taught him that there was something bigger out there somewhere. He just wasn't sure if anyone-including himself-knew exactly what that something was.

It wasn't a loss of faith in himself or his abilities. Remo was a Master of Sinanju. To be Sinanju was to be at the peak of one's physical powers. To say that he was one of the two most lethal human beings to currently walk the face of the earth was neither boast nor delusion. It simply was. Like the oceans or gravity or the sky above his head.

It was certainly not a loss of faith in friends or family. For one thing, Remo didn't have any friends. And though the orphaned Remo Williams had discovered in recent years that he did indeed have some family, he didn't see them enough to lose faith in them. The only real family member he saw on a regular basis was more constant than even sea or stars. In this individual, he could never lose faith.

No, the thing that Remo had lost faith in was man. Both man as a species and men as individuals.

The sad erosion of trust that brought him to this state seemed to have taken many years. But on reflection, he realized it had been with him for a long time. So long that he didn't much think of it. And so, even though it had sat there as big as can be in the middle of his life for years, he had only just noticed his complete and utter lack of faith in all of humanity that very morning.

Truth be told, he had been nudged into this realization by a meeting with his employer earlier in the day.

Because of circumstances beyond his control, Remo was currently living at Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York. Folcroft was cover for CURE, a supersecret government agency set up outside the pesky confines of the Constitution in order to protect the American republic from those who would do it harm. Remo was CURE's enforcement arm, answerable only to his employer, Harold W. Smith.

The circumstance that had put Remo in such close proximity to his boss was a fire. Specifically, a fire that had burned to the ground Remo's home of ten years.

Remo had been planning a trip to Massachusetts to collect a few items in storage that he had left behind after the fire two weeks before. Since he was heading that way already, Smith had stopped by Remo's Folcroft quarters with a small assignment in the area. It was when he learned the nature of the assignment that Remo realized he no longer had even an ounce of faith in his fellow man.

Remo was pondering just how vast was this pool of personal disillusionment as he parked his rental car on the snowy streets of Lowell, Massachusetts.

The air was cold as Remo stepped onto the sidewalk. There wasn't a hint of the elusive February thaw that was spoken of by many New Englanders but hardly ever seen. Remo suspected that the alleged thaw was a comforting myth the people of the region told one another in order to get them through the last long months of winter.

Even though he was dressed only in a white T-shirt and dark gray chinos, Remo didn't feel the cold. As soon as he left his car, his body compensated for the extreme temperature. Indeed, if passersby had looked closely enough they would have seen just a faint heat shimmer around his bare forearms. Like a desert mirage on an open highway.

Without even a hint of a chill, he walked up the street, stopping on the sidewalk before an old brick structure.

The building was two stories tall with an open cupola sitting high on its slate roof. Three big whitewashed garage doors sat almost directly on the street. Above the middle door, the legend Engine No. 6 was etched into the brick.

The garage doors were all closed. To their right was a man-size door, also closed.

When Remo tried the door, he found it locked. Frowning, he rapped a knuckle against it.

It took two whole minutes of knocking, but a four inch-by-four-inch peephole finally opened in the door.

A pair of very tired eyes looked blearily out on the street. Below them, a giant handlebar mustache sagged out the opening like the paws of a dead ferret.

"What is it?" the fireman yawned. "It's two o'clock in the afternoon. We were all asleep."

Remo smiled. "Hi, I'm a corrupt and stupid mayor who wants to increase my fire department's budget," he said sweetly. "Is Firefighter Joe here?"

The eyes above the mustache grew skeptical. "Yeah, he's here. But he usually deals with fire chiefs, not mayors."

Remo's smile relaxed just a bit. "It's a very sad story about our chief," he confided. "He was with the department for eighteen years but, for some reason we still can't figure out, he went to see a fire last week. It was his first one. He was so scared at all the hot and the orange, he had a heart attack and dropped dead right then and there."

The man nodded. "I been with the department ten years this summer," he commiserated. "So far I been lucky enough to keep away from all that fire stuff."

And, having decided that Remo's story did indeed check out, the man opened the door.

Apparently Remo's knocking had awakened the rest of the firehouse personnel. As he entered, several men were lumbering down the wide staircase at the side of the building, wiping sleep from their eyes with pudgy fingers.

The name Bob was stitched on the T-shirt of the man at the door. He had been given the nickname "Burly Bob" by his fellow firemen. It was a sobriquet that hardly acted to distinguish him from his firefighting brethren, since most of the sleepy-faced men who were even now stumbling tiredly out into the main garage bays of the station house tipped the scales in excess of five hundred pounds.

Scanning the sea of ponderous bellies and sagging bosoms, Remo worried for the fate of any cat unfortunate enough to get caught in a Lowell tree. Come autumn, he envisioned a lot of bent ladders and crippled cherry pickers, as well as dozens upon dozens of feline skeletons clutching desperately on to naked maple branches.

"Hey, Joe!" Burly Bob yelled up the staircase. "Guy's here to see you! Says he's a mayor!" He stumbled away from the door to join his comrades at a big coffee machine.

As the men slurped coffee and devoured pastries from an aluminum-foil-lined tray near the coffeemaker, Remo crossed his arms patiently. He hummed quietly to himself.

Smith's computers had caught Joe Bondurant while tirelessly searching the Internet. Online, he went by the name "Firefighter Joe," offering via the electronic ether a service that was at once abhorrent and completely contradictory to the goals of his chosen profession.

When Joe appeared a few moments later, Remo saw that he obviously didn't share with his brother firefighters a fondness for sweets. Firefighter Joe was tall and thin. His blue T-shirt and trousers looked like collapsed sails. If it weren't for his red suspenders, he would have been tripping on his pants as he walked over to Remo. Like the others, he wore a long mustache that sagged morosely to his chin.

"What can I do for you?" Firefighter Joe asked as he shook Remo's hand. He had no sooner spoken than a bell began ringing loudly throughout the station.

The men at the coffee machine reacted angrily. "Not again," one man complained through a mouthful of sticky Danish.

"It's probably just a whatchamacallit," said another, scowling as he chewed a lemon cruller. "You, know, uh..." He had to think for a second. "A fire."

"Shut it off," Burly Bob griped as he sucked the blueberry goo from the center of a bearclaw. Someone disappeared into the radio room. A moment later, the noisy ringing stopped.

"That's better," Firefighter Joe said. He hitched up his sagging pants. "Now, Bob says you're a mayor?"

Remo nodded. "Mayor Dan Garganzola," he said. "We've got a bit of a budget crisis going on in my town right now. I've had a four-million-dollar surplus in discretionary spending every year for the past five years that I spend, no sweat. But because of some nits in the city council making noise, raising taxes is getting to be a tough sell. Trouble is, I've promised the fire department seventeen new trucks, eight new station houses, two firefighting catamarans and GPS satellite locaters stitched into their infrared union suits."

Firefighter Joe nodded thoughtfully. "So you're looking for, what, an event?"

"I guess," Remo said. "What've you got?"

"First off, we'll handle it for you," Joe said, waving to the other men. "This is our gig, exclusive."

"But I have my own fire department," Remo said. "Don't you just give me the details and I pass the info on to them?"

"No," Joe insisted. "It's ours and ours alone. The deals we cut are almost exclusively with the chiefs or the unions. It's either that or no dice."

Joe had just given him what he wanted most to know. There was only a handful of people involved in this scam.

"Fine," Remo agreed.

"Okay," Joe said. "What we do, see, is we give you a fire. Make it big enough that you have to call for assistance from neighboring communities. That'll give us an excuse to be there. Of course, we'll have been there already, since we're the ones who'll start it for you."

"How do I know they'll send you?"

"Trust me," Joe said. "I've greased enough palms around here to make sure we're the ones who get called. Now a big fire is usually enough for most small towns looking to siphon more dough into the fire department. Warehouse, factory, mall, that sort of thing. Of course, if you want the big one-national media attention and tons of money pouring in from around the country-you're gonna have to sacrifice. A body or two's good. More is better."

"You've done that before?" Remo asked, a slithering coldness creeping into his voice.

"Oh, sure," Joe boasted. There was a smile beneath his huge mustache. "We're all old pros at this."

Joe didn't see the hard look that settled on Remo's face. Smith's information had been accurate.

"For body duty, it's best to hire a couple of guys off the street," Firefighter Joe continued. "Guys who aren't real tight with the union yet and don't mind going out and squirting that wet stuff on fires."

"Water," Remo suggested.

"Yeah, that," Joe said. As he talked, he walked over to a nearby fire engine. "Most of the young guys are still stupid enough to be willing to do the actual fighting-fires part of firefighting. You send them into the building and then seal it off behind them with my own patented method." At the truck now, he patted the gleaming red side. "This'll be what locks the door behind them."

Remo smelled the familiar strong scent in the air. "You filled the water tanks with gasoline," he said darkly. His eyes were flat.

Joe seemed surprised that Remo had guessed their secret ingredient. The special tanks were supposed to be tight enough to mask the smell. The fireman nodded.

"Exactly," he said. "Make it look like we're battling the fire when we're actually feeding it. Afterward, invite the camera crews to watch for five weeks while you sift the ruins for teeth." His smile broadened. "Then sit back and watch the local, state and federal money pour in."

Remo seemed to be soaking it all in. As he looked from Joe to the fire truck to the men gathered around the sweets table, a somber expression took root on his face. He shook his head slowly.

"When I was a kid, Father Hannigan took a bunch of us altar boys to a fire station in Newark," he said softly. "I'll never forget it. The firemen were washing one of the engines out front. They even let us slide down the pole."

"Pete broke our pole," Burly Bob said. He jerked a greasy thumb to a particularly obese fireman. The man's blotchy red face was smeared with confectioner's sugar.

"It was a great day," Remo resumed, not listening. "It was because of that one visit that I knew I wanted a career where I could help people. I almost joined the fire department. But then I figured I could do more good as a cop."

Pastries fell from chubby fingers. All around, the firemen grew rigid, their faces drooping behind mustaches.

"You a cop?" Joe asked thinly.

Remo looked up. "Huh?" he asked. "Oh, no. Not anymore. That was a long time ago."

There was a collective exhale of sugar-scented bile.

"I'm an assassin," Remo supplied. "And officially, I was sent here to kill you guys because you're all guilty of murder and arson. On a more personal note, however, I want it to be known that I'm doing it because you have caused me to lose faith in my fellow man."

As he spoke, Remo noted the not-so-subtle nod from Firefighter Joe. As the lanky man backed up carefully against the truck, Remo sensed movement and heard the sound of wheezing breath behind him. He felt the burst of displaced air as a fat fist was launched at the back of his head.

Remo ducked easily below the blow, turning as he stood.

Burly Bob and Fireman Pete stood behind him. The men were winded from their three-yard walk from the refreshments table. Bob was bracing palms against knees, trying to catch his breath after his unsuccessful assault against Remo. As Remo stood calmly watching the first hyperventilating man, Pete hauled back.

Another fist came forward, this one even slower than the last. Remo leaned away as the big mitt swished by.

"Damn, I gotta start on the treadmill," Pete wheezed.

Remo offered him no sympathy. "Wanna see why they call those handlebar mustaches?" he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he took hold of one drooping fuzzy end of Pete's mustache.

As the beefy man howled in pain, Remo steered him around in a wide circle, slamming him hard against the side of the fire engine. He hit with a clang that left a big-and-tall-size dent in the truck's side. Bells ringing loud in his head, Pete fell to his back.

For an instant, the fireman clutched his face in pain. But all at once, a new idea flashed in his brain. "Ow, my back!" Pete yelled, his eyes growing crafty. "Call the union rep. I have to go on disability."

He tried slipping his hands behind his back, but his great girth prevented him from doing so. He opted to roll histrionically in place like an upended turtle.

"Oh, hell," Remo said, his face growing sour. With the toe of one loafer, he tapped Pete's massive chest.

The fireman's eyes grew wide in shock. Sucking in a horrified gust of air, he clutched at his heaving chest. Face contorting in sheer agony, he opened and closed his big lips like a gulping fish. He went rigid, then limp. When his hands fell slack at his sides an instant later, his face was already turning blue.

And as the life drained out of Pete, the remaining firefighters suddenly seemed to grasp the urgency of the situation.

Panic erupted in the firehouse.

Men used to a completely sedentary lifestyle tried to run for the first time since high-school gym class. They didn't get far.

Before the alarm sounded, Remo had already spun away from the dead man. As the others began their stampede for the door, Remo was already dancing down the thundering line. Flashing hands flew forward, hard fingertips tapping quickly and efficiently against bouncing chests.

One after the other, the firemen fell like obese blue dominoes. None of them had gotten even halfway to the door.

When Remo spun from the last tumbling body, he found Firefighter Joe right where he'd left him. The thin man was rooted in place next to the fire engine, his face frozen in disbelief. Eyes wide with shock, he took in the scene of carnage. Only when Remo began walking slowly back toward him did he realize he should have fled out the back door. Like a cornered animal, he remained in place. "You challenged my faith," Remo accused as he walked across the big bay. "I didn't even know that I had it, but I guess I did. The country's going to hell, but I still had faith in some institutions. Faith that there were people out there who were doing the right things for the right reasons. I had kept a tiny piece of my faith since the moment I slid down that fire pole when I was in fourth grade. But it's gone now. Every last bit of it. And you killed it." He stopped before Joe.

Firefighter Joe looked over at the bodies. He looked back up at Remo, trying desperately to think of the appropriate thing to say.

"Oops ... ?" Joe shrugged hopefully.

"And another thing that ticks me off," Remo said, annoyed. "Since when are firemen called firefighters?"

Firefighter Joe wasn't sure how to respond. Mouth twisting, he crinkled his long mustache in silent confusion.

"Don't bother," Remo said, exhaling in disgust. When he reached out a hand, Joe instinctively recoiled. When the hand went right past him, Joe sighed relief.

Remo grabbed something from the side of the truck. When his hand reappeared, the cringing fireman was confused to see that Remo was holding on to a long high-pressure hose. It was attached to the side of the fire engine.

"What are you doing with that?" Joe asked anxiously. For the moment he had forgotten the doohickey's name.

"Joining the volunteer fire brigade," Remo replied.

Joe didn't have a chance to ask what he meant. Before he could ask another question, Remo's hand whipped up and around. For Firefighter Joe, the world suddenly grew very dark and very, very cramped.

As he stuffed the fire hose over Joe Bondurant's head, Remo's expression was devoid of all emotion. The hose fit down over the fireman's eyes and nose like an aggressive nightcap. Most of Joe's giant drooping handlebar mustache was still visible. When he opened his mouth to yelp in pain, Remo slipped the hose down to his neck. After that it became a tight fit.

Remo had to pop the fat steel ring off the end in order to get the hose around Joe's shoulders. Once he got past the shoulders, it was clear sailing down the length of his body.

In a matter of seconds the fireman was swallowed up by the hose. He had stopped wiggling around the time his pelvis disappeared inside. The bulge that was Firefighter Joe filled a thick spot inside the hose. He looked like the victim of some fire-engine-dwelling South American snake.

A pair of black boots stuck out into the firehouse. Remo closed the end of the hose around Bondurant's toes, then knotted it tightly. Pummeling and kneading the body, he managed to work it up the long length of the hose.

By the time he reached the tank, Firefighter Joe was no longer in one piece. With a dozen fat plopping sounds, his body hit the liquid.

When he was done, Remo folded the hose back up into the cranny on the side of the truck. He turned from the engine, looking out at the bloated bodies lying on the garage floor.

He had hoped that by getting the bad guys, some of his lost faith would be restored. It wasn't. He still felt every bit as crummy as he had that morning.

He wasn't really surprised. At this point he didn't hold out much hope for anything anymore. The world was lousy, he felt crummy and that was that. Case closed.

Still, it would have been nice to feel something. "Crap," muttered Remo Williams, stuffing his hands deep in his pockets.

Leaving the dead firemen on the floor of Engine House Number 6, he strolled glumly from the station.

Chapter 3

Edwige Soisson didn't even try to hide his anxiety as he watched the men scurrying around the concrete base near the massive metal fins of the Every4 rocket. Why should he? After all, Edwige was acutely aware of everything that could go wrong in a space launch. He knew better than anyone that little things could cause major problems.

Back in the early nineties, as a high-ranking official at the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales in Paris, he had been liaison between the CNES and the space center at Kourou, French Guiana. Since Guiana was so close to the equator, it was an ideal location for launching rockets into space. Therefore the Kourou facility, northwest of the port capital of Cayenne, had always been of vital importance to the CNES.

As a rising star at the Space center with a bright future ahead of him, Edwige had been present all those years ago to oversee the ill-fated launch of the Every 44D.

At first it had been a breathtaking sight.

The launch itself was flawless. The rocket had lifted like a timid bird from its platform, rumbling its way into the heavens.

Everything was perfect to the last detail. That was, until the rocket exploded in midair.

When the CNES was finished sifting through the debris, it was discovered that the explosion had been caused by a carelessly discarded rag left in a water circuit.

A rag.

Millions of francs in damage caused by a dirty rag.

Because of this monstrously stupid mistake, the space program of Everyspace had been subjected to endless delays. Since Everyspace was the driving force behind the entire European Space Agency, research programs across the Continent had been disrupted. All because of a single filthy rag.

Of course, a scapegoat was needed. Unfortunately, that scapegoat had been none other than Edwige Soisson. Before the accident he shuttled back and forth between CNES headquarters in Paris and the main test and research center in Toulouse. After the accident he had been put on permanent assignment at the Guianan Space Center.

He had gone to South America for a few days, only to be stranded there for the better part of a decade.

But Edwige was determined to get back to his beloved France for more than just a few vacation weeks a year. To this end his life had become a testament to perfection. Immediately upon being stationed permanently in Guiana, he had begun to inspect personally each and every rocket before launch.

As he checked feed hoses and unclipped side panels to inspect ganglionic circuitry, the technicians regularly snickered at the skinny bureaucrat in his sweaty dress shirt. Despite the jeers, Edwige would not be dissuaded. After all, it was their fault that he was down here in the first place. They were the ones who had left the rag in the 44D, not him. He was determined not to be a victim of their incompetence again.

And as the decade bled into a new century, his tenacity seemed to be paying off. There had been no major accidents since his appointment to French Guiana. His superiors at the Centre National seemed pleased with the way things had gone in the years following the accident.

In fact, Edwige had noted a certain softening toward him of late. Nothing major, but if he continued to perform his duties well, he might finally be freed from exile to return to the City of Lights, the Paris he loved so dearly.

But that would happen only if every launch continued to go flawlessly.

Edwige watched nervously as the last men took the elevator down from the bare scaffolding of the launch tower. Standing more than fifty feet tall, the tower was only slightly higher than the slender rocket itself.

The umbilical lines to the second- and first-stage dimethyl, hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide tanks were detached. The third-stage liquid-oxygen-and liquid-hydrogen tanks had already been separated from above.

All was ready.

In the control bunker, the dark-faced launch supervisor approached Edwige.

"The platform is clear, Monsieur Soisson," he informed the CNES representative. "We have begun the countdown."

Edwige's ratlike face puckered unhappily. "Did they recheck for rags?" he asked. Sweat beaded on his pale forehead.

The supervisor didn't flinch at the question. He had been asked the exact same thing during every prelaunch sequence since coming to work at the Guianan Space Center five years before.

"Oui," the man replied politely.

Edwige nodded. "Proceed," he snapped.

He spun anxiously from the supervisor. Worried eyes looked out the angled, tinted window to the launch area.

At the bank of computer stations behind him, scientists in shirt-sleeves began the last tedious steps that would put the Every rocket into orbit.

They were launching a weather satellite today, a very expensive piece of hardware developed by the Japanese to study typhoon formation in the Pacific. Millions of yen, francs and dollars were tied into this project.

Edwige bit his ragged index fingernail nervously. There was barely anything left to it. He had chewed most of it away earlier that day. As he watched tiny puffs of propellant seep from the open hoses on the launch tower, he switched over to his thumbnail. Nearly everything here was handled by computer. Once the prelaunch sequence was begun, the machines took over. It gave Edwige some small comfort to know that he would not be relying on fallible human beings like the one who had left the rag in the Every 44D rocket years before.

"... trois... deux... un... "

He bit down harder on his nail when the rumbling ignition of the distant rocket sounded. So lost in thought was he that the countdown had hardly registered.

His eyes found focus once more, his fearful gaze directed out the blast-proof window.

As Edwige watched, the slender rocket shuddered on the launchpad, lit on its blunt end by a white-hot burst of flame. The collapsible scaffolding dropped away as the missile wobbled into the air as if pulled by some uncertain, invisible string.

The rocket cleared the launch area in seconds, screaming on its plume of belching flame into the clear sky.

Edwige watched it soar heavenward. With each passing second he allowed another short burst of suspended breath to slip from between his tensely pursed lips.

The missile passed the range where the Every 44D had exploded. As usual, Edwige had counted off the time in his head.

He was about to exhale completely to take in a celebratory gulp of air when the unthinkable happened.

Without any warning from the scientists behind him, Edwige saw a flash of fire somewhere in the second stage. As it soared skyward, the flames enveloped the pointed nose cone, cracking the metal shell of the rocket like a cheap German sausage.

It happened in a flash. In a single, shocking, terrible instant, the entire steel body was a roiling mass of smoke and flame.

Men began shouting behind him.

Alone at the window, Edwige's heart stopped as he watched the rocket-along with its expensive cargo, his career and his hopes of returning to Paris-spread in shattered pieces across the blue South American sky.

Fragments from the rocket began their long, smoking descent to the well-tended grounds of the space center far below.

Somewhere distant an emergency siren began a plaintive wail. To the little man from France, all noise had become hissing static. Edwige Soisson failed to hear anything over the sound of his own pitiful sobbing.

Chapter 4

In his Spartan administrator's office at Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, Dr. Harold W. Smith read the news digests concerning the explosion of the French Every rocket with bland disinterest.

Behind his immaculate rimless glasses, flint-gray eyes flicked across lines of scrolling text. Sitting in his cracked leather chair, his unflinching gaze directed at his computer monitor, Harold Smith affected a pose that was as fundamental to his being as the air he breathed.

Smith was nothing if not a creature of habit. Indeed, everything about him was testament to a man for whom custom was firmly rooted. For Harold W. Smith, change was an enemy that, while impossible to vanquish, was at the very least and as much as possible a thing to be kept at arm's length.

His clothing was always the same. A three-piece gray suit with a complementing striped school tie. When vests went out of fashion years ago, Smith continued to wear his. When fashion once more caught up with him, there was Harold W. Smith to greet it, sartorially unchanged.

He drove the same rusted station wagon to work seven days a week, although in deference to the Protestant ideals of his strict New England upbringing, he tried to keep his Sunday hours shorter than his regular work days.

The office in which he toiled had remained virtually unchanged for the past forty years. The only new addition was the gleaming black desk at which Smith worked. Buried in the depths of the somber onyx slab was a computer monitor on which Smith viewed the events of the world in which he lived, but rarely ventured out into.

But although there were few things about himself or his work habits that he had changed over the years, there were some alterations he had made here and there, some out of necessity and some for the sake of convenience.

Four mainframes hidden behind a secret panel in the basement of the sanitarium had been searching the electronic ether long before the term "Internet" had taken its place in common parlance. Since assuming the reins of CURE as its one and only director, Smith had relied on the tireless efforts of the Folcroft Four to alert him to any criminal activity that might require his agency's attention. However, even though the mainframes were sophisticated, they weren't infallible. There were some connections that only a human mind could make. To make up for their deficiencies, during his tenure with CURE Smith had continued reading several newspapers per day. That had changed slightly in recent years.

Thanks to the increased popularity of the World Wide Web, Smith was now able to read hourly concise digests of breaking news stories that might not otherwise be of interest to the CURE mainframes. The explosion of the Every rocket was one such article.

There was nothing really new in the story. A number of similar malfunctions had occurred in recent years. An exploding Chinese rocket had destroyed an expensive Intel satellite, while another had landed in a residential area, killing many civilians. Other smaller technological firms had witnessed their share of similar setbacks.

Smith wasn't surprised. Although frugal in the extreme, he would never be so foolish as to entrust a piece of billion-dollar equipment to any nation with a spotty success record. It was a lesson his mother had taught young Harold from an early age: you get what you pay for.

Smith finished the report on the rocket's explosion, as well as the digests of the other top stories of the hour. There was some piffle about the dessert preferences of the wife of the recently inaugurated president, as well as a story about some benefit for the homeless in California featuring a large number of comedians. Smith saw nothing in any of these stories that warranted CURE's attention.

Smith was switching from the news digest to the constant data stream collected by the mainframes when his desktop intercom buzzed to life. He stabbed the button with an arthritic finger without looking up from his monitor.

"Yes, Mrs. Mikulka."

Smith's secretary was apologetic. "I'm sorry to disturb you, Dr. Smith, but there's a problem with a patient."

His eyes flicked up to the digital time displayed in the corner of his screen. It was only 8:57 a.m. "Dr. Paulakus is on duty," he said with a frown.

"He's the one who phoned," Eileen Mikulka replied. "He said it was one of your patients in the special wing. He thinks he might be waking up." Head snapping up, Smith felt his heart trip.

At the moment there were only three CURE patients in the security corridor. Smith was careful to keep them separate from the rest of Folcroft's population. One was a young woman, the other was a comatose patient whom he had been told would never awaken again. He prayed that he had been given a misdiagnosis for that individual, for he dared not think what might happen if the other man ever regained consciousness.

He struggled to keep the apprehension from his lemony voice. "Which patient is it?"

"It's the one you've been giving the extra medication to. He didn't say his name. I could check," she offered.

The color drained from Smith's face. His skin went from sickly gray to ashen.

"That isn't necessary. Tell him I will be right down." He nearly choked on the words.

Rising swiftly, Smith didn't even bother to shut off his computer. His ears rang. For the first time in his forty-year stewardship of CURE, he left his office door ajar.

When he hustled out into his secretary's office, Mrs. Mikulka glanced up, a worried look on her matronly face. A phone was pressed to her ear as she waited for someone to pick up at the desk in the security wing.

"Is everything all right, Dr. Smith?" she asked. He didn't even answer. Offering a stiff nod that could not but fuel her concern, he rushed to the door. Smith was so hurried, he nearly plowed into the man who was coming into the office from the hallway. The new arrival jumped in surprise.

"Oh, excuse me," the young man apologized. He was tall and thin, with a broad face and light brown hair. His cheeks were flushed, his greenish eyes anxious.

Smith didn't even acknowledge the man's presence. As the stranger spun a confused pirouette around the sanitarium director, Smith hurried past him and out into the hall.

Heart thudding, the CURE director rushed down two flights of stairs. The fire door led up to a pair of closed doors. A numeric touch pad was fixed to the wall. Smith only realized his hands were shaking when he tried to punch in the six-digit code.

Breathing deeply to steady his resolve, he carefully entered the number. A blinking light went from red to green, and an unseen bolt clicked back. Smith pushed the doors open and hustled into the hall.

An empty nurses' station was to the left. Ten evenly spaced doors lined the right wall. Only two of the occupied rooms were closed. Light spilled from the third.

Bracing himself for the worst, Smith steered a certain course to the lighted open door.

When he stepped into the room, he found a Folcroft doctor leaning over an emaciated patient. Drawing open one lid, Dr. Paulakus was shining a penlight into a brilliant blue eye.

Smith cautiously noted that the room appeared to be in order. An unused television was bolted to a corner of the ceiling. Beside the bed was a bare nightstand. Nothing seemed changed in the least.

Smith allowed himself a thin slip of relief. "How has the patient's condition changed?" he asked crisply as he crossed carefully to the bed.

The doctor turned sharply to the voice. "Oh, Dr. Smith. I didn't hear you come in." He stood up from the patient, slipping his penlight in the pocket of his white smock. "I hope I didn't worry you. It's not an emergency, but I think we need to discuss the patient's treatment."

"I have outlined his needs to you," Smith said slowly, his gaze straying to the man in the bed.

A mane of flowing, corn-silk hair spilled across the starched pillowcase. The pale, delicate face was almost feminine.

"I know," Dr. Paulakus said, shaking his head. "But the situation has changed. It's amazing given the level of potent sedatives he's been administered, but I think he's coming around. It's almost as if he's trying to will himself awake."

Smith's worried gaze returned to the doctor. "How so?"

"Well, his pupils aren't responsive yet, but he's giving other signs. I'd noticed over the past few weeks when I'd come in to deliver his morning injections that his hands were flexing a lot. It was a sort of repetitive clenching. At first I figured it was just a reflex motor action, but then I noticed this."

He pulled up one side of the hanging sheet. When Smith saw the patient's forearm, his jaw dropped. For years now, the arm had been a thin, fragile thing. As delicate as the bones of a bird.

It was muscled now. Not overly so, but toned and fit. He noted with sinking dread that the wrist had grown to an unusual thickness.

As Smith watched, the hand clasped and opened, clasped and opened. The narrow chest rose and fell in rhythms that were at once hypnotic and terrifying.

"The last few days I've been asking him to squeeze my hand," Dr. Paulakus was saying, oblivious to the look of quiet dread that had settled on his employer's face. "I'm certain that my voice is reaching him on some level, because he's responded every single time."

Smith's face and voice grew stem. "That kind of contact is not advisable," he warned.

The doctor seemed surprised by the rebuke. "I don't think there's any need for concern," he said, allowing a hint of condescension to brush his tone.

Smith's expression told another story. Even his body language telegraphed his apprehension.

Of course, Dr. Paulakus couldn't know the whole story. The fact was, Jeremiah Purcell, prior to the dozen years he had spent under permanent care at Folcroft, had represented a threat like none other CURE or its field operatives had ever faced. Remo and his teacher would not allow Smith to eliminate him. For a danger like Purcell, there was only one other real treatment option. It had worked. Until now.

"Increase the dosage," Smith ordered. "Under no circumstances is that man to regain consciousness."

The doctor hesitated. "Dr. Smith, I know you want to keep the patient's meds high," he argued, "but the circumstances are changing. He's showing signs of recovery."

"That cannot be allowed to happen," Smith replied tightly. "In this state he can do no harm. Awake, he is a danger to himself and others."

Dr. Paulakus hesitated. "Dr. Smith, I don't usually have a need to question you on matters of medical ethics," he ventured. "But these circumstances are highly unusual. I believe this man is recovering from whatever brought him into our care. Even the criminally insane have rights. Now, I don't know why such a patient would be at a private institution like Folcroft to begin with, but if he is as you say and he's regaining consciousness, rather than leave him in a perpetual medicated coma, maybe we should consider transferring him to a facility that's better suited to handle dangerously psychotic patients."

Tearing his eyes from the slumbering form of Purcell, Smith turned his full attention to the Folcroft doctor.

"Dr. Paulakus-" he began. It was as far as he got.

There was a sudden flash of movement from the bed. Both men spun in time to see the clenching hand lash out.

It moved as if independent of the rest of the body, swinging up and around. As quick as a wink, it dropped, connecting with a pounding thump against the night table.

The thick metal surface of the heavy nightstand buckled into a V shape. As quickly as it had lashed out, the hand withdrew, settling back to the patient's side.

Purcell resumed his rhythmic breathing.

Dr. Paulakus couldn't believe his eyes. He pulled his stunned gaze from the buckled night table to the slumbering patient. The man seemed perfectly at peace.

"What was that?" the doctor gasped.

"Your patient is awakening," Smith said evenly. "I would highly suggest that you not allow that to happen."

Dr. Paulakus didn't need to be told again.

When Smith left the room a minute later, the doctor was administering a second dose of tranquilizers. As he brought the syringe to the sleeping man's pale forearm, the doctor's hands were shaking.

Chapter 5

Driving back to Quincy for what would likely be the last time, Remo took a short detour.

As he steered down the familiar street, there was a faint flicker of sadness in his deep-set eyes. Everything looked exactly as it had when he left in the dead of night two weeks before. That was, until he got to the corner.

The old converted church that had been his home for a decade lay in charred ruins. Shrunken black beams formed an angry twisted lattice on the stone foundation. Yellow hazard tape had been strung around the site. The tangled plastic streamers fluttered in the winter breeze.

The surrounding buildings looked lost and alone. The absence of Castle Sinanju was like a missing front tooth. A glaring hole in the character of the neighborhood.

On the way there, Remo had considered stopping. But now that he was here, he changed his mind. Instead, he continued on to the corner intersection and took a right.

He avoided looking in the rearview mirror.

Five minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot of the Quincy Motor Lodge. The motel was the strip kind with two levels of doors that faced the main parking area. He left his car in a space near the swimming pool, which was closed for the season, and headed for the building. When he pushed the door to his efficiency open, he found everything pretty much as he'd left it.

Ten lacquered steamer trunks were stacked against one wall beyond two unused beds. Just where Remo had left them two weeks ago. In fact, they appeared to be completely untouched. He realized that this wasn't the case as soon as he saw the room's occupant.

Near the small stove at the back wall, a wizened figure fussed over one of the glowing orange burners. He wore a black silk robe decorated with elaborate silver-and-gold embroidery. When Remo had left a few hours before, the old man had been wearing a simple yellow kimono.

Chiun, Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju, the most lethal assassin to ever walk the face of the planet, had obviously found more than just a change of clothes in his trunks. He was steaming some rice in an old cast iron pot. Both pot and rice had apparently been stashed away somewhere in the recesses of the old Korean's luggage.

As he closed the door behind him, Remo welcomed the starched aroma.

"Inventory all done, Little Father?" he asked. His back still to his pupil, the old man nodded. "All was as I left it," he replied, his voice a precise singsong.

Remo was relieved. He'd paid a month's rent on this room, leaving ten of Chiun's fourteen trunks here the night their house burned down. He was glad they'd been left alone, since he was in a lousy mood today. He seriously doubted that having to dispose of some nosy chambermaid's body would break him out of his current frame of mind.

"Good," Remo said. "I'll ditch the rental we brought up from New York and pick up a minivan. That should give us more than enough room to haul the rest of these back."

Chiun nodded wordlessly. The wisps of yellowing white hair that sprouted above each shell-like ear on his otherwise bald scalp danced in eddies of steam created by the boiling water. As he offered his silent agreement, a shrill whistle sounded from the stove.

Gliding into the room on silent feet, Remo saw a silver teapot on a back burner. It had been hidden by Chiun's frail body.

"No wonder those trunks are heavy as lead," Remo said. "You've been hauling half the pantry around with you for the past thirty years."

"Be grateful that one of us is prepared," Chiun replied. "For we could not fill our empty bellies with the toothbrush and spare undergarments that are your only belongings."

"So sue me for not dumping the whole K-mart housewares department in my Samsonite carryon," Remo said, hopping up to a sitting position on the narrow counter. He watched the old man work for a moment. "Can I help?" he offered.

Chiun shook his head. "Everything is done," he said, flicking off the burners with fussing hands.

A ratty old table for two sat on the worn linoleum floor of the kitchenette. Chiun had lopped off all but one foot of each of the legs, so that the table was now close to the floor. He had piled the chairs between the two beds.

Picking up the long-necked kettle in one skeletal hand, he breezed over to the table. On the cracked Formica surface sat two wooden bowls and a pair of bone china teacups-all retrieved from his trunks.

Chiun filled their cups. After tapping out a few scoops of brown rice into the bowls, the two men settled cross-legged to the floor.

Chiun used his long fingernails as chopsticks, while Remo ate with his fingers.

They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes. As they chewed their rice, each man's unspoken thoughts flitted to the same gloomy sentiment.

For years the town of Quincy had been their adopted home. The cloud that had forced them to leave in January had dissipated somewhat while they were away. But now that they were back, the gloom had settled in anew.

It was Remo who finally broke the silence.

"I drove by our house on the way back here," he said.

The old man looked up. His hazel eyes were bland. "Why?" Chiun asked, his voice flat.

"I don't know," Remo admitted. "It's Quincy. I figured I'd see if people were looting the ash piles. I kind of wish I hadn't, 'cause it didn't make me feel any better."

Chiun's eyes narrowed. "Better than what?" he asked.

"Than how I feel right now," Remo said. "That job Smith gave me put me in a real cruddy mood." He shook his head. "Ah, I guess I'll get over it," he muttered. Shoulders slumping, he hunched morosely over his bowl.

As his pupil chewed glumly, the Master of Sinanju silently pushed his own empty bowl away. A troubled shadow settled across the old man's parchment brow.

"Are you feeling well, my son?" the Asian asked.

"Huh?" Remo frowned, glancing up. "Yeah, I'm okay. I guess."

Chiun didn't seem convinced. "What exactly disturbed you about Emperor Smith's assignment?" he pressed.

This was the honorific the elderly Korean had applied to Smith since he first came into the service of CURE. The Masters of Sinanju had for five thousand years hired out to khans and kings. Chiun refused to work for anything less than an emperor; therefore the title had been bestowed and retained, despite Smith's early and frequent objections.

"Everything," Remo answered. "Crooked firemen aren't supposed to exist in America. But I met a bunch of them today. Worse thing is, most people probably wouldn't give a crap in a hatbox about it. They've learned not to care. America's used to a steady diet of corrupt cops and shifty politicians and people lining up to stick a shiv in their neighbor's back 'cause the dog took a whiz on the gas grill. But they don't have to live it like we do. The news to them is just another TV show. Bored with society collapsing down around your ears? Just switch over to Regis Philbin asking the dingbat du jour 'Who's buried in Grant's tomb?' But I can't switch it off. And I'll tell you something, Little Father, it sucks that I can't."

As the younger man spoke, the Master of Sinanju's expression had only grown more troubled. "This is not right," the old man intoned once Remo was through.

"Damn right it's not right," Remo agreed. "I'm glad for once you see it my way."

At this, Chiun waved a dismissive hand. "That is not what I meant," he said, his face souring. "America is as degenerate as any nation that allows its subjects to choose its king with paper ballots. If your Founding Fathers had tried this democracy foolishness in ancient Rome, Nero would have squashed their rebellion and fed them to the lions."

"Three cheers and a tiger to Thomas Jefferson for being born at the right time," Remo said dryly.

"America is what it is," Chiun persisted. "As assassins, we should not be troubled by this. Yet you are. It is your attitude, not this society, that is not right."

"Yeah, you're right, Little Father," Remo said. "I think I'll go out and do back flips down the street. There are firemen who do part-time work as arsonists and murderers. Hip-hip-hooray." His face collapsed into a scowl. "I'd think that a guy whose house just burned down would be a little more sensitive to all of this."

"My loss, while great, has nothing to do with this," Chiun said. His face sagged. "Oh, Remo, I was afraid this might happen." His tufts of hair were thunderclouds of soft despair as he sadly shook his aged head.

Remo felt a twinge of concern. "Afraid what might happen?" he asked.

"Your grave affliction," the old man intoned. "It did not expire at the proper time. Oh, why did you tempt the gods as you did?" In the deepest crevices of his wrinkled face dwelled a look of dark concern.

Remo racked his brain. He couldn't remember ticking off any deities lately. "Okay, I give up," he said finally with a shrug. "What are we talking about?"

"Your Master's disease," Chiun explained. "The Hindu curse imposed by one of their gods that makes you feel it is your responsibility and yours alone to stamp out all injustice in the world. It occurs in every fifteenth generation of Sinanju Masters. I had hoped that you would break the cycle, since you are not from the village proper, but rather from the more remote outskirts of town."

"Newark, New Jersey's about as far on the fringes of Sinanju's suburbs as you can get, Chiun," Remo pointed out. "And I thought that curse was lifted back when we were in Africa a few months ago."

"It should have been," Chiun said. "But like a fool you could not rejoice in your recovery. In the dying days of your illness, you did open your big, foolish mouth and implore all the gods at once to leave you as you were."

Remo bit his lip. "Woops. I did kind of do that, didn't I?" he said.

"Yes, you did," Chiun confirmed darkly. "And I fear that your prayers have been answered." Remo's brow dropped as he considered the old man's words. "I don't know about any of that fruity stuff," he said. "But if it's true, it'd be just my luck. All the times I prayed for parents or a new bike when I was at the orphanage, heaven's phone was off the hook. First time I open my yap without thinking, bammo."

Chiun raised a thin eyebrow. "The first time you opened your mouth without thinking was the first time you opened your mouth," he said aridly. "And back at the almshouse where you frittered away your youth, you were praying to the false God of the carpenter's dowagers. This time, your ill-chosen words fell on the right ears."

"I don't know, Chiun," Remo said skeptically. "I don't think my attitude's the product of any thousand-year-old curse. I think this is just the way I am."

"It is," Chiun said. "Now. And thanks to you, it is probably how you will always be." In a flurry of robes he rose to his feet. He gathered up their empty bowls and breezed over to the small sink.

As Chiun ran rusty water over their dishes, Remo remained seated on the floor.

"I don't think it's a bad thing," the younger man said after a few long moments of consideration. "I mean, this job rots. I shouldn't be blind to what's going on. So I get mad every once in a while. So what?"

"Mad is acceptable. Madness is not," Chiun said. "I suppose the best we can hope for, given the circumstances, is that you understand the difference some of the time."

"Maybe we can do that one better," Remo offered. He took a deep breath. "We could leave," he exhaled.

At the sink, Chiun slowly turned. His hooded eyes showed no emotion. "Leave what?" he asked.

"Leave here. America. Quit," Remo said. "Quit Smith, quit CURE. Go to work for somebody else. It's tough watching this country go to hell in a handbasket. Maybe it'd be good for me to go somewhere where I don't have to see it close up." His face turned sly. "I hear the melons are nice in Persia this time of year."

Chiun pursed his papery lips. "Persian melons grow properly only in Persia. They have been nothing but seeds and rind since the time of the Parthians."

"Okay, Mesopotamia. You like Mesopotamia, right? Didn't Master Hupka the Lesser even invent the wheel for them he liked them so much? We can go there."

"Hupka gave them the wheel to facilitate the transport of tribute back to Sinanju," Chiun said guardedly. "To this day we have not been given proper credit for its invention. However, Mesopotamia is now Iraq. And no matter what you now say, you would never be satisfied working for them."

"Yeah, Saddam Hussein is kind of a prick," Remo agreed. "Tell you what, throw a dart at a map. Wherever it lands, we pull up stakes and go there."

Chiun shook his speckled head. The gentle tufts of cotton-candy hair fluttered delicately at the motion.

"I am too old to be uprooted by your whims," he said. "America is the only nation currently able to afford both of us, and so we stay here. Someday you will leave this land. Perhaps that time will not come until the day you are forced to inter my bones with those of my ancestors. But I will not leave now because you wish to flee fate."

Remo accepted his words with a somber sigh. "Okay," he said. "But next time you're itching to leave, don't come carping to me." He rose fluidly to his feet. "I'm gonna go rent us a van." Turning from the kitchenette, he left the motel room.

Once he was gone, Chiun turned an eye to the closed door. On his parchment face was a look of deep concern.

Remo was making his life much more complicated than it had to be. As usual.

Eventually, the old man tore his hazel eyes from the cheap wood veneer. On silent, shuffling feet, he went to the table to collect their two empty teacups.

WHEN HAROLD SMITH returned to his secretary's office, he found someone waiting for him.

The nervous young man Smith had nearly knocked over in his haste to get down to the security corridor was seated on a drab green vinyl chair near one of Mrs. Mikulka's well-tended rubber plants.

Smith's thin lips tightened as the man rose to greet him.

"Dr. Smith," the visitor said, offering his hand as he stood. The cast on his right wrist jutted from the end of his sleeve. "I didn't realize it was you when we..." He pointed awkwardly over to the door where they'd nearly collided. "Can we talk in your office?"

Smith seemed unhappy for yet another intrusion in his normal routine. "Who are you?" the older man asked.

"He's a salesman, Dr. Smith," Mrs. Mikulka offered from her desk. "Medical supplies, wasn't it?"

The man floundered for a moment. "Well, yes," he said. He seemed unhappy with the admission.

Smith's look of displeasure become one of bland impatience. "You have no appointment," he said.

"This is kind of awkward," the man said, lowering his voice. He glanced at Smith's secretary. "I really couldn't phone ahead. If you could just give me a minute, you'll understand why."

"Perhaps," Smith said. "But I am quite satisfied with all of our current suppliers. I suggest you leave your business card with my secretary."

The man was growing frustrated. "I-I don't have one," he said. He found that he was clenching his teeth as he spoke. Forcing himself to relax, he offered a tight smile. "Just one minute, Dr. Smith. Please. I promise you, you won't be disappointed." Smith's face soured. He glanced at his old Timex. "I will give you no more than three min-" he began.

He got no further. The jangling of an oldfashioned phone sounded from his office.

The Folcroft director looked to the door, annoyed with himself for having left it ajar. The ringing blue contact phone sat in full view on his desk.

"Please wait here," Smith said to the salesman. Before the salesman could object, the older man marched from the room, closing the door behind him.

As the door slammed shut in his face, the young man scowled. Exhaling impatience, he took up his post in the corner waiting-room chair.

"Dr. Smith is a very busy man," Mrs. Mikulka offered thinly. The blue-haired woman didn't seem to approve of the young man's impatience.

"I can see that," the visitor muttered tightly. He did not look at the secretary as he spoke. Rummaging on a small table near his elbow, he found a two-decade-old Reader's Digest. Slouching in his chair, he began reading an article about the upcoming 1980 presidential race.

SMITH PICKED UP the phone on the third ring. Through the big picture window at his back, winter wind attacked the choppy white waves of Long Island Sound.

"Smith," he said, settling into his chair. As he spoke, he noted with a frown that he had left his computer on.

"What's with answering on the third ring?" Remo's voice said by way of greeting. "You slowing down in your old age, Smitty?"

"I was otherwise occupied," the CURE director replied. "There is a potential problem with one of our patients. I fear the Dutchman is beginning to regain consciousness."

Remo was instantly wary. "Purcell?" he asked. "Why, is he making people hallucinate there again?"

"No, nothing so extreme yet," Smith said. "It has the potential to be worse, however. He appears to be growing stronger physically, and there is some suggestion of cognitive ability. I have increased the dosage on his sedatives, but I want you and Chiun to examine him on your return."

"That's why I was calling," Remo said. "We're ready to leave now. If I run every red light, we should be back home in a couple of hours."

"I don't believe it's necessary to hurry," Smith said. "But do not dawdle."

As he spoke, habit drew his eyes to his computer. He found that the CURE mainframes had pulled an article in his absence. When he read what it was, he frowned.

"Can do, Smitty," Remo said. "See you in a few."

He broke the connection.

At his desk, Smith absently hung up the phone.

An expression like that of a curious squeezed lemon had formed on his angular gray face.

Assuming his earlier haste had caused him to err, he checked to see if he had inadvertently pulled the file from elsewhere in the system.

He found that he had not. The mainframes were functioning properly. And yet, there was the article staring up at him from the glowing depths of his black desk.

It was the same story he had read-just before being called down to Jeremiah Purcell's room. The article about the Every4 rocket explosion.

Coupled with the story was another article pulled from the electronic netherworld by CURE's basement mainframes. Apparently a three-year-old NWS satellite that had been put in place to study hurricane formation over the Atlantic Ocean had malfunctioned. For reasons unknown at the present time, the satellite had abruptly gone dead.

Other than the fact that the payload of the French rocket had been a similar weather satellite, Smith saw no connection between the two stories. But he had learned long ago to trust the rigid data analysis of the Folcroft Four.

Forgetting all else, Smith turned his full attention to his computer. If there was something larger at work here, perhaps he would have uncovered whatever it was by the time Remo and Chiun returned from Massachusetts.

Chapter 6

One hundred miles above the windswept New England coast, a slender object raced silently through the limitless void of space. Though night was fast approaching the easternmost shores of the continent far below, unfiltered light from the star Sol glinted starkly off the lazily spiraling object's sleek black exterior.

Though its movement appeared slow, the boomerang-shaped object rocketed with a speed surpassed only by the rotation of the planet far below.

Few nations on Earth possessed the ability to even detect, let alone track the object. Not that very many would have been interested in seeing it even if they were technologically able.

For even though the object that grabbed glimmers of white sunlight was man-made and streaked across the heavens at breathtaking speeds, it was only four inches long.

The small titanium securing bracket had been used in the repairs of the Hubble telescope. Accidentally released by one of the mission astronauts, the right-angled metal wedge had joined the thousands of other bits and pieces of junk that had been dumped into orbit around the planet in more than forty years of space exploration.

It was assumed that all of the orbiting garbage would eventually approach the Earth's atmosphere, finally burning up on reentry. And though a few voiced complaints about this sort of dumping, most experts agreed that the only real problem posed by space junk was to those who worked there. Since spacecraft and astronauts were at high risk if they were to come in contact with any debris, every piece of material abandoned in orbit was carefully logged and monitored by space-faring nations. Including the seemingly harmless metal bracket.

Named 0.440B, the bracket's orbit occasionally brought it alarmingly close to an expensive CableSys commercial satellite in geosynchronous orbit above the east coast of North America.

The cable company had balked when it learned of the existence of 0.440B. However, CableSys had been assured that, although their orbits sometimes made them stellar neighbors, the two objects would never, ever intersect. Since 0.440B's orbit was deteriorating, it would only grow farther away. The satellite, CableSys executives had been assured, was in no danger whatsoever.

As usual, this day the wedge of metal had drawn within yards of the CableSys satellite-two cold strangers in the silent void of space. On its lower orbit, 0.440B had pulled abreast and was about to draw past the bigger object when something unexpected happened.

0.440B hopped.

It happened in the wink of an eye. The bracket suddenly veered violently off course and shot sharply upward, tearing out of its decaying orbit.

Firing at an impossible velocity, the curved metal tore through the shell of the communications satellite. The satellite's delicate exterior buckled as the alien missile ripped a deep gash into the interior.

The ensuing sparking explosion was consumed by the vacuum of space.

A backup computer failed as 0.440B tore an angry path of destruction through the center of the satellite. By the time it punched through the far side, circuitry was already collapsing. Wires flamed out and died.

Critically wounded, the CableSys satellite listed and grew still. A gaping hole through its middle revealed the distant white specks of billion-year-old stars.

And somewhere in that endless black sea, the melted lump of metal that had been insignificant little 0.440B continued to rocket like a furious comet, trailing a tail of charge particles.

"YOU MISSED," Zen Bower complained.

"The target was acquired," General Boris Feyodov replied tersely. But in spite of the words, his fleshy face was drawn in a look of calculated displeasure.

"By mistake," Zen insisted, angrily noting the general's own seeming disappointment. "You hit that other-" he waggled a disapproving finger "-doohickey thingamajig and banked it into the satellite."

They were both standing in the cramped interior of the supreme defense bunker, the secure haven built for the ruling council deep below the potholed streets of Barkley.

A few men worked around the rocky tunnel. Most were Americans from Barkley University. Only a small number of Russians had been imported for this project.

Old Soviet-era equipment lined two walls, augmented by newer American computers. One of the new Packard Bells had just finished interpreting the telemetry from space. A slow-motion simulation reenacted the collision of the piece of floating space junk with the CableSys satellite.

"I explained to you that punching through the atmosphere might warp the signal," Feyodov said as the computer-generated version of 0.440B tore through the far side of the communications satellite. Represented on the screen as a simple caret shape, the small fragment of space junk raced off the edge of the monitor and was gone forever.

"I figured you were just being cautious," Zen pouted.

"I am that as much as possible," Feyodov replied. "But I am also realistic. Our tests many years ago demonstrated limitations with the device. Targets within the atmosphere can be acquired only if we are given a narrow enough window. Space launches are excellent test objects, for they originate from specific locations at predetermined times. That is how we could destroy that French rocket with such ease. There are problems, however, once we leave the atmosphere."

"Satellites are locked in orbit," Zen argued. "They should be easy for you to lock on to."

The Russian general took a deep breath. The buttons on his old Red Army uniform strained against his protruding belly. A few moth holes were visible in the dark wool.

"'Lock on to' is an inaccurate term," Feyodov insisted. "Understand, it is like aiming a big, cumbersome gun. Rapid aiming and precise target acquisition are not possible, which is part of the reason why the research was discontinued. It was originally hoped the device could be employed to stop incoming nuclear missiles. But due to speed, randomness and unknown launch locations, at the time of its development the weapon could not be applied to hostile enemy missiles."

"So you're saying not only can we not get the satellites like you promised, but Barkley might get nuked?" Zen complained. He put his hands on his hips. "Well, that's just perfect."

"America will not drop a bomb on California," General Feyodov muttered dismissively.

"Easy for you to say," Zen insisted. "You grew up in a socialist paradise. I've had to spend my entire life in this bourgeois capitalist wasteland. Genocide, imperialism, threats to cut funding to the NEA. Goddamn hostile takeovers that steal the ice cream empire you built with your own two hands right out from under you. I know what those Wall Street fat cats and their Washington cronies are capable of." The general was not convinced.

"There are forces to fear that have nothing to do with your government," Boris Feyodov said ominously.

Unconsciously, the Russian's dark brown eyes flickered from side to side, as if searching for ghosts in the shadows. Zen had noticed this peculiar habit of his supreme commander ever since he'd brought the general to America.

"What the hell are you doing?" Zen demanded. Feyodov's eyes skipped back from the darkest corner of the room. "Hmm?" Feyodov asked. "That thing you always do-looking around when there's nobody there. What's with that?"

It was a habit Feyodov had developed only since the start of this enterprise. He hadn't been aware that anyone had noticed him doing it. Spine straightening, he locked his eyes on the retired ice cream man.

"There is a piece of hardware that will help us to overcome our displaced targeting problem," the general said, distracting Zen from his question.

Zen frowned. "I thought you said we couldn't do it."

"Not with the current equipment we are using here, no," General Feyodov agreed. "But the technology I refer to was developed by our space program for independent reasons after the funding was pulled from this project. It could enhance our systems. However, it is in Russia and as you know, items of this kind are not easily procured." His eyes lowered. "With the proper motivations I could get it for you."

It was a pitch the ice cream man had heard far too much lately. Zen crossed his arms. "How much?" he asked.

"Three million," Feyodov replied. "American dollars, as usual."

The ice cream maker scowled at the general's favorite choice of currency.

"Why can't you ever be a good people's general and ask for rubles?" he said. "Better yet, be a purist and do it for the Revolution?"

The Russian bristled. "There is always another promised revolution on the horizon," General Feyodov said coldly. "And from revolution to revolution, we must still eat." The hint of anger that pinched his sagging face was lost on Zen.

"Yeah, yeah," Zen said.

He was thinking about how to get the money. His source wasn't tapped out; that was certain. But given his distaste of all things capitalist, Zen tried as much as possible to limit contact with his backer. Plus, there was his own stock portfolio to think of. At this point in the game he didn't want to upset the applecart.

"I'll see what I can scrape up," Zen said. Turning from the general, he marched down the long corridor of hollowed-out rock. His sneakers squeaked once on the raised metal catwalk, then he was gone.

Feyodov shook his head at the ease with which he had just upped his payment. Of course the CableSys satellite in its lazy orbit had been a fat, easy target. The old Soviet equipment hadn't been capable of such a feat, but thanks to the computer advances of the intervening decade, a single PC with the right programming made such precision effortless. He had just made a deal to purchase yet another shiny, worthless bauble for these fool Americans.

More money for Boris Feyodov. More wealth to corrupt his already hopelessly tainted soul.

In the hollow center of his gutted heart, he felt sick at what he had become. But that would all change soon. Soon he would have his revenge. And when the day of reckoning at last came, the very ground would boil.

Until that time, he was a prostitute.

With morose eyes Feyodov looked down at the monitor.

Although the screen was new, it was the same station at which he had watched the Challenger explode fifteen years ago. The digitally-enhanced contours of the CableSys satellite continued to roll in dead orbit around the planet.

The general shook his head. "The whore will have his day," he vowed softly. Dropping into a chair, Feyodov unfastened some of the more uncomfortable buttons on his uniform jacket.

Chapter 7

With troubled eyes of flinty gray, Harold Smith scanned the data that slipped across his computer screen.

The explosion of the Every4 rocket had been followed too quickly by the malfunctioning weather satellite. Linking those two events, the Folcroft mainframes had identified something as a potential problem. But it remained only a possibility. Given an absence of further information, the basement computers could not make a positive connection between those two separate incidents.

At first. That had changed a few hours ago. Two had now become three.

Smith had learned that a satellite for the company CableSys had gone black for no apparent reason. Harold W. Smith was not a man who ordinarily trusted instinct, far preferring to truck in cold, hard facts. But he had to admit there were times in his life when his gut was a far better barometer than even his trusted computers. And at the moment he could not help but feel there was something larger going on here than three coincidental malfunctions. Still, there was not enough yet to commit CURE's resources. In the privacy of his tomb-silent office, Smith was looking for the link that would connect these three events.

So engrossed was he with the scrolling information on his monitor that he failed to hear the sound of a vehicle slowing to a stop behind the sanitarium. Only when the horn honked was he shaken from his worried thoughts.

Smith leaned back in his chair, the better to see the loading dock that extended from the back of the sanitarium.

Twilight had begun to crawl up from the Sound, settling like a velvet cape among the barren winter trees. In the wan gray light, Smith saw a minivan parked near the main delivery entrance. Remo hung out the window, waving him down.

The CURE director twisted from the window. Smith quickly backed out of his system, shutting off his computer with a hidden stud. When he hustled out of the office a moment later, his secretary exhaled great relief.

"Oh, Dr. Smith," Mrs. Mikulka said. Her full face was flushed with mild tension. "You just missed him." Her troubled eyes glanced to the hallway door.

Smith frowned. "Who?" he asked.

"That supplies salesman," Mrs. Mikulka explained. "The one you said you'd meet with? He's been waiting out here for hours. I know how you don't like to be disturbed, so I didn't buzz you all afternoon. I figured you'd let me know when you wanted to see him. Should I have interrupted?"

Face troubled, she bit her lip.

Smith had completely forgotten about the salesman.

"No," he said. "I was otherwise occupied."

"That's what I assumed," Eileen Mikulka said. "Well, he'll be very happy that you're finally available. He just stepped out for a moment to use the rest room. I must admit, he's a very patient young man."

"He will have to be more patient," Smith said, edging for the door. "I don't have time for him now."

"Oh..." Mrs. Mikulka said hesitantly. "Very well." She seemed unsure what to do.

"Please ask him to return tomorrow morning," Smith said. "And this time please set up a proper appointment for him."

Turning crisply, he hurried from the room.

Mrs. Mikulka seemed uncomfortable with the order. After all, in her opinion, the young man had displayed a patience that was almost unheard of for anyone of his generation. Still, it was not her place to question Dr. Smith.

She pulled out her employer's appointment book. Although it was early February, there were no marks yet visible in the binder. Like most of the ones she'd purchased since coming to work for Dr. Smith, she assumed the crisp white lines would remain virtually blank for the bulk of the coming year. Dr. Smith rarely had appointments.

With a blue Bic disposable, she dutifully began to log the Folcroft director's first meeting of the new year.

SMITH QUICKLY UNLOCKED the big garage door and rolled the sheet of corrugated steel upward.

Remo and Chiun stood on the rust-smeared concrete delivery platform on the other side. Remo's rented van was backed up to the dock. The younger Sinanju Master's face was troubled, while the older's was grave.

"Emperor Smith." Chiun bowed tightly.

"Hey, Smitty," Remo echoed, ducking under the door even before it had rolled all the way up. "Any problems while we were on the road?" Chiun padded in after him.

Smith shook his head, slipping his key ring back into his pocket. "None," he replied. "I instructed the attending doctor to call me directly every half hour if there was any change. The sedatives appear to be working."

"I must see him," the Master of Sinanju pronounced.

"Of course," Smith nodded.

The CURE director pulled the garage door back down, locking it securely. Taking the lead, he brought the two men back through the cellar. A short hallway led to another locked door, which, in turn, fed into the basement corridor where Remo and Chiun shared quarters. Passing through a pair of fire doors, the three men climbed one flight of stairs to the secure wing. Smith's security code gained them access.

When they entered Purcell's room, the Folcroft doctor looked up sharply. At Smith's order, he had been sitting at the patient's bedside the entire afternoon.

To Remo, Purcell looked as he had the last time Remo had seen him. His pale face was at peace. Soft blond hair spread like a nimbus around his head.

"Dismiss your quacksalver, Emperor," Chiun commanded as he swept to the bedside. "I would examine the Dutchman without the intrusion of prying Western eyes."

Dr. Paulakus seemed more confused than insulted. More interested now in the strange little Asian in the kimono than in his patient, the doctor allowed himself to be led outside.

Once he had escorted the Folcroft physician from the security wing, Smith returned. The CURE director closed the door to the room tightly.

Only when it was just the three of them in the hospital room did the Master of Sinanju pull back the sheet on the sleeping patient. His face darkened when he noted the Dutchman's toned arms.

Wordlessly, he went about his examination. Slender fingers tapped joints from foot to shoulder. His skeletal touch lingered lightly on the thin neck, feeling the coursing blood. When he was through, he pulled the sheet back up.

At the foot of the bed, Smith and Remo waited expectantly for an answer. The old man turned to them.

"He heals," Chiun said. His eyes were flat. Remo shot a glance at the Dutchman. Purcell's placid expression was the antithesis of his own worried look.

"How long we got?"

"I cannot say for certain," the old man replied seriously. He tucked his hands inside the voluminous sleeves of his black kimono, clasping bony wrists. "The Emperor's soporifics continue to keep him in this state. If not for them, he would likely be awake now. I can only say that the time is not imminent, but that it is coming."

Smith exhaled stale bile. "That is some comfort, I suppose," he said. He pulled off his glasses, massaging the bridge of his nose with tired fingers.

"Says you," Remo said.

"Master Chiun," the CURE director said, "are there any means by which you can prolong this state? You are able to paralyze others with a touch, why not the Dutchman?"

"Because he is Sinanju," Chiun said simply.

"Other means then," Smith said, replacing his glasses. "Perhaps your Sinanju amnesia technique. If you could supply the proper suggestions under hypnosis, maybe-"

"No dice, Smitty," Remo interrupted. "Rip van Winkle's on his way back to the land of the living, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it right now."

Hazel eyes directed on the sleeping form of Purcell, the old Korean took a deep breath.

"That is correct, Emperor," Chiun said. "However, that time will be later rather than sooner, so there is no great urgency. In any event, since we are bound by tradition not to harm another of the village, this is a Sinanju problem and one for which you need not trouble your regal head. When he awakens, Remo and I will deal with the Dutchman."

"Yeah," Remo said dryly. "We've done a whizbang job taking care of him so far. Say, maybe we should get him a balloon bouquet and a card that reads 'Welcome back to the land of the living. Sure hope you don't kill a bunch of people this time.'" The Master of Sinanju's face was bland.

"When he finally does awaken, I certainly hope you have come up with a better plan than that," Chiun sniffed.

"Me?" Remo asked. "What do you mean me, white man?"

But Chiun didn't answer. His prognosis on Purcell delivered, the old man breezed past Remo and their employer. Without a backward glance, he left the room.

"What did he mean, me?" Remo demanded of Smith.

Smith only shrugged. He clearly wasn't comfortable with any aspect of the situation.

"Very well," the CURE director said, sighing. "We will cross this bridge when we come to it."

"It ain't very damn well from where I'm standing," Remo said, shaking his head. "Everything's just piling on for me lately. My house, my curse, now this." He sighed loudly. "I better get Chiun's trunks before the parking brake goes and the freaking minivan rolls into Long Island Sound." Sullen, he turned and left, as well.

Alone, Smith cast a last troubled eye over the sleeping form of Jeremiah Purcell. Gaunt face a well of deep concern, he backed from the room. Shutting the door tightly, he snapped off the lights from the switch out in the hallway.

The clicking of his cordovan dress shoes faded to silence down the hall.

Long after Smith left, the faint rustling of sheets sounded from the darkened room as Jeremiah Purcell continued to relentlessly open and close his pale hands.

BY THE TIME SMITH returned to his small office suite, his secretary was gone for the evening.

The outer office was empty.

Relieved that he no longer had to deal with the persistent young medical-supplies salesman, Smith stepped into his inner sanctum. He found a yellow Post-it note stuck to the edge of his desk. On it, Mrs. Nlikuka's neat handwriting reminded Smith of his 9:00 a.m. appointment with the salesman the following day.

As Smith read the name, something sparked his distant memory. It seemed familiar somehow.

After a moment's hesitation, he decided that it was a common enough sounding name. Smith committed the young man's name and the time to memory. Satisfied this time that he would not forget, he folded the note and dropped it into the wastebasket that was tucked in the footwell of his desk.

With practiced fingers, he located the concealed stud that turned on his computer. The glowing square of the angled monitor winked on beneath the desk's surface.

When the screen came up, a fresh report awaited him. His face grew grave when he saw that it was connected to the three earlier satellite mishaps.

Smith took but a few scant moments to read the digest. Concern grew to puzzlement.

"Odd," he said to the empty room.

Getting up, he retrieved an old black-and-white portable television set from a wooden file cabinet in the corner.

As a sop to the times, he had finally given up on his tinfoil-wrapped rabbit ears. A thick black cable wire trailed in his wake as he brought the small portable set to his desk. He had turned it on and was tuning to the proper channel when his office door popped open.

Remo and Chiun slipped into the room on silent feet.

The CURE director barely noted their arrival, so engrossed was he in his labors.

"Now the truth comes out," Remo said. He nodded to the small television as the two men crossed the room. "If you're hiding out at work watching Judge Judy just to dodge your wife's meat loaf, Smitty, I'm telling."

Smith was watching the TV, gray face registering confusion. "This is most peculiar," he frowned as the two Masters of Sinanju rounded his desk.

On the screen a sweating man bounced and jumped across a wide stage. His wild physical contortions were matched in energy only by his frantically flapping lips.

"You got that right," Remo said. His thin lips formed a scowl. "That's Leslie Walters."

Smith arched an eyebrow. "You know him?" he asked.

Remo shot him a glance. "Climb out of your crypt once in a while, Smitty," he said dryly. "Everybody knows him. I think he even won an Academy Award a few years back. He's been in a bunch of movies. What's Up, Saigon, Lady Doubledees. Oh, and he did the big-screen version of Hagar the Horrible. He was a stand-up comic who got his first break on some crappy TV show years ago. 'Puke and Cindy,' or something like that." He tipped his head, considering. "On the one-through-ten unfunny hyperactive dickwad meter, I'd have to rate him somewhere in the eighteen- to twenty-five range."

At Smith's side, the Master of Sinanju observed the prancing figure on the TV through slivered eyes. "This cavorting lunatic must be of Mongol descent," Chiun determined.

"What makes you say that?" asked Remo.

The Master of Sinanju gave a matter-of-fact shrug. "He is tall and his eyes are round, but what other reason would he have to drape himself with animal pelts if not to pay homage to his Turki yurt-dwelling ancestors?"

"I got news for you, Little Father," Remo said. "That ain't a fur coat."

Chiun cast a skeptical eye at his pupil. He examined the screen carefully for a moment. All at once, his wrinkled mouth formed a shocked O. "What manner of monkey-man is this?" he hissed.

"Told you," Remo said. "I think Walters was voted the hairiest man alive by People magazine. I heard a rumor that some PETA protesters even threw red paint on him backstage after a big dance number at last year's Oscars. He took off his shirt, and they thought he was wearing a mink tuxedo."

On the screen the comic wore a T-shirt and slacks. His exposed arms were covered with a thick brown thatch. Even more hair jutted from collar, ears and neck. Some said Walters had to shave his eyelids and the tip of his nose twice daily just to keep five-o'clock shadow at bay.

"Why are we watching one of the biggest A-list A-holes in Hollywood?" Remo questioned Smith. "My computers have linked him to a chain of events that I have been investigating," Smith said. He could not hide the uncertainty in his voice.

He quickly sketched in the details of the three satellites that had been destroyed over the past twenty-four hours, including the fact that no one had linked the three events as anything more than just unfortunate coincidence.

"So what does Walters have to do with it?" Remo asked once the CURE director was through. "Was someone forcing them to beam one of his movies to cable? Because if that's the case, you can't blame any self-respecting satellite for committing hara-kiri."

"I long ago installed a program in the mainframes that allows for real-time filtering of closed-captioned programs," Smith explained. "At first it was intended as a tool to read political speeches that might not otherwise receive print coverage. I expanded the original parameters after the upgrades I made to the CURE systems a few years ago. This show is being broadcast live and is closed-captioned. Apparently, Mr. Walters has made numerous references to the destruction of the three satellites during the course of a bizarre, incoherent monologue." As he watched the comic bounce desperately around the stage, he shook his head. "Is this man on drugs?" he asked, amazed.

"He lives west of the Rockies," Remo said, as if this explained everything. "You want us to check him out?"

Taking one last look at the wildly gyrating comedian, Smith snapped off the TV.

"I think not," the CURE director said. "While the connection seems troubling, he is obviously demented. I would not put much weight in his nonsensical ramblings."

Leaving the TV on the edge of his desk, he settled into his worn leather chair.

"Suit yourself," Remo said. "The way things are going for me lately, bumping off a twit like Leslie Walters would have been a ray of sunshine. No surprise to me that I don't get to have any fun." He sank cross-legged to the floor.

Smith began typing. As he worked, he felt eyes watched his every move. After a minute of trying to ignore the two men, he finally looked up over the tops of his glasses.

Chiun still stood beside the desk, his face an imperious wax mask. Before Smith, Remo was seated on the threadbare rug wearing a bored expression. Both men stared at Smith.

"Don't the two of you have something better to do?" the CURE director asked thinly.

"Us?" Remo said. "Naw. Chiun checked to make sure all the stale mints and oyster crackers were still in his trunks back in Taxachusetts. They're all unloaded and stored in his room downstairs. Until you give us something to do, we're free as birds."

"We are not free, but we are competitively priced," the Master of Sinatrju quickly inserted.

"Yes," Smith said carefully. "Perhaps you are hungry. The cafeteria is closed by now, but per your request there is an ample supply of fish and duck in cold storage. You may feel free to help yourselves."

"We ate back in Quincy," Remo explained. He patted his stomach. "Brown rice, a little dab'll do ya."

Smith pursed his lips. With a hint of perturbed frustration he returned to his work. The sound of his fingers drumming on his desktop was interrupted a few scant seconds later.

"You been dyeing your hair, Smitty?"

Drawing on deep reserves of patience, Smith raised his white head. "Perhaps I was in error," the CURE director said levelly. "It might be a good idea for you to check into Walters after all. I'm not sure if there is a connection, but it would do no harm to make certain. The event he is performing at is called Buffoon Aid."

Remo nodded. "I've heard of that. A bunch of comics get together for charity."

"Precisely," Smith said. "The telethon is held to raise money for the homeless."

At Smith's side, the Master of Sinanju's supremely uninterested expression disappeared in a flash. "The money raised goes to those without homes?" he asked.

"Yes," Smith said, nodding.

"Remo and I are currently without a home," the old man pointed out, one eye narrowing with cunning.

"I don't think they'd be too worried about us, Little Father," Remo said. "Besides, if you need a second house, it's only because you've got so much loot stuffed in the one back in Korea it's starting to dump out the chimney."

There was a whirl of angry silk at the side of Smith's desk, followed by a rush of displaced air. Remo felt a bony toe kick him soundly in the leg.

The black blur that had flown around the desk resolved back into the shape of the Master of Sinanju.

"On fluttering wings of doves do Remo and I happily hasten to do your will," Chiun sang to Smith. He kicked Remo again. "Get up, lout," he snapped in Korean. "We are going house hunting."

"Okay, okay," Remo grumbled in the same language as he rose to his feet. "But I for one am not buying any of this. We're just getting the bum's rush because Smitty doesn't want us around."

"And you were looking forward to listening to his wheezing and creaking? Now let us hurry, before all the best palaces are taken." He spun back to his employer. "Where are these generous souls located, Emperor?" he asked in English.

"The Buffoon Aid telethon is being held in Barkley, California," Smith replied. "I will book you a flight."

With a look of great relief he began typing once more, this time with earnest purpose.

"They're not gonna give you any money, Chiun," Remo warned the Master of Sinanju as Smith worked. "And they're sure as hell not giving you a house."

"They will when they hear my tale of woe," the old man said. A frail hand brushed his thin chest. "A poor old man in the twilight of his life, far from the land of his birth, forced out into the cold streets by a cruel quirk of fate." He pitched his voice low. "I will be certain not to tell them that the quirk of fate was you and your firebug friends."

"I did not burn down our house," Remo said, scowling.

Chiun waved his words away. "Be sure to play up the orphan angle." He tipped his head as he examined his pupil. "Your shabby clothes are perfect for the part."

"No one cares about full-grown orphans, Little Father," Remo warned him.

"Try to walk with a limp," Chiun suggested slyly.

Chapter 8

It was known only as the Institute.

The massive concrete building was a bully that menaced a block of Kitai Gorod in Moscow, east of the Kremlin. The ground-floor windows had been bricked over years before. On the upper floors, shadows played over recessed brick and mortar where there had once been panes of translucent glass.

At street level, a locked metal gate led up a short drive to the sealed entrance of an underground garage. Although this appeared to be the only way in, no one in the surrounding neighborhood had ever seen it open. The fat chain that wrapped the gate was rusted from age.

Those who came and went from that building did so by means unknown.

In the waning days of the old Soviet empire, some protesters unlucky enough to have found their way onto the streets around the Institute had vanished. Disappeared without a trace, presumably swallowed up by that menacing colorless building. They were the lucky ones.

Others who passed by with placards and makeshift weapons had died in the streets. Not from poisons or bullets. They had simply toppled over where they stood. Some said an invisible wave of fear generated by the Institute itself had caused otherwise healthy men to drop dead.

Even after the Cold War ended, the Institute remained. The Soviet Union had long collapsed beneath the relentless marching heels of history, yet when the new age dawned, that huge building was as it had always been. Unchanged from the days when the last premier walked the halls of the Kremlin.

No one was quite sure what went on inside, which was good enough for the people who lived nearby. Most did their best to keep from even looking at the building as they passed by it, let alone pry into its secrets. Many avoided the Institute altogether, taking torturous routes through the narrow, winding streets of Kitai Gorod that brought them no closer than two blocks from the sinister building that was a throwback to another era.

There was one person, however, who could not avoid the big building or the secrets it held.

The office of the Institute's director was buried deep below street level. If there was automobile traffic, it went unheard so far beneath the ground. An explosion big enough to level the building far above could go off without this area of the complex even knowing it.

The director's office was small, without ornamentation.

A television played on a pressboard stand in the comer. The used table had been picked up for twenty U.S. dollars at a bazaar in Zagorsk. On the TV screen was a grainy image of two men walking down a crowded boulevard.

The director watched the television with a vacant stare.

On the metal desk sat a plain black phone, out of date by at least thirty years by Western standards. Next to the phone was an open bottle of French wine and a lone glass. The wine was being given a chance to breathe. There was irony in that, which was not lost on the director.

As the silent television played to blankly staring eyes, the old-fashioned phone suddenly jangled to life.

It came as no surprise.

The weary figure pulled up the heavy receiver. "Yes, sir."

"I have studied the information you have sent to me," the voice of Russia's president said without preamble.

The former KGB official who now ruled Russia had no time for pleasantries. It was a most worrisome attribute. The director of the Institute understood all too well that a man with power who was always in a hurry was a man to fear.

"That data is already old," the director said. "There has been another incident since the first two. A commercial communications satellite."

The president swore softly. "Do the Americans know about this yet?" he asked.

"Not that I have been able to ascertain. I have no doubt, however, that elements of their government will eventually make the connection."

The president hissed angrily. "Feyodov," he growled. "Who knew the coward would grow claws?"

"It is my belief that he is driven by fear, revenge and greed. All are motivations that can make the most timid man seem brave. Had I been given his dossier as I requested after the events in Chechnya more than a year ago, I would likely have seen this coming."

"Forgive me," said the president with parched sarcasm, "but when I assumed this post, my predecessor failed to tell me of your clairvoyance." His voice grew firm. "You must stop him," he ordered.

For the first time there came a flicker of emotion on the director's face. The head of the Institute leaned forward. The rusted metal springs of the desk's matching chair creaked in protest. A soft sound in the small room.

"You are aware, Mr. President, that the Institute exists only to advise. We have no field agents."

"You have an entire building of field agents," the Russian president insisted. "Use them."

This was the one command the director feared. "Those men are not traditional field agents," the Institute head explained. "They were not trained for such a task. Unleashing them on American soil would surely bring unwanted attention directly to this organization. I would advise you to use SVR agents."

The SVR was the agency that had succeeded the KGB.

"No," the president declared, his voice steely. "This cannot be allowed to spread any further. If you will not use the men at the Institute, you will go yourself."

"That would be an unwise use of materials," the director said. "In addition, it would create an unacceptable risk."

"That was not a request," the president growled hotly. "You were a field agent once. Arrogant enough to think that you were better than any man, as I recall."

In another life, the two had met briefly. It was back before the director had gone into a decade of deep cover. When the president assumed his leadership of Russia, he had been dismayed to learn that this testament to conceit was still alive. Worse, that the former agent had been made head of something as important as the Institute.

"You will go to America," the president commanded. "You will kill General Feyodov, and you will suppress this information at all costs. Am I clear on this matter?"

There was no room for argument. The head of the Institute nodded to the empty office.

"Yes, sir."

"And be warned," the Russian leader said. "If you fail, there will be an open grave waiting for you on your return." With that, he severed the connection.

Coming as it did from a former KGB man, the words were no idle threat. The black office phone fell heavily back into its cradle. So that was that. America awaited.

And in that small basement office there was an old fear in the director's blue eyes that had absolutely nothing to do with the Russian president's threat.

Chapter 9

Remo and Chiun took a late flight from JFK, arriving at San Francisco International Airport at dawn. Although the temperature was only in the high fifties this early in the day, the sun and lack of snow was a welcome change for Remo.

"This sure beats the hell out of freezing in the New England icebox," he commented as they made their way to the rental-car agency.

"I like New England," the Master of Sinanju sniffed. "It was near enough to Smith without being too near. And despite the unpleasant name, there were no Old Englanders anywhere to be seen."

"Both pluses, I suppose." Remo nodded. "Still, if we do get a new house, my vote's for someplace hot."

"And the moment your vote counts more than mine, you may live in the inferno of your choosing. Until such time, the sacred scrolls dictate that it is for the Reigning Master to decide where he and his apprentice will live."

"Where do the scrolls ever give a rat's ass about where we're supposed to live?" Remo asked, smelling a scam.

Chiun waved a hand. "Somewhere in the back, I believe. Now, please, Remo, hurry and rent us a carriage. I do not want some street-reeking lazybones to claim squatter's rights over our new residence."

Still dubious, Remo rented them a car. They took the Bayshore Freeway across the Oakland Bay Bridge. It was a short trip up the eastern shore of San Paolo Bay to Barkley.

Remo sensed trouble as soon as they hit town. A battered Volkswagen Beetle came puttering toward them, a faded McGovern For President sticker plastered to its bungee-corded front bumper.

The Master of Sinanju's face grew displeased the instant he saw the ancient yellow car.

"Were not those ghastly contraptions banned by your government?" Chiun asked.

"No," Remo said as the car passed by. "Worse, they started making them again, even uglier than before. We won the war, but the Germans get the last laugh."

Chiun didn't hear him. A bony hand suddenly clasped Remo's forearm.

"There!" the old man screeched, stabbing a quivering nail at the windshield. "Yet another approaches." His breath abruptly caught and he squeezed Remo's arm even tighter. "Can it be?" he exhaled.

"Hey, trying to drive here," Remo said, wincing at the pressure being exerted on his forearm.

"It is," Chiun said, with a trace of unaccustomed fear in his voice. "Remo, turn this vehicle around at once!"

"What the-? Chiun, will you let go of my goddamn arm, for crying out loud?"

"A pippie!" the Master of Sinanju cried. In a flurry of frightened fingers he ducked below the dashboard as the second Volkswagen chugged by.

The car was covered with rubber daisies and peace symbols. The driver looked as if he shopped at the dump for his clothes and bathed once every two decades whether he needed to or not.

"What's gotten into you, Meryl Streep?" Remo asked.

"Turn this vehicle around at once!" Chiun shrieked in horror from the footwell.

"Huh? Why the hell should I do that?"

"Some wicked magic has obviously cast us back in time to the most odious era in your nation's history," the Master of Sinanju insisted. He tried grabbing for the steering wheel, but Remo held on tight.

"We haven't time traveled," Remo insisted. "This is just Barkley. As long as you keep your hands inside the car at all times, the locals won't bite."

A gasp from far below.

"Horror upon horrors!" Chiun wailed. "This is your fault for taunting the gods. I have become victim of their excess wrath. If we reverse our direction, perhaps we can escape this nightmare."

Chiun blindly tried to shift into reverse. Remo held tightly to both the steering wheel and gearshift lever.

"Will you knock it off?" he snapped. "I told you, we haven't gone through a time warp."

Hazel eyes appeared above the dash.

"I do not know what those words mean, but that was the most warped time since time began. I would gouge my eyes from my head and flee into the wilderness before reliving that dismal era."

"Okay, first order of business-no gouging," Remo insisted. "We're still in the present, those cars were really old and if you grab the wheel one more time I'm buying a banana plantation on Maui for both of us and having the natives hoist the Sinanju flag."

Sensing his pupil's certainty, the old man eased cautiously up to the edge of his seat.

"Purchase what you want where you want, but you will be swinging from your ancestral trees alone," the Master of Sinanju said. "Now explain this place quickly." Wary eyes watched the road ahead.

"Barkley is lost in time, but not in any supernatural way," Remo said. "I blame the college. There isn't a bigger factory for PC Jim Morrison hashhuffers than higher education. And the freaks they've got running Barkley U are the worst poncho-wearing gladiolis this side of the touring company of Hair. Dopey professors plus dopier kids equals LSD trips on daddy's credit card and vintage Volkswagens still tooling around the streets."

Chiun was caught between skepticism and his long-held belief that any lunacy was possible in America.

"Why would your nation allow a place filled with mental defectives to exist?"

"Don't know about you, but I'd rather keep all the assorted nuts in one can," Remo said.

And because it was the first time he could remember his pupil or America ever making sense, Chiun settled cautiously back in his seat. Nevertheless, he kept a careful eye on their surroundings as they drove deeper into the city.

Remo was surprised by the large number of potholes on the main streets. Their rental car bumped and bounced its way to the center of town. As they drove, he had noted a shape looming up over some of the low buildings.

At first he ignored it, but when they came to a set of traffic lights, he saw through a break in the buildings two massive black eyes staring down at them.

"What the hell is that?" Remo remarked, looking up at the huge statue at Barkley's center.

"It appears to be the image of some god," Chiun observed.

"Some god is right," Remo said sarcastically. "Looks like a big black turd with the top lopped off."

"That's right, Remo," Chiun said blandly. "Perhaps this is the one god left that you have not yet insulted. I will bring you back to Sinanju after this latest angry deity has transformed you into a pillar of salt. The fish salter can chip bits off of you to cure the catch for the long winter months." He watched the statue with quiet reverence.

"That'd almost be worth it just to get someone in that dump of a village to do an honest day's work," Remo said.

The eyes of Huitzilopochtli followed them as they headed for the main square.

The driving soon became impossible. Remo ditched his car on a rutted side street. The two men continued on foot.

Like a full moon at midnight, the Huitzilopochtli statue seemed to always be in the sky at their shoulder as they walked along the sidewalk.

"Let's hope the Buffoon Aid benefit's inside somewhere," Remo said. "That statue's giving me the creeps."

They found a reed-thin woman on a street corner near the town square. Dressed in a big, filthy muumuu, she looked like a dirty stick draped with a circus tent.

The woman sat on the sidewalk cutting colored scraps of paper into clumsy flower shapes. As she worked her scissors, the white tip of her tongue jutted from between her pale lips. A cobblestone pried up from a hole in the street kept her paper flowers from blowing away.

As they stopped before the squatting woman, Chiun's face took on a glint of quiet fascination. "Excuse me, ma'am," Remo said.

The scissors paused in midsnip.

"'Ma'am?'" Lorraine Wintnabber sneered up at him. "What kind of patriarchal cave did you crawl out of?"

"The kind with liquid Tide and bars of Dial that aren't dehydrated from nonuse," Remo replied.

"Soap pollutes our precious waterways," Lorraine said. She resumed clipping away.

"Since you're the first noncartoon person I've seen with actual stink lines floating off them, my vote's for sudsing up the mighty Mississip," Remo said. "Now, while my nose is still attached, you mind telling me where that big stand-up comic show is being held?"

The woman was still deeply involved in her work. She hadn't even looked up while Remo spoke. "That way," she snarled.

Lorraine waved to a big auditorium across the street from Barkley's city hall. Remo saw HTB vans parked out front, their rooftop satellite dishes aimed skyward. The legend "An AIC News-Wallenberg Company" was stenciled in small print on the side panels of each of the vans.

"Now, beat it," she said. "I've got eight hundred of these things to do by the day after tomorrow and I've only got twelve done so far."

She finished clipping another ragged flower. With great care she delivered it to the pile of finished ones, clapping the muddy cobblestone back in place.

"This may be none of my business, Dirty Harriet, but wouldn't it be easier if you did that inside?" Remo asked.

"It's too dark," Lorraine said, her eyes on her scissors.

"Turn on the lights."

"Electricity is an invention of the military-industrial complex designed to keep the masses weak and pliable by making them stay up late watching Johnny Carson."

This time when Chiun squeezed Remo's arm, there was a look of questioning joy on the old man's face. He was watching Lorraine intently.

"Can it be?" the Master of Sinanju whispered under his breath to his pupil.

Something else down the block caught the old man's eye. With sudden glee he bounded a few yards away.

Brow furrowed, Remo tracked his teacher. The wizened Korean stopped near a college-age man. The Barkley University student was passing out colored fliers to pedestrians. Remo noted that they were printed in the same colors as those the woman at his feet was cutting.

"In case you didn't hear out on Neptune, Johnny Carson retired years ago," Remo said to the seated woman. "Thanks for the directions."

He started to leave, but Chiun was hurrying back toward him, dragging the pamphlet-hawking student in his wake. The old man's face was rhapsodic.

"I have found another one!" Chiun squealed.

"Another what?" Remo scowled. "And stop pointing that thing at me."

He leaned back from the kid the Master of Sinanju held before him. The young man had a black sweatshirt, scraggly goatee and a shaved head.

"You wanna know the truth behind all those cattle mutilations?" the college student confided to Remo. "Think genetically engineered supercows. It's the secret Ronald McDonald doesn't want you to find out about."

He stuffed a photocopied flier into Remo's hand.

On the bright pink paper several stick-figure dead cows formed a bovine border around illegible text. "Next time you might want to write your manifesto after they let you out of the straitjacket," Remo suggested. He crumpled the paper and tossed it over his shoulder.

"Litterbug!" snarled the woman snipping out the papers. She snatched up the flier and began carving it up.

"Thought I had an easy target," Remo said. "I was aiming for your mouth. What's up?" he asked Chiun.

"Do you not see?" the old man asked, delighted. He held out his hands in proud presentation. "This, Remo, is a village idiot. It is a wonderful old English tradition."

"There's nothing wonderful about the English, Grampa," Lorraine insisted as she worked. "Just a bunch of dead white males spreading syphilis and the language of conquerors."

"Lady, I got news for you," Remo said. "I've been almost everywhere there is to go on this benighted rock, and the most civilized places by far are the ones where they speak English. Furthermore, even a dead guy would jump out the window before spreading syphilis to you."

The sidewalk-squatting woman didn't even hear the last of what he said. At his use of the demeaning and sexist term lady, she immediately tried to stick the blunt end of her childproof scissors into Remo's leg.

"See?" Chiun said, ecstatic. "She is another village idiot. And there!" He pointed out to the road. "There are two more!"

Two flabby middle-aged men in short shorts and too-tight tanktops were just pedaling past on a bicycle built for two.

Chiun clasped his hands together with giddy glee. "Why did you not tell me this was a training ground for village idiots, Remo?" Chiun asked. "Or perhaps it is a national secret. When the time is right, wave after wave of idiots will be dispatched from this province to amuse and delight the citizenry of this land. Look!" he squealed.

Wrinkled face rapturous, he flounced down the street.

"Yeah," Remo agreed as the Master of Sinanju began joyfully stalking a placard-wearing vegan. "And that time comes every spring at Barkley U graduation. Will you knock it off?" he snapped down at the sidewalk.

Lorraine was still trying to jab him with her scissors. When he walked off, she gave up and instead stuck the nearby college kid in the calf. Yelping in pain, the young man promptly dropped all his fliers. As he rubbed the bruise the blunt scissors had made, Lorraine swept all of the colored papers between her folded knees.

"Go litter on someone else's planet," she accused.

Ever on the lookout to do her part to save Mother Earth, she began recycling the college student's discarded trash into more respectable, environmentally conscious daisies.

Chapter 10

Boris Feyodov was trotting down the broad front steps of Barkley's city hall when the voice called out to him.

"General. I mean, Supreme Military- Hey, you!"

Feyodov considered ignoring the man altogether. With great reluctance, he paused in midstride. He turned.

Gary Jenfeld was huffing down the staircase, a container of Jane Funday Sundae Ice Cream in his hand.

"I am already late," the Russian said impatiently. Feyodov was not wearing his Red Army uniform. He had agreed to that ridiculous term only on the condition that he not have to march around the street in it.

"Yeah, I know," Gary said. "You gotta get that special part. I didn't want to keep you, but-" he cast a glance back up the steps "-it's about Zen."

The look on Feyodov's face made clear his opinion of Gary's partner in the ice cream business. "I'm not allowed to tell you some of what's really going on here," Gary whispered conspiratorially.

"It's all very hush-hush. But me and the rest of the council are getting kind of worried. Zen seems to be losing focus."

Feyodov raised a bland eyebrow. "That is of no concern to me," he said. "I am aware that you receive your money from some secret source. You pay me, and I supply that which you need. That is as far as I care."

"But I'm not sure you should leave," Gary hissed. "He's been coming unglued ever since that takeover of our ice cream company a couple years ago. With everything that's going on now, he's getting this Oliver North glint in his eye."

Feyodov scowled. "That is your problem, not mine. He leads your council until someone else takes over. If you are bothered by him, do what has been done to political opponents in Communist nations for a hundred years."

Gary's brow dropped in confusion. "Prison?" he asked.

Feyodov's eyes were flat. "Kill him."

This was obviously not the solution Gary had been hoping for. "No one ever built a socialist utopia by murdering people in cold blood," the ice cream man scolded.

"No," Feyodov agreed. "But it was not for lack of trying. Excuse me."

He turned on his heel and began marching back down the steps. Behind him, Gary hesitated for a moment before waddling unhappily back up the staircase.

Feyodov reached the main walk in front of the building and was hurrying across the grassy town square when something across the park caught his eye.

Two men were walking toward Barkley's civic center.

His eye had first been drawn to the robe the older one wore. It was red and shimmered like wet blood. Swirling patterns of embroidered gold danced across the material.

The crowd in the square was focused mostly around the building where the American cable network's charity event was being held. Even though the mob was thick before the hall, the two men moved through it like a pair of unwavering phantoms. In the great shadow cast by the huge stone statue Huitzilopochtli, they glided through the gleaming glass front doors of the distant hall and were gone.

As they vanished through the doors, Feyodov frowned.

His glasses were in the car, so he had not seen the two men well. Yet something about their comfortable gliding movements was familiar.

For an instant his brain almost allowed him to think the unthinkable. Almost at once he remembered Zen's earlier observation. He hated to admit it, but the idiot was right. Feyodov was always watching shadows. This was just another instance of his mind creating ghosts from his own fears.

Pulling in a deep breath that filled his ample belly, Feyodov forced the two men and all they represented from his mind. Ghosts. That was all. He put them behind him.

That was in the past. A place that he did not like to visit. The present was all that mattered to him now.

As he hurried to his waiting luxury car, the flat black eyes of Huitzilopochtli continued to stare dully out over the bustling activity of Barkley's main square.

Chapter 11

Smith logged off his computer at precisely 12:30 a.m.

After hours of searching, he had found nothing to indicate that the destruction of the three satellites was anything more than an unfortunate coincidence. Still, the nagging hunch that there was something more to this dogged him even as he climbed wearily to his feet.

His bones creaked as he leaned to collect his battered briefcase from beside his desk.

Remo and Chiun had left for the airport an hour ago. The CURE director feared that theirs would be a wasted trip.

At the door, Smith tugged on his heavy overcoat. On the wooden rack where it had hung, a new gray woolen scarf was draped over a dull brass peg.

The scarf had been a Christmas gift from his wife. Maude Smith had been so happy to give him something she knew he could use. Her Harold was so difficult to shop for.

She had been thrilled when he told her that it was almost exactly like a scarf he'd had as a child. He recalled many a cold Vermont night being wrapped in that scarf as he hiked to the small local library to study. That old scarf had captured all the winter aromas of his youth. It smelled of countless boiled dinners, smoke from the basement potbellied stove and his mother's pungent lye soap.

Alone in the postmidnight shadows of his office, away from prying eyes, Smith surrendered to a sudden twinge of nostalgia. Holding the scarf to his nose, he tried to get a scent of home from the wool.

There was nothing. Just the faint smell of mothballs and the even more faint indifferent aroma of a dusty old office. There was not even a hint of the neat little home he and his wife had shared for forty years.

Of course, there wouldn't be. His name might be on the mail, but his Rye residence was home only to Maude. To Harold Smith it was just a house. A place to sleep, shower and occasionally eat. His real home was here.

The sharper lines of his gaunt face softened into something resembling regret as Harold Smith drew the scarf around his narrow neck. Putting on his gray porkpie hat, he turned off the lights and left his drab office.

When he stepped through the side door to the sanitarium's administrative wing a few moments later, the cold wind that blew off Long Island Sound cut like an icy knife to his very marrow. Smith drew his scarf and collar more tightly to his neck and struck off for his car.

At this time of night the employee parking lot was practically empty.

Smith recognized all but one of the cars. It was parked in the shadows a few empty spaces down from his own. Smith assumed that a member of the skeleton crew that worked at night had gotten a new vehicle. He reached into his pocket to remove his keys.

He was clicking his key into the lock when he heard the sound of a door opening. Looking over the roof of his station wagon, he saw a figure emerge from the strange parked car.

"Dr. Smith?"

Smith was instantly alarmed. His concern intensified when he saw who it was coming toward him. It was the young medical-supplies salesman who had spent the bulk of the day sitting outside the Folcroft director's closed office door.

The man's face was flushed, his breath nervous puffs of white steam in the cold air.

"I'm probably handling this badly, but you didn't really leave me with much of a choice," he said as he approached.

Frozen and motionless, alone and unprotected in the lonely windswept parking lot, Smith was overwhelmed by a thousand thoughts flooding his mind all at once, none of them good.

"This is highly irregular," Smith said tersely. He kept his movements subdued even as he continued to stealthily unlock his door. "I do not know what you hoped to accomplish by lurking out here in the middle of the night, but you may consider our appointment canceled."

"It's a little more complicated than that," the salesman replied.

At first, Smith was worried that he would not be able to protect himself against this stranger. After all, the young man looked to be some fifty years Smith's junior. And the CURE director's automatic pistol was in a cigar box hidden deep in the back of his bottom desk drawer upstairs. But the salesman didn't seem threatening in his manner. In fact, once he got as far as Smith's station wagon, he stopped. The two men faced each other over the roof of the rusted car.

"I'm Mark Howard," the salesman said. "Your new assistant." He glanced nervously over his shoulder.

Black trees clawed up from the snow-streaked landscape around the parking area. Weak yellow overhead lights bathed the frozen asphalt.

"I know your name," Smith said. "As does my secretary." This was said as a warning. "And if you think that this is an acceptable way to seek employment, young man, you are-"

"You don't understand," Howard insisted. "I've already got the job. I'm not here to work for the sanitarium."

He glanced around once more. He gave the look of a man peering for enemies in the distant shadows. It was a habit the CURE director knew all too well.

When he turned back around, Howard pitched his voice low, as if shadow or snow might overhear his words.

"I was sent by the President to help you, Dr. Smith," he whispered. "I'm the new assistant director of CURE."

The shocking words were like a fist to the thin chest of Harold W. Smith.

Mark Howard offered a weak, apologetic smile. Smith didn't even acknowledge it.

The older man blinked behind the cold lenses of his glasses. And when they slipped from his stunned arthritic fingers, the sound of Smith's keys striking the pavement was swallowed up by the howling, desolate wind.

Chapter 12

Despite the wishes of the Russian president, the head of the Institute had not come to America alone.

A team of six SVR men with foreign experience had been drafted into service directly from the Moscow offices. When Pavel Zatsyrko, the head of the SVR, found out one of his squads had been activated by someone with security clearance greater than his own, he would not be pleased.

It had been a calculated risk. The Institute director's reasoning was simple. The mission would either be a success and this minor defiance would be overlooked, or the mission would end in failure and no amount of disobedience would alter the director's fate.

The six agents had worked as a unit years before, assigned to the Soviet embassy in Washington. Time had been as kind to them as it had to the nation they once served. The men were mostly twitchy and balding, with growing bellies and the relentlessly scanning eyes of former KGB agents.

One was a hulking brute whose youthful muscle had long ago started the middle-aged slide into flab. At the other end of the evolutionary scale was Vadim Zhdanov, their leader in the SVR. A short man with deep, intelligent eyes, he scrutinized every move the Institute director made.

Zhdanov had not wanted to come back to America, especially after all these years. His men were no longer the field agents they had once been. Nor was he. Even though he had done his best to stay fit over the years, time had slipped past all of them. Yet the activation orders came from so high up they could not be refused. And so he and his five men had reluctantly returned to America.

Guns bulged beneath six armpits.

All seven Russians were crowded into a balcony box above the hall where the Buffoon Aid fundraiser was being held. The six SVR men were stuffed in behind a thick red curtain. The Institute head alone sat in a seat. A pair of infrared binoculars bathed the crowd in spectral green.

"There," the director announced, aiming a certain finger at the main floor of the auditorium.

Vadim crept forward, accepting the binoculars. Sitting next to the director, he trained them to the front of the vast crowd.

In the fourth row from the back on the left-hand side of the stage sat a stone-faced man. While others around him laughed uproariously, his expression never changed.

"That man is Yuri Koskolov. He is a known associate of General Feyodov," the director said, quietly. "You and your men will capture Koskolov. Repeat that order, for I do not want you to claim a misunderstanding if you blunder and kill him."

At this, Vadim frowned. "I am not a child," he said.

"No," the director agreed. "You are worse. You are a man. Now repeat the order, or I will put one of these others in charge."

Vadim had heard of this brusqueness. It was somewhat legendary in certain intelligence circles. He had always found the hushed tales amusing. Now that he was on the receiving end, however, his own attitude had changed.

As his five snickering men looked on, he repeated the command.

"We will capture Koskolov," the old agent said. "We will not kill him."

The director nodded curtly. "There is one other thing, this more important than anything else. There might be two men here in town looking for General Feyodov. One is a thin Caucasian with very thick wrists, the other an Oriental who is very, very old. If you see either of them, run. Do not approach them, do not speak to them and under no circumstances attempt to engage them either with weapons or physically. If you happen upon General Feyodov and they are in the vicinity, shoot the general and then run for all you are worth."

Vadim wasn't sure if this was some attempt at humor. The look on the director's face was deadly serious.

"You are joking, yes?" the SVR man asked.

"If you are stupid enough to involve yourself in a contest with these two men, you will be dead before the breath of shock reaches your throat," the Institute head continued icily. "With any luck you will not even encounter them. If you successfully apprehend Koskolov, he will lead us to our renegade general. Perhaps we can clean up this mess before anyone here finds out the truth. Now, go."

Vadim Zhdanov nodded. Getting up from his seat, he herded the cluster of hiding SVR agents out from behind the curtain and through the balcony door.

After they were gone, the director raised the special binoculars once more. A green glow descended on the crowd.

With precise movements, the director scanned the mob, looking once more for the face of General Feyodov.

It was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. Intelligence had put the general in San Francisco. Sketchier were the reports that had placed him in Barkley. It was only after seeing Yuri Koskolov, a former Red Army major and associate of Feyodov's, enter this building that the director knew they were on the right track. But the prize was the general himself, and every moment he remained at large increased the chance that the director would be

The spyglasses abruptly froze in place.

Two new figures had just entered the hall. When the Institute head saw who they were, a wave of cold fear slipped across the director's body like a ghostly fog.

One was a thin man with exceptionally thick wrists. Beside him stood an ancient Korean.

It had happened. After all these years.

And to the shaking director, the terrible dream that had haunted many a sleepless night for more than a decade had finally become a waking nightmare.

"PEE-YEW. I smell Russians."

Remo's face was puckered in displeasure as they entered the hall where the Buffoon Aid event was being held.

At shoulder level beside him, the Master of Sinanju turned his unhappy button nose into the air. "There are at least eight," the old man replied. Hazel eyes scanned the balconies to the left of the hall where the bulk of the odor seemed to be concentrated.

"Dammit, they've had democracy for-cheez, gotta be ten years by now," Remo griped, fanning the air with his hand. "Why can't those Volgapaddlers smell like something other than turnips boiled in Stolichnaya?"

"Were I American born, I would not be so quick to find fault with the cultural odors of others," the Master of Sinanju droned in reply. "Until my delicate senses adapted, my first five years in this heathen land I could smell nothing but frying cow flesh. Although in defense of America, most of that issued from your smelly pores."

The old man's eyes narrowed when he noted the last balcony box far down near the stage.

"Yeah, well, I'm here 'cause Smith wanted us outta his hair, not to stamp out any beet-eating Russians," Remo said, "so they can watch us till their mutant Chernobyl cows come slithering home. I don't care. I'm not looking back."

On some level that Remo never quite understood, he could sense when he was being given more than just casual attention. Such was the case now.

Instead of looking at the person observing them, Remo turned his determined gaze on the distant stage.

For his part, Chiun was staring at a pair of very big lenses. They obscured the face behind. A pair of small, pale hands held them in place. Beyond was shadowy blond hair.

"Yes," the Master of Sinanju said, "by all means, Remo, do not look." The old man's tone betrayed just a hint of some buried emotion.

Remo failed to notice the catch in his teacher's voice.

"I'm not," Remo said firmly. "Just said so." Chiun's slivered gaze never wavered. "Binoculars, right?" Remo said absently. "If you ask me, binoculars are just a big fat cheat. Oh, they're gone. Good riddance to Bolshevik rubbish." Whoever had been watching them had abruptly stopped. Remo felt the cessation of pressure waves on his body. He didn't seem interested in the least in their silent observer.

The auditorium was large, the seats filled nearly to capacity. Given the three-day nature of the marathon event, people didn't feel as obligated to stay put as they otherwise might. Streams of concertgoers were coming and going up and down the six long aisles that ran the length of the big hall.

The houselights were dimmed, the stage lights up full.

Remo was busy watching the man onstage. To his surprise, he had found upon entering that he actually liked the comedian who was performing.

The portly old man wore a black suit and red tie. He had once starred in a movie about a successful businessman who enrolled in college to be closer to his estranged son. Even though it was now more than ten years old, whenever he passed by that movie on TV Remo still stopped to watch it.

"Let's find some seats," Remo said.

Chiun's somber weathered face did not reflect his pupil's uncharacteristically bright tone.

When the binoculars had lowered, their owner had already been darting back into the balcony box. The old man had seen just a flash of a face. But it was enough.

Chiun looked as if he had seen a ghost.

Far down the hall a set of doors opened. In the general commotion of the hall, they went unnoticed. Six men hurried through them and began marching up the aisle.

"The Russians are coming," Chiun observed. He cast a wary eye at his pupil. He seemed relieved to find that Remo had not so much as glanced at the balcony. The younger Master of Sinanju had not seen the specter in the box.

The Russians were coming full steam ahead, elbowing people aside in their haste to reach the back of the room. Although they had not yet unholstered their side arms, the hands of all but the leader strayed under their jackets.

"Russians, schmussians," Remo griped. "I'm sick of Russians. Don't they know they're not even topical anymore? They should have the decency to be Chinese. C'mon, there's two empty seats down there."

He had no sooner spoken than the man onstage completed his act. There was a round of thunderous applause during which the comedian departed and a slight, balding man with a curly fringe of black hair stepped up to the microphone.

"Oh, balls," Remo griped when he saw who it was.

Bobby Stone was a film actor, occasional Oscar host and one of the three regular emcees of Buffoon Aid. He had been in one hit film about a group of middle-aged men who signed aboard a ship as merchant mariners for a two-week adventure vacation. Aside from Land Lubbers, Stone's movies were generally bombs so large the studio should have fired their PR team and replaced it with a demolition squad.

As Stone lapsed into a painfully unfunny improvisational routine, Remo spun to the Master of Sinanju.

"Let's get out of here," he griped.

Chiun remained motionless. "Smith would want us to see why those Russians are here," he said.

"Since when do you give a turd in a tailpipe what Smith wants?" Remo said. "And besides, they're coming up to nab that other Russian who's stinking up the fourth row." He shot a thumb over his shoulder, roughly to where Yuri Koskolov sat. "You coming with me or what?"

The old man shook his head. "You cannot leave."

"Course I can," Remo disagreed. "I can ignore whatever they're going to do and go outside and sit in the grass in the shadow of that chunka-chunka scary rock. Bye."

He hadn't taken a single step for the exit when he heard the first shout in Russian behind him. It was quickly followed by a single gunshot. After that, pandemonium.

"Well, crap," Remo observed, slamming on the brakes. Placing firm hands to his hips, he spun. The seated Russian was now trying to claw his way across the panicking row toward the center aisle. In his wake came the gaggle of men who had raced up the aisle. A hulking member of the hit squad carried a smoking gun in his paw.

The single, ill-advised warning shot had sent a flood of concertgoers to the exits. The first wave was racing toward Remo and Chiun. The crowd broke around the unmoving men, crashing through the gleaming exit doors behind them.

Remo shook his head in disbelief. "They don't leave for Bobby Stone's Ricardo Montalban impersonation, but they stampede over one single gunshot?" he complained.

"Quickly," the Master of Sinanju pressed.

The center seats were empty by now. Chiun bounded from the floor. Toes barely brushing the top of one of the back seats, the old man launched himself forward.

With a resigned sigh, Remo followed, toe to chair to air. The two men propelled themselves to the fourth row down, spinning in midair. In a heartbeat they landed on either side of the pack of armed Russians.

The huge Russian with the gun was running along in front of the other five. Lumbering toward his fleeing countryman, he was startled to suddenly find himself staring down into a pair of hard, deep-set eyes. Halting, the SVR agent quickly twisted his gun, aiming it into Remo's face.

"Here's where I've got a problem," Remo said. "My country's falling apart, sure. No argument there."

As a pudgy finger squeezed the trigger, something went wrong. Instead of aiming toward the little American's face, the gun was now pointed in the opposite direction. The hulking SVR agent didn't have time to ponder the significance of this strange turn of events before the bullet fired by his own hand blew off the top of his Soviet-era head.

"But your country," Remo continued as he bounded over the falling mountain of flesh and into the next man in line.

The next Russian came up short, stunned by both his collapsing comrade and the stranger leaping over him.

"Now if we want to talk a real mess, that's the shithole to end all shitholes," Remo said as he planted a finger deep into the second man's occipital lobe. "I mean, rather than pester me, why don't you use this energy where it might do some good? Take a mop and a pail to the Urals and don't stop until you reach Iran."

When he crushed the third man's chest to jelly and found a fourth one beyond the toppling agent, Remo frowned. There were only six in all, and he was up to four.

"What, you sitting this one out, Little Father?" he complained loudly as he planted a gun deep into the next man's pumping heart.

Chiun didn't respond. The row was too narrow. Remo couldn't see the Master of Sinanju beyond the next two men.

With a punishing overhand blow, Remo sent the penultimate agent's head down deep into his thoracic cavity. Collapsing vertebrae clicked together like fastening Legos. His chin now nestled onto his sternum, the suddenly short SVR agent tipped forward onto the floor.

All that was left behind the man was one very shocked Vadim Zhdanov.

The Master of Sinanju was nowhere to be seen. When he realized he alone was left standing among his SVR agents and that a man who fit the description given by the director of the Institute was wading through the bodies of his team toward him, Vadim Zhdanov did the only thing he could do under the circumstances.

Gulping audibly, the Russian agent placed his own gun to his own temple and pulled the trigger. As the last body fell, Remo scowled. "Typical," he said to the man with the smoking hole in his head.

"He gets me all rah-rah worked up and then takes a powder."

Still frowning, he turned.

The crowd had all but dispersed. A few stragglers were pushing through the doors near the stage. Remo was grateful that there weren't any cameras aimed his way. Most were directed at the stage, but some were positioned to get audience-reaction shots. But the crew from the cable network airing the Buffoon Aid special had fled, as well.

At the end of Remo's row, beyond the line of fallen SVR agents, a man was sprawled across two seats.

Hopping from head to chest to head, Remo skipped across the bodies and approached Yuri Koskolov.

The single shot intended to warn had accidentally found a target. Lying back uncomfortably across the seats, the Russian was clasping a hand to his heart. His fingers were stained bright red. His skin was already growing waxy.

"What's your story?" Remo asked.

Yuri Koskolov shook his head in weak incomprehension. "I just vanted to see funnyman Jackoff Smirniv," he gasped.

Then he died.

Remo straightened. His brow had only sunk lower over his eyes.

"Russia," he mumbled in disgust. "What a country."

Expression still dark, he went off in search of the missing Master of Sinanju.

Chapter 13

The clandestine rendezvous was held in the broad daylight of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Boris Feyodov leaned back on a bench, his heels digging comfortably into the pebbled path. Hands folded and resting on his paunch, he watched the joggers as they ran by.

The retired general was glad he had worn a jacket. Though the sun was warm, the occasional gusts of cool, salty wind from off the Pacific chilled the air.

His tired eyes watched a young jogger approach. The girl was all of twenty-five, with a bobbing knot of natural blond hair, red shorts and a scandalously revealing tank top.

The sweating girl smiled at him as she ran past. Feyodov returned the smile, tracking her with his eyes.

Her smile was one of politeness. She wasn't interested in him. Couldn't possibly be. She had seen him looking at her and decided to give a dirty old man a cheap thrill.

As he thought of his age, his physical condition, his current career and the life that had somehow claimed all he had once been, the remnants of the smile he had offered the pretty young American girl slowly faded into the broad lines of Boris Feyodov's sad, sagging face.

A sudden stiff breeze made him shiver.

Feyodov was scowling at the cold when a dark shadow fell across him, blotting the sun. Eyes hooded, he looked up.

He saw little more than a bushy black mustache surrounded by a nimbus of brilliant sunlight. "This is the last of it," the man grunted by way of greeting. He pulled a thick manila envelope from under his black raincoat, handing it over to the seated general.

Feyodov silently accepted the envelope. As the man took a seat beside him on the bench, Feyodov opened the envelope, thumbing through the thick stacks of hundred-dollar bills.

He didn't count the money. He just wanted to make sure there weren't any old Pravda clippings padding out the payment. This customer had tried that once early on.

With a satisfied nod, the general turned his full attention to his seatmate.

Without the blinding sun as a backdrop, he was now able to make out the features of the man.

He had brown hair that was streaked with gray and a matching mustache that drooped over his thick lips. Bushy black eyebrows hung heavily over eyes that burned with the passion of an unapologetic Communist.

In his day several years before, Vladimir Zhirinsky had been nearly a legendary figure in Russia. At that time the ultranationalist was feared by the West. As time wore on, Zhirinsky's star had faded. Now-like the Soviet Union he loved-he was relegated to the back pages of history books. But thanks to his dealings with Boris Feyodov and others in Russia's black market, he was poised to rewrite both his personal history and that of his nation.

"Everything has nearly been delivered," Feyodov said as he tucked the envelope in his breast pocket. "This will cover the rest. The most-" he paused "-exotic item is already on the ground in Alaska."

Zhirinsky nodded. His gray eyes seemed to be transfixed by Feyodov's nose. Often in meetings, Feyodov found that the nationalist looked people in the nose rather than the eyes.

"You will have to contact my office in Russia with the details," Zhirinsky said, getting quickly back to his feet. "You have the number. I have already told my spineless assistant, Ivan Kerbabaev, to await your call."

Feyodov seemed puzzled. "Why can I not just tell you?"

"No time. I must return to Moscow," Zhirinsky said mysteriously. "I learned only this morning that an opportunity that I have awaited for months has finally presented itself."

The nationalist whirled. He took two steps across the grass before spinning back to Feyodov. A sudden impulse grabbed the wild-eyed man.

"Join me," Zhirinsky said. "You were a general once, as well as the son of a great hero to the people's cause. Be a hero like your father, the field marshal. For the people, for the cause. The tide will turn soon. You have helped lay the groundwork for the new glorious revolution, share in the benefits that history will afford the strong."

Still sitting on the bench, Feyodov shook his head. "I was a general," he agreed softly. "Once. But that rank proved to be a hollow mockery." Slapping hands to knees, he pushed himself wearily to his feet. His eyes were level as he addressed Zhirinsky. "Now I am a businessman."

The look of disgust on the face of Vladimir Zhirinsky was enough to show Boris Feyodov what his fellow countryman thought of businessmen.

Zhirinsky hadn't the time to argue. With the urgency of a man propelled by great events, he strode off across the park. Feyodov watched him go.

"Protect the world from revolutionaries," the former general muttered. The soft words were not so much a prayer as a cheerless desire. Thinking dark thoughts, Feyodov wandered across the park.

His car was in the lot where he'd left it.

Had this been a Moscow park, the vehicle would have been stolen two minutes after he'd left it and would be halfway to Sevastopol by now. Not that he would have any right to complain about the criminals. The fact that he was one of the greatest contributors to the current lawlessness that gripped his land was not lost on Boris Feyodov.

Feyodov was climbing in behind the wheel when his cell phone chirped to life.

When he answered, he recognized the worried, whispered voice of Oleg Shevtrinko, one of the men he had brought with him to California from Russia. "General, something is happening here," Oleg said

Feyodov accepted the use of his former military title. While he had lost the title of general years ago, his black market associates were mostly former Red Army subordinates. They were the men from the Sary Shagan Missile Test Center. The men who knew him as nothing less than a god. Out of respect for what he had been, they would not dare call him anything other than general. If they only knew the truth of his career after that time...

The fact that it was Oleg calling sent up a warning flare for Feyodov. Obviously, there was some kind of problem. Yuri Koskolov was the only man authorized to contact Feyodov.

"What is wrong?" Feyodov asked. "Where is Koskolov?"

"Dead," Oleg answered. "At least that's what they are saying. There was nearly a riot at that insane charity event here. In addition to Yuri, several others are dead." His voice dropped lower. "Those we work for are panicking, General. They say this is a preemptive attack by their government. They have ordered the scientists to-"

The phone abruptly went dead. "Oleg?" Feyodov demanded. "Oleg?" He shook the phone. Nothing.

He tried calling back. Dead air greeted him.

The batteries were new. Feyodov had just changed them the previous morning. This was a very expensive phone. It filtered out background noise, so that there was not even a hiss. According to the carrier service, the phone worked in all but the most remote parts of the country. Golden Gate Park certainly shouldn't qualify as inaccessible.

Not a single sound issued from the lump of plastic in his hand. As far as he knew, the only thing that should have caused such a thing to happen would be-

Feyodov's face blanched. Slapping the phone shut, he stuffed it back in his pocket.

"Sukin syn," he swore.

Throwing the car in gear, he stomped down on the gas.

Joggers jumped out of the way as the big American car steered by the renegade Russian general lurched desperately into the street.

"WHAT'S THAT ONE?" Zen Bower demanded.

On the screen where the ice cream maker was pointing, a computer-generated object whirled through the void of space. It looked like a stickfigure box with a funnel at the top. A glowing blue line extended just below the funnel.

"It's another communications satellite," answered the nervous man at the targeting console. He was an engineering professor from Barkley University.

"Is it on the chart?" Zen asked hotly.

The engineer looked at the reference book on his lap, comparing the numbers from the screen. "No," he said.

"Then blast it," Zen commanded.

The man shook his head. "The weapon's not fully charged," he replied apologetically. He cringed when Zen pounded a fist on the console.

"Dammit!" Zen growled. "Just shoot already!" Another voice broke in from behind Zen.

"It is not possible yet."

Zen wheeled.

Oleg Shevtrinko had just come up the rock-hewed tunnel. In his hand he still clutched the cell phone he had used to contact Boris Feyodov. It had gone dead the moment Zen-in a wild selection of random targets-had ordered the destruction of the satellite through which the signal was being carried.

"Don't you dare tell me anything's not possible," Zen snapped. "It's your boss who told us we couldn't hit anything without some three-million-dollar gewgaw. We've taken out three more satellites with no problem at all."

"It is possible to target and hit an object in space, but it is not foolproof," Oleg lied. "The device that General Feyodov is getting will make luck unnecessary."

"Yeah, well, maybe," Zen said. "And he's not General Feyodov-he's being paid to be Barkley's supreme military commander. Although we're gonna pull back on the SMC title until we know what happened. After this I might bust him down to private and give you a battlefield promotion."

Oleg Shevtrinko's back stiffened. He had known General Feyodov for seventeen years. Back when the general was in charge of Sary Shagan, Oleg had participated in the murder of Viktor Churlinski and the other scientists that fateful January day. With ties forged in blood, Oleg's loyalty was to his general and his general alone.

"I would not accept," Oleg said coldly.

Zen's eyes widened. "You'll do what I say," he ordered. "Feyodov abandoned his post just when the U.S. government decided to attack. If that coward doesn't hurry up an-"

"We do not yet know who attacked," Oleg interrupted icily. "And were I you, I would refrain from using the word coward in the presence of the general."

To Zen, it was as if the air in the underground chamber had suddenly gotten ten degrees colder. He wasn't sure what unwritten line he'd just crossed, but it was obvious he had trodden on something he should stay away from.

Oleg's eyes were flinty and unblinking. "As for the incident at your silly concert that has gotten you so panicked, it is probably nothing more than random violence."

Some of the anger drained from Zen. "Violence doesn't happen in Barkley," he said dismissively, his voice growing subdued. "We've registered every man in town as a potential sex offender and forced every adult white hetero male to undergo mandatory sensitivity training. For God's sake, if the men here were any more whipped they'd all be lesbians. Which," he added quickly, lest Oleg get the wrong impression, "as a lifestyle choice is perfectly natural and beautiful and should actually be encouraged since men are such horrible, sexist-pig rapists anyway. So if there is violence in town, it has to be imported. America must be on to us."

Conclusion made, he gave quick orders to the seated engineer to continue firing at targets on the approved list. Turning from the frowning Oleg Shevtrinko, Zen hurried up the tunnel. He paused to kick a chair at an empty console.

"Get out of there," Zen snapped.

With a timid squeak, Gary Jenfeld came crawling out from under the table. He clutched a cardboard container of Zen and Gary's Chewy Newton Crunch in his shaking hand. Runny ice cream streaked his thick beard.

"Is it safe?" Gary asked worriedly.

"The plan's been bumped up," Zen said. "Since they're obviously on to us, it's time we told the oppressive regime in Washington what's expected of it."

"Um ...Zen," Gary said hesitantly. "Isn't that jumping the gun? Shouldn't you tell him about the dead people at Buffoon Aid? I mean, this is all his idea. Not to mention his money. Maybe he'd think different about this than you."

Zen dropped his voice low. "He knows, you idiot," he hissed. "HTB was airing Buffoon Aid, remember? Besides, this is going exactly according to plan."

With that, Zen spun away from his former partner. Without another word, he marched up the tunnel with the brisk stride of a revolutionary.

"His plan or yours?" Gary Jenfeld wondered softly.

Melting container of ice cream in hand, Gary huffed nervously up the dark tunnel after Zen.

Chapter 14

The frightened crowd from the civic center had fled screaming into the streets, only to stop at the town square. They stood in the shadow of Huitzilopochtli. Faces fearful, they clogged roads and sidewalks.

The Master of Sinanju had encouraged Remo to engage the Russians in the hall merely as a distraction. Blocked by their bodies, the old man had slipped out a side door. He emerged into the tightly packed crowd.

His hazel eyes scanned hundreds of faces for one in particular. He had nearly given up, thinking that his advanced years had somehow given way to hallucinations, when he caught a glimmer of movement across the square.

While most everyone's interest was focused on the hall, one figure skulked off in the opposite direction. The peaked black hood of an obscuring cape could be seen bobbing across the distant road that bordered the grassy square.

The hood slipped beyond the gleaming window of an apothecary shop. It turned up an alley and was gone.

Before the figure had disappeared, Chiun was off.

Pipe-stem legs pumped furiously as he bounded across the road in front of the hall.

The crowd seemed possessed by some reflexive instinct of preservation, for it parted as if connected to a single mind. The split formed across the park, beneath the giant statue's shadow and over to the distant street. And through the new-formed passage-a wall of human flesh on either side-flew the Master of Sinanju.

Sandals barely brushed sidewalk as he raced past the apothecary shop with its hanging crystals and jars of herbs. His path free of people and now at a full sprint, Chiun raced up the alley.

Hazel eyes searched for a face that mocked the grave.

The long alley was deserted. Chiun was a blur.

Past bundled trash bags and broken asphalt he ran. The Main Street alley fed into a narrower gap between a pair of two-story buildings. And on the street beyond, Chiun caught up with the fleeing figure.

The black hood was racing to a parked car. Upon exiting the alley, the Master of Sinanju stopped dead. The hems of his red silk kimono fluttered to angry stillness. Like a peal of furious thunder, his booming voice rang out across the empty street.

"Hold, deceiver of the Void!" Chiun commanded.

Chiun's tone was enough to freeze the black-clad figure in its tracks. Slender fingers clutched the handle of the driver's door.

With a few quick strides Chiun shed the shadowed mouth of the dark alley. He stopped behind the immobile figure.

"Why have you returned from the dead?" he demanded.

The hand finally slipped from the door handle. "I was never dead." Though the voice was soft, it was not apologetic. The shoulders remained proudly erect.

"My son thought you so, and so you were," Chiun said.

The figure turned slowly to him. The black hood hung low over eyes as cold as steel.

"Did you not think I was dead, as well?"

Chiun stomped his foot. "That does not matter," he insisted. "You were dishonest to make him believe you no longer lived. And now-at the most precarious time of his Masterhood-you return. Remo cannot afford you as a distraction. You will go. Now and forever. Leave this land and never return."

"You stop me only to order me to go?"

"Pah!" Chiun waved. "You were not going anywhere. You are on some fool errand for your Kremlin lords. Now that Remo has dispatched your men, you would be forced to lurch and blunder around yourself. I will not allow your path to cross my son's. I tell you now, leave not only this province, but this nation, lest you bear the wrath of the Master of Sinanju."

Two small hands reached up and the hood finally came down, revealing a short crop of honey-blond hair and a familiar high-cheekboned face.

"I cannot go. Not yet."

Chiun's expression began to harden when his sensitive ears suddenly detected swift footfalls behind him. With flashing hands, he grabbed for the door.

One bony hand clutched the handle, the other held firm to the cloaked figure's bicep when Remo came exploding from the alley mouth an instant later. The younger Master of Sinanju's eyes darkened when he spied his teacher.

"I've been looking all over for you," Remo groused. "Next time you badger me into snuffing out a Russian hit squad, I'd appreciate it if you did at least two seconds of actual work before punching off the clock for your afternoon rice break." Face still a scowl, he glanced at the figure Chiun was manhandling into the car. "Hiya," he added.

He looked momentarily back to Chiun. Then his face fell.

For an instant the world stood still. Remo's head snapped back around.

When his eyes alighted once more on the stranger's face, anything Remo might have wanted to say froze in his throat.

Eyes growing wide in shock, his jaw dropped open. He seemed desperate to speak, but could not. He looked the figure up, then down.

Remo wheeled on Chiun. The Master of Sinanju's wrinkled countenance was pinched into an unhappy knot.

"Chiun?" Remo asked, bewildered.

"Go back to the center of town and wait for me," the old man advised darkly. "No good can come of this, my son."

Remo spun back to the Institute director. "This can't be," he insisted.

With a frustrated hiss, the old Korean released his grip on the head of Russia's secret Institute. "Your eyes do not deceive," the Master of Sinanju insisted angrily.

The Russian agent nodded gentle agreement. There seemed a hint of shame in the movement.

It was almost too much for Remo to take. A swirl of emotion, confusion, amazement, spiraled around him in a crazed, impossible kaleidoscope. For what seemed an infinite moment, he lost all voice, all reason. When he finally caught up with his swirling thoughts, it was as if the one word he spoke echoed up a ten-year-old tunnel that led to the depths of his very soul.

"Anna?" Remo Williams asked. His voice was small and faraway.

And with equal emotion, buried under a practiced veneer of cold rationality, Anna Chutesov nodded sharply.

Chapter 15

They stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity. It was Remo who finally broke the silence. "You're dead," he insisted.

"Obviously not," Anna replied. She shot an uncomfortable glance at the Master of Sinanju.

"Oh, no," Remo snapped. "No. You're not gonna worm out of this one. I saw you dead."

"Impossible," Anna said. "What you should ask yourself is, did you see me die?"

Remo opened his mouth to speak, his finger raised authoritatively. Sudden memory made him hesitate. "You see?" Anna said, nodding. "You remember. You did not see me die, nor could you have, because it is apparent that I did not."

"A situation easily remedied," offered the Master of Sinanju thinly.

"Back off, Chiun," Remo snapped. He was regaining his senses. The shock of seeing Anna Chutesov after so many years was worse than any physical blow. "But Mr. Gordons killed you," he said to Anna, some of the fight draining from him. "He was wearing your face when I kicked his mechanical ass years ago."

"Gordons," Anna nodded. "The android that was programmed by your space agency to take any form that would aid in its survival. He looked like me, you say?"

"He was you by way of Xerox and Lockheed-Martin," Remo said. "But, yeah, he looked like you when we zapped him."

"I suspected as much," Anna said, pleased with her deduction. "It determined that mine was a form that would aid its survival. It hoped to confuse you, a plan that I gather failed, given the fact that you both still live."

"Maybe it didn't fail," Remo said, suddenly cautious. "I took out its central processor." He took a step back.

"You did not," Chiun sniffed. "It was I who slew the mandroid that time."

"No, it was the amusement park that time, Little Father," Remo said. With narrowed eyes he studied Anna.

"I know where it was," Chiun said haughtily. "And we were not amused."

"No matter which one of us whacked the robot that time, we still met up with him twice. since then," Remo pointed out. "He's like the wind-up version of Freddy Krueger. He keeps coming back with a new Roman numeral tacked to his caboose. Who's to say this isn't him again?"

Chiun shook his head. "The machine man is dead," he said firmly.

"Yes, Remo," Anna begged. "Do not complicate this any further. I tried to shoot Gordons. When that had no effect, I determined that there was only one prudent course of action available to me."

"Which was?"

Anna shrugged. "I ran."

"And Gordons didn't follow?" Remo said skeptically.

"You were its enemy, not me," Anna said logically. "After I fled, it must have decided that since we were allies, it would muddy the waters by transforming itself into my likeness." She nodded appreciatively. "A strategy that I would probably take under the same circumstances."

"My point exactly," Remo said. "How do I know you're not wearing a set of tin-plated long johns under that Captain Marvel cape?"

Anna considered but a moment. When she lunged at Remo an instant later, he braced for an attack. He arrested the forward lethal movement of his own hand when-instead of striking him-Anna grabbed him by the shoulders and planted her lips firmly on his.

Remo tensed. After a few seconds he relaxed. A moment later his arms fell limp at his sides. Beside them the Master of Sinanju's wrinkled face tightened into a tangle of disgust.

"Stop that this instant," he snapped. "I endured my fill of this vulgar exhibitionism back when I did not have a heart condition." Though they were harsh, there was a worried undertone to his words.

Anna and Remo unlocked lips. Despite her best efforts, the Russian agent's pale cheeks were flushed.

"Okay, no android kisses like that," Remo admitted.

Embarrassed by her lack of physical control, Anna looked down, brushing wrinkles from her long, dark cloak.

"I am sorry to hear about your heart problem," she muttered to Chiun.

"He doesn't have anything wrong with his heart," Remo said. He was still staring at Anna in disbelief.

"Yes, I do, O heartless one," Chiun disagreed. "And it is aggravated by proximity to aging Russian harlots. Go this instant," he instructed Anna, "lest your presence alone causes me to drop dead on this very street corner."

He pulled open Anna's car door. Remo slapped it shut.

"A clone," Remo announced. "Maybe the Russians grew another you in a test tube."

"Now you are being ridiculous." Anna scowled.

"Yes," Chiun agreed. "Russia has always produced more than sufficient numbers of prostitutes without having to resort to unholy means."

Anna pointedly ignored the old man.

"If I tell you something only I would know, would that satisfy you?" she asked Remo.

"I guess," he replied reluctantly.

Anna leaned in close to him. Her breath was warm on his ear as she spoke in a barely audible whisper. "Stop shouting," Chiun groused.

When Anna finished, this time it was Remo's face that was flushed. His ears burned red.

"Anna," he said, his voice soft with incredulity. Until that moment he hadn't permitted himself to fully believe. He looked at her now with new eyes.

The Russian nodded sharply. She tugged off the big black poncho she'd been wearing since arriving in Barkley that morning, tossing it through the open window of her car.

"It is a wonder the two of you got any work done at all, with all of your groping and grunting," Chiun huffed. He turned a stern eye on his pupil. "Remo, I have always kept to myself my opinions about the way you fritter your life away. Though presented with opportunities to criticize that were more numerous than the stars in the sky, always have I held my tongue. I have allowed you to stumble and bumble and rut like a mad donkey with every debauched hussy who invited you to share her bed. Never did I scold or complain or offer even a single sharp opinion."

Remo gave the old man a heavy-lidded stare. "Don't make me start doubting you're you," he said flatly.

Chiun pointed a long-nailed finger at Anna Chutesov.

"I never liked this woman," the old man insisted. He folded his arms angrily. "There. I have said it. And to speak this truth, I have been forced to break my steadfast and ironclad rule against meddling. Her fault, again."

The Master of Sinanju's words were like white noise. Numbly, Remo turned back to Anna.

"It's really you," he said. "I don't get it. Why didn't you tell me?"

His voice was small. In his eyes was the lost-little-boy gleam that had always stirred some long-repressed maternal instinct deep within Anna Chutesov's ice-princess heart. But she well knew her feelings for Remo had never been truly maternal.

"You know the answer," Anna said. "It was too dangerous for me. I was an outsider who knew of your organization. Dr. Smith had already expressed his desire to see me terminated. That loomed over my head for the year we worked together. Long before our encounter with Gordons, I had been working on a way to get away alive. Our last meeting presented an opportunity I could not resist."

"Never would have happened," Remo insisted, shaking his head firmly: "You were never in danger."

"Yes, Remo, I was. And if you already thought me dead, you would not have come to kill me. With so many deaths, I assumed I would be counted among the missing at the amusement park. When it was demolished afterward, so, too, was my existence as far as you and Dr. Smith were concerned. Because of my deception, I have lived the last thirteen years of my life in peace."

"Anna," Remo said. It still seemed so strange to speak her name. "I never would have killed you. Ever."

Her expression remained unchanged. "If not you, him," she said, nodding to Chiun.

"The day is young," the old man offered thinly.

"I wouldn't have let him," Remo said.

"You could not have stopped me," Chiun volunteered.

"Stay out of this, Chiun," Remo snapped. His flashing fury melted instantly. "Don't," he begged. "Okay? Just don't."

He turned back to Anna. "I loved you," he said softly.

Her expression hardened.

"That is not what you told me in Smith's office thirteen years ago," she said. "Or do you not remember?"

Remo thought back to the last time he'd seen Anna Chutesov. There had been a long gap between encounters. So long that in the intervening months Remo had gotten engaged to someone else.

At the time Remo-the perpetual outsider, the orphan with no real roots-had been determined to get married. He wanted to force happiness on his life if it killed him. In the end it was not Remo who was the victim. His single-minded quest for the elusive normal existence enjoyed by the rest of the world had claimed but one life. Mah-Li, Remo's Korean bride-to-be, had paid the ultimate price for the life he led. Killed by the Dutchman, Jeremiah Purcell.

Before Mah-Li died, Remo had met Anna for one last joint mission. It was then that he had told her of his intention to marry someone else. Always cool, always in control, Anna believed that it was she who had the upper hand in their relationship. But the news of Remo's plans to wed another had been worse than any physical blow.

At the time she pretended it didn't matter. But it was a lie. The truth was, in the end, she had been shocked to learn that she loved Remo more than he loved her.

Anna had used the first opportunity that presented itself to flee. Her claim that her disappearance was motivated by concern for her personal safety was only partly true. Yes, she wanted to live. But the act had as much to do with emotional self-interest as physical. Given all that had happened between them, she needed to stay away from Remo.

Remo had accepted the lie, assuming Anna dead. Not long after, Mah-Li had died, as well. After that loss, Remo had thrown himself into his work, allowing little room for emotional contact. In the past decade he had come to realize that his marriage to Mah-Li had been more for his sake than for hers. A selfish desire for a life that could not be. But Anna...

Anna had always been another story. Remo wasn't really sure what it was he felt for her. Was it emotional? He didn't know. It was certainly physical. He didn't know if he could possibly still love her. At the moment all else had been short-circuited by the shock of discovery and his anger at her deception.

"Remo?"

The voice sounded far away. Remo was numbly aware of a pair of slender fingers snapping in front of his face, like a hypnotist trying to bring a subject out of a deep trance.

He blinked hard once, looking down into the beautiful upturned face of Anna Chutesov.

"As much as I would like to stand out on this sidewalk for the rest of the day, we should go," Anna said.

The Master of Sinanju was already scurrying into the back of Anna's car. Sitting in the center of the seat, he folded his billowing kimono neatly around his bony knees.

"Why can't anything ever be easy?" Remo exhaled quietly.

"There is a saying in my country," Anna said as she slid efficiently behind the wheel. "Simplicity is for children, fools and the dead. Did you kill all my men?"

"An even half dozen," Remo confirmed as he got into the passenger's seat.

"What about Koskolov, the man they were after?"

"Dopey-looking gay? Partial to Russian stand-up comics?" Remo said. "The big guy who looked like one of the dancing bears from the Moscow circus shot him."

"Idiots," she muttered, jamming the key angrily into the ignition. "They killed our only lead to the lunacy that is going on here."

Yet another surprise for Remo. "So this isn't just Smith getting us out of the house?" he asked. "You wanna fill me in on what's really going on here?"

When she looked at him, her blue eyes were charged with sparks of dark concern.

"The end of the world," Anna Chutesov replied ominously.

Twisting the wheel of her rental car, she pulled carefully away from the curb and into the pot-holed street.

Chapter 16

For Harold W. Smith, the end of the world had begun after midnight the previous evening. His impending personal Apocalypse loomed large and full in the gloomy gray hours before dawn. With the rising of the cold winter sun, the threat did not fade, but grew greater still.

As the tired sun swelled from bleary red to bright yellow, the light spilled through the one-way picture window at Smith's back. The shafts of widening sunlight stabbed across the room, illuminating the figure that slept on the sofa of his Folcroft office.

Mark Howard was using his coat as a blanket. It was tucked up under his chin as he slept. Howard was oblivious to the old man who was staring at him from across the room.

Smith had remained awake the entire night. Though exhausted, his eagle's gaze had not once shifted.

Smith's lower desk drawer was ajar. The lid of the cigar box that was ordinarily tucked far in the back was open. Inside the box Smith's old service automatic sat atop his cracked leather shoulder holster.

His first concern after his shocking encounter in the parking lot was that this was some sort of trap. Some individual, agency or government had learned of CURE.

But upon rapid consideration he realized that the means by which such an enemy would announce himself would almost certainly have been different.

To send no one but a shivering young man to stand alone in the nearly empty Folcroft parking lot didn't make sense.

After frisking Howard for weapons and recording devices and finding neither, Smith had reluctantly brought his guest back up to his office.

By then it was one o'clock in the morning and far too late to call the President.

At other times Smith would not have hesitated to call the White House, even at so ungodly an hour. But it was barely two weeks into the new President's first term, and the chief executive had yet to contact the head of CURE.

At first, most presidents were reluctant to communicate with the agency. When they did finally call, some merely did so just to see if there would be an answer on the other end of the line. Others waited until there was a crisis. In either case, the introduction was always an awkward moment, and so Smith made a habit out of not being the first to make contact.

This was the worst scenario he could think of to break that custom. If the new President had not sent Howard here, then the young man had found out about CURE by other means. Were this the case, then security had been compromised.

Smith's relationship with the last President had been strained. After the past eight years, this was not the kind of introduction he wanted to make to a new chief executive. It could only be worse to call in the middle of the night. And so, to dull the edge of what might be a disaster for CURE, Smith waited for a more respectable hour to call.

Through the night, he had not even been able to use work as a distraction. He dared not turn on his computer. Dared not expose any more of what was going on here to the snoring stranger across the room.

And so he sat. Staring.

Smith was still watching the man on his couch when he was startled by the abrupt opening of his office door.

Smith instinctively darted for his gun. When he saw who it was entering his inner sanctum, he quickly slid his desk drawer shut, concealing the automatic.

"Good morning, Dr. Smith," Eileen Mikulka said pleasantly as she walked into the room. She balanced a small serving tray on her forearm. On the tray was a steaming cup of coffee and two slices of dry toast.

This was one of Mrs. Mikulka's daily duties, and one that she made it a point not to miss.

In days long gone, Dr. Smith had sometimes found time to golf in the mornings. Once in a while when he was gone there were important sanitarium documents that needed his attention. The papers were couriered to his home. On these occasions, according to sanitarium lore, Mrs. Smith had always been delighted to greet company and insisted that they have something to eat. Afterward, when next there came a time that something needed to be delivered to the Folcroft director's home, whoever went last invariably refused to go.

Everyone around Folcroft knew that Mrs. Smith was a very nice, very lonely woman, as well as a notoriously bad cook.

And so Mrs. Mikulka had taken it upon herself to see to it that her employer at least ate something decent during the day. At 7:00 a.m. every morning, come rain or shine, she delivered a plate of toast and a cup of coffee to the Folcroft director's office.

Mrs. Mikulka was stepping across the threadbare carpet when a noise behind her nearly caused her to drop her tray. Startled, she looked over her shoulder. Someone on the couch was just stirring awake.

"Oh," she said, surprised that her employer was not alone. She grew even more surprised when she saw who it was pushing himself to a sitting position on Smith's sofa.

When she glanced at her employer, she saw that his tired gray eyes were rimmed with dark bags. "Is everything all right, Dr. Smith?" Mrs. Mikulka asked. When she looked back, the patient young medical-supplies salesman from the previous day was rubbing sleep from his eyes. Standing in front of Smith's desk, she seemed unsure whether she should say hello or call security.

"It's quite all right, Mrs. Mikulka," Smith said.

"Oh. Very well." Hesitantly, she set plate and mug to Smith's desk. She still was not sure what to make of this. "Would you like something, sir?" she asked Howard.

"No, thanks," Mark said, stretching. "How late's the cafeteria serve breakfast?"

"Oh, um, eleven o'clock."

"I'll grab something later," he said, smiling. Mrs. Mikulka nodded. Clutching the plastic tray like a shield to her ample bosom, she left the room. As she was closing the door, Mark climbed to his feet. Stifling a yawn, he checked his watch. Because of the cast on his wrist, he wore it on his left arm. "It's probably okay to call now," he ventured. Smith nodded crisply. Before opening the right-hand drawer where the special White House line was secreted, he pulled open the lower left drawer, once more exposing his automatic pistol. Smith took out an old-fashioned cherry-red phone, placing it on the desk next to his toast and coffee.

As Howard stood patiently before him, tie loosened and suit rumpled, the CURE director lifted the receiver.

THE PRESIDENT of the United States was getting dressed when the pager on his belt buzzed.

His wife was sound asleep beneath a mound of blankets. Although she had been a political wife for some time, she had not been prepared for the attention she was getting as First Lady. The past few weeks had worn her out.

Leaving his jacket at the foot of the bed, the President tiptoed from the room. Walking briskly, he headed down the main hallway of the family quarters, past the private elevator. He ducked into the Lincoln Bedroom.

Like many other rooms in the White House, the Lincoln Bedroom had recently been hastily refurnished with antiques from the Smithsonian Institution. The remodeling became necessary after it was discovered that the previous occupants of the White House had left under cover of darkness with a wagonload of priceless antiques. Over the past week some of the missing national treasures had begun quietly showing up at an online auction house. The highest bid for the framed original copy of the Emancipation Proclamation was currently $2,350.50, not including shipping.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, the new President opened the bottom drawer of the nightstand and removed the dial-less red phone that sat alone inside.

Hand on the receiver, he steeled himself for a moment before lifting it to his ear.

"Yes?" he said. His faint Southern twang was noticeable even on the single syllable.

"Good morning, Mr. President," a sharp voice replied.

The President was surprised at how tart it sounded. His predecessor had been right about the voice. It was like lemons mixed with grapefruit.

"This is Smith, I presume?" the President said.

"Yes, sir," Smith answered crisply. "Mr. President, do you know a man by the name of Mark Howard? He claims to have been sent here by you."