Last Rites

Destroyer #100: Last Rites

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

PROLOGUE

They had laid her out in the narrow oaken bed to die. Everyone knew she was to die. She was old. Very old. She had lived a useful and productive life as a bride of Christ, but now that life had ceased to be useful, and her senses were shutting down.

A priest had given her the last rites of the Catholic church, sprinkling holy water over her thin frame with an aspergillum. He had spoken the words in the familiar Latin, commending her immortal soul to her savior. Incense candles were lit.

But she refused to die. The windows were curtained to keep out the harsh sunlight that tormented her even through the milky cataracts that had robbed her of almost all sight. She could hardly hear. She had not strength to walk. Food seemed not to nourish her.

There was no quality to her life, and although no disease ravaged her work worn body, there was no hope for recovery. Her vitality had been used up. Some say she had begun to fail many years ago, after the fire.

Yet she lay in her deathbed, shrouded in white linen, blind eyes fixed on the cracked ceiling of Our Lady of Perpetual Care Home for the Infirm, fingering the black beads of her rosary. Her thin lips writhed soundlessly.

The sisters who took care of her in lieu of nurses thought she was saying her Hail Mary's. She was not. She was counting her charges, reflecting on their destinies. A virgin, she had no sons or daughters to call her own, and so the lost and abandoned offspring of others became hers.

Each bead groped between her fingers brought to mind a name. Most she had lost touch of. Some had visited her often in days gone by. Many were lost. In France, in Korea, in Vietnam and more obscure places whose names no longer mattered, their bright promise had been spent like so many precious coins.

No one visited her now. She had retired long ago-so long ago that even the youngest boy had grown old enough to have adult children and adult cares and no time in a busy life for an old woman who had taught him the best she could.

She had never imagined growing this old. The infirmities were almost unendurable. She wore her skin like shellacked paper stretched almost to the breaking point. The slightest bump to the backs of her hands where the skin was especially shiny created a black bruise that seemed never to heal.

Another bead crawled between her fingers. And another. There was no order to the boyish faces that came to her mind's eye. They came unbidden, spoke in their authentic voices and seemed to be saying goodbye.

Then came a face that brought a clutching twinge to her heart and a wave of inexpressible sadness filled her breast.

She remembered him as a boy. Not even ten. She preferred to remember him as a boy. She had known him as a man, but she always thought of him as a boy. Just as when she dreamed, she did not dream of the rectory where she had dwelt for most of her adult life, but of her childhood home. Many people dreamed that way, she had read.

The boy had sad eyes the color of tree bark. He had not been the smiling kind. A serious boy. "The Window Boy," they used to call him. For hours on end, he would press his face to the orphanage window, looking out into the wide world he did not know, waiting, ever waiting.

He was waiting for the parents he never knew. The parents no one knew. The parents who might or might not be alive. She had told him that. Still, he waited.

But no one ever came for him. No one ever cared. My failure, she thought bitterly. My one failure. Some children are placed and some are not. That is a truth as hard as concrete and as eternal as the promise of resurrection.

Perhaps if a proper home had been found, things might have turned out differently for that one sad-faced boy. But they had not. It was the boy's own fault, in a way. He had resisted all efforts to place him in a good, loving home. He stubbornly waited for his true parents, who never came.

When he had matured, he was full of such promise. A policeman. It was a surprising choice. Perhaps not so surprising upon reflection. A wronged boy who wanted to set the whole world right. He had been an honest boy, too.

It was such a shock when they had convicted him of that murder.

The boy she had known would never have slain. But he had been a Marine. Had served in Vietnam. Vietnam had changed so many of them. They came back lean and hollow cheeked and with a spiritual emptiness deep in their eyes. It was, she had long ago concluded, Vietnam that must have changed him so. Although he returned to exchange his green uniform of war for his blue one of peace, no doubt he had been changed by the green.

It had been such a bitter day when the state executed him. To Sister Mary Margaret Morrow, it had felt like losing flesh and blood.

Now, with her body failing and her senses all but shut down, Sister Mary Margaret lay in expectation of death, refusing to die and wondering why.

She had no unfinished business on this earth. None whatsoever.

But the good Lord refused to take her, and all she could think of was an orphan boy who had gone bad many many years ago.

A boy named Remo Williams.

She wondered if she should ask for him at the gateway to Heaven. She was certain he had died in Christ, in the end.

Chapter 1

By the time he took the last turn on the trail from Yuma and Red Ghost Butte hove into view, William S. Roam began to feel as if he were riding across the dying planet Mars.

Red Ghost Butte was the color of raw brick. Everything around it was red. The sun burned overhead like a red, resentful orb. The sandstone hills were red. But Red Ghost Butte was reddest of all.

Although he had grown up in these rusty hills among the blowing sands of this low corner of Arizona, he had been away long enough that the red receptors of his eyes were overwhelmed by the sheer ferocity of the color of desolation.

All at once he felt ill, weaving on his hand-tooled saddle as he piloted his horse through the low desert toward Red Ghost Butte and what lay beyond.

Even his horse seemed red. It was chestnut colored, more brown than red, but under the blazing Arizona sun, it seemed to absorb the infernal redness all around till its hair smoldered.

Though sick, Bill Roam pushed on. His people needed him. He had nothing to bring but the white man's money and an empty fame that had come too late in life. But they were his people, and he had a duty to them.

He looked like a cowboy in his pink shirt and denims. His boots were hand-tooled Spanish leather, bought in Mexico City with a Visa Gold credit card. His white Stetson was pure Hollywood. The silver points of his turquoise-studded bola tie clinked together with each gritting hoof fall. His legs were long, and his muscles under his denim jacket were like lean, knotted ropes. Seven feet would catch his height. Only God could calculate his age.

He was no cowboy. His face was as red as the land that had formed him, as eroded as the sandstone mesas that dotted the endless red desolation. His eyes wore a permanent sun-squint, and their color was the color of the red-brown clay that lay under the red sand to nourish the corn that was life.

After three more miles, his red receptors shut down. The red of the sand and the sun faded, washed out, and he felt twenty times better.

The corral-style fence came into view, its gate as wide open as all outdoors.

"Pick it up, Sanshin," he told his horse, urging it along.

The horse began cantering. The red never bothered him. Horses don't see color. Horses don't know heartsick. Horses are lucky, he thought.

Bill Roam rode through the gate, past a weathered sign. There were two words that had been burnt into the sign with a heated poker. The first word began with an S. That was the only letter still visible. The second word was Reservation.

The first hogans began appearing. Every door faced east as tradition demanded. Every dome roof sported a stovepipe. And every third roof had a satellite dish pointed to the vaulting blue sky.

"I can see where my money went," he muttered without bitterness.

An Indian in a red-checker shirt and ragged Levi's stepped out of the first hogan, took one look and came back with a pump shotgun. He squinted up the long barrel.

"This is reservation land, white man."

"You wouldn't know it from the sky dishes, Tomi." The pump gun all but fell from the brave's sunburned hands.

"Sunny Joe. That you?"

"I come back."

"We thought you'd deserted us forever."

"You got no call saying that. I been sending money right along."

"Hell, you know we got millions in that bank account we don't ever touch because it came from Washington."

"My money still good around here?"

"You know it is, Sunny Joe."

"Swap you a silver dollar for a cold one."

"Coming right up, Sunny Joe."

Bill "Sunny Joe" Roam kept riding. Tomi caught up on foot. Walking backward to keep pace with the chestnut horse, the spurs on his Reeboks jingling, Tomi handed up a cool Tecate, saying, "Keep your silver dollars, Sunny Joe."

"Sounds like you got plenty of these firewater cans," said Bill Roam, popping the tab.

"I like to keep the dust from my mouth these days."

"How is the dust these days?"

"It's killing us off, Sunny Joe. You know that, else you wouldn't have come all the way from that opulence you enjoy."

"I know," said Bill Roam gravely. "That's why I come back."

And he knocked back the entire can without pausing for breath.

"It's the death-hogan dust. It's powerful strong now."

"I hear they call it something else now," said Sunny Joe.

Tomi spat. "White man's words. White man's science."

"I hear they call it the Sun On Jo Disease."

"What do whites know?"

"How many dead, Tomi?"

Tomi grunted. "How many living is a shorter answer. Just a few of us left. We're dying, Sunny Joe. Not all at once. But it's catching up. The death-hogan dust is bound to devour us all before too long."

"That's why I come back."

"To save us, Sunny Joe?"

"If I can."

"Can you?"

"Doubt it. All I got is money and fame. What do the death spirits care about either?"

"Then why'd you leave all that to risk inhaling the dust of death, Sunny Joe?"

"If my people are going to perish, I aim to die with them. After all, I'm the last Sunny Joe. And what have I got left at my age? Just too much money and useless damn fame."

Sullen Indians began collecting behind the horse with every hogan they passed. Some were drunk. Most were skeptical. A few jeered.

"Show us some magic, Sunny Joe."

"I'm fresh out of magic, Happy Bear."

"Did you meet any famous white guys in the white lands, Sunny Joe?"

"Yeah. Stallone. Schwarzenegger. Any of those?"

"Any and all. But I wouldn't trade a one for the least of you ornery redskins," Roam answered.

"People say you turned apple."

"Do I look like an apple to you, Gus Jong?" The Indians fell silent.

When they passed a hogan and no one emerged, Bill Roam would ask, "Who died there?"

And as he heard the names, he hung his head and squeezed his dry eyes.

"Ko Jong Oh gather up his red soul," he said softly.

"You look tired, Sunny Joe."

Old Bill Roam's eyes sought Red Ghost Butte standing in the shadow of the great Chocolate Mountains. "I am tired. Damn tired. I'm an old man now. I have come home forever." And lowering his voice to a dust-dry whisper, he added, "Forever to dwell with the spirits of my honored ancestors, whom I revere more than life."

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he couldn't tell if he was dreaming or not.

He knew he had been asleep. In the quiet darkness of the summer night with the faint salt tang of the Atlantic Ocean coming in through the open window of his unfurnished bedroom, he wondered if he was still asleep and only dreaming.

Remo was a Master of Sinanju, and so did not sleep like other men. A part of his brain was always awake, eternally aware. He slept deeper than other men, woke up more refreshed than other men, but still his sleep was deeper. Rarely now did he dream. Of course he did dream. All men dreamed. Even men who had been elevated by the discipline of Sinanju-the first and ultimate of the martial arts-dreamed. But Remo rarely remembered his dreams upon waking.

If this was a dream, Remo knew he would never forget it. If this was a dream, Remo understood it was important.

For in the fitful darkness of his room, where moonlight showed on and off through rifts in the summertime clouds, a woman appeared in the room.

The portion of Remo's brain that never slept, which monitored his surroundings even in the deepest part of sleep, became aware of the woman the instant she appeared at the foot of the tatami mat on which Remo slept.

That the woman did not enter the room through the door or a window startled the never-dormant portion of Remo's brain, and he snapped awake like a mousetrap tripping.

Remo sat up, dark eyes adjusting to the darkness of the room.

At this point he wasn't certain he was really awake. The ever-vigilant part of his brain-which had warned him of the presence in his room-went dormant as his other senses kicked in.

They told him he was alone in the room. His hearing detected no heartbeat, no faint, elastic wheeze of lungs, no gurgle or hum of blood coursing through miles of veins and blood vessels. His sense of smell trapped the airborne scent molecules tumbling around the still air, separated sea salt, car exhaust and mown grass and told him there were no danger smells present.

Almost every sense told him he was alone. Except sight. He could see the woman. She was looking down at him with a calm face that was an oval framed in long dark hair. It was a cameo face. Young but ageless, beautiful but not breathtaking.

Her eyes were very sad.

She stood barefoot at the foot of the reed mat, and while her face was clear, her form was something even Remo's powerful eyes could not read. She did not appear to be clothed. Yet there was no impression of nudity. She might have been some cosmic angel beyond the concept of skin or cloth.

Remo reached out with a bare toe to touch the woman.

His foot disappeared into a darkness so absolute he had to yank it back.

Then the woman spoke.

"I was only watching you sleep." And she smiled faintly. For all its hesitation, it was a warm and generous smile. "You are so handsome as a man."

"Are you really my-mother?" Remo asked in a voice that cracked on the last word.

Her sad eyes shone. "Yes. I am your mother."

"I recognize your eyes."

"Do you remember me?"

"No. But I have a daughter. Your eyes are like hers."

"There is shadow around your daughter."

"What!"

"That is not for you to worry about now. One day you will face this shadow. You will face many things you do not understand." She closed her eyes. "We have been apart nearly all of your life. But that too will change. When you die, my only son, you will die unknown. But they will see fit to bury you in Arlington National Cemetery under the name that belongs to you, but which you have never heard."

"'Remo Williams' isn't my real name?" She shook her head slowly.

"What is my name?"

"You must discover that for yourself."

"Tell me your name, then."

"He will tell you."

"My father?"

"You have not yet found him."

"I've been trying, but-"

"I have told you that I lie buried by Laughing Brook."

"I can't find any Laughing Brook. It's not on any map or in any atlas or guide books."

"Laughing Brook is a sacred place. It does not belong on any map. And I have told you that your father is known to you."

"I don't know who that is. I've racked my brain-"

"You must not stop searching in your mind, in your heart or in the world of flesh and earth."

"Just tell me his name," Remo pleaded.

"I am sorry."

"Look, if it's so freaking important for me to find him," Remo said hotly, "just tell me his name."

"I would not be a fit mother if I led you by the hand long after you have learned to walk."

"Then give me another hint. Please."

"Sometimes he dwells in the land where the Great Star fell. Other times he dwells among the stars."

"What does that mean?"

"Search for him south of Great Star Crater or among the other earthly stars."

"I don't know what an earthly star is."

The woman closed her dark eyes. "I am permitted to show you a vision."

And in the formless space between her face and her bare feet, the darkness congealed. Dim shadows darkened, took form. Patches of moonlight bent themselves into artful, impossible shapes.

Gradually a picture resolved. There was no color, just blacks and grays. A night image.

"What do you see, my son who is not known to me?"

"A cave..."

"Look deeper. What do you see in the cave?" Remo peered into the vision. The cave was dark, but his eyes took in the ambient light, amplifying it.

He saw at first a pitiful thing wrapped in a blanket. The blanket had color once. But now it was faded and tattered. In the blanket was a bundle of desiccated sticks and patches of dried brown hide, and above the bundle, tilted to one side, lolled a human head, shriveled, wizened, eyes withered shut above a sunken nose and a mouth that appeared to have been stitched shut.

To the bald, drum-tight skin of the head clung dirty tatters of hair.

"I see a mummy," said Remo.

"Does the mummy have a face?"

"Not much of one," Remo admitted.

"In death, do you see whose face the mummy wore in life?"

Remo's eyes took in the ruined mask of parchment skin and dead bone for a long time. He swallowed once, hard.

And turning his head away, Remo squeezed his eyes shut and said nothing.

"Whose face?" the woman insisted.

"You know whose face," he said thickly.

"You will visit this cave soon. You have only to take the first step."

"I don't want to go anymore."

"You seek your father. You seek the truth."

"Not if it costs me-"

"You have searched with your eyes and your brain. You have not yet searched with your heart. His eyes look down upon you, although he does not see you."

"What does that mean?"

"My people are the people of the Sun. Your people are the people of the Sun. Find the people of the Sun, and you will find understanding and the peace you have sought all your life."

"I-I can't."

"You will. Listen to the mother you have never known. You will enter this cave, and all will be revealed to you. Do not be afraid. There is no death. You are no more alive than I am. No more conscious than your most remote ancestor. And I am no more dead than my genes that you carry in your body."

And with a last wistful look, the apparition faded from the room.

Remo did not sleep the rest of the night. He lay flat on his back looking up at the ceiling, trying to convince himself that it had all been a bad dream.

But Masters of Sinanju, the absolute lords of their own minds and bodies, did not experience nightmares. And Remo knew that his worst fears were only days away.

THE MASTER OF SINANJU was making longevity tea for breakfast.

The water boiled happily in its celadon teapot while the ginseng strips and crushed jujubes and raw pine nuts waited patiently in their individual bowls. Warm sunlight streamed through the kitchen window as the Western sun shed its good radiance upon the loose imported green tea leaves.

The Master of Sinanju would have preferred an Eastern sun, but he lived in difficult times. Yet they were not terrible times, he reflected as he bustled around the kitchen with its electric stove and running water and other Western conveniences.

As he prepared the morning meal, he hummed a song from his village of Sinanju in faraway Korea. The song made him feel closer to his village. But in truth, he was not unhappy.

True, he dwelt in a barbarian land. True also, he dwelt with a son who was not only adopted, but white and large of foot and nose and blankly round of eye. A ghost-faced white.

But the Master of Sinanju had known harsher times. He had experienced the bitter comfort of his village during the difficult days when he had no son, no heir, no pupil. Only the awesome responsibility of his village and the cold knowledge that the five-thousand-year tradition, of which he was the last caretaker, had come to an ignominious end.

In those days he had tasted the gall of failure, the sure knowledge that he had let down fifty centuries of ancestors, and faced his final days alone.

Those had been the darkest hours of his life. How could any event seem more distasteful? How could any ignominy make that one pale into insignificance?

So he happily prepared longevity tea in the warm morning sunshine and, although his pupil should have arisen with the sun, Chiun didn't go upstairs to awaken him.

"Remo will appear in due time. He is a good son, if pale."

But Remo didn't appear. And when the water had bubbled down to trace metals, the Master of Sinanju simply put on a fresh pot and resumed his wait.

Longevity tea is worth waiting for. And so are good sons.

THE HUMMING had long since ceased and the teapot had grown cold when Remo Williams padded barefoot into the kitchen, the lines and planes of his strong face unhappy. His deep-set eyes were like burn holes above his high cheekbones.

"I have made longevity tea," said Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, not turning from the stove.

"I'm not hungry."

"That is good, because I have thrown yours into the sink."

"That's okay," Remo said absently, taking a tumbler from a cupboard and holding it under running water.

He drank two glasses of the metallic-tasting water, and the Master of Sinanju still didn't turn around.

"I have wasted the entire morning," Chiun said abruptly.

"Doing what?"

"Being happy."

"That's not a waste."

"When one spends an entire morning thinking well of inconsiderate boors, it is a waste. It is a betrayal." Remo said nothing.

Chiun whirled. "Do you know what time it is?" Remo didn't have to look at the wall clock in the shape of a black cat whose rocking tail swung in constant opposition to its shifty cartoon eyes. "Ten thirty-two," he said, setting the empty tumbler in the stainless-steel sink. His wrists were freakishly thick.

"Why did you keep me waiting?"

"Couldn't sleep."

"If you could not sleep, why fritter away the morning on your back?"

"Because I was afraid to get out of bed."

The Master of Sinanju stopped, his mouth a perfect O. "Why?"

Remo hesitated.

"Why do you fear morning?" Chiun pressed.

And when Remo turned, there were tears .in his dark, deep-set eyes. One rolled down the curve of a high cheekbone. "You're going to die," he said.

"Possibly," Chiun admitted, searching his pupil's troubled features.

"You're going to die soon, Little Father."

A dark cloud passed over the Master of Sinanju's features. "Why do you say that?"

"I don't want to be left alone in the world."

And seeing the pain deep in his pupil's eyes, the Master of Sinanju dropped his anger like a mask and padded toward Remo.

"What troubles you?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

Chiun clapped his long-nailed fingers together. "Speak!"

The doorbell rang.

"I will answer it," said Chiun.

He came back a minute later with a heavy plastic mailing envelope and laid it on a kitchen counter carelessly.

"What's that?" asked Remo.

"Nothing."

"How do you know?"

"It is only for you and it is from Smith."

"Could be important."

"It is not. The look in your eyes is important."

"I'd better make sure," said Remo.

And because he was showing interest through his pain, the Master of Sinanju allowed his pupil to open the package.

It was a Federal Express pouch, made of a plastic called Tyvek that was so tough it could not be torn or damaged even by truck drivers flinging it carelessly at doors. Houses were now wrapped with Tyvek before siding was nailed in place. It could be cut with sharp blades but not torn by human hands, no matter how strong.

Remo tried to find the flap, got confused and impatiently grabbed the pouch at both ends, popping it apart like a paper sack.

Out spilled a fanfold stack of green-bar computer paper. Remo glanced at the top sheet briefly.

"What is it?" asked Chiun.

"Nothing," said Remo, dumping the stack of paper into the trash bin.

"It is from Smith. How could it be nothing?"

"Because it is," said Remo.

The Master of Sinanju lifted the stack from the trash and examined the top sheet. It was a list of names.

Williams, Aaron

Williams, Adam

Williams, Alan

Williams, Allen

Williams, Arthur

"What are all these names?" he wondered.

"Just names. Forget them."

"Ah," said Chiun, understanding dawning in his hazel eyes. "You demanded of Smith that he seek out a suitable father for you, and this is the list of culprits."

"It's a stack of wastepaper. Get rid of it."

"If you no longer care to seek your wayward father, perhaps I will do so. If only to congratulate him for ridding himself of so intractable a son. Then I will present him with a bill for raising you."

"Stuff it," said Remo, storming from the room.

Chapter 3

Dr. Harold W Smith began his day as he always did. He parked his beat-up station wagon in his assigned parking spot at Folcroft Sanitarium, nodded to the lobby guard as he strode to the elevator and rode it one floor up to his office.

"Any calls, Mrs. Mikulka?" he asked, and Mrs. Mikulka crisply informed him that no, there had not been any calls, a fact that should have been obvious inasmuch as it was six in the morning.

Harold Smith liked to get an early start on the day. Some people were that way, so no one considered it unusual that the director of a sleepy sanitarium in Rye, New York, should approach his boring job with the same brisk urgency as the head of a major TV network.

Smith shut the office door behind him and entered his sanctum sanctorum, an office overlooking Long Island Sound.

The office reflected his personality. Spare, frugal, unassuming. If Smith had chosen the wall paint, it would have been gray, like the three-piece suit he habitually wore. Like the pale grayish cast of his skin. But because Folcroft was supposed to be a warehouse for the chronically ill, the walls were a vapid hospital green.

The office might have been furnished in the 1960s, from prewar castoffs. Except for the desk. It gleamed darkly, like an altar of obsidian, out of place in the slightly shabby room.

A Spartan block, the desk sat before the picture window framing the sound. The leather executive chair behind it was cracked with age, and the springs creaked when Harold Smith dropped his spare frame into it. But the desk was new.

Smith absently tightened the knot of his hunter green Dartmouth tie and reached under the lip of the slab of black tempered glass that served as a desktop. He found a black button and depressed it.

Deep in the desk, under the glass and canted so that it faced the man behind the desk but was invisible to anyone else, a phosphorescent amber screen came to life.

Smith brought his gnarled fingers up to the edge of the desk. A touch-sensitive keyboard lit up. Smith input a string of characters, and the amber screen went through its sign-on cycle.

Smith waited patiently, his patrician face glued to the screen. Behind rimless glasses, his gray eyes watched the familiar process. The virus-check program automatically executed. When it was complete, Smith watched for an on-screen warning light.

There were none. No emergencies. Only then did he relax.

Smith called up the Constitution data base, reading it word for word as he had for the three decades he had operated out of Folcroft, not as its chief administrator, but as the director of CURE, a government agency so supersecret only the President of the United States knew it existed.

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union..."

Smith finished his reading, closed the file, and called up the wire-service news digests. Two floors below, in Folcroft's basement, giant mainframes and optical WORM-drive servers toiled night and day, trolling the net, culling information that might indicate a threat to US. security, warning signs of domestic disorder or global peril-all of which fell under the secret CURE operational guidelines.

There had been another overnight Amtrak derailment. This time outside Baton Rouge. It might be simply another example of incompetence on the part of the government-funded company that ran the nation's aging railroad system, but there had been a great many such derailments of late. Smith captured the news digest and dumped it into a growing electronic file marked 'Amtrak.'

If these derailments continued, it might mean a matter for CURE to look into.

There had been an overnight political assassination in Mexico according to Notimex. This was the third in recent months. The situation south of the border was difficult but not explosive. At least not yet.

After reading the extract, Smith dumped it into the Mexico file.

Other items flashed on the buried amber screen. Another American fishing boat had been seized in Canadian waters. The new premier of North Korea continued his courting of the UN, even while making veiled threats against South Korea. The situation in Macedonia still festered.

Problems but no crises. No mission for CURE, Harold Smith reflected.

Which was a distinct relief, because CURE had no enforcement capability at present. He was on strike and vowed to remain on strike until Harold Smith had found his parents.

It was ironic, thought Smith as he turned in his chair to face Long Island Sound with its sun-dappled waters and scooting skiffs. Remo Williams had been selected to be CURE's enforcement arm precisely because he had no living relatives. There had been other candidates, all collected by the very mainframes that still hummed in the Folcroft basement, but only Remo had all the qualifications to fulfill the mission.

When CURE was set up in the early 1960s, there had been no thought of an enforcement arm. A new President of the US. had taken up residence in the White House full of hope-and discovered the nation faced its greatest crisis. It was tearing itself apart. The laws of the nation were no longer enough to hold society together. The Constitution had been made obsolete by lawless forces.

That President had faced as stark a choice as Lincoln had a century before. Take drastic action or forfeit the nation.

Two options had presented themselves. Declare martial law or suspend the Constitution.

The President had wisely done neither. Instead, he had plucked an obscure information analyst named Smith out of the CIA and installed him as head of CURE with a mandate to clean up the nation and preserve American democracy even if it meant riding roughshod over the Constitution of the United States.

Which Harold Smith did with a grim relentlessness over the course of CURE's first decade. And it was the reason why, at the beginning of every work day, he dutifully read the most sacred document in American history. It was a reminder of his awesome responsibility and a kind of silent act of contrition. Harold Smith believed in the Constitution. He just didn't believe in sacrificing the greatest democracy in human history to the inflexible demands inscribed on a sheet of parchment paper. Nor did he believe that the great democratic experiment called America had failed abysmally.

By the end of that first decade, a new President had assumed the office and found the tide of lawlessness had only worsened. He had given Smith the broader responsibility of creating an enforcement arm.

Smith had plucked an obscure patrolman with a single tour in Vietnam to his credit-who nevertheless fit an exhaustive list of criteria-and had him killed.

Harold Smith's fingerprints were not on file in the killing of patrolman Remo Williams, the last man executed by the State of New Jersey. He had arranged it all by telephone calls and whispered orders. Others had done the dirty work.

A badge was stolen. A pusher was beaten to death with a baseball bat in an alley in the Ironbound section of Newark, New Jersey, and when the sun rose, it was Remo Williams's badge that was found at the scene of the crime, Remo Williams who was arrested by Newark detectives, Remo Williams who was rushed through a show trial and found guilty of premeditated murder.

Everyone believed Remo was guilty because everyone knew that the State of New Jersey would not execute one of its own law-enforcement officers unless there was absolutely no shred of doubt. Twelve honest men found Remo Williams guilty, never dreaming they were unwitting participants in a conspiracy that reached all the way to the Oval Office. They only knew that Remo Williams had to die. It was as obvious as the color of the sky.

Remo Williams never understood he had been framed and railroaded through a corrupt justice system. Not until the day after the smothering black leather hood had been jammed over his head and the searing juice poured through his jerking body.

He'd lost consciousness in the death house of Trenton State Prison and woke up in Folcroft Sanitarium, where it was all explained to him by CURE's lone field operative in those days, a one-handed man named Conrad MacCleary.

The chair had been rigged. The trial had been rigged, the jury bought off. His fingerprints and other life records had been pulled from every file.

"Won't work," Remo had said after it was all laid out for him.

"We were thorough," said MacCleary. "You have no family. Few friends-what cop has real friends except other cops?-and the blue brotherhood didn't exactly stand by you here. You were too honest. And honest cops are always the first ones they hang out to dry."

"Still won't work," Remo Williams insisted stubbornly, feeling the bandages on his face from the plastic surgery used to change his appearance.

"Why not?" asked the man with the hook for a hand.

"I grew up in an orphanage. Maybe I don't have a family, but I had a zillion brothers."

"Saint Theresa's burned down two weeks ago. Fortunately, there was only one casualty. A nun. Seems she contracted smoke inhalation or something. Understand you knew her, Williams. Sister Mary something?"

"You bastard."

"You're all alone in the world, Williams. And there's a hobo with no name lying in your grave. Just say the word, and we'll swap you for him and no one will know any different."

Remo Williams had accepted his new life. He had been given over to the last pure-blooded Master of Sinanju and transformed by long training, arduous exercise and monkish diet until he himself was a Master of Sinanju, a martial-arts discipline so old it was said that all other fighting arts were descended from it.

For many years, seeming never to grow older, he had served America in secret. The man who didn't exist working for the the agency that didn't exist. America's enemies wilted before this silent, implacable human weapon.

And now he wanted out. Forever.

But before he got out, Remo was calling in an old obligation from the man who had robbed him of his old life and set him on the new.

The trouble was, Harold Smith had done his job too well so many years ago. Erasing all traces of Remo Williams's existence had been easy compared to erasing other men's existences. Consequently, two decades later, absolutely no trace remained.

The orphanage had burned down to the ground with its scant records. Smith had read Remo's record long ago, before the orphanage was consumed. The skimpy account told of a baby boy, not many weeks old, left in a basket on the doorstep of Saint Theresa's Orphanage. A note attached to the babe's swaddling clothes told his name. Remo Williams. That was all. No explanation. No back trail.

Even Smith's computer file on Remo, maintained over those long years, had been lost when Smith was forced to erase all CURE files during an IRS seizure of the sanitarium in the recent past.

Smith had hit a brick wall. Remo Williams might well have never existed-just as Harold W Smith had intended all along.

Only now Harold W Smith very much wanted to locate Remo Williams's parents. The contract between the CURE and the House of Sinanju was due to be renewed in the coming months. And without Remo, CURE might as well shut down.

The blue contact telephone rang. Smith scooped it up and said, "Yes?"

"Hail, O Emperor of understanding and enlightenment. I crave the boon of your clear-seeing mind," said a squeaky voice.

"Go ahead, Master Chiun."

"Remo is acting strangely."

"More strangely than usual?"

"He received your package."

"It was the best I could do. It is a printout of all US. males whose last name is Williams and whose dates of birth fall within the parameters that would permit them to parent someone Remo's age."

"He threw these names away, unread."

"Why?"

"I do not know why," Chiun said, a testy quality creeping into his tone. "That is why I have called you. Why would these names cease to interest Remo?"

"I have no idea. Last week he appeared very eager when I told him I was compiling such a list."

"Yet now he scorns these names. Scorns the very thing that has obsessed him for many seasons."

"Master Chiun, barring a miracle, I do not believe I can ever locate the information Remo seeks."

"That is good."

"You have expressed those sentiments before."

"And I express them now."

"In the past you made representations suggesting you know something about Remo's past. Something you refuse to divulge."

"I do. Remo is Korean."

"I think that unlikely."

"Remo's father is Korean. Possibly his mother, as well."

"Why do you say that?"

"It is very simple. Remo is outwardly white, but he has taken to Sinanju like no pure-blooded boy of my village ever has. Therefore, he cannot be white. Entirely white. He is Korean. And if he is Korean, his father must be Korean, for it is well-known that Koreanness-true Koreanness-can only be passed from father to son."

"I see," said Harold Smith vaguely, recognizing that the Master of Sinanju had lapsed into the prejudice and superstition of his ancestors.

Smith changed the subject. "What do you suggest we do? The next contract expires in the fall. It is bad enough that Remo considers himself on strike, but once the contract lapses, there is no predicting what he will do."

"Remo must never be allowed to find his father," Chiun said suddenly.

"Why not?"

"Because," said the Master of Sinanju in a strange voice, "if he does, he may never forgive me."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Smith.

But the Master of Sinanju had already hung up. Harold Smith replaced his receiver and turned his chair around to face Long Island Sound. He steepled his fingers as a sour expression settled over his slightly sharp features.

All his life he had traded in information. Hard fact was his currency. On hard fact he made countless life-and-death decisions. Harold Smith believed that like the radio transmissions of his long-ago youth, the facts of Remo's lineage not gone forever, but were speeding through the galaxy. If one could take a radio far enough into deep space, fifty-year-old broadcasts of "The Shadow" and "The Green Hornet" and "I Love a Mystery" could be received as clearly as if it were 1939.

Somewhere out there was a document, a file, a newspaper account or even a human brain that held the secret of Remo Williams.

It was just a matter of finding it and recognizing it.

Chapter 4

Remo Williams walked the sands of Wollaston Beach thinking that all the important places in his life were by the water. Newark. Folcroft. Sinanju. And now Quincy, Massachusetts.

There was a spanking wind off Quincy Bay. White sea gulls hung in the air like kites, feet dangling, heads craning and twisting down to spy food scraps. Once in a while one would drop to catch a fish or root among discarded food on the curved smile of sand that was the beach.

Remo was walking north, toward the place where the sand became rock and then salt marsh. Beyond it was the Hummock, a hump of trees and brush that was also known as Arrowhead Hill. There the Moswetuset Indians had dwelt until the white man came, some say to despoil a vibrant culture. But the tribe that had given their name-if unwillingly-to the State of Massachusetts had left behind only a hill not much more prominent than a garbage dump. Beyond the Hummock the blue towers of Boston, a city not among the nation's largest by any means, reared gleaming to put the ancient seat of the Moswetusets to shame.

As he walked, Remo thought about another beach, more rock than sand, fronting the inhospitable slaty waters of the West Korea Bay, thousands of miles away.

On that beach a fishing village called Sinanju stood as it had for over five thousand years. Almost no one in the West knew of it. But it was from this village that the Masters of Sinanju-the premier assassins in human history-had ventured forth to serve the great thrones of the ancient world.

From Egyptian and Chinese dynasties history had long forgotten to the Roman Empire-which, by Sinanju standards, fell in the recent past-the House of Sinanju had been the preeminent historical power. Preeminent but unsuspected by historians and thus unrecorded. In their way, the Masters of Sinanju kept the peace. For when an emperor had an assassin at his disposal, he could crush his rivals, internal and external, thereby preserving his domain. Costly and ruinous wars were prevented this way. Lives were saved. Armies were not wasted on bloody combat. Kingdoms were made stable.

At least that was how the Master of Sinanju had explained it to Remo.

That village was old when the Moswetusets were learning to chip flint. It would still be standing when Boston had sunk into rubble. If Chiun had his way, Remo would one day take over the village as the first white Master of Sinanju.

It wasn't exactly how Remo had envisioned his life when he left the orphanage to seek his fortune. In those days his dreams had a different size. A policeman's salary, wife and kids and the traditional clapboard house with a white picket fence. Houses like that were all over America. Remo had never lived in one. Not for long, anyway. The simple dreams had always eluded him.

He couldn't see himself living in Sinanju. Ever. But the years had made him more part of Sinanju than America.

Newark, the city of his youth, was no more. Riots and neglect and the grinding passing of time had obliterated it.

This city was only the latest in a long string of places where Remo had lived since shedding his old life in that other place on the water, Folcroft Sanitarium. Remo might live here another year, or even ten. It would never be home. There was no home for an orphan who had never had a family. Not in the comfort of the past. Not in the uncertainty of the future.

Remo walked on. Having come from nowhere, he was not concerned that his path was aimless.

He became aware of the Master of Sinanju padding alongside him long after Chiun had joined him. Remo had been looking down at the sand, not up at the world and the sky.

"You are a duck that walks," Chiun squeaked.

"I'm a duck that walks," agreed Remo.

"A target for any who would do you harm."

"That's called a sitting duck."

"For a Master of Sinanju to walk along so oblivious to danger, you might as well be sitting."

"I'm in no danger."

"It is when you are most lulled that danger rears its water-buffalo skull."

"That's 'ugly head.'"

"There is no difference," Chiun said dismissively. "What troubles you, Remo?"

"I don't belong anywhere."

"You belong to me."

"And after you pass on?"

"Why this preoccupation with death?"

"It's my trade," said Remo bitterly. "I never wanted to be an assassin. I'm sick of death."

"This has troubled you these last few months. Something new troubles you today, my son."

Remo held his tongue for a full minute before speaking. "She came to me again last night," he said softly. "My mother."

"That hussy!" Chiun hissed.

"I thought you said she didn't exist."

"She is a fragment of your imagination, therefore she is a hussy. Because what other kind of woman would spring unbidden from your white mind?"

"She's real. She told me to keep looking for my father."

"And so, like an obedient son, you have stopped?"

"She showed me something else."

"What is that?"

"A vision."

"An hallucination," spat Chiun.

"You didn't say that when I saw the Great Wang that time years ago."

"Seeing the Great Wang was the last passage of a Master in training to full Masterhood."

"Yeah, well, it was good to get all those dippy rites of passage over with. The Night of the Salt. The Dream of Death. The Master's Trial. It was getting to be like puberty every three years."

"There is still one other rite you have not yet undergone."

"What is it? The Dance of the Dippy Duck?"

"No. The Rite of Attainment."

Remo regarded the Boston skyline. "Never heard of it."

"It is necessary to prepare a full Master for the final stage in his responsibilities to the House."

"What's that?" Remo asked without interest.

"It sanctifies a full Master so that upon the retirement of his teacher, he can assume the title of Reigning Master of Sinanju."

"You planning on retiring?"

"No."

Remo stopped suddenly. He turned to face the Master of Sinanju. He was rotating his thick wrists, something he did when agitated. They were as unalike as two men could be. Remo towered over the old Korean. His white T-shirt and gray chinos were casual while Chiun's riotous scarlet-and-lavender kimono belonged in a Chinese wedding party. One ageless, the other ancient. "Little Father," said Remo.

Chiun searched his pupil's troubled features. "Yes?"

"That vision she showed me. It was of you." Chiun brightened.

"Me. Really, Remo?"

Remo frowned darkly. "Why are you suddenly interested in a vision of a woman you say you don't believe in?" he asked tightly.

"Because the vision mentioned someone of importance. Namely, me. Continue, Remo. What did she say about me?"

"Nothing. She showed me a cave."

"What was in this cave?"

"You were."

"What was I doing?"

"Decomposing."

The Master of Sinanju stepped back as if struck by a blow. He narrowed his hazel eyes. "She lied!" he shrieked.

"She said I had to find my father and when I did, I would enter that cave and discover the truth about myself."

Chiun gathered up his wispy chin whiskers in a pout. "You'd been dead a while, Little Father. You were a mummy."

"How did you know it was me?" Chiun challenged.

"It was your face, your hair, your bone structure." The Master of Sinanju made a fist of his face, the deep seams and wrinkles gathering tighter and tighter like parchment wrinkling as it absorbed water.

"When did she say this evil day would come to pass?"

"She didn't. Exactly. Only that it would be soon if I kept looking for my father."

"You must not seek out that man, Remo!" Chiun said, waggling a stern finger in Remo's face.

"That's exactly what I was thinking."

"And you must go near no caves."

"That goes double for you, you know."

Chiun stroked his tendril of a beard thoughtfully. "And we must seek out a place where that busybody woman can vex you no longer."

"I'm quitting CURE, Little Father."

"Yes, yes, Let me think."

"For good this time. I mean it."

Chiun fluttered his winglike kimono sleeves like an ungainly, flightless bird. "Yes, yes. Of course you do."

"The organization can dragoon someone else if they want. Let 'em make an enforcement arm out of Arnold Schwarzenegger, for all I care. I've done my time, paid my dues. It's time to move on."

"We must pack."

"To go where?"

"You must trust me. Do you trust me?"

"Sure. You know I do."

"Then come. For I have been neglectful in my duties to the House. You have been a full Master long enough. It is time that you undergo the Rite of Attainment."

And the Master of Sinanju ran down to the lapping waters of Quincy Bay, leaving no sandal prints in the loose beige sand.

Remo followed, likewise leaving no trace of his passing.

When they reached the bay, it was in unison. They seemed to step up onto the calm water as if mounting a shifting ledge of rock. The water supported them. They ran out past the anchored sailboats and rounded Squantum headland, where legend had it Captain Miles Standish first met Squanto, the Indian who taught the pilgrims how to survive their first harsh New England winter by planting corn.

"Where are we going?" Remo asked as they ran under the long bridge to Moon Island and entered Boston Harbor, water barely splashing under their feet.

"There," Chiun said, pointing north.

And on the other side of Boston Harbor, Remo spotted the fat concrete radar tower of Logan Airport. A 747 was lifting off in their direction, trailing a dirty fan of exhaust.

"I thought you said we had to pack first."

"Pack!" Chiun spat. "There is no time to pack! Make haste, O slugabed."

"SO, WHERE ARE WE HEADED, Little Father?" Remo asked after the Boston-to-New York City TWA passenger jet lifted off over Boston Harbor.

"That is a surprise."

"If we're going to Sinanju, I'm grabbing my seat flotation cushion and getting off here."

"We are not going to Sinanju."

"Good."

"You do not deserve to visit the Pearl of the Orient."

"Oyster of the Yellow Sea is more like it," muttered Remo.

Chiun had the window seat and was looking out. "Wing holding up?" asked Remo.

"I am not looking at the wing."

"What are you looking at, then?"

"There!" said Chiun in the high, squeaky voice he used when excited. "Behold, Remo."

Remo leaned over to see out the window.

The wheels were up, and the TWA 747 was swinging back over land. They were south of Boston. Remo recognized the sinuous Neponset River separating Boston from Quincy.

Then he saw it.

Nestled beside the T-shaped high school was the unmistakable place they called home. Even from the air it stood out.

Once it had been a church. A real-estate developer had come along and replaced the stained glass with vinyl-clad replacement windows, added doghouse and shed roof dormers to the roofline and converted it into a sixteen-unit condominium. The Master of Sinanju had acquired it from Harold Smith two contract negotiations back.

"Castle Sinanju," said Chiun proudly. "Look how it dwarfs all lesser domiciles."

Remo folded his lean arms. "If I never see it again, it'll be fine with me."

"Philistine," sniffed the Master of Sinanju.

The 747 leveled off at two thousand feet and followed the coastline south. Remo recognized the hook of Cape Cod, the seat belt light winked off and he settled down to enjoy the flight.

A black-haired stewardess came up and leaned so far down, her cleavage almost plopped into Remo's lap. "Sir, you look like a strong man. We could use a strong man in the galley."

"Is there a problem?"

The stewardess looked up and down the aisles. "I don't want to alarm the other passengers. If you could just follow me."

"Sure," said Remo.

"It is a trap," warned Chiun. "On an airplane?"

"There are traps and there are traps," sniffed Chiun. Smiling, the stewardess led the way to the galley and, when Remo entered, she ran the curtain shut. "What's the problem?" asked Remo.

"My uniform zipper is stuck" And she turned to present her shapely back to him.

"It's all the way up."

"I know. Could you get it down for me?"

"If you say so," said Remo. The zipper came down easily, and the stewardess wriggled out of her uniform, turned and gave Remo the full sunshine of her radiant smile.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Your free initiation."

"Into what?" Remo asked suspiciously.

"The Mile High Club."

At that moment the curtain drew back and a honey blond head poked in. "What's going on?" the new arrival hissed.

"He's just helping me with my uniform zipper." The blond stewardess looked from the stewardess in her underwear to Remo and slipped in.

"My panty hose are sagging. Do you think you could do something with them?"

"I don't do panty-hose realignments," said Remo.

"You don't?" The blond stewardess looked stricken. The other stewardess crooked her fingers and looked as if she wanted to gouge the blonde's eyes out.

"He doesn't," she said tartly.

"He's strictly a zipper man. Now, get back to serving peanuts."

"Can I watch?" wondered the blonde.

"No!" Remo and the first stewardess said together.

"How about I just close my eyes and listen?"

"This is a private party," the first stewardess hissed.

"This is no party at all," said Remo.

"Excuse me." And he exited the galley.

Four hands reached out to pull him back but ended up clutching at empty air as Remo glided back to his seat and turned to the Master of Sinanju.

"You were right, Little Father. It was the oldest trap in the world."

"You resisted?"

"I don't take advantage of women who are drunk on my Sinanju pheromones."

"Unless they are hung like cows."

"Women are not hung. Men are hung. The expression is 'hung like a bull.'"

"Cows hang lower than bulls."

"Okay, cows are hung, too."

"They drag their udders through the grass."

"I get the picture."

"Just like the white women you fancy."

"I don't fancy stewardesses. Stewardesses are always hitting on me. That's another thing I don't like about my life. I can have any woman I want. They can't resist me. It's no fun. Where's the chase?"

"Coming up the aisle," said Chiun, nudging Remo with a bony, silk-covered elbow.

The entire complement of stewardesses bustled up the aisle, their reproachful eyes fixed on Remo.

"We're on strike until we get some satisfaction," one said.

"Don't look at me," returned Remo.

The stewardesses then sat down in the middle of the aisle-including the one still in her underwear.

"No satisfaction," she announced, "no peanuts or drinks for anyone" And she gave a clenched-fist salute.

"What's going on here?" a passenger dernanded. The underwear stewardess pointed an accusing finger at Remo and said, "That man disrobed and abandoned me."

"Shame on you!"

"I was helping her with her zipper," Remo said.

"Looks like you got carried away."

"And didn't have the balls to finish what you started," a little old lady added.

"Skirt teaser!" another woman accused.

"Remo, we will never get any peace unless you satisfy that poor waif," said Chiun.

"She's no more waif than I am Steven Seagal."

A passenger went forward to the crew compartment, and the copilot came back wearing a stiff expression.

He had to step over three stewardesses in order to reach Remo's seat.

"I understand you've been bothering the stewardesses."

"Not me," Remo said defensively.

"It is a federal offense to tamper with the crew of a commercial carrier, sir. Especially in flight."

"Okay, okay, I'll do it. Anything to get some peace and quiet." Remo stood up. "Is that all right with everybody?"

The stewardess in her underwear piped up from the floor. "Yes!" It was very a enthusiastic yes. Reluctantly Remo escorted her to the galley, and the stewardess stood with her eyes closed and her cleavage thrust forward as if on a serving platter.

"You may begin wherever you like," she murmured. Remo lifted her left hand by the wrist and turned it over.

"Oooh, I feel shivery already."

"Me, too," Remo said without enthusiasm. Holding the underside of her wrist up, Remo began tapping on it methodically.

"Whatever you're doing, keep it up."

"It's called foreplay."

"I never had foreplay like this."

"And you never will again," said Remo.

"Oh, don't say that!"

Remo continued tapping, achieving a rhythm and bringing it higher and higher until the fleshy face of the stewardess began to tighten like a fine clock being wound.

This was the first in the thirty-seven steps to sexual fulfillment the Master of Sinanju had taught Remo long ago. There was a sensitive nerve in the human wrist, unsuspected by Gloria Steinem, that could be manipulated until a woman achieved a delicious kind of whole-body orgasm.

At least that was how it sounded to the expectant passengers and crew of the TWA 747 when the stewardess's screams of pleasure began rolling down the aisles and back up again like a very long wave sloshing between two stone jetties.

When Remo stepped out from the galley, he was greeted with a standing ovation.

The other stewardesses began lining up with expectant faces.

"Sorry. One orgasm per flight," said Remo, brushing past them and sliding back into his seat, next to the Master of Sinanju, who sat with his hands clapped over his delicate ears.

"It's over," Remo told him.

Chiun removed his hands. "It is disgusting what these white women will do."

"Actually she tended more to olive skinned."

"Green is not a healthy color, but for a white it is healthier than the fish-belly coloring you unfortunate people are cursed with."

Twenty minutes later they landed at Kennedy International Airport, and no one got off. Instead, the empty seats filled up.

The black-haired stewardess was carried unconscious out of the galley and poured into a jumpseat, where she smiled dreamily all through the flight over the Atlantic.

"So, where are we going?"

"Iberia."

"Oh, yeah? What's in Iberia?"

"Us. Provided the wings do not fall off."

TWO HOURS over the Atlantic, Remo had read every magazine and was bored. The stewardesses started looking at him with appealing eyes, and they kept moistening their lips with their tongues until their mouths became pale and their tongues turned assorted Maybelline colors.

So Remo pretended to sleep in his seat. And because he was bored, he willed himself to drop off.

Remo Williams dreamed.

In the dream he was standing before a cave. It was an impenetrable black maw, but as he stood before the opening, mists began rolling toward him with a hungry eagerness.

Remo tried to peer past the white swirl to see what was making mist emerge from a cave, but he saw only more vapor.

The mist was white, vaporous, ghostly. It shone with an inner luminance.

And deep within the cave, Remo heard the approaching sound of a beating human heart.

"Who's in there?" Remo asked in his dream. The heartbeat continued its approach.

In his dream Remo's own heartbeat began to accelerate. He willed it to stabilize.

"Who's in there?" Remo repeated.

The mist suddenly regathered, intensified and filled the cave entrance like flowing cotton spiderwebs. When it was as opaque as milk, it started to swirl outward. Remo dropped into a defensive posture, legs bent at the knees, hands hovering at his belt line, right hand a fist, left a spear point of stiffened fingers. When the man stepped out, he seemed to be clothed in mist. Smoky tendrils clung to his lean, wiry form. "Who the hell are you?" Remo asked.

"I am the first," he said in a hollow, dead voice. "The first what?"

"The first," repeated the tiny man dressed in mist.

"What do you want?" Remo demanded, keeping his guard up.

"You must best me. If you can."

Remo grunted a confident laugh. "I could take you with both hands tied behind my back."

"That you must prove," said the man dressed in mist. Only then did Remo get a good look at his face. It was Asian. The man had no eyes. The loose skin of his eyelids were sunken hollows and stitched shut with catgut. He advanced purposefully.

Remo watched his movements, and the phrase that came to his mind was cream puff.

The eyeless man walked right into a nerve punch that compressed his entire rib cage, exploded the air from his lungs and laid him flat on his back.

As the mist from the cave strove forward to wash over him, the blind Asian intoned, "I was only the first."

"Good for you," said Remo, eyes snapping open.

"WHAT IS GOOD FOR ME?" asked Chiun, turning in his seat.

The dull whine of jet engines filled Remo's ears. "Nothing. I was dreaming."

"Quickly!" Chiun clutched Remo's arm. "What did the hussy say this time?"

"Let go of me. She didn't say anything. I didn't dream of her. Not that last time was a dream."

"You dreamed?"

"Yes."

"Sitting here next to me with a full six hours of sleep from last night and another ten minutes on top of that, you dreamed?"

"Yes, I dreamed. Break my saber in two and tear off my chevrons, I dreamed."

Chiun regarded his pupil with narrowing eyes. "Of what did you dream, Remo?" he asked, thin voiced.

"Nothing."

"Speak!"

"A cave. I dreamed of a cave."

"You had another vision?"

"I don't think it was the same cave. Anyway, I didn't go in to find out."

"Good. If you dream of that cave again, do not enter it. If you disobey me, then do not tell me what you saw in that cave, for I do not want to know. Unless it is very important, of course."

"Something came out of the cave."

"What?"

"A guy."

"Guy? What kind of guy? Speak his name."

"He didn't give one. He challenged me to a fight for no reason."

"And what happened?"

Remo shrugged unconcernedly. "What do you think? I laid him flat with one shot."

"Ah," said Chiun. "Good. You killed him"

"Nah. I just laid him out."

"Why did you say 'Good for you' in your sleep?"

"He said he was only the first."

Chiun's eyes suddenly thinned to unreadable slits. "What did this man look like, my son?"

"He was Asian. Looked like someone gouged his eyes out and stitched the lids shut."

Chiun nodded to himself. "Was this man Korean?"

Remo shook his head. "Maybe. But he was covered in mist."

"Mist?"

"Yeah, mist. There was mist coming from the cave. It clung to him. That was the weird part. He was dressed in white mist. Wonder what that means."

"Why should it mean anything?" snapped Chiun.

"I read an article about dreams a few months back," Remo said. "Scientists say they're the unconscious mind's way of processing the day's events, mixing them with fantasy and crazy stuff so the brain can work through its fears and concerns."

"Pah. White superstitions."

"You should talk. You think I'm the reincarnation of Shiva the Destroyer."

"You are."

"And of an old Sinanju Master named Lu."

"You are Lu, too."

"I'm Remo Williams and I haven't had a real dream about Sinanju that I can remember since the Dream of Death. That's gotta be over ten years ago."

"You are who you are. Just because you do not understand who you are does not mean you are not what you are."

"I can understand the cave. It's my brain working through the vision. But who was the eyeless guy and why was he wearing mist instead of clothing?"

"Perhaps he was a poor vagabond in search of a home."

"I wish I understood dreams."

"I wish I understood whites," said Chiun, dismissing the subject with a careless wave of his clicking fingernails.

But when Remo glanced over at him a few minutes later, the Master of Sinanju's wrinkled visage was tense with a dark foreboding.

Chapter 5

When Remo deplaned, the TWA stewardesses were all lined up at the exit door, tears in their eyes.

They waved him goodbye, patting him on the back, wishing him a happy stay in Madrid, and felt his strong lean biceps wistfully.

One gave him an affectionate pat on the backside, and when he and Chiun reached the terminal, Remo sensed he was being followed.

"Little Father, are those stewardesses following us?"

"No," said Chiun.

"Good."

"They are following you."

"Rats."

Outside the terminal a fight started over who would share a cab with Remo.

"No one's sharing a cab with me," said Remo, pulling spitting and clawing stewardesses off one another and making two piles.

Instantly the stewardesses pulled nail files and pen knives and held them to their pulsing throats.

"I'd rather die than not share a cab with you," one sobbed.

"Me, too."

Remo threw up his hands. "Okay. Okay. I surrender. Everybody into the cab."

There was a scramble to enter the cab. Remo obligingly held the doors open for the eager stewardesses. When the back seat filled up, he held open the front passenger's door. The driver was pushed out the other side by the crush of perfumed, uniformed bodies.

A stewardess reached out and clapped his cap over her head, rolling up the driver's-side window to prevent him from recovering it.

"Everybody comfy?" asked Remo. "Yes! Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes."

"Good," said Remo, going from door to door and welding them shut with the high-speed friction of his rubbing palms.

He left the trapped stewardesses fighting the windows open so they could squeeze out.

"What the hell's going on?" Remo complained to the Master of Sinanju as they walked away. "I always have problems with loose stewardesses, but never this bad."

"You are obviously baiting them with your manly allures."

"That's another thing. What about my rights as a man? That first stewardess all but tried to rape me, but I had to satisfy her. If it was the other way around, I'd have been the one up on charges."

"Aggressor."

"Get off it."

When the next cab in line pulled up, Chiun entered and told the driver in perfect Spanish, "Pompelo."

"Que?" said the driver.

"Pompelo," Chiun repeated. And when the driver continued looking blank, he added, "San Fermin."

"Ah," said the driver. He hit the gas just as Remo's foot left the pavement. Remo got the door shut in time to see the airport Exit sign flash by.

"Where are we going?" he asked Chiun.

"To a pleasant little town below the Pyrenees."

"What's it called?"

"It was founded by one of Pompey's sons. The cross-eyed one, if I recall the scrolls of my ancestors correctly."

"Do you recall a name?"

"Pompelo."

"Never heard of it. I've heard of Pamplona, but not Pompelo."

Chiun made a face. "These modern Iberians cannot even pronounce the names of their better towns. Pah." The cab took them out of Madrid at high speed and through lush, climbing Spanish countryside. The early-July air was brisk and invigorating. There were many white churches along the way.

On the way, Remo saw a road sign that read Pamplona-300 km.

"That's two hundred miles."

"If we are going to Pamplona. We are not. We are going to Pompelo," said Chiun.

They drove for nearly four hours through hills and valleys with the Pyrenees always looming off to the east. When the mountains petered out into a flat plain, they reached their destination.

It was a plain-looking city dominated by industrial smokestacks and the brick of factory buildings. Remo said, "The sign says Pamplona."

"It is really Pompelo."

As they entered town, it became clear a festival of some sort was in progress. The streets were clogged by cars, tourists from all nations staggered about in various stages of inebriation. Soon traveling by car became more trouble than it was worth.

In perfect Spanish, Chiun paid off the driver and they got out in a broad plaza that reeked of history. "What's going on?" asked Remo as two men stumbled by wearing red sashes and long ropes of garlic hung around their necks.

"Some pagan festival," sniffed Chiun as a man in an ordinary suit coat and an exaggerated papier-mache head the size of a suitcase staggered by.

"I'm not in the mood for festivities."

"It is a Christian celebration, dedicated to a Moorish saint called San Fermin."

"I didn't know there were Moorish saints."

"The Moors once ruled this land after the Christian upstarts had pulled it down from its lofty Roman greatness. It was inevitable that in a moment of weakness one would succumb to carpenter worship. Perhaps while we are here, you would like to light a candle to San Fermin."

"No, thanks."

"Good," said Chiun, leading Remo to a street stall where a vendor sold an assortment of red cotton sashes and scarves.

After bickering with the merchant, the Master of Sinanju purchased one of each item and offered them to Remo with a polite dip of a bow and an air of quiet ceremony.

"Don these."

Remo examined the items critically. "What are they?"

"What do they look like?"

"A red sash and matching scarf."

"Then you should know which to wrap around your neck and which goes about your flabby middle without instruction from me."

"My middle is not flabby," said Remo, snatching the limp swatches of red cotton from Chiun's fingers. "You have gained over an ounce in the last five years. I suspect you of sneaking sweets when my back is turned."

"Your back is never turned," said Remo, tying the sash around his waist so the broad end hung over his right front pocket. The red scarf went around his neck with a quick tie.

"Now what?" he asked.

Chiun beckoned with a crooked yellow finger. "Follow."

At what appeared from the outside to be a stadium, Chiun bought them tickets and they took front-row seats among a growing crowd of drunken revelers. Many were passed out in their seats.

"We going to see a bullfight?"

"You will not," said Chiun.

"Huh?"

And the Master of Sinanju leaped without warning into the dirt-floored ring.

"What are you doing?" demanded Remo, jumping down to join him.

He looked around warily. There was no sign of any bulls or horses or matadors. In fact, the more he looked around, the more Remo was reminded of a rodeo ring. At one end a wooden corral gate lay agape. It led out of the ring and up a narrow chute obviously meant for the bulls.

The Master of Sinanju ignored his pupil and instead went padding about the ring, his head bowed, his eyes intent on the ground upon which he walked.

"What are you looking for?" asked Remo.

"Shush," said Chiun, continuing his perambulations.

When he reached a certain spot, Chiun indicated it with a pointing fingernail. "Dig."

"For what?"

"Dig, and the what will reveal itself."

Shrugging, Remo dropped to one knee and began scratching dirt away from the spot where the Master of Sinanju pointed so sternly.

From the stands they were watched. But not challenged.

Remo used his hands to spank away the loose dirt that had been pounded dry by the tread of men and the hooves of beasts. When he reached the darker, moister subsoil, he used the tips of his fingers to excavate. A pile formed, pale at the base but darker as it grew.

When there was a tiny mountain, Remo's fingernails scratched metal.

"Found something," he said, lifting a dirt-caked disk to the hot Spanish sun.

"Clean it," commanded Chiun.

Rising, Remo gave the disk a flick as if flipping a coin. The disk spun upward, shedding the accumulation of grit through centrifugal force. Then it landed in his open palm. It was a thin bit of hammered metal with the profile of a man on one side. An inscription ran around the rim.

"Looks like an old Roman coin."

"A denarius," corrected Chiun. "Did the vestal virgins who reared you teach you Latin?"

Remo looked at the inscription. It read J. CAES. AUG. PONT. MAX. P. P.

"Yeah. It says, 'Julius Caesar Augustus Pontifex Maximus.' I don't know what the 'P. P.' part stands for."

"Pater Patriae. Father of his Country."

"Just like Washington," grunted Remo.

"Once the Roman Empire extended to the far corners of the earth. Now all that is left are ruins, countless worthless coins in the dirt and idle eaters of pasta and makers of pizza."

"Meaning?"

"You must find the meaning for yourself. For it is time for you to run."

"Run where? I thought we came to see a bullfight."

Chiun examined Remo critically. "Let me straighten your scarf, for it is on wrong."

"It's fine," said Remo, nevertheless letting the Master of Sinanju adjust his scarf.

When it was retightened, it covered his eyes completely.

"Now I can't see," Remo complained.

"Can you hear?"

"Of course I can hear."

Then a dull whoosh like a rocket going up came from a mile or so away.

"You must run toward that sound," said Chiun.

"Why?"

"You will know when you get there. Let me point you in the proper direction." Remo felt himself being spun in place. "Do you remember the open gate?"

"Yeah."

"Run through it. Follow the cobbled path. Do not stop. Do not allow any obstacle to dissuade you from your path. There will be barriers on either side to keep you on the correct path."

Chiun gave Remo a quick shove and said, "Now go!"

Remo ran. His memory guided him to the open gate at the far end of the ring, and when the dirt beneath his feet became wood and then cobblestones the size of loaves of bread, he switched from a flat-footed run to a toe sprint that propelled him lightly from cobble to cobble.

His other senses guided him along. He heard cheers. They swelled. A few shouted Spanish at him, he didn't understand.

"iEsticpido! iNo te das cuenta de que te estas equivocado?"

The cobbled pathway twisted and turned as Remo ran through a world of smells. There was bread and coffee and liquor and the sweat of human beings worked up in a frenzy of excitement.

Far ahead he heard the sound of another rocket. Then a rumble. It grew nearer. The cobbles, connected to one another by mortar, communicated an impending vibration that grew and grew the farther Remo ran.

Something was coming his way. But Remo couldn't stop to worry about it now. He had a goal. He didn't know what it was all about, but the Master of Sinanju had given it to him. And his training wouldn't let him turn away until he reached it.

EVERY YEAR Don Angel Murillo looked forward to the Festival of San Fermin.

And every year he was glad when it was over. The foreigners with their drinking and their drugs and their lack of appreciation for the glorious art of bullfighting were difficult to stomach.

But he took solace in the running of the bulls. Always in the running of the bulls.

It was Don Angel's responsibility to oversee the running of the bulls so foolish men, both Spanish and otherwise, did not ruin the glorious event.

The rules were firm. From the moment the first rocket was fired from the town hall to set the runners on their way to the firing of the second rocket, announcing that the bulls had been released from their corrals at the bottom of Calle Santo Domingol, no man intending to stay ahead of the bulls could call attention to himself or incite the brave bulls in any way that brought harm to others.

If a man stumbled before the rushing hooves, that was his privilege. If the horns caught him and hooked him upward, well, that was what the horns of the bull naturally did. Everyone knew that. Even drunken Princeton students.

It was strictly forbidden for a runner to do anything to cause a bull to deviate from the barricade-lined nine-minute run to the bull-ring. Or injure an unsuspecting runner or bystanders.

Don Angel Murillo was stationed at the barricade along Dona Blanca de Navarra to see that none of these things happened.

When the first rocket was fired, the runners were off and the first cheers went up. When the second rocket arced smokily upward in the bright blue sky, the rattling drum of hooves made the very ground vibrate and the souls of men and woman thrill with anticipation.

Don Angel Murillo was looking up toward the town hall in heart-pounding anticipation of the first redsashed runners in white pants when a man in gray chinos wearing the scarf of San Fermin, the patron saint of Pamplona, and the red sash of a runner came flying up the course.

He was going in the wrong direction. This was not only very definitely against the rules but very strange indeed.

More strange undoubtedly was the fact that he wore the scarf over his face, obscuring his vision. "iEstupido!" Don Angel called in Spanish. "Do you not know you are running the wrong way?"

Then around the corner came the first stumbling wave of men, and behind them the snorting black bulls of Pamplona.

A WALL OF MOVING FLESH jumped around the corner. Remo heard their feet and hooves mingle and blend into a mass of sound as great as the mass of flesh and bone he faced.

The panting of men mixed with the snorting of bulls. Remo recognized that the brutes were bulls. This was Pamplona, made famous by Ernest Hemingway for the running of the bulls, despite whatever name the Master of Sinanju called it.

Calculating the closing distance, Remo flashed ahead, knowing he had a better chance of surviving if he shortened the ordeal's duration.

Men were stumbling and pressing themselves up against the barricades as the bulls pounded down the straightaway.

Remo fixed on the heartbeat of one man who ran ahead of the pack and made for him.

The man tried to swerve from the unexpected obstacle, but Remo was too fast for him. Leaping off the cobbles, Remo used his shoulder for a catapault. Remo launched himself over the heads of the other runners and toward the mass of bulls.

One foot touched an undulating back, rebounded, and the other jumped off the bullish rump.

After that, his feet took him from bull to bull, so tightly clumped there was almost no space between them. They were running in a bunch. No stragglers. No mavericks. And though they were moving fast, especially if one was trying to keep one step ahead of them, to Remo's highly trained reflexes they might as well have been grazing.

His toes bounced him from back to back with such grace the spectators lining the barricaded runway exploded into spontaneous applause. And then Remo alighted back on the cobbles and was racing toward the place where he had fixed the sounds of the rockets.

When he reached it, he sensed a broad plaza and a rowdy crowd who shouted Spanish compliments. "iBravo! iBravo!"

"iMagnifico!"

"iYva San Fermin!"

"iTlenes duende! iSe siente tu duende!"

Remo reached up to remove his scarf when a third rocket pistol banged back the way he had come. "What the heck does that mean?" Remo muttered, wondering if he was supposed to run back the way he had come or not.

"It means," squeaked the Master of Sinanju, suddenly at his elbow, "that you have braved the first athloi."

Remo snatched off his scarf.

Chiun stood looking up at him, his face unreadable. "Athloi?"

"Yes."

"Is that a Korean word?"

"No."

Remo looked back down the road he had come. "That was the running of the bulls I just screwed up, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"You're supposed to run ahead of the bulls, not into them."

"Any fool can be trampled. A Master of Sinanju requires a greater test of his grace."

"I think my intelligence was just tested, not my grace."

"And you may be correct, for you lack all graces," spat Chiun.

"What are they saying about me?" Remo asked as the crowd surged drunkenly toward them.

"That you have duende."

"What's that mean?"

"Some say it means grace."

Remo grinned. "I like the Spanish. They recognize quality when they see it."

Chiun didn't return the grin. Instead, he turned away with a swirl of kimono skirts. "Come. We are through here."

"We just got here."

"And now we are leaving."

"But we just got here."

"Pah. I am glad too that my ancestors did not survive to see the town that Pompey's son founded become a den of besotted Christianity."

And they melted into the alleys and byways around the great square, often leaping over the sprawled figures of drunken tourists.

"Where to next?" wondered Remo.

"Hellas."

"What did you say?"

"I said Hellas."

"That's good," said Remo. "For a minute I thought you said we were going to Hell."

"We are not yet going to Hell," said the Master of Sinanju. "For you, however, there may be no difference."

Chapter 6

Remo got off the Olympic Airways plane in Athens, Greece, wearing a T-shirt that read I Ran With The Bulls Of Pamplona, a red baseball cap that sported bull's horns and a fan club consisting of an assortment of Greek stewardesses-along with one cow-eyed steward who ardently tried to interest Remo in an alternative life-style.

Remo ducked into the nearest men's room, which took care of the stewardesses, and locked the lovestruck steward in a toilet stall.

When he emerged again, the stewardesses were singing his praises in a kind of Greek chorus.

"You are so manly," one cooed.

"For an American," another amended.

"Do you like Greek women?" asked a third.

"Greek women," Remo said, "should be neither seen nor heard."

The collection of Greek stewardesses looked at one another with baffled black olive eyes.

"I like women who are hard to get," Remo clarified. "Hard to-"

"Very hard to get," said Remo.

"If we are hard to get, will you seek us out?"

"Only if you're completely out of my sight," promised Remo.

The stewardesses made themselves scarce, and Remo and Chiun sought a cab.

"You are learning," said Chiun as the cab took them away.

"Not what I want to learn. Why are we in Athens?"

"You have your Roman coin?"

"Yep."

"We must find you a Greek coin."

"Why would I want a Greek coin?"

"Because you failed to discern the meaning of the Roman coin."

Remo shrugged and watched the city go past. The driver drove like a maniac. Remo wondered what it was about European capitals that made the taxi drivers drive as if suicidal.

"Where to, guys?" the driver asked, turning his head. His breath filled the back seat with a commingled grape-leaf, onion, olives, lamb and feta-cheese odor.

"Piriaevs," said Chiun.

The driver seemed to know where that was and redoubled his speed, banging around narrow corners like a caroming billiard ball.

He took them to the waterfront smelling of creosote and tar, where small, flat octopuses hung drying on lines like wash. There the Master of Sinanju engaged a seamfaced Greek trawler captain in fluent Greek. Some gold changed hands, and Remo was waved aboard.

"Where are we going this time?" Remo asked once on board.

"You are going sponge diving."

"What are you going to be doing?"

"Hoping you do not take all day because we have to be in Kriti by nightfall."

The trawler was ancient and barnacle encrusted. It muttered out into the brilliant blue Aegean and its many sun-drenched islands.

When they reached an island that stood out from all the others by its crusty gray-and-white streaked homeliness, the boat stopped and dropped anchor.

Chiun faced Remo, saying, "There are sponges below us. You must find the two largest and bring them back."

"Why."

"Because your Master has told you to do this." Remo hesitated. Then, stepping out of his shoes, he somersaulted from a standing position from the aft deck and into the water. He went in like a dolphin, with hardly a splash.

The Greek sea captain happened to be in midblink when Remo left the deck, so to his slow brain and eyes, it was as if Remo had abruptly dwindled into his shoes. He knelt to examine the shoes, found them empty but still warm with the vitality of the man who had stood in them just a moment before. The captain crossed himself fervently.

THE AEGEAN WAS AS BLUE below as it had been above. Remo arrowed through the crystalline water and found the bottom.

A ghost-gray octopus went flowing past, tentacles spread like a flower, two touching the bottom to guide itself along.

It saw Remo with its sleepy, human-looking eyes, went from gray to a livid green in a glimmering and pulled itself into the safety of a broken ceramic pot, so that one near-human eye peered out warily.

Remo swam on. Fish he did not recognize swam and darted by.

The sea bottom was silty, and when he touched it, sediment curled up in brownish obscuring clouds. Remo found a bed of sponges and began picking through them. They were of all sizes and shapes but the largest ones were easily the size of both his hands joined together. He found one he liked and spent a casual five minutes looking for its mate.

Meanwhile, carbon-dioxide bubbles dribbled from one corner of his grim mouth at a rate of one every quarter minute. The lack of oxygen bothered Remo not at all. His training had expanded his lung capacity so that once he charged them, he was good for over an hour underwater. More if he didn't exert himself. Since there was no rush and he knew Chiun would be critical of his choices if he wasn't careful, Remo took his time finding two matching sponges.

"THESE ARE THE BEST you could find?" the Master of Sinanju demanded when Remo's head popped up alongside the fishing boat, hands held high, the sponges upraised for his inspection.

"You saw how long I was down there."

"You were playing."

"I scoured the bottom for the best sponges," Remo insisted. "These are them."

Chiun turned to the boat captain and gave him a withering stare. "You and your greedy kind have taken all the best."

The boat captain shrugged. He was still trying to figure out how Remo had gotten into the water in the first place.

Chiun turned back to Remo. "Take your sorry prizes to that isle and do what has to be done."

"What's that?"

"You will know what the moment you step onto its shore."

Remo turned. The isle was a hump not bigger than a city parking lot. Sea gulls and other ocean birds circled it. Some alighted, paused and flew off again.

They made no attempt to peck or claw its surface for food scraps. Not surprising, Remo saw. There wasn't a shred of vegetation on the thing.

Remo saw why when he reached the place. The water at the edge was gray and scummy, the smell rank. "Wanna throw me my shoes? I think I'm going to need them."

The shoes plopped obligingly into the water, only to sink from sight.

"Damn," said Remo, diving after them.

Putting them on underwater, he surfaced and recovered the sponges, which bobbed in the grayish water. Remo jumped straight out of the water and onto the crusty shore. His feet splashed up grayish-white goo. "What do they call this place?" Remo called back.

"In Greek you would not understand the words. In English it is called Guano Isle."

"Why aren't I surprised?"

"If you are not surprised, why do you dally?"

"Because I have a sinking feeling what these sponges are for now."

"What are sponges for?"

"Not for eating."

"Good. If not for eating, what then is their purpose?"

"Cleaning," Remo said without enthusiasm.

"You may begin now. You have until sundown." Remo started at one end of the isle, standing in water so he wouldn't have to kneel. Seabirds eyed him with hostile intent. Occasionally one dropped a present where he stood.

Soon Remo was covered in malodorous stuff. He kept scouring.

"This is starting to feel like the twelve freaking labors of Hercules," Remo complained.

And from the sponge trawler the Master of Sinanju burst into brief but polite applause.

"Why are you applauding?"

"Because you are half through with your noble chore."

"What's noble about being hip deep in bird shit?"

"The knowledge that you are conveniencing the seabirds of the next century who will have a clean nest to feather."

"Bulldooky," Remo grumbled.

"No. Gull guano."

When Remo was finally finished, it was late. The sun was going down, and the lights of Athens were coming on. High on the hill called the Acropolis, the many-columned Parthenon burst into radiance like an ivory shrine.

Remo raised his tattered sponges to the night sky. "Hallelujah. I'm done!"

A sea gull dropped a spatter of gray and white just in front of one ruined shoe.

Keeping his face triumphant, Remo eased one foot over the offending blot.

"I saw that," said Chiun.

Reluctantly Remo dropped to one knee and cleaned up the spot. He flung the sponge at the offending bird, and it dropped into the water, flustered and chastised.

As he climbed off the isle, other seabirds came along. Remo tried shoo them away. They shooed. But they also came back.

"You cannot leave as long as one spot remains," Chiun called out.

"The minute I turn my back, there's going to be more than one spot."

"This is your athloi."

"I thought cleaning the isle was my athloi!"

"No. You had to scour Guano Isle in order for the athloi to commence."

"That wasn't the freaking athloi? This is the freaking athloi?"

"Yes," intoned Chiun. "This is the freaking athloi."

"Damn."

Remo looked up. The white sea gulls were hanging in the wind, just like sea gulls the world over.

"We could be here all night," he warned Chiun. "You do not have all night. There is still the coin to find."

Remo made his voice resolute. "I say we pack it in and find that all-important coin."

"You cannot leave until you have completed the athloi."

"Can't leave tonight? Or can't leave ever?"

"Ever. That is the rule."

"Who made up this rule?"

"The Great Wang."

"He wouldn't do that to me."

"Take it up with him."

"He's been dead for three thousand years."

"Dawdler," spat Chiun.

Grumbling, Remo looked around the isle. It appeared to be made of rock and maybe some old coral. It was hard to say. A lot of it was porous. That might have been the nature of coral or the corrosive effect of centuries of gauno action.

The porous stuff broke off under his weight, so Remo willed his mass to adjust. Then he had a thought. Going to one end of the isle, he stamped hard. This had two results. It spooked the hovering sea gulls and it broke off a chunk of isle, which dropped into the now-very-white water.

Grinning, Remo repeated his action after moving back a pace. Another section of isle dropped into the water to sink from sight.

"What are you doing?" the Master of Sinanju shrieked as the west end of the island began to crumble into the Aegean.

"Completing my freaking athloi, " Remo retorted.

"What about future Masters?"

"I'm doing them a favor. They'll thank me."

"This is against the rules, as well."

"When the Great Wang tells me so, I'll stop," said Remo, redoubling his efforts.

"You are willful and disobedient!" Chiun accused.

"Maybe. But I'm also getting off this stupid rock." By midnight the isle had been reduced to the size of a trash-can lid, and Remo realized that he was going to drop himself into the befouled water sooner or later. So he took a deep breath, jumped up as high as he could and brought both feet stamping down on the last pitiful remainder of the isle.

It pulverized and dropped Remo into the water.

Eyes closed, he swam toward the bobbing boat. When Remo surfaced, Chiun glared down at him angrily.

"You are filthy."

"But triumphant."

"You have desecrated a shrine of Sinanju."

"Let's just get out of here. I'm exhausted."

Chiun shook his aged head. "You cannot climb aboard as you are. You must swim." And before Remo could protest, Chiun directed the trawler captain to weigh anchor.

The chain rattled up, and the screws began churning gray-white water. The trawler bubbled away.

Remo followed at a brisk pace, swearing all the way. After a while he noticed they weren't swimming north toward the Acropolis, but farther south into the island-dotted Aegean Sea.

"I don't like where this is going," Remo grumbled to himself.

And back from the muttering trawler came the Master of Sinanju's squeak, "How can you say that when you do not know where you are going?"

"Because I know you."

"You wish."

And Remo wondered what the Master of Sinanju meant by that.

Chapter 7

Four hours later the Greek sponge trawler put down anchor within sight of a sprawling island.

"Oh, no," said Remo, treading water with tired arms. "I'm not cleaning that! No way."

"This is not your athloi, " returned the Master of Sinanju. "Come, but do not profane this worthy vessel's deck with your soiled tread."

Chiun padded toward the bow and Remo swam around the boat, keeping pace with him.

At the bow the Master of Sinanju pointed toward the dark and rocky shoreline and said, "There is a sea cave in that inlet."

"I'm not going into any cave. And you know why."

"I am not in this cave, so do not fear to venture within."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"Enter this cave," said Chiun, "and find your way to the other end." He pointed down the coast, to the south. "I will await you at its exit."

"Sounds easy," Remo said reluctantly.

"Therefore, it cannot be easy."

"What's the name of this island anyway?"

"That will become obvious even to you once you enter the cave that awaits you."

Remo struck out for the cave. As he approached, the sea lapping against the shore made weird sobbing sounds, like an old woman crying.

The sea floor came up to scrape Remo's questing hands and bare feet. It felt like coral, but when Remo reached shore, he saw it was a gray-black volcanic rock.

He walked up to the cave mouth and listened. All he heard was the incessant sobbing, and when he compressed his eyelids to squeeze out all but necessary moonlight, the black cave mouth remained black and foreboding.

"Here goes," Remo said, entering the cave.

Wide at the mouth, the cave became more like a tunnel the deeper Remo passed into it. The feel of porous volcanic rock against his bare soles was unpleasant, but as his tough soles became accustomed to it, he soon put it out of his mind.

The ceiling sloped downward. Remo was forced to bend his head to keep walking.

Thirty feet in, the tunnel branched off in two directions. Remo paused and tried to figure out the right way to go. After a moment he realized that one branch went south toward where the cave exit was supposed to be.

Then again, since this whole test was Chiun's idea, the most logical choice was probably the wrong one. Remo took the northern tunnel, suppressing a grin of confidence.

It evaporated when he came to a blank wall before a quiet pool. In the darkness his feet discovered the pool. There was no sign of any secret walls or other exits.

Grumbling, Remo backtracked and followed the southern branch.

After about the same distance, it too stopped at a blank wall. Only this time there was no pool.

"Don't tell me I blew it," said Remo.

He felt the walls for levers or catches. Finding none, he padded back to the north tunnel.

When he reached the pool, he knelt before it and touched the water with his fingertips. It was cool to the touch. He brought the moistened tip of one finger to his nose and sniffed.

No scent of poison or predators.

Sighing, Remo slipped into the pool feet first, knowing if there was something lurking in the pool he stood a better chance of survival if it bit off a foot and not his head.

The pool swallowed him. There was no light, of course-any more than there had been in the tunnel-but Remo's trained senses enabled him to feel his way down.

The pool led to a watery shaft, like a well. But it took a sudden horizontal jog and became an underground river.

Remo hesitated. He hadn't expected this. There was no way to tell if the river ran very far or not. Did he have enough oxygen in his lungs or not?

After a moment Remo decided to chance it. He swam south, the logical direction, keeping his movements to a minimum to conserve air and energy. There was a current, so he surrendered to it, knowing it would do most of the work for him. This helped conserve oxygen, too.

Remo knew when the tunnel ran out because he bumped his head. There was almost no warning. He couldn't see. There wasn't even any ambient light down here for his eyes to capture and magnify. The current had begun to slow. Remo had run out of tunnel.

Recoiling from the unexpected obstacle, Remo got reoriented and tried feeling for a way out. He found no shaft leading up. Nor one down, either.

There was a hole about the size of his hand in the end of the underground tunnel. The water was flowing on through that. But it was too small for a man, and when Remo attacked it with his fingers, he excavated a distance of about a foot, only to find the tunnel remained narrow as far as he could feel.

Treading water, he let the bubbles dribble from his mouth as he considered his next move. He might have enough oxygen to keep digging. Then again, maybe this wasn't the correct way.

In the end the low glow of fear deep in the pit of his stomach forced Remo to retrace his swim. He swam hard, against the current, using up precious air faster than he planned.

At the juncture below the shaft, he was forced to stop and think ahead. Go up and recharge his air or swim the other way?

He decided to go for the air.

When his head popped up at the top of the pool, he immediately sensed a presence.

Remo went very very still and let the sounds of the presence come to him.

The predominant sound was breathing-heavy, moist and brutish. He tried to resolve the darkness in the area where the thing hovered. It was impossible. There was nothing to work with.

So Remo closed his eyes. His energies redirected themselves toward his remaining senses.

The overall impression was of an upright being-a biped. But its heart action and working of the lungs was greater than that of a man. And the breathing was that of a brute.

The creature-whatever it was-snorted once, and Remo reacted as he was trained to. He went for the sound.

The thing, amazingly, retreated faster than Remo's thrust.

Remo came out of the water and moved in on it. Where the carotid artery pulsed more loudly than any other point in the circulatory system except the heart, Remo attacked. He employed a simple but effective blow. A lateral slice with the side of his hand.

The blow, designed to sever the head so swiftly the target never knew what hit him, was clean. So clean, Remo thought as the body fell with a surprisingly soft thud, that he hardly felt the strong muscles and cables of the neck give before it.

The head fell into his hands, and instinctively Remo snared it.

He discovered he had grabbed it by a thick, short horn and, startled, dropped the head. In his mind's eye, he visualized a bull's head.

But the thing he had killed was a biped. He decided to leave the corpse alone.

Filling his lungs to full capacity, Remo returned to the pool and swam north against the current this time.

It was a long swim and he began to tire. His oxygen held out, but he had been swimming half the-night. While he had reserves of strength to draw upon yet, the first tendrils of fatigue had insinuated themselves into his nerves and muscles. He sensed lactic acid accumulating in his muscles and willed his body to ignore the approaching fatigue.

More than a mile along, the tunnel began to curve. Remo used his hands to guide him, walking along the bottom of the tunnel the way he had seen the Aegean octopus do it earlier in the day.

The tunnel twisted in several directions, and only the magnetic crystals in Remo's brain-crystals present in most higher animals including man-enabled him to keep track of his polar orientations.

Remo found himself swimming in the same direction as when he had started along this branch of the cave when a fragment of loose, current-borne volcanic rock bounced off his shoulder.

Instantly all his senses went to full alert. Another tumbled past. And while he was wondering what could have disturbed solid rock without disturbing the water or setting off warning vibrations, Remo swam smack into a blank wall.

Damn! he thought, panic raising. He had maybe five minutes of good air left. Quickly he began feeling the rock.

Then there was a small hole, the size of a quarter in the end of the tunnel. Otherwise, it was a dead end.

A dead end and a fifteen-minute swim back to the pool where life-giving oxygen waited.

Remo thought fast. Maybe there was a branch trail. As soon as the thought came, he realized eddies in the current would have indicated a side tunnel. There was no side tunnel. He had struck another dead end. A complete dead end.

Two dead ends, and the Master of Sinanju had told him to follow the cave to its southern exit.

I must have missed it, Remo thought angrily. Smartass that I am, I must have gone right past it. But where and when?

With no hope of swimming back in time, his brain wrestled with the problem. What could I have missed? How could I have missed it? It's impossible.

Unless Chiun faked me out.

Three minutes of oxygen burning in his lungs, Remo began to consider the possibility that the Master of Sinanju had lied to him.

Can't be. He wouldn't do that. He said to meet at the exit. There has to be an exit. Remo visualized the Master of Sinanju pointing southward. And he was facing north. The other tunnel had pointed south.

Then a thought struck him. It came to him with a great cold clarity.

I'm on Crete. That thing with a bull's head was the Minotaur. I'm on Crete. This is the labyrinth. I'm on Crete.

And in his mind, the voice of Sister Mary Margaret came to him, telling him how Theseus used his wiles to find his way out of the minotaur's labyrinth.

Damn. I should have realized this was Crete. But even a thread won't save me now. Goodbye, Little Father. I hope wherever I'm going I'll meet my mother.

And in his mind's ear he heard the crisp, no-nonsense voice of Sister Mary Margaret repeat the legend of Theseus; With only simple thread, Theseus retraced his way out of the labyrinth of the Minotaur and found salvation.

That's it! That's what I missed.

Furiously Remo attacked the quarter-sized hole at the end of the tunnel. Volcanic rock turned to powder under the hydraulic force of his compressing fingers. The water became gritty to the touch.

When Remo broke through, he shot ahead like an arrow, against the current. He was down to ninety seconds of usable air. If he was wrong, it would all be over soon. He would lose control, thrashing and flailing like an insect as his body surrendered to the inimical watery environment it was never meant to plumb.

One minute of oxygen remained. He began counting the seconds as he reached out to use the jagged roof to pull him along. A few more yards, he thought. If I'm right, it's just a few more yards.

He was out of oxygen when his questing fingers lost all purchase.

He shot upward and felt the blood rush from his head and brain. Everything started to go dark.

He was wondering how it could get any darker since he was already in impenetrable darkness when he completely lost consciousness.

WHEN REMO AWOKE he found himself floating. And breathing.

For a moment he wondered if he could be dead. But the coldness of the water and the sweet-stale tang of cave air told him otherwise. He drew in a full double lungful and charged every lobe of both lungs.

"I'm alive," he whispered.

Hoisting himself out of the pool, Remo used his bare feet to feel for the body of the fallen Minotaur. It was gone. Only the coarse-haired head remained.

Remo picked it up and tucked it under one arm. It wasn't much of a trophy, but it was better than facing the Master of Sinanju empty-handed and wearing complete failure on his face.

When Remo emerged from the sea cave, the Greek fishing trawler still lay at anchor. And the Master of Sinanju stood stiff-faced at the entrance, his hands tucked into his scarlet kimono sleeves.

"I thought you said you'd meet me at the exit," Remo said.

"And I have kept my word," said Chiun.

"You pointed south when you said that," Remo said hotly.

"And if I had scratched my nose instead, would you have emerged from one of my nostrils?"

"That's not funny. I came this close to drowning."

"Master Nonja nearly drowned too. But he did not and you did not and that is that."

"This is Crete, isn't it?"

Chiun looked pleased. "Kriti." He gestured to the object tucked under Remo's arm. "And I see you have bested the Minotaur."

Remo lifted the bull's head to the moonlight. For the first time he got a clear look at it. The head was definitely bullish. It was also hollow and made of hardwood covered in scratchy black fur. Its nostrils were twin bovine flares, and the horns were tipped with hammered silver. The eyes were two polished gems that reflected the moonlight with a greenish-red smoldering.

"It's only a stupid helmet."

"Do not insult the proud skull of the mighty Minotaur," said Chiun, snatching it from his pupil's fingers.

The Master of Sinanju carried it down the shore and stepped on a black horn of volcanic outcropping. A shelf cracked open, revealing a boxlike cavity into which he deposited the Minotaur head.

When Chiun took his foot off the horn, the shelf dropped back into place, showing no seam.

Remo pointed an accusing finger at him and exploded, "You were the Minotaur! You made your heart and lung action sound different, didn't you?"

"I admit nothing of the kind."

Chiun padded past him toward the waiting trawler. Remo followed angrily.

"That's why there was no body when I came back. You'd taken off."

"Next you will tell me that I was also the Santa Claus of your youth."

"Santa didn't visit the orphanage much," Remo said glumly. "You old fake."

"Rest assured that the Minotaur will live again if there are any Masters of Sinanju after you or I."

Remo went on. "The water tunnel was a circle. If I broke through from either direction, it would lead me back to the pool and the Minotaur."

"Gi the Lesser realized this without having to break the labyrinth. Now you have ruined it for future Masters."

"Sue me."

They entered the water and got on the boat. Chiun didn't object, but the Greek sponge captain didn't look very happy when he saw the wet footprints Remo tracked all over his deck.

As they beat back toward Athens, Remo laid himself out among a coarse pile of dragnets and said, "I don't think I would have made it without Sister Mary Margaret."

Chiun eyed him coldly. "Why do you say that?"

"I heard her voice telling me how Theseus did it. He used string."

"If you had employed string, you would have cheated."

"That's not the point. She said Theseus used string to retrace his way out of the labyrinth of the Minotaur. Not to find the exit. But to retrace the way he came. That meant the entrance was also the exit."

"That is obvious," Chiun said in a chilly voice.

"Even then, I couldn't be sure. But there was another way I figured it out."

"And what is that?"

"I remembered you pointed south. You didn't say the exit was south. You just pointed. That meant technically you didn't lie to me."

Chiun said nothing.

"I knew if my life was at stake, you wouldn't lie," Remo went on. "You wouldn't lie to me about something that important."

And the Master of Sinanju went to the bow and stood there like some troubled figurehead, staring across the Aegean toward Athens, where the floodlit Acropolis gleamed like an ancient pharos.

Among his nets, Remo Williams succumbed to sleep and dreamed fitfully.

HE FOUND HIMSELF FACING a pleasant little Asian man dressed in the garb of rural Korea. They were in a place of rolling hills touched by the pink blossoms of the flower known as rose of Sharon in the West, which the Koreans called mu-gang-hwa.

The man greeted him with the ancient and traditional greeting of the Korean countryside. "Pam-go-sso yo?"

"Yes, I have had rice today," Remo answered in his best Korean.

"Good," said the pleasant little man. He smiled. It was an infectious smile despite the man's lack of a full set of teeth. Remo couldn't help but smile back.

So when the pleasant little man tried to take Remo's head off with an unexpected snap kick, Remo was caught off guard. He evaded the strike only because his body was trained never to be caught unawares.

"Hey! What's your problem?"

"I am the second."

"The second what?"

The little man bowed politely. "My name is Kim."

"Big deal. So's every third Korean's."

"Your reflexes are exquisite," said the little Korean pleasantly.

"Thanks. Why did you try to kill me just now?"

"I wanted to see if it was true what they say."

"What's true?"

"That a big-nose, round-eyed white had mastered Sinanju."

"What's it to you?" demanded Remo.

"It is a point of family pride."

"What family are we talking about?"

"Your family." And the little man dropped into another bow. He bowed so low he vanished from sight with a tiny pop like a cork letting go.

WHEN REMO WOKE AGAIN, he got up and found the Master of Sinanju watching the lights of Athens from the bow.

"What was the name of the second Master of Sinanju?"

"I have taught you that," Chiun said coldly. "You should know."

"Was it Kim?"

"There were many Masters named Kim. 'Kim' is a common name in my land. It means metal. It is like your 'Smith.'"

"Answer my question."

"There was Kim the Younger, Kim the Elder, the Lesser Kim and the Greater Kim, as well as several unremarkable Kims. But yes, the second Master was named Kim. The Lesser."

"I just had a dream about him."

Chiun said nothing for a very long time. Abruptly he turned away from contemplating the lights of Athens and said in a cold, remote tone, "We are about to make landfall, and I have no time for your unimportant dreams."

Remo stood alone on the deck wearing a hurt expression on his strong face.

HE WAS STILL WEARING IT when they climbed the hill called the Acropolis and looked down upon the white city of Athens below.

Chiun began pacing amid the ruins until he found a spot he liked. "You must dig."

Remo looked at the spot. "How do you know this is the right spot?"

"Dig," repeated the Master of Sinanju sternly.

So Remo dug. This time he used his bare big toe to disturb the earth, not dropping to his knees until the glint of metal peeked up from the ancient soil.

"Got another coin," he said. "A drachma."

Remo stood up. This time he cleared the dirt of the coin by tapping each side once with a fingertip. The dirt flew off as if vacuumed away.

One side had the profile of a man with a winged helmet.

"Hey. This looks kinda like one of those old Mercury-head dimes I used to see when I was a kid."

Chiun raised an eyebrow. "You recognize Mercury?"

"Sure. He was the Greek god of-wait a minute. Wasn't he Roman?"

"The Romans took their gods from the Greeks."

"Oh, right. Who did the Greeks get their gods from?"

"Hither and yon. The Egyptians and the Koreans mainly."

"I don't remember any Korean gods except that bear that was supposed to be the first man."

"As usual, you have gotten everything confused. The face on that coin is Hermes, whom the Romans called Mercury."

"It's coming back to me. Zeus was Jupiter. Ares was Mars. Hercules was.... What was Hercules?"

"A drunken wastrel."

"No, I meant what was his Greek name?"

"Heracles."

"I never liked that name," Remo said thoughtfully. "He was always Hercules to me."

"The vestal virgins who raised you filled your mind with useless junk. You know no Korean tales but those I taught you."

"Is there a point to all this carping and criticizing?"

"If there is, you are too dense to see it," snapped Chiun, who started down off the mountain.

Remo followed him down. "That's it? We climb this mountain, dig up an old coin and we're on our way again?"

"Yes."

"How about we check into a hotel for a few hours? I'm beat."

"You have had six entire hours of sleep. And a nap. You cannot be tired."

"I must be getting old."

"You are getting lazy, and there will be no hotel. We are going to Giza."

"Isn't that in Japan?"

"You are thinking of the Ginza. Giza is in Khemet."

"Never heard of Khemet, either," grumbled Remo, taking a last look back at the crumbling Parthenon and thinking how much it reminded him of Washington, D.C.

" 'Khemet' means 'Black Land,'" said Chiun.

"Still never heard of it."

"That is because the rulers of Khemet threw away their brains."

Remo looked his question, but the Master of Sinanju said nothing.

Chapter 8

On the plane Remo fell asleep.

A darkness filled his mind and, after a time, it churned and boiled and out of this darkness stepped a man wearing the robes of ancient Egypt and the face of a sad pharaoh. Despite his pharaonic attire, he was unmistakably Korean.

His mouth parted and the words coming out were doleful and hollow. "History has forgotten me."

"Who are you?" Remo asked.

"Wo-Ti was my name."

"Was?"

"I served Pharaoh Pepi II all of his days."

"Good for you," said Remo.

"His days numbered ninety-six years. And because I was pledged to guard his body, I did not see the village of my birth for the remainder of my days. The world still remembers Pepi II, but not Wo-Ti who ensured his long life."

"Where is this place?" asked Remo, seeing all around him only a blackness so intense it seemed to vibrate. "This is the Void."

"Yeah. I thought so. Pleasant. Do all Masters of Sinanju end up here after they go?"

"The Void is not a place of bitterness, unless one brings bitterness into the Void with him. Remember that. When you drop your body, leave all bitterness behind you to lie moldering with your bones."

"I'll try to keep that in mind," Remo said dryly. Wo-Ti lifted gnarled hands and flexed them with a warning crackling of cartilage. "Now we must fight."

"Why?"

"Because you have failed to recognize me."

"What kind of cockamamy reason is that?" said Remo. "I never met you before."

"That is no excuse." And Wo-Ti lashed out with a stabbing finger Remo checked with one thick wrist. The opposite hand flashed out. Remo caught it with his other wrist and stepped back.

"This is ridiculous. I gotta be three times younger."

"And I possess three times your experience. Defend your life."

Wo-Ti made two fists like mallets of bone, and Remo copied his posture, stance and blocking moves.

Their fists orbited each other, feinting, circling, withdrawing just on the verge of connecting. No blow was struck. This was not a contest of strikes or blows. Each man knew from the way the other reacted that his blow would fail if launched, and, knowing this, wasted no effort.

It was the purest form of Sinanju fighting, a training exercise that could only be undertaken by two full Masters. Any lesser human being would not survive the first three seconds. It was called Lodestones, because the closed fists acted like magnets, attracting and repelling by turns, but never touching. To either land or receive a blow brought disgrace to both combatants equally. For contact signified that both teacher and pupil had failed in their duties to the House of Sinanju.

It took Remo back to his earliest days of training, when Chiun would land many blows and become enraged at Remo for allowing it.

"How long does this go on?" he asked Master Wo-Ti.

"When you can tell me the lesson of my Masterhood."

"What if I don't remember?"

"It will be as much of a disgrace to you and your teacher as if your fist struck my body or my fist struck yours," said Wo-Ti, probing for an opening.

Remo thought hard. Trouble was, it was nearly impossible to do Lodestones and concentrate on anything else.

Wo-Ti. Wo-Ti. Why was Wo-Ti important? Remo thought.

It hit him in a blaze of insight.

Yeah. I remember now. Pharaoh Pepi II had the longest reign of any emperor in history, thanks to Wo-Ti. And all because Wo-Ti promised Pepi I he'd watch over his son for the rest of his life.

"A Master should never serve a succeeding emperor!" Remo said quickly.

And without another word, Master Wo-Ti dropped his guard and bowed out of existence.

WHEN REMO AWOKE there was an AirEgypt stewardess sitting in his lap staring searchingly into his eyes.

"I have a question," Remo said.

"Ask, O alabaster-skinned one."

"Where in Egypt is Khemet?"

"Egypt is Khemet. It is the ancient name for Egypt. You are obviously very interested in Egypt."

"Since we're about to land in Cairo, yeah."

She smiled duskily. "Then you must be interested in Egyptians."

"Vaguely."

Her fingers toyed with a lock of his dark hair. "And Egyptian women."

"In the abstract," admitted Remo.

"Have you never heard of the Mile High Club?"

"I'm a eunuch. I don't normally like to admit it but I notice you're fingering my zipper even though we just met, so I think you should know in advance."

"Perhaps if I tickle it, it will grow back."

Remo made his face sad. "Many have tried. But it doesn't work."

"You still have lips for kissing and a tongue for deeper kissing."

"Wrong again. The people who chopped it off snatched my tongue away."

"Then how do you speak?"

"Prosthetic tongue. It's plastic. Tastes like a squirt gun. You wouldn't like it."

And while the stewardess was staring with a befuddled expression lapping at her kohl-rimmed eyes, Remo reached up and touched a nerve in her neck that froze her in place. Then he gently picked her up and carried her across the aisle, still frozen in a seated position, dropping her into an empty seat. There were a lot of empty seats. These days Muslim fundamentalists were murdering tourists in Cairo with wild abandon in an effort to call down the sympathy of the world community upon their latest cause. Which, since the Israeli-Palestinian accords, seemed focused on blowing up secular poets, godless pop singers and protesting family planning.

When the jet rolled up to the gate, the remaining stewardesses were waiting to see Remo off the plane. So Remo and Chiun sat patiently in their seats until the entire plane had emptied out.

On the way out the passenger exit, Remo shook hands with every flight attendant, whispering, "I'm a eunuch. Honest. I'm a eunuch."

On his way out, the Master of Sinanju shut the cabin door behind him, giving it a smack that made the entire fuselage shake like a gaffed fish and incidentally fusing the door shut.

The sound of fists beating against unyielding metal followed them up the jetway ramp and into the busy terminal.

A smiling Egyptian man bowed Remo and Chiun into his cab outside the terminal, and Chiun slipped in first. When Remo dropped into the seat beside him, he found the driver had already been given his instructions. The cab took off, screeching through the clangor and congestion of downtown Cairo.

"Care to enlighten a tourist as to his destination?" Remo asked Chiun, rolling up his window to keep out the sulphurous smog.

"You are going to confront the dreaded Sun Lion."

"I'm not afraid of lions."

"This is a very large lion."

"How large can a lion be?" asked Remo.

The Master of Sinanju only smiled with a tight satisfaction.

UNDER THE BORED GAM of the Cairo police Theron Moenig, UCLA professor of inexplicable phenomena, had set the four surveyor's lasers, one for each point on the compass, around the crumbling treasure of ancient Egypt men called the Great Sphinx.

The lasers were calibrated to nanometer tolerances. Set equidistant, they would detect the most minute vibrations in the great limestone idol. The great moment approached.

Theron Mcenig had toiled for six years for this great moment. Six years of seeking grants, funding and specialized equipment normally used to test the structural integrity and plumb of high-rise skyscrapers. And now it was here.

He must not fail. Science looked to him for the answer to one of the great riddles surrounding the Great Sphinx of Giza.

There were many questions surrounding the Sphinx. They had been asked repeatedly down through the dusty centuries. The empty echoes of answers that were never forthcoming resounded down the decades.

Who had built the Sphinx? Why was it built?

And who or what was represented by the giant, multiton figure of a recumbent lion with the head of a pharaoh?

Some said it wore the face of Pharaoh Khufu, who was known as Cheops to the Greeks. Others claimed the Sphinx wore the visage of his son, Khafre, at the foot of whose pyramid it reposed. Most scholars believed the Sphinx dated back to the end of the Old Kingdom. A few believed it was older than the earliest pharaoh.

Questions immemorial. The centuries rolled on, but the theories still hung in the sandy air of the desert, unanswered. If not unanswerable.

Professor Moenig had come to the land of the pharaohs not to investigate the old, unprovable theories but to pose one that had never been asked in all of history. Has the Sphinx been moving?

It was a preposterous question, which was why it had taken six and not the usual three years to wrest a halfmillion-dollar grant from UCLA's archaeology department. No one ever considered that the Sphinx had moved from its original spot. It had been buried by the encroaching deserts the ancient Egyptians called the Red Land countless times. In fact, had it not been buried four and a half centuries after it was carved, and thereby sheltered from the biting erosion of the windblown sands of the desert, the Sphinx might conceivably have become even more disgracefully eroded than it was.

It was the orientation of the Great Sphinx to the Pyramid of Khufu that first posed the theory in Theron Moenig's mind. Ancient records had shown conclusively that the Sphinx lay at a precise right angle from the Khafre pyramid's eastern face. Yet a modern satellite picture showed a clear three-degree tilt away from the perpendicular.

That the Sphinx had moved over the centuries as it sat patient and brooding seemed as inescapable as it was impossible.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa tilted. Everyone knew that. Big Ben had even started leaning one way. This was known. The seas receded. Glaciers melted and tides lifted. These were facts.

But what could have caused the Sphinx to move slowly, inexorably and-prior to sensitive surveying lasers-imperceptibly from its original east-facing orientation?

Professor Moenig was determined to find out. Armed with six million dollars of UCLA money-one million of it needed to bribe Egyptian authorities-he would discover the truth.

Even if he had to live in the three-hundred-dollar-a-day Pharaoh Suite of the Nile Hilton from now until the turn of the century to do it.

Opening his sun parasol, Moenig sat down before the computer terminal that displayed the Sphinx transfixed by the lasers' equidistant beams and pulled a paperback book from his backpack, settling down for the long haul. The longer the better.

THE CAB CARRIED Remo and Chiun over a bridge and out of the city. They were soon on Pyramids Road, and the imposing cluster of three great pyramids bulked up through the stinking smog. Desert sands lay on either side. Camels plodded majestically along, carrying tourists and pilgrims alike.

"Now, Khufu had many sons," Chiun said suddenly, as if picking up a story left unfinished. "But only one could be pharaoh. This was in the days of Master Saja. Khufu chose Djedefre as his successor. But one of his wives schemed to install her son by Khufu, one Rama-Tut. Ignorant of Khufu's unspoken choice, she conspired with a wicked vizier to rid the world of the rival sons of Khufu. Many accidents befell the sons of Khufu, who was in those days overseeing the building of the greatest of the pyramids before you. For pharaohs believed themselves to be gods who walked the earth and who, upon death, would ascend to the stars and rule the afterlife."

"That why they built the pyramids?" asked Remo.

Chiun nodded. "'The pyramids that you see are both tombs and staircases to the stars. In each structure that you see lies a shaft, facing north and slanting upward toward what was then called the Imperishable Stars-those that never set."

"Like Polaris?"

"In those days the pole star was a yellow star known to the Egyptians as Thuban, which lies at the tail of the constellation known since Roman times as Draco. Polaris has now taken its place in the sky. After we are dust, it will be the star Koreans call Chik-nyo. For not even the fixed stars in the sky are forever, Remo. But rest assured, when Chik nyo enjoys ascendancy the House of Sinanju will yet be strong."

The hot air grew dustier with every mile. Remo said nothing. The pyramids seemed to grow before them without giving the appearance of coming closer. They were immense, their dun outlines crumbling.

Chiun spoke on. "Now, Khufu had many burdens. He fretted over his pyramid, whose construction and sanctity would ensure a happy afterlife, and he worried about the misfortunes that were felling his lesser sons. So he summoned his chief vizier and asked him if the stars blessed the ascendancy of his son Djedefre to pharaoh. And this treacherous vizier, who was in league with the wicked mother of Rama-Tut, told Khufu that Djedefre would never be pharaoh. The stars looked with favor upon Rama-Tut instead.

"These tidings troubled Khufu deeply, for he recognized the darkness of Rama-Tut's heart and trusted only Djedefre to see that after his passing his tomb would endure the centuries undefiled. So Khufu sent to Sinanju for Master Saja and presented him with his dilemma.

"'If the stars bless Rama-Tut and not my good son Djedefre, what am I to do?' he asked Saja.

"And Saja answered, 'We will foil the stars.'

"Khufu demanded of Saja what was meant, but Saja said only, 'If Sinanju can foil the stars, will you build a monument to the House that will endure through the ages?'

"'Done,' said Pharaoh Khufu. And the deal was struck.

"That night, Remo, Rama-Tut died in his sleep, and no one ever discovered the malady that ended his life. The mother of Rama-Tut threw herself into the Nile and drowned. And in the fullness of time, Khufu died and Djedefre became pharaoh, just as Saja had promised."

Remo grinned. "I think I know what got old Rama-Tut."

"Shh. It is a secret. Even now."

"That was centuries ago. What's the problem?"

"The driver may be a descendant," Chiun said in a conspiratorial voice. "Egyptians are notorious holders of grudges."

Remo rolled his eyes.

Chiun continued his tale. "When Djedefre ascended the throne, Master Saja came before him and told him of his bargain with Khufu."

"'What is your desire?' Djedefre asked Saja. And Saja replied, 'I see that your tomb is even now being laid out by your royal architects and that they quarry stone from an outcropping in the shadow of your father's tomb. Make from the rock that remains a statue of wondrous size, in the image of a recumbent lion always facing the sun and my village, which is the sun source. And give it the face of the one who ensured your assumption to the throne of Egypt. Do this to show that, mighty as Egypt is, the House of Sinanju is more powerful still.'

"'Done,' cried Pharaoh Djedefre. 'When next you see my kingdom, you will behold your wish turned to stone that will last for all of time.'

"But years passed and no more was heard from Egypt, who was in those days a great client of the House. So Saja undertook the long journey to the land of pharaohs, and when he came to Giza, he beheld the reality of his bargain from the back of a dromedary. Mighty it was, Remo. And proud as it faced the rising sun, its colors triumphant. But as Saja drew close, his boundless pride collapsed into a cold rage. For the visage of the Lion that Faces the Sun was not his own."

"Uh-oh. Djedefre welched."

"Pharaohs were notorious welchers, but we didn't know this in those days. So Saja appeared before Djedefre and demanded why the face of the Sun Lion was not his. And Djedefre replied that such was not the bargain. Saja had asked that the lion wear the likeness of the one who had ensured Djedefre's reign, and Saja had to admit that this was true. Technically. Bowing his farewells and expressing admiration for Djedefre's shrewdness, Saja returned to his village and, when in later years word came from Egypt that Djedefre needed the help of the House, Saja tore up the message without replying. And when Saja's successor received an entreaty to help succor the Old Kingdom in its waning days, that message too was ignored. Thus, Egypt fell upon evil days and it was many generations before a Master worked again for a pharaoh. And all because Djedefre was so shrewd he cheated Sinanju and in so doing lost his empire."

The cab turned off the road, and Remo saw the half-obliterated face of the Sphinx gazing over the undulating sands. It faced away from the three massive pyramids and their smaller satellite temples.

"Is that the Sun Lion?" he asked Chiun.

Chiun voiced disapproval. "It is a sad sight. Better had they left it to sleep under the sands that had claimed it."

"Better for who? The Sphinx or me?"

"Let us find out," said Chiun, paying off the driver.

"I don't like the sound of this," said Remo nervously.

Tucking his hands into his sleeves, the Master of Sinanju padded up to the gigantic Sphinx. "The sacred cobra no longer rears up from his mighty brow," he intoned. "The beard is missing. His painted headdress is forever faded. That my ancestors could see this now, they would fret and fume that this once mighty relic of a former glory has come to this."

Chiun gestured distastefully.

There were tourists walking around the Sphinx, tourists climbing the crumbling sides of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

"In the days of Wang, heads were lopped off over such desecration," Chiun observed. "Imagine, Remo, if children were allowed to run amok in the halls of your Senate."

"They do. They're called senators."

Remo grinned. Chiun frowned. Remo swallowed his grin. They continued walking, the sand beneath their feet accepting their tread without complaint and ejecting it without creating the impression of their feet.

"What are those things?" Remo asked, pointing out the tripod-mounted electronic equipment surrounding the Sphinxlike Panaflex cameras recording a Biblical epic movie set.

"I do not know."

"I think those are laser beams."

"Why would anyone want to burn holes in the Sphinx?"

"I don't think those are burning lasers, Little Father."

"Is that not what lasers do? Burn?"

"Some. Those probably do something else. What, I don't know."

They came upon a man in khaki shorts, his limbs splayed in a folding lawn chair shaded by a parasol. Before him was a portable laptop computer, and he was reading a book. Remo ducked his head to read the title. It was Chariots of the Gods?

"Those lasers yours?" Remo asked.

"They are," the man said in a snooty voice. A pith helmet was perched precariously on his elongated head. The letters UCLA were stenciled on the front.

"What are they doing?"

"Waiting for the Great Sphinx to move, if you must know."

"They're going to have a long wait," Remo commented.

"That is perfectly acceptable. UCLA is paying for this study."

"Do tell."

"I do. I am one of its foremost scholars. Now, kindly shoo. You are in my reading light."

"Happy to oblige," said Remo, walking away. After he rejoined the Master of Sinanju, Remo asked, "Did you hear that screwball? He's waiting for the Sphinx to move."

"He is very intelligent for a sunburned white."

"What do you mean?"

Chiun gazed up, noting the angle of the midday sun. "It is time for the Sphinx to move."

Remo looked up at the Sphinx's noseless, wind-worn face. "This, I gotta see to believe."

"Alas, you cannot."

"Why not?"

Chiun regarded him with flinty eyes. "Because it is you who will move great Sun Lion."

"I can't move that"

"Why not?"

"It's too big."

"The earth is big. It moves. The moon is big. And it moves. The Sphinx is not so big, so you can move it easily."

"With all these tourists around?"

"It matters only that it moves. It does not have to move very far." Chiun's eyes narrowed cunningly. "Unless you can answer the riddle of the Sphinx," he added thinly.

Remo grinned. "Sure. Try me."

"You must not guess. You may answer only from knowledge."

"Fair enough."

Chiun regarded him thinly. "Whose face does the Sun Lion wear?"

"That's not the riddle of the Sphinx. The question is what walks on four feet in the morning, two in the afternoon and three in the evening?"

Chiun brushed Remo's protest aside. "That is the wrong riddle. That is a child's riddle. You are not a child, but a Master of Sinanju. The true riddle has been asked. Do you know the answer?"

"You know I don't."

"Are you certain? Examine the proud features. Do they not look familiar?"

"I don't know too many noseless pharaohs," Remo growled.

Chiun nodded. "Then you must move the Lion that Faces the Sun."

"What kind of test is this?"

"A difficult one," said the Master of Sinanju.

"Har-de-har-har-har," said Remo.

He began to walk around the Sphinx. It was gigantic. That was no surprise, but walking all the way around impressed Remo with its sheer immensity. He felt like a dwarf beside one of its limestone toes. How a technologically primitive people had erected it was beyond him. That it had stood there for nearly five thousand years impressed him. And as he came back to the face, so incredibly ancient, the knowledge that time had eroded its glory saddened him.

"When it was built, it must have been the greatest thing in the world," he said.

"It was," breathed Chiun. "Now look at it."

"Yes, look at it. It is still great, but there are many great things in the world and this magnificent beast of limestone is but a honey cake set out to attract human ants and their money."

"If there's a way to move this thing, I don't see it."

"There is. And if you do not discover it, we will never see Kush."

"Suits me."

"But not me. You may begin at any time."

Remo checked the Sphinx. He looked enough like a tourist the local police didn't bother him. The other tourists ignored him. A camel spat in his direction, but Remo avoided the expectorant without turning. His body sensed pressure waves and moved him out of its path.

At the right front paw, Remo casually leaned his back against the member. His feet dug into the limestone platform on which the Sphinx was built. He pushed his body in both directions.

Somewhere a computer beeped. "It moved! It moved!"

Remo came around the paw and said, "What moved?"

The UCLA professor was jumping up and down with undisguised glee. "The Sphinx. It moved! My instruments registered positive movement."

"You're crazy. I was right next to it."

The man squealed with delight. "It moved a nanometer."

"How small is that?"

"Barely a billionth of a meter."

"Maybe it was the laser that moved."

"Impossible. It was the beam that reacted to the movement, not the laser case."

"What direction?"

"Northeast."

"I'll go check. You go that way."

Remo ran to the rear of the Sphinx, looked both ways and leaned his back against the rump. His feet hissed as the heels sunk into the sand-dusted platform on which the Sphinx reclined.

Up by the head another beep came. "It moved! It moved again!" Remo came running.

"Which direction?" he asked the excited man.

"Northeast. The same direction."

"I didn't see anything."

"Something's making the Sphinx turn toward the northeast."

"Tell you what," said Remo. "You go back to the rump. I'll watch the head."

"Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you."

Remo took the same spot by the front paw and leaned his back against the Sphinx as if tired. His body became one with the great idol. So when he exerted pressure, it responded down to its limestone-block toes. There came a beep and another shout of exultation. "It moved! It's a miracle. The Sphinx is moving!" As the UCLA professor came running back toward the head, taking Instamatic pictures every step of the way, Remo returned to his spot at the rump. This time he laid his hands against the ruin and leaned into it.

The beeping became a protracted squeal, and when Remo was satisfied, he stepped away and found the Master of Sinanju.

"That enough?" Remo asked Chiun.

"Huk moved it just as far with only two pushes."

"Huk didn't have lasers to deal with."

The UCLA professor was leaping into the air, pumping his arms excitedly. "The Sphinx moves! I've proved it. The Sphinx moves!"

"Personally," Remo called out, spanking limestone dust off his hands, "I think your equipment's on the fritz."

The man's face fell. "It's the best money could buy."

"You have all these witnesses, and no one saw a thing."

The UCLA professor got down on hands and knees, trying to see under the Sphinx. "Maybe it's on a pivot. Like a weather vane. We should dig it up. I'll bet we find a pivot."

"You know how much time and money that would cost?"

"Millions," the man cried. "Millions and millions. This is too big for UCLA. This is a Yale grant. I'll need a Yale grant. Excuse me. I have to call the States."

As he ran off, Remo asked Chiun, "Now what? Do I push it back or what?"

"No."

"No? You mean that's it?"

"It is enough for this century. I have pushed it and now you have pushed it. If you ever sire a worthy successor, he can push it. Eventually it will face the proper direction."

"What's the proper direction?"

"Toward my village of Sinanju, of course."

"How long will that take?"

"Only another two thousand years."

Remo looked up at the crumbling face. "Think the old guy will last that long?"

"Not if these pesky tourists continue to clamber atop it."

"Not our problem. Where to next?"

"The Egyptians called it wretched Kush."

"Give me a name I understand."

"The Greeks named it Ethiopia. To the Romans it was Africa."

"I'm not up for Africa."

"We could journey to Hyperborea instead."

Remo frowned. "I never heard of Hyperborea."

"I will give you a choice. Hyperborea or Africa?"

"Is this a trick question?"

"Only to the ignorant."

Remo reached into his pockets and pulled out two coins, the Greek drachma and the Roman denarius. "How about if I flip a coin? Heads Hyperborea and tails Africa."

"I will accept this."

Remo flipped the coin, and the face of Hermes landed up.

"Hyperborea it is. Sure hope it isn't hot and steamy like Africa."

"It is not."

"By the way," asked Remo as they sought a cab back to Cairo, "what did you mean when you said they threw away their brains?"

"When a pharaoh died, his body was prepared for entombment with preserving niter and bitumen, should he reclaim it at a later time. It was wrapped in specially prepared linen, and the organs extracted and preserved in jars. Except for one organ."

"The brain?"

"The brain."

"Why did they throw away the brains?"

"Because while the Egyptians understood the function of the heart and the liver and the gall bladder, they did not know the purpose of their own brains. And so if there is an afterlife for pharaohs, it must be a terrible place because they have no brains in their skulls to enjoy eternal dominion among the Imperishable Stars."

And amid the blowing sands of Giza, which would one day overtake Cairo itself, Remo Williams laughed softy. Until Chiun said something that wiped the smile from his face and caused a chunk of ice to settle in his heart.

"When I am a mummy, Remo, see to it that my brain reposes in the correct receptacle."

Chapter 9

The flight from Cairo to Hyperborea stopped at Copenhagen, Denmark, which Remo took to be a good sign. They changed planes in Iceland, which made Remo's brow furrow with worry.

While they refueled at the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik, Remo noticed with relief that it was very green. A stopover in Greenland made him decide whoever had named both places must have dropped his notes. Iceland was green and Greenland was icy.

And when the crew changed at Godthaab, Greenland, and the Danish stewardesses who kept nibbling on Remo's ears became Eskimo stewardesses who tried to rub their cold noses against his warm one, Remo took this to be a very very bad omen.

So when the gray seas below the Air Canada's wings became choked with cakes of ice, Remo was not particularly surprised.

"We're not going to the North Pole by any chance?" wondered Remo.

"No, we are not," Chiun said. "Good," said Remo.

"You are going to the place where only one Master of Sinanju has ventured before you."

"Where is that?"

"The moon."

"I am not going to the moon. Air Canada doesn't fly there."

Chiun waved the objection away. "It is too late for you to object, inasmuch as you are already on your way."

As the plane droned on, the Eskimo stewardesses kept up a running chatter about how they were now called Inuit but Remo could call them bandicoots if he gave them all a big hug. Preferably one at a time, but because they were landing soon, all at once would do just fine.

"Pass," said Remo, thinking furiously.

"Why do you spurn the advances of these fine, sturdy women?" asked Chiun in an undertone.

"How come you didn't ask me that in Spain or Egypt?"

"Those women spring from inferior stock."

Remo took a second look at the stewardesses who were beaming brilliant smiles in his direction like roundfaced searchlights.

"These women look suspiciously Korean," he said.

"They are not. They are Eskimo."

"Inuit," called a bell-like voice.

"You know, they say Asians came across the Bering Strait and populated America."

"These women could pass for Asian," Chiun admitted. "Chinese perhaps. Or Mongol. But not Korean. Although they have their charms."

"If you like pumpkin heads perched on squash bodies."

"They are fortuitously designed for childbearing. This is a good thing for a man of your advancing years."

"My years aren't advancing that I know of. I look younger than I did before I came to Sinanju."

"It would be a correct thing for you to impregnate the three you like best in the event you do not return from the moon in this century," Chiun told Remo.

"Three?"

"Knowing you, I do not trust you not to sire another female. If not two. But if you make three with child, surely at least one boy will result."

"Pass."

"Awww," said the stewardesses in unison.

"No offense," Remo assured them. "I already have a daughter."

"And a son," added Chiun. "The jury's still out on that one."

Remo lapsed into silence. They were flying in the general direction of the North Pole, which featured only ice and snow and cold and maybe the Fortress of Solitude. In other words, nothing useful or interesting.

Somewhere in the dim recesses of his memory, he recalled a legend of a Sinanju Master who went to the moon. Who was that?

"Shang!" Remo said, snapping his fingers. "Shang went to the moon."

Chiun clapped his hands together approvingly. "It gladdens my heart to hear that one of my lessons has stuck to the inside of your thick white skull."

"Cut it out. Besides, Shang didn't really go to the moon. He just thought he did."

"He went to the moon. So it was written in the Book of Sinanju."

"What's written in the Book of S'vnanju is that Shang fell for some Japanese tart, and she hectored him into fetching her a piece of the moon, figuring if he failed, she was rid of him. So he hiked north, made it to a land of cold and ice and snow bears and, because he was ignorant of the shape of the earth, Shang thought he had made it to the moon. Actually he'd hiked across the frozen Bering Sea into what is now northern Canada. Because it was winter, there was no moon in the sky, and Shang thought he had walked all the way to the moon."

"How did the story end?" an interested stewardess asked.

Remo shrugged. "Search me. I just remember the part of the moon. And only because it was wrong."

"Pah!" said Chiun, turning away. "You have learned nothing."

For the rest of the trip, the stewardesses tried to convince Remo that although they were Inuit or Eskimos-take your pick, kind sir-they were really just as modern and sophisticated as any woman you could find.

"Yes," said one. "We have satellite dishes in our homes. Alcoholism. Drugs and even AIDS."

"That's really sophisticated," Remo remarked dryly. "Congratulations."

The stewardesses giggled with delight, thinking they were cracking the thick antisocial ice surrounding the strange white man with the yummy, thick wrists.

So when he fell asleep, they were very disappointed. When they deplaned at Pangnirtung on Baffin Island, the entire crew of stewardesses offered Remo a ride to any point he cared to visit, including lodgings in their very own homes, which they assured him were not igloos. Unless, of course, igloos appealed to him. In which case they would build the warmest, most snuggly igloo imaginable.

Feeling his face shrink before a polar wind, Remo muttered, "All of a sudden, I'd like to visit Africa."

"We can kayak down!" one squeaked.

In the end Remo was forced to drag them across the icy tarmac to a waiting rental agent because they had latched on to the cuffs of his pants and refused to let go.

"We wish to rent a vehicle hardy enough to travel many miles through ice and snow," Chiun announced.

"And horny Eskimo women," added Remo.

The rental agent gave them a nice deal on a snowball-colored Ford Bronco with heavy-duty studded snow tires that had chains on them for extra traction. "Pay this man, Remo," said Chiun.

"Remo! His name is Remo!"

The rental agent peered over his counter top.

"Sir," he said in a hushed tone usually reserved for informing someone that his fly was open or toilet paper had stuck to his shoe, "you have stewardesses clinging to your pant legs."

"They think they're in love with me," Remo complained.

"They look awfully convinced of that to me," the rental agent agreed.

"Can I leave them with you?" Remo wondered.

"No! No!"

"Just until I get back?" added Remo.

"Yes! Yes! We'll wait for you! We'll wait forever."

"I was hoping you'd all say that," said Remo. "Should be back in-" He looked to the Master of Sinanju.

"Very soon or never."

"Very soon," said Remo.

"Yaaay! "

When the keys were offered to Remo, the Master of Sinanju snatched them away. "I will drive," he said coldly.

"Why do you have to drive?"

"Because you appear very tired, and I do not wish you to drive us into a glacier or off a precipice to our death."

Remo decided that made good sense, so he hopped in back while the Master of Sinanju spent ten minutes finding a position behind the steering wheel that was comfortable and didn't wrinkle his kimono.

They rattled out onto a road and into lightly blowing snow. For miles in every direction lay the snow-dusted expanse of the Arctic. They were well above the tree line, with not a spruce in sight.

On the way they passed a solitary Eskimo man hiking through the white desolation, who called encouragement after them. "Go, Juice, go!"

"You know, if we get lost in this thing, no one would ever find us. Our paint job's the same color as the terrain."

"Do not worry, Remo. I will not get lost."

"Good."

And Chiun did something strange. He yawned. After a minute Remo yawned, too. Chiun yawned again. And again.

Remo fell asleep in the vehicle not long after.

IN SLEEP, he was back in the Void. A sad-faced man appeared to him, wearing the baggy pastel silks of the Yi Dynasty.

"Which one are you?" asked Remo wearily.

"I am you."

"I don't remember Chiun mentioning a Master Yu."

"My name is not Yu. It is Lu."

"Lu? Oh, yeah, Chiun thinks I used to be Lu in a past life."

"That is why I said I am you."

"Funny. You don't look like me."

"We wear different flesh, but our essence is one."

"That so? If you're me and I'm you, how can we be having this conversation?"

"Because you are dreaming," Master Lu said in a reasonable voice.

"Oh, right. So. Do I have to fight you, too?"

"A man cannot fight himself. For there would be no victor-only two defeated ones."

"Gotta remember that."

"I am here to tell you that while our essence may be one and our flesh different, my blood flows in your veins."

"How's that possible? You're Korean and I'm American."

"America was not always. Your ancestors were not always American. Therefore, they were something else."

"They sure as hell weren't Korean," said Remo. But Master Lu only smiled with a thin austerity, and as his face began to recede, Remo thought his eyes looked familiar.

Those knowing eyes were the last things to disappear into the Void.

WHEN HE WOKE UP, Remo was sitting in the back seat and the Bronco had stopped on a block of ice. There was hardly any sunlight, and it was very very cold. A steady wind blew.

"What the hell?" Remo said, opening the door. His foot touched water, and he withdrew it with haste. The water was very cold. He looked out and down. The water was gray and choppy, in addition to being cold.

The block of ice was entirely surrounded by water, confirming Remo's first sleepy impression. And it was moving south.

"Damn it Chiun! Where are you?"

As it turned out, not in the back, which contained only a wad of coarse, woolly blankets, or under the hood, which was full of cold, inert engine.

Remo scoured the horizon with his deep-set eyes. To the north lay cold, impenetrable mist and the fresh scent of snow. To the south he smelled open water and blubber.

Kneeling at the thick end of the floating ice block, Remo tested the water. So cold, it was like touching a live wire. When he pulled his finger free, it instantly acquired a coating of ice, which he knew better than to try to break off. His skin would probably crack off with it.

Sucking on his frozen finger to soften the ice, Remo returned to the Bronco. He got behind the wheel and found no key in the ignition.

Growing up on the streets of Newark had given Remo certain skills that never seemed to age. He hot-wired the ignition and got the engine going. The heater filled the interior with just enough warmth to cause Remo's muscles to relax. Then the engine conked out.

No amount of tinkering could get it going again. The cold settled in the Bronco's interior like a frigid hand. And Remo started shivering uncontrollably. It was a mechanism by which the body warmed itself when necessary.

Remo had been taught not to shiver by the Master of Sinanju, who had pronounced it a waste of energy. But from the way things looked, he was marooned. He would shiver now and when he got bored with shivering, there were Sinanju techniques that ran the gamut from visualizing fire to hibernating that might carry him through this ordeal.

The only question in Remo's mind was why Chiun had put him in this position. It made the Cretan labyrinth look like a pie-eating contest.

Well past midnight, Remo was in the fire-visualization phase of his survival plan. It was working. He felt warm even as a night wind howled against the windshield. Windblown water had rimed the glass with a thick coating of obscuring ice. He couldn't see where he was going, even though at this time of year midnight meant the sun was hanging low to the horizon, giving the world the semblance of dusk.

So it came as a mild surprise when the ice block crashed against something and the Bronco rocked on its springs, while pressing their wet black noses to the windows.

Remo cranked the window down on the passenger's side and saw that his ice block had nudged another ice block.

"Could be my lucky break," he said.

He got out. Instantly his skin shrank over his muscles and bones. The wind was bitter and penetrating. Remo walked over to the adjoining block of ice. It bobbed and fought against his patch, which meant it wasn't land but another chunk of floe ice.

Remo hesitated. The two cakes were clashing, but nothing said they'd stay joined forever. He looked back.

He couldn't afford to lose the shelter of the Bronco, so he went back and released the emergency brake. After that it was easy to roll it onto the other block. Remo reconnoitered the new block. It was flat for a hundred or so yards but soon grew vertical. A peak of snow-dusted ice lifted into the star-touched sky, the top obscured by a mist of ice crystals.

I'm on a freaking iceberg, he decided.

Remo searched his memory for what he knew of icebergs. They broke off from the Arctic ice pack and drifted south, sometimes taking years. This was not an encouraging thought. On the other hand, when they hit warm water below the polar regions, they could melt into nothing. This was even more discouraging to contemplate.

From somewhere in the vicinity of the peak, came a low, mournful growl.

Remo listened. After a while the growl came again. In the course of his reading, the phrase blue growler had stuck with Remo. It was a kind of iceberg that made growling sounds under the stresses of intense wind and cold and water.

Maybe he was on a blue growler.

Except there was nothing blue about the ice and snow. It was definitely whitish. Not bluish. Nothing bluish about it. Maybe they were only blue under strong sunlight.

The growl came again, and this time it sounded organic.

Remo decided he'd look into the growling. Climbing the iceberg meant exposing himself to high, subfeezing winds, but there was no smarter way to do this. He started up on foot, switched to all fours, and to gain the slippery summit he poked fingerholds into the ice with stabbing thrusts of his forefingers.

From the peak Remo saw the polar bears on the other side as plain as day. They looked surreal-as surreal as the animated polar bears in the soft-drink commercial.

Casually they looked up at him with big wet eyes. Remo gave them a friendly little wave, and one, encouraged, tried to clamber up the iceberg after him. He kept losing his purchase, sliding back on his white rump and spinning when he reached flat pack ice.

When they started to walk around the summit, Remo decided he needed to protect his only shelter. Climbing down was harder than climbing up, even with prepunched fingerholds. Halfway down Remo was forced to slide on his stomach in emulation of the bear. He came up on all fours, still sliding, and skated on two legs the rest of the way.

He reached the Bronco one step ahead of the loping bears.

Grabbing the door, Remo tried to open it. Stuck. The lock was frozen. Remo gave the lock a quick knuckle strike and tried again. It came open with only a minor hesitation.

He slid in, and was pulling the door shut when a huge white paw swiped in, holding the door open.

Remo slapped the paw. The bear growled. The others advanced, lumbering and curious. They weighed maybe a quarter ton each and started to clamber all over the Bronco, rocking it and jouncing it on its squeaky springs, while pressing their wet black noses to the windows.

Remo batted at the obstructing paw again and, bonewhite claws extended, it raked the air, narrowly missing his head.

In that interval he got the door shut and the window up.

"Great. Now I'm stuck here."

The bears circled the Bronco for the next hour, testing its sturdiness and making it rock like a cradle. Remo let them have their fun, hoping they would tire soon and leave him alone.

He hoped there would be time to sneak out and try to snag a fish. He was getting hungry, and because his diet was restricted to fish and duck and rice, polar-bear meat was out of the question.

Remo was fishing about the glove compartment for something to use as a line and hook when one of the bears-the big one that had tried to climb up after him before-got his huge front paws on the rear of the vehicle and started pushing.

"You have got to be kidding me," said Remo as the Bronco began creep toward open water on locked tires. The emergency brake was on, but the ice was slippery. The polar bear had his entire weight against the Bronco, and it was inching forward with a prolonged scratching of chain-wrapped rubber against the ice.

Remo put his foot on the brake. It didn't help much. The bear continued leaning. The Bronco moved forward until he lost his balance. Then he climbed back up and started the comical cycle all over again.

Ahead, the other bears had dropped into the water. Their black bruin eyes regarded Remo with quiet expectation.

"Okay, show's over," he growled, cracking the door. "Get away. Shoo!"

The bear refused to shoo. But it did keep pushing as if he had an intelligence and a single-minded determi nation to push Remo, vehicle and all, into the frigid Arctic sea. Or wherever he was.

Having no choice, Remo got out, slamming the door behind him like an angry motorist who had been rearended.

"What the ding-dong hell are you doing!" he shouted.

The bear jumped away from the Bronco and retreated a few yards, where he began pawing the ice lazily. He yawned, exposing a fanged mouth like a scarlet cave full of stalactites.

"And stay away!" Remo added for good measure. It must have been the wrong thing to say to a polar bear, because without warning, the bruin started to gallop at him like an express train.

He was fast. Remo, annoyed, was faster. He took a run at the bear, jumped off the ice and nailed it on the tip of the nose with a furious snap kick.

Remo bounced off and landed on his feet. The bear recoiled as if shot. Shaking its head, it came again. "You don't learn, do you?" Remo snapped. And let fly again.

This time there was a loud snap as the polar bear's spinal column broke under the expert kick. Remo landed on his feet, the bear lay down dead and the Bronco teetered over the edge of the ice pack and into the cold gray water.

"Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!" Remo shouted, scaring the other bears away. "Damn that Chiun!" Because there was nothing else to take his frustration out on, he walked over and gave the dead polar bear a splintering kick in the ribs.

He felt better, but it hardly improved the situation any.

Standing by himself, he felt the cold of the Arctic Circle take hold of him with crushing, energy-sapping fingers. His rib cartilage began crackling with each breath. The air going into his lungs became like cold fire. Remo began drawing it in slowly, letting his mouth and air passages warm it before it could reach the delicate tissues of his lungs.

"What would Shang do in this situation?" Remo wondered.

The wind picked up. It blew soft waves of heat off the polar bear's dead hulk.

Snapping his fingers, Remo got down on hands and knees and crawled under the warm body of the dead polar bear, figuring it would get him to morning even though technically it was still daylight.

THAT NIGHT, he walked the polar wastes in his dreams. The snow and ice lay like a trackless expanse as far as the eye could see. The sun hung low to the horizon as if it were slowly dying. A wind howled, creating spiral vortices like sparkling diamond galaxies.

After a time Remo came upon footprints in the snow. He followed them because he recognized them. Prints left by Korean sandals.

As he walked, leaving no footprints himself, Remo thought to himself how interesting it was that in three thousand years, sandal prints had not changed.

Remo didn't ask himself how in this timeless place of snow and wind he knew he was in the polar wastes of three thousand years gone by. He just knew.

Remo found the owner of the sandal prints shivering in an ice cave.

Squatting in snow, the man seemed to be clothed in snow. His limbs peeped out from a white covering that swathed his body. He was looking down at his naked brown feet.

As Remo approached, he looked up. "I will not fight you, ghost-face," he said.

"Good," said Remo.

"It is not for your benefit that I spare you the challenge, but for the future of the House, which was young when I lived."

"Suit yourself," said Remo.

"I have two things of great import to tell you."

"Shoot," said Remo.

"First be careful whom you love. I loved badly and the line suffered. You must love wisely or love not at all."

Remo said nothing.

"The second thing I must tell you is very important."

"Yeah..."

"You must wake up."

"Why?"

"Because you will freeze to death if you do not follow my example."

"What example is that?"

But the Korean only bowed his head and reached back to flip a fragment of the whiteness that covered his bare limbs over his intensely black hair.

Remo saw the fragment had a furred snout, black nose and inexpressibly sad eyes.

Harold W Smith was lurking on the net.

As the international infobahn crept across the face of the globe like an alien nervous system, a new lexicon evolved to capture the uncharted reality of what some called cyberspace. People posted notes on the net, flamed one another in anger and, in an effort to impart feeling to what had formerly been known as cold type, created symbols known as emoticons-like smilies and frownies-the better to make electronic conversation convey exact shades of meaning only spoken words could.

One coinage of the electronic age was lurker. A lurker was someone who browsed the nets and bulletin boards anonymously but never posted messages. Lurkers just lurked and watched, unsuspected.

Harold Smith might be said to be the first lurker in the history of the Internet.

Back when the net was limited to a small handful of computers in government and educational hands, Harold Smith lurked, unknown and unsuspected, watching the message traffic and growing aware that the day was coming when the average American would own a home computer and do the same.

Harold Smith feared that day. Not that he thought it would be entirely a bad thing. If it involved the average American citizen, it would offer a mixture of good and bad.

No, the information explosion was feared by Harold Smith because of the enormous drain it would place on CURE resources. CURE operated on several levels. Wiretapping and other illegal information gathering was part of its intelligence-gathering outreach. So were human intelligence plants. CURE had agents in everything from the National Security Agency to the Department of Agriculture. All reported by mail or telephone or dead drop-or most recently, by E-mail. None knew they worked for Harold W Smith, although many thought they worked for the CIA.

Data constantly flowed into Harold Smith's mainframes. Data that had to be stored, scanned, evaluated and disposed of. Most were erased as not mission specific. Some were filed for future action or investigation. A few were acted upon.

The proliferation of home computers and electronic exchanges of all kinds meant an entire domain of accessible data had come into existence for Harold Smith to patrol.

Thus, he lurked, unsuspected. He had recently created an electronic-mail address that couldn't be traced back to Folcroft Sanitarium or himself. Through this, an increasingly large number of field contacts reported to him.

Early on Smith had written programs whose sole function was to troll the net for events or people. Global searches were executed on all incoming data so that buzzwords captured pertinent data for review.

But not all the buzzwords in the universe could patrol the net in search of CURE-critical events. Only a discerning mind could perform that function.

So Harold W. Smith lurked.

He skipped the news groups. They were the electronic equivalent of graffiti, Smith had long ago discovered. Most might as well have been scrawled in crayon on sheets of brown wrapping paper.

But all sorts of news traveled the fiber-optic route these days. Especially local news that never went national.

Smith was scanning these. He had a particular and unusual way of dealing with vast blocks of trivia that might contain a kernel of importance. It was an adaptation of the primary speed-reading method whereby the reader ran his eye down the middle of the page at a constant speed and absorbed the gist of the text semisubconsciously.

Smith found speed-reading useless for absorbing important documents, but for trolling the net it was more than adequate.

Certain key words jumped out at him whenever he did this. His eyes saw everything, but his alert brain only picked up on the key words. In a way Smith functioned like a human data processor when he did this.

It was while scanning a continuous scroll of random news reports that Smith's eyes alighted on a word that caused him to instinctively reach for the scroll-lock key.

The screen froze the amber blocks of text on the buried screen.

It had happened so fast Smith's brain hadn't quite registered the word that caused the reflex action to kick in.

He stared at the word now. It appeared on the screen as "Sunonjo."

Smith blinked his tired gray eyes.

"Sunonjo?" he muttered, tapping a hotkey. In response, a window text opened up in the center of the screen.

"Sunonjo: no exact match."

Knowing that reporters were notorious for factual and spelling errors, Smith tried several variations, including "Sinanjo" and "Sunanju," but each time no match appeared.

Giving up, Smith deactivated the encyclopedia program and turned his attention to the main text.

It was a brief news item datelined Yuma, Arizona. Smith read it carefully.

Arizona Virus (AP)

A new form of hantavirus may mean the end to an obscure group of Indians who have survived in the southwest corner of Arizona for centuries. The Sunonjo tribe have dwelt peacefully in the Sonoran Desert, coexisting with Navajo, Hopi and white man alike. Tribal legends say they have never known war. Now a virulent new hantavirus has emerged, which has begun to lay waste to the peace-loving tribe.

Smith laid his blinking amber cursor against the word hantavirus.

Instantly a window opened up.

Hantavirus: A genus of airborne viruses, believed to originate in rodent droppings. First recognized during the Korean War, and named for the Hantaan River, where it was encountered by US. Army doctors. Symptoms include coughing and chills, which rapidly progress to a pneumonialike filling of the lungs, and coma. Death often comes within forty hours, if untreated.

"Odd," said Smith.

He finished reading the news extract, found it unimportant except for the coincidence of the name Sunonjo and moved on.

An hour or so later, eyes fatiguing, Smith logged off the net, frowning.

It had been an frivolous expenditure of time, he decided.

Somewhere the truth of Remo Williams's ancestry lurked unsuspected. But wherever it was, it was not to be found on the net. Of that Dr. Harold W. Smith was absolutely positive.

WHEN REMO WOKE up, his limbs were stiff.

The polar bear atop him had grown cold and seemed to have picked up an extra ton of dead weight.

Remo crawled out and got to work immediately.

He started at the neck, where the warm white fur lay smooth and flat against the bear's skin, and dug his cold-stiffened blue fingers deep into the thick skin.

With one fingernail that was always kept clipped an eighth-inch longer than the others, Remo began scoring the blubbery skin. His nails-like those of all Sinanju Masters-had achieved a combination of strength and sharpness that ordinary people who abused their bodies by consuming beef fat and dairy products, tobacco and alcohol, could never imagine. Many years of prescribed diet and exercise had given Remo's fingernails the cutting power of a straight razor.

Still, even a straight razor had its limitations. As he felt the body heat being sucked out of his lean body by the relentlessly contractive Arctic cold, Remo kept at it until the skin at the back of the polar bear's neck parted like a ghastly pink grin, exposing meat and vertebrae.

Then, selecting a spot over the spine, he climbed atop the behemoth and, working on his knees, began ripping the life-preserving pelt back to the tail. The exuding polar-bear warmth kept his muscles from going too stiff.

When he was done, Remo peeled both sides down to the ice and tried to figure a way to roll the skeletal mass of exposed raw meat and bones off its skin. His muscles felt like iron lumps.

The cold continued to suck energy and warmth from his body at a ferocious rate. An internal awareness of his body's state told Remo he was low on calories and to try to move the monster would leave him weak and exhausted on the remorseless ice with a life expectancy of maybe twenty minutes.

So Remo crawled into the body, squeezing between the thick, yellowish fat and the raw meat and ribs, knowing that the blubber would insulate him from the cold.

To conserve energy, he went back to sleep. This time he did not dream.

Chapter 10

The captain of the Canadian Coast Guard cutter Margaret Trudeau was skeptical to say the least.

But he saw that the ancient Asian was frantic. It could not be acting. His state was agitated in the extreme.

As the cutter cut through the Arctic sea, the old man paced the afterdeck frantically while searchlights blazed across the cold, unforgiving waters of Cumberland Sound.

It was broad daylight now, but there was a chance the searchlights would be seen by the person they were searching for and he would find a way to signal them.

"Would you mind explaining it all one more time?" Captain Service asked.

"Yes, I would mind," the old man snapped.

"It would help us find your friend."

"He is not my friend. He is a fool whom I cannot leave alone for a single moment."

"You landed in Pangnirtung, a perfectly inhospitable place, where you and your traveling companion rented a vehicle. That much I have clear in my mind. And you went for a ride without benefit of guide or map. Why?"

"Remo is very impetuous."

"No. No. What were you doing in this region? What was your purpose?"

"Vacation."

"You and he were vacationing above the Arctic Circle?"

"It is sununer, is it not?"

"Yes. But it hardly constitutes the summer of the lower latitudes."

The old man flapped his scarlet sleeves like a flustered bird trying to take off. "We were driving and ran out of fuel. I went in search of a gas station and when I came back, the vehicle was gone and so was Remo." "Your friend sent you across pack ice for gas?"

"I know it is idiotic. But I could not trust him not to become lost."

"I understand you parked at the edge of the sea. A very dangerous place."

"How was I to know the idiot would park upon a shelf of ice that would fall into the sea?"

"Actually it didn't fall. It simply broke off and drifted away. It happens all the time during these summer months."

The old Asian made a snappish gesture with one flapping sleeve. "With Remo and the vehicle upon it. No doubt he was asleep and entirely oblivious to all!"

"Please calm down. He could not have drifted very far in so short a time. I am confident we will find him."

"In this merciless cold? It will sap him of all vitality-"

Captain Service said nothing to that. There was no gainsaying it. If the foolish American who had parked at the edge of Cumberland Sound only to drift off on an ice pack was not soon found, he would certainly perish by the time he reached Davis Strait.

"We will find him," Service promised.

But as he returned to the bridge, he saw by his watch that the chances had become very slim indeed. This cold tended to suck the life from a man like some ferocious, icy Dracula.

LITTLE MORE THAN an hour later the first mate called out. "Captain, I spy something unusual."

Captain Service went directly to the bow and raised his binoculars.

"See that growler, sir? There's a polar bear just starboard of the peak."

"Skinned," the captain said, nodding. "We might take a look."

Captain Service barked out orders, and the cutter changed course. Soon, under the prod of its churning screws, it warped alongside the looming iceberg and was made fast.

First off the cutter-before anyone could stop him-was the frail old Asian named Chiun. Bounding across the pack ice, he suddenly didn't look very frail at all. The crew was hard put to keep up with him, in fact.

His squeakily plaintive voice echoed off the blue berg. "Remo! Remo, are you here?"

The dead and rent polar bear quivered in answer. And a bluish face popped out from behind a flap of blood-spotted bear hide.

"Chiun!" a voice croaked.

"Look what you have put me through!"

The blue American's face became angry. "Me put you through? You're the one who marooned me on a freaking ice pack!"

The old Asian shrieked in reply, "Do not dare blame your miserable failures upon me! After all I have done for you!"

"I was asleep in the back seat one moment, and the next I'm playing Nanook of the North. With no sign of you anywhere."

"Was it my idea to come to this awful place of ice and bitter cold?"

"Yes!"

"Liar."

Captain Service and a complement of men trudged up as the argument grew shrill.

"Hah!" cried Chiun, pointing angrily toward the Canadians. "Tell your false tale of woe to these brave sailors who have risked all to succor you."

"It was his idea," Remo said, pointing back to Chiun. "He thinks this is the moon."

"You flipped the fickle coin that brought us here," Chiun countered.

"You flipped a coin?" Captain Service said, dumbfounded.

"Yeah," said the blue-faced Remo. "It was either here or Africa."

"Why would anyone go to Africa on vacation?" asked Captain Service in a stumped voice.

"Search me," said Remo, crawling out and letting his body shiver.

"Why are you shivering?" Chiun demanded.

"Because I'm freezing, damn it!"

"Bring an oilskin for this man," Service ordered. Chiun narrowed his eyes to thin slits. "Do not bother. Let him wear the pelt of his handiwork."

"I'm cold, not desperate. I'll take the oilskin."

To the astonishment of all, the tiny Asian stepped up to the dead polar bear and, with quick swipes of his long fingernails, stripped the dead brute of a section of pristine hide.

Remo pulled this over his shoulders. "Man, I thought I'd never live through the night."

Chiun looked around unhappily. "Where is the vehicle? I do not see it."

"Thanks for your consideration," Remo said bitterly, cocking a thumb over his shoulder. "But that moronic polar bear pushed it into the water."

"Then you must pay for it."

"There is also a fine for killing this bear without a proper license," said Captain Service. "I assume you do not possess the proper license?"

"License, my ass!" Remo exploded. "That bear jumped me! It was self-defense."

"He is quite the complainer for one who has been rescued," Captain Service remarked to Chiun.

Chiun rolled his eyes. "His carping has been incessant during all the years I have known the wretch. And he is forever falling into ridiculous predicaments such as this."

"He does appear to be the hard-luck sort," the captain agreed.

"Can we just be on our way?" Remo grumbled. "I feel like an idiot standing here in a polar-bear skin."

"Embrace the feeling," Chiun squeaked.

WHEN THEY PULLED into port, Remo said, "We're blowing this Popsicle stand, and I don't want to hear different."

"After you have paid the lawful fine," reminded Captain Service.

Wearily Remo handed over his gold card.

"As well as all expenses incurred during your rescue," Captain Service added.

"Don't you rescue people as part of your duties?" Remo asked.

"We rescue Canadians as part of our duties. Americans have to pay."

"Don't you people have universal health coverage up here?"

"We do. But what does that have to do with your situation?"

Remo pointed an accusing finger at the Master of Sinanju. "Because after twenty years of associating with this old reprobate, I have to be out of my mind to keep following him wherever he goes. Therefore, I plead insanity."

"Insanity is a plea normally made in a court of law."

Remo offered his wrists for cuffing. "Haul me before a magistrate, and I'll so plead."

"Sorry," said the captain of the Canadian Coast Guard cutter as he ran a credit check on Remo.

"I can hardly wait to get home," Remo told Chiun pointedly.

"You can hardly stand," countered Chiun.

"And you are not going home."

"Where am I going then?"

"Africa."

"I am not going to Africa."

"Or we can put off Africa and its soothing heat and go directly to Hesperia."

"Where's Hesperia?"

"Where we are going if we do not go to Africa."

"On second thought," said Remo, "how bad can Africa be?"

THE STEWARDESSES on the Air Ghana flight wanted to know if inasmuch as they were flying into war-torn Stomique, Remo wouldn't like to have sex one last time. "I don't intend to die in Africa," Remo told them.

"Once you are dead, it will be too late to change your mind," a second stewardess smilingly argued.

"I am not changing my mind," Remo assured her. "Are we not the most beautiful black women you have seen?" asked a third in a pouty voice.

Remo conceded the point. They were as elegantly slim as high-fashion models.

"And are we not alone in this great big aircraft, just you and the four of us, and is it not a flight of seven boring hours?"

"You're forgetting my chaperon," said Remo, jerking his thumb over his shoulder to the Master of Sinanju, seated six rows back over the starboard wing.

"If he is your chaperon, why do you not sit together?"

"We're having a tiff."

"You should not be angry with him. He looks very sweet."

"He tried to feed me to the polar bears a while back. Before that, he almost got me drowned. And I had to move the Sphinx all by myself."

"Then you should not care that your cruel chaperon disapproves your sleeping with four beautiful flight attendants."

"Did you know we were all Miss Ghana?" another stewardess wondered.

"I only sleep with Miss Universes, and even then only one per year."

The four ex-Miss Ghanas looked perplexed. They repaired to the galley, huddled briefly and when they came out again they wore fierce expressions.

"We have discussed this," one announced sternly, "and have concluded that you are a vicious racist for not sleeping with us."

"Yes. An obvious vicious racist."

"I am not a racist," Remo said wearily.

"A definite racist. One who refuses to sit with his yellow chaperon or sleep with gorgeous, willing and eager black women."

Remo got up. "All right, all right," he said.

The stewardesses brightened. "You are weakening?"

"No. I surrender absolutely."

The four ex-Miss Ghanas hurried to unbutton their blouses, uniforms and step out of their panty hose. "Not that," said Remo. "I'm going to sit with my chaperon."

"Homo," they hooted after him. "Girlie boy." After he took the seat beside the Master of Sinanju and a frosty silence hung in the air, Remo said, "I met Master Lu."

"Goody for you."

"He hinted that I was Korean."

"You are not good enough, brave enough or wise enough to be Korean," Chiun sniffed.

"These dreams I'm having are just that. Dreams."

Chiun made a snorting sound of derision.

"A person can't meet himself. It's impossible," Remo continued.

"You are impossible."

"You should talk."

The frosty silence returned.

"You know, Lu looked kinda familiar. Around the eyes."

"You have seen Lu's eyes before?" Chiun asked.

"Yeah," admitted Remo. "But I can't place them."

"Look in the mirror."

"I am not Korean."

"Then do not look in the mirror if you fear the truth."

"Don't worry. I won't."

"Coward," sniffed Chiun.

"Sticks and stones break mirrors, but not my resolve to avoid looking into the mirror," Remo said firmly. A little while later, Remo pretended he had to use the men's room.

When he returned to his seat, Chiun asked, "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Do not take me for an idiot. You looked in the bathroom mirror. What did you see?"

"Coincidence."

"You will never grow up," Chiun said unhappily.

"What are you talking about?"

"You will never achieve Reigning Master status. I should have known better than to train a white. I have been burdened with shepherding a pupil longer than any Master since Yung. I long for the peace and joy of retirement."

"Since when?"

"Since I have been burdened by your insufferable whiteness," Chiun said, turning his face to the window and the marching stratocumulus clouds beyond.

"You ache for retirement the way I yearn for roast duckling. Not at all."

"I have trained a pupil who spurns duckling, the most sublime of fowl," Chiun lamented, shaking his head until the cloudy wisps over each ear shook with sorrow.

Angrily Remo changed seats again.

As soon as he did, the four stewardesses drew straws. The winner approached him.

"Leave me alone," Remo snapped. "I'm going to take a nap."

"Before I go, would you like something warm to cover you?"

"Fine," said Remo.

And the stewardess draped her lush, dark body across Remo WiIliams's lean, vaguely bluish one.

Remo was so beat he just went to sleep with the contentedly purring stewardess atop him. It beat being laid out flat under a polar bear.

EVERYWHERE WAS BLACKNESS. Without form or shape or size. The ground was as black as the sky. There was no horizon and no light. All was ink.

"You are not worthy," a disembodied voice said coldly.

Standing in the breathable ink, Remo said nothing. "I am Ko," the voice rang out.

Remo tried to fix the voice. It seemed to be everywhere. And since everywhere was blackness, it might as well be nowhere.

"And this is my sword!" the voice of Ko boomed. As if covered in black silk that had slipped off, the point of a sword appeared in the darkness surrounding Remo.

He recognized the wide, flaring point. It was the Sword of Sinanju, forged centuries ago by Master Ko as a headman's sword. It had been lost to the Chinese until he and Chiun had recovered it years ago in Beijing.

"I find you guilty of the crime of unworthiness and sentence you to lose your head," the voice behind the sword said.

Remo said nothing. The sword lifted high and drew back. When the blade started for him, it might as well have been delivered by a Federal Express carrier.

Remo dodged it easily. On the back swing, he moved in for the Master wielding it.

Somehow he miscalculated and went flying past. Dropping to a defensive crouch, Remo felt a lock of his hair fly away as the double-edged blade swept back and forth like a great scythe.

Slithering away and up again, Remo assumed a defensive position. One foot tucked against his calf, hands floating before his breastbone.

Masters of Sinanju in the days of Ko were pre-Wang, he knew. They hadn't known of the sun source. They were good, but their techniques were those the ninja later copied.

Ko was wearing black silk, Remo understood, and the sword suddenly vanished beneath what was probably a cloak.

"I don't kill that easy," Remo said. Stepping around in the dark, he knew the blade-which, uncloaked, exceeded seven feet in length-could slip out of the silk cape and seek his vitals from any unexpected angle.

"You will die before you become the head of the House,"

"Bigot!" Remo taunted.

"Ghost-face."

"Chicken."

"What is wrong with chicken?" the disembodied voice wanted to know.

"Chickens are frightened by any low thunder," Remo countered.

"I am a rooster, not a hen, ghost-face."

And seeing a glint of steel in the darkness, Remo kicked up and high.

His foot connected and the Sword of Sinanju jumped high, cartwheeled in slow motion, and Remo faded back to get out of its way.

A slickness brushed the back of Remo's hand, and instinctively he snared it, yanking hard.

The blade pinned the black cloak against the blacker ground, and Master Ko slipped out of his concealing garment.

Remo got a momentary glimpse of him then. He wore black and a black hood. He shucked this off and, looking at Remo with a grudging respect, bowed in his direction.

Then he snapped up his cloak, and it swallowed him utterly and forever.

Exhausted, Remo slept on.

Chapter 11

Mahout Feroze Anin, Supreme Warlord of lower Stomique on the Horn of Africa, plugged one ear with a thin brown finger and pressed the satellite cell-phone receiver more closely to his other ear to keep out the steady thoom of mortars and the insistent rattle of small-arms fire.

"I challenge all of America to a fight," he raged.

"Over what?" asked the American ambassador.

"Over..." Anin made a face. His lean face, so open beneath his high, shining forehead, dripped sweat. It was the face that had graced the covers of Time, Newsweek, People and other great international magazines so often only a few years ago, but now was scarcely to be found in the newspapers of the surviving Stomique capital, Nogongog.

It was called the surviving capital because of all the cities in Stomique, both upper and lower, it was the only one not yet in abject ruins.

This was not how Anin had expected things to turn out when the UN peacekeeping force first stormed ashore in their effort to restore democracy to Stomique. Back then Anin had known exactly what to do. He hastily purchased a Western suit and tie, sought out a CNN microphone and welcomed the Americans with open arms and a beaming smile that soon radiated from news magazines all over the globe. He was certain that this magnificent PR gesture would put him in the good graces of Washington, and after a suitable period, they would install him as the new president of Stomique, his warlord days forever behind him.

But they had not. Instead, they had insisted that he surrender his cached weapons.

"But I am pro-American!" Mahout Feroze Anin had complained to the American ambassador in those early days of the UN occupation.

"Excellent. Have your weapons fieldstripped and hand them over to the chief UN observer."

But Anin hadn't done that. Instead, he'd gone underground. And the UN had come after him. So naturally he'd fought back. When his technicals had ambushed a Belgian UN peacekeeping unit, Mahout Feroze Anin's smiling pro-American face was plastered on Wanted posters all over Nogongog, and the U.S. Rangers were sent in. Mahout Feroze Anin had been forced to take up the sword and the gun and send his followers after the treacherous Rangers, who obviously didn't know an ally when one offered his empty hand.

It had proved to be a smart move. In the short run. The Rangers had been chased out of Nogongog, and Mahout Feroze Anin had elevated himself to Supreme Warlord of lower Stomique, victorious over the world's last superpower.

The trouble was, after the short run came the long run.

Stomique fell back into internecine feuding. No sooner had Anin liquidated his most deadly rival warlords than others sprang up to take their place. Instead of two enemies, he had four. And when he had the four butchered, there were suddenly eight. All weaker than those who had come before, but just as vexing. Eventually, the UN relief supplies ceased to flow into Stomique. And when that happened, there was no more food for Anin to seize, some to feed his followers, the rest to be converted into gold bullion.