Syndication Rites

Destroyer 122: Syndication Rites

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Chapter 1

Drugs were Cal Dreeder's stock-in-trade. He had realized this sad truth in an alcohol-inspired epiphany just a few short days before his untimely death. That cold winter night the last of his dreary life-he mentioned his revelation to Randy Smeed.

"Stock-in-trade means you deal it, Cal," Smeed explained to the older man. He tried to force a bored tone, but there was a tightness to his voice.

The two men were crammed along with twelve others in the back of a windowless van. They jounced uncomfortably on their hard seats as the nondescript vehicle turned off the New Jersey turnpike. The road soon became rough.

"It's what you do business with," Cal said knowingly. "I looked it up. And without drugs, we're out of business." He sounded almost disappointed.

"We'd find something else to do," Randy insisted dryly.

"You, maybe. Not me. I've been in this business nearly thirty years. It'd be hard for me to find something else. At my age, it's hard to change."

"You're old enough. Why don't you put in for a desk job?"

Cal laughed. "That'd be even harder. No, my only hope is that the drugs hold out until I retire." A few hard faces glanced his way.

"Joking," Cal said, raising his hands defensively. "Jeez, you guys've gotta learn to lighten up."

One of the young men held Cal's gaze for a long time. He was still scowling when he finally turned away.

Cal shook his head. So serious.

The young men in the truck all wore matching windbreakers. The letters DEA were printed in block letters across the back. Cal wore one, as well.

He'd worn some form of official ID for most of his life. From his stint in the Navy, he'd gone straight to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Most of the men who surrounded him now were still watching Saturday-morning cartoons when Cal was going on his first hippie drug raids.

Thirty years of undercover, crappy pay and putting his life on the line on an almost daily basis. And the drug problem had only gotten worse.

These days, people would drink a gallon of cough syrup if they thought they could get a buzz off it. Cal had heard of kids sealing their nostrils shut while sniffing glue, housewives who had been hospitalized after guzzling rubbing alcohol and one case where a teenager had died after sucking on the nozzle of a can of spray paint.

Society was crumbling. Cal Dreeder was charged with the impossible job of holding it together. As a result, Cal had been depressed for more years than he cared to remember.

The young punks around him didn't get his bitter joke. It had been a stupid thought. Drugs weren't going anywhere. Not as long as there were people willing to pump the junk into their veins and snort it up their noses. Not as long as there were creeps eager to push it in schoolyards and playgrounds. And especially not as long as it was profitable for the bigwig scum-suckers abroad and at home who supplied it.

No, Cal Dreeder's job was secure. And on this mid-January night on a back road in Jersey, the cold stink of the factories in the distant frozen swamps curling on winter's wind into the van's fetid air, the thought that he would never be out of work filled Cal with an infinite sadness.

They drove for another half hour.

The road became almost impassable. The men who were sitting were practically thrown from their seats. Those standing banged their heads on the steel roof more than once.

"They could've picked a better location," one of the young men complained.

"Better for who?" another grunted.

Eventually, the van slowed to a stop. What little conversation that had been going on within the confines of the truck died along with the engine.

Guns were pulled out of holsters. Safeties were thumbed off. The men formed a silent sweating row as the side door of the van rolled open.

"Out."

The voice of the DEA field agent in charge was a soft growl. The men dutifully piled from the van. Cal felt a small knot deep in the pit of his stomach when he saw the dull amber squares through the naked trees. The light shone through the windows, casting weird shadows around the nearby frozen woods.

On the surveillance photographs he'd seen, the building looked as if it had been an airport hangar at one time. If so, there was no sign of the airstrip it had served. It might have been used by a crop duster during some bygone age in the Garden State. Now, it was just another rotting hovel commandeered by society's dregs.

The rusting tin building had the benefit both of being in the middle of nowhere while remaining convenient to Jersey City, Newark and New York. The drugs that had found their way to America would be shipped from here.

At least that was the drug merchants' plan. But they were about to find out that the DEA had learned of their warehouse.

Cal gently fingered the trigger of his Colt as he fell in with the other, much younger agents.

The kids were nervous. Although he'd never admit it, Cal was, as well. He didn't feel the same depth of shivering apprehension as the rest, but it was there. His was the anxiousness of experience.

The men began to break away, circling through the woods in the prearranged deployment pattern. Cal pulled in a few deep, steadying breaths before pushing away from the side of the van. He hadn't taken a single step before a firm hand pressed against his shoulder.

It was his superior. He was younger than Cal by a good twenty-five years. His expression was grave. "Cal, you and Smeed are backup," Agent Wilkes said.

Cal Dreeder was stunned. "Excuse me?"

"Stay here," Wilkes insisted. The words came out in an angry hiss. His breath on this cold night was white.

Cal wanted to press the issue but knew he couldn't. The field agent in charge turned away, marching purposefully after his group of silent commandos.

There was no reason to ask why he was being left behind. He already knew the answer. He was old. Harry Wilkes had made it clear time and time again that this was a young man's game. He didn't want to entrust a rickety old fossil like Dreeder with his life.

Cal glanced at Randy Smeed. In the pale light cast from the drug warehouse windows, Cal saw an expression of anger mixed with confusion on the much younger man's face.

Smeed was his partner. Because of Cal, he was losing out, too.

This wasn't the first time Cal's age had been an issue. The doubts had been expressed for the past few years. Never like this, however. This was maddening, humiliating. Under the circumstances, even inappropriate.

Maybe the higher-ups were right. Maybe it was finally time for him to pack it in.

Right now, there was still work to be done. Cal holstered his gun.

"Inside," he ordered in a growling whisper.

Cal preceded his partner into the rear of the van. Two more men still sat in the back. They didn't even look up from their monitoring equipment as the pair of discarded agents climbed into the van's interior.

The other two men each wore a slender radio headset. They were monitoring the DEA agents who were even now making their way to the old tin hangar.

Cal slipped on a headset, as well.

All he heard at first was heavy breathing. The agents were maintaining silence as they approached the building.

"How many are in there?" Cal whispered.

A bowl-like unit that resembled a small satellite dish was secured to the roof of the van. Aimed at the hangar, it was used to amplify sound.

"Two," one of the men said, sounding annoyed that the question was even asked. He didn't look at Cal.

Suppressing his anger, Cal fell silent.

"Raffair," one young man barked to the other. It was a word he'd just heard on his headphones. "Any idea?"

"Guy's name?" the other suggested. Cal wasn't even listening.

Two. If their source was right, this would be a big bust. With only two men in the makeshift warehouse and more than a dozen DEA agents converging on the place, there wasn't much doubt who was going to come out on top. And Cal was stuck sitting in a van with three wet-behind-the-ears kids.

Grumbling, he pulled the headset down around his neck.

Probably just as well. Maybe everybody was right. Maybe at his age, it was time to get out. Rubbing his hands for warmth, he glanced over at Smeed.

The kid was sitting anxiously by the half-open rear door. He hadn't bothered to reholster his gun. It was sitting on his thigh. Every once in a while, he'd switch hands, wiping the sweat from his palms across his knee.

Smeed was cleaning off the latest cold perspiration when Cal Dreeder heard a distant pop. It was echoed on the headset around his neck.

Cal's eyes widened. A gunshot.

It was followed by another. All at once, a chorus of soft pops filled the freezing woods like winter crickets.

Smeed shot to his feet. "What's happening?" the young agent asked, gun raised. A gloved hand reached for the door.

"Stay put," Cal snapped, whipping his headset back to his ears.

Cal was instantly assaulted by the closeness of the gunfire. Between shots, men shouted.

It was an overlapping gibberish, back and forth. Although he couldn't make out what was being said, he'd heard enough. The number of voices shocked him.

"There's more than two," he said, his heart thudding.

The agents manning the equipment shook their heads in helpless confusion. "There were only two," one said, his eyes registering the first hint of panic.

"It's an ambush," Cal muttered hotly to himself. That was all Randy Smeed needed to hear. Gun in hand, the young agent hopped from the back of the van.

"Hold it!" Cal shouted, ripping away his earphones.

Too late.

A sudden grunt from outside. The door slammed shut.

Cal was diving for the door when he heard the muffled shots. Too close.

"Damn," Cal swore. He wheeled to the two stunned agents. They were like ice statues, frozen in their seats. "Draw your weapons," he ordered.

The men behind him dutifully dragged guns from holsters. Depositing their headsets on their eaves-dropping equipment, they stepped woodenly up behind Cal.

"Cover me," he snapped.

But as he reached for the handle, Cal froze. He cocked an ear. Listening intently, he wiped a sheen of cold sweat from his upper lip with the cuff of his windbreaker.

"What is it?" one of the young agents whispered.

Cal's voice was flat. "Gunfire's stopped."

So scared were they, the men hadn't realized it. Straining, they tried to make out the familiar pop of weapons' fire. There was none. The woods had fallen silent.

Cal Dreeder knew that could mean only two things. The DEA had either won or lost. Judging from the number of nongovernment voices on the squawk box, he had a sick feeling it was the latter.

In an instant, the air within the van seemed to grow noticeably hotter. More difficult to breathe. "We've got to get out of here," one of the men said, his voice tight. It was the young agent who had scowled at Cal's drug comments not an hour before. Cal shot the man a withering look.

There was only one real option, and Cal Dreeder wasn't happy with it.

There was no access to the cab from the rear. Someone would have to physically step outside the van and walk around to the front.

Smeed was dead. The bullets that had doubtless ended his young life had been fired right outside the door.

Yet there was silence now.

Maybe they'd retreated. Maybe if they gave Cal enough time, he could-

There came a wrenching from the rear of the truck.

"Ready!" Cal growled, falling back.

He aimed his gun at the door. The other agents followed suit, their faces sick.

When the door sprang open, Cal caught a glimpse of a hulking figure with a crowbar. Squeezing his trigger, the DEA man buried a slug in a spot below the edge of his stocking cap.

As the man collapsed, another sprang into view. This time, Cal's shot was wide. His opponent's was not.

The bullet caught Agent Cal Dreeder dead center above the bridge of his nose. With a meaty slap, it formed a deep black third eye between the fifty-four-year-old agent's shocked baby blues.

Cal toppled onto his back. Even as he fell, more scruffy faces appeared at the rear of the van.

The other two agents fired wildly. One shot clipped an assailant in the shoulder. The rest missed completely.

The shots fired into the van were far more accurate. In a matter of seconds, the last two agents joined Cal Dreeder in a bloody heap on the van floor.

Silence flooded the woods once more. The bodies were left where they fell. The gunmen hurried away from the van, back to the big building with the sickly yellow light.

THE VAN WOULD BE discovered at dawn the next morning. By that time, the five hundred million dollars of cocaine that had been stored in the old hangar would have already been shipped to a safer location.

That dreary post-New Year's day, four things would happen in the wake of the botched DEA raid.

ON THE NEW YORK Stock Exchange, a company called Raffair, which had recently gone public, would be the center of a buying frenzy. As the day progressed, the value of Raffair's stock would skyrocket in brisk trading.

AT A WROUGHT-IRON TABLE on a polished-granite Old World veranda overlooking a cold, dormant vineyard, an old man would open a newspaper. His weathered face would grow quietly pleased while reading of the unsuccessful raid across the Atlantic. It was all part of the master plan....

THE FAMILIES of the fifteen dead DEA agents, including Cal Dreeder's, would begin making funeral arrangements. In their grief, they would neither know nor care to know that the deaths of their loved ones were not in vain.

The audio recordings made within the bloodsoaked DEA van would be duplicated and analyzed by every concerned agency in the U.S. government. Through circuitous means, the information would be brought to the attention of a dull gray man in a small sanitarium in Rye, New York.

FINALLY, the most awesome force in the arsenal of the United States would be released against the agents' killers. So terrible would be his wrath that the very earth would tremble beneath his feet, and when vengeance finally came, it would be swift and brutal.

But before America's last, best hope could set out on this most violent path, he needed to do one tiny little thing first. He had to stop the future from happening.

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and there was a time in his life when he didn't believe in ghosts.

Back when he was a simple beat cop in Newark, New Jersey, Remo didn't have time to worry about ghosts or goblins or any of the other supernatural beings that sprang to frighten children from the minds of the Brothers Grimm. In those days, he was too busy just trying to stay alive.

Another lifetime and a million years ago, Remo Williams thought as he stared out the small airplane window.

The setting sun was an orange island of fire. On the ground far below, it was already growing dark. The commercial plane on which he was flying was bound for Puerto Rico. Unbeknownst to the other passengers, it had begun its descent a few seconds ago. Like a mild itch, the barely perceptible shift in altitude was registered by Remo's sensitive eardrums.

Only one other set of eardrums on the face of the planet would have detected the first subtle slide the U.Sky Airlines plane had made over the Caribbean island. At the moment, that pair of ears and their owner were back in Massachusetts. Chiun, Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju, the greatest house of master assassins ever to ply the art, was contemplating the future. Both Remo's future and his own.

Remo wasn't in the mood to think about the future. In fact, when Upstairs called with this assignment, Remo was more than eager to accept it. He had hoped that activity-any activity at all-would keep him from thinking about anything other than the here and now.

The seat-belt light abruptly began flashing. Over the PA system, the pilot muttered something both in Spanish and in English. Alone with his thoughts, Remo listened to the words without hearing. His mind was somewhere else.

The eerie sensation was finally starting to go.

It all started a few months ago at the wake of an infant child in Illinois. Remo had gone there to find the baby's killer. Instead, he found himself troubled by repeated ghostly visitations from a young Korean boy. In time, Remo discovered that the child was in fact the son of his very own adoptive father. In a sense, this sad young boy was the spiritual brother the orphaned Remo Williams had never known.

Chiun's first pupil had died many years ago, and in so doing had helped to fulfill Remo's destiny. Under the strict tutelage of the Master of Sinanju, Remo had himself ascended to full Masterhood. In full command of his entire being, Remo was able to do things that could only be considered superhuman for the average man. Apparently, the ability to host visitations from the occasional Korean ghost was one of those things.

The boy had prophesied of Remo's coming years. Of the time that Remo would take a pupil of his own and when Chiun would retire to his native village of Sinanju in North Korea. He had also told of the unseen hardships Remo would yet face. As phantom apparitions went, this one had cribbed a lot from Dickens. His cryptic words of Remo's life-to-be made the youngest Master of Sinanju feel a lot like Ebenezer Scrooge. But, unlike Scrooge, by the sound of it there wasn't a damn thing Remo could do to change his life one way or another.

After that time a few short months before, it had taken Remo a while to stop looking over his shoulder every two seconds. Even now he caught himself glancing around every now and then, looking for...

Well, he didn't like to think about what it was he was looking for. He certainly wasn't looking for his future. That was a long way off. He hoped.

Anyway, this day wasn't about the future. This day, thank God, he had work to do. Something to distract him from the bleak words of his ghostly visitor.

When the plane touched down at Luis Munoz Marin International Airport, Remo was the first passenger down the air stairs. He found a cab in front of the main terminal.

His destination was in a seedier part of the capital, San Juan. He gave the driver the address from the scrap of paper he'd brought from the United States and settled back on the taxi's worn seat.

Twenty minutes later, the driver deposited Remo on a sidewalk in front of an old brick building that slouched along the edge of the road like a two-story vagrant. A faded rectangle above the door indicated where a sign had once hung. The sign, along with the business it had advertised, had long since fled the neighborhood.

The street was dark, but like most streets in San Juan it was crowded. A few weak lights pinched the heavy shadows.

"Thanks," Remo said to the anxious taxi driver. Without bothering to count, he peeled a number of twenties off a thick roll of bills.

"It is not safe here," the cabbie warned as he accepted the money. His accent was soft, his voice tense. "MIR owns this neighborhood. This is their stronghold."

At this, Remo offered a flat smile. It was a smile devoid of even a hint of warmth. "According to my guidebook, it's Menudo world headquarters. Tell you what." He peeled off another eight twenties. "I won't be long. Circle the block and meet me back here in ten minutes. If I don't come out with Ricky Martin's signature, this is yours." He held out the bills for an enticingly long moment before depositing them back in the pocket of his tan chinos.

The driver frowned as he eyed Remo's hard face. The fare looked to be in his early thirties. His white T-shirt was spotless, and his hand-sewn leather loafers held not a single scuff or scratch. Apart from the man's startlingly thick wrists, there wasn't anything outwardly extraordinary about him. Except for his eyes.

The driver found himself studying Remo's eyes. Set deep in his skull-like face, the passenger's brown eyes glinted with a quiet menace that stilled the cabbie's heart between beats. There was somehow the promise of otherworldly menace buried in the depths of those penetrating eyes.

The cabdriver nodded with slow fear. "Very well," he agreed. "I will return in ten minutes." When Remo turned to go, the cabbie called after him. "I am not for independence," the older man blurted.

On the darkened sidewalk, Remo turned silently. "I love America," the cabbie insisted. Realizing the building in front of which he was proclaiming his fealty for the United States, he pitched his voice lower. "I have never missed an opportunity to express my patriotism. In fact, in November I voted for the man who is to be the new President."

Remo considered the man's words for a long moment. At last, he gave a knowing nod.

"Too late to take it back now," commiserated Remo Williams, a man who yet possessed some vestiges of childlike patriotism, but who rarely found use for those who governed.

And turning on his heel, Remo headed for the building.

Behind the wheel of his cab, the driver didn't see the front door of the old building open. One moment, Remo was there; the next he was gone, swallowed by shadows.

The driver gulped. Although he did not agree with MIR or its tactics, the older man found himself saying a silent prayer for those inside that crumbling building.

Doors locked on the dangerous San Juan slum, he pulled out into the street.

EDUARDO SANCHEZ HAD SPENT nearly twenty years of his life as a political prisoner in a foreign land. That his incarceration had taken place not in Russia, China or even Cuba, but in the United States of America did not matter. Freedom was freedom and prison was prison. And he had spent a large part of his adulthood in a cold stone cell in a hellish New York maximum-security federal prison.

That he had been imprisoned for his politics, there was no doubt. Oh, there were those who would have said that he was a murderer. Sanchez wasn't one of them. The bombs he'd set had been the first salvos in the war for liberation.

That his victims had been largely innocent civilians mattered not. America was guilty of oppression. America was its people. Therefore, all Americans were guilty.

Back in the U.S. in the 1970s, Eduardo Sanchez's Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, or MIR for short, had set off dozens of bombs intended to liberate Puerto Rico from beneath the grinding heel of its American oppressors. The only things the bombs succeeded in liberating were a few American arms and legs from a handful of worthless American torsos.

Prison had kept MIR silent for years. Not anymore.

The time had came. Finally.

In a grimy old garage in the back of an old factory in the most squalid San Juan slum, Eduardo Sanchez and most of the upper echelon of the movimiento were in the process of planning the first in a series of events that would oust the rulers of their island nation once and for all and install a new leader of the People's Puerto Rico.

"My friends, the time is upon us," Eduardo Sanchez announced solemnly to those gathered around. There were sixteen of them in total, all dressed in the drab paramilitary chic of the 1970s. The same clothes most of them had worn during their trial years ago. "We exchanged inactivity for our freedom. The silence of the past year has been difficult for all of us to endure. Yet for our benefactor, we embraced the silence. For her, we have kept this temporary truce."

A small shrine had been constructed on an upended wooden crate. On it, surrounded by flickering votive candles and rose petals, was a lovingly framed picture of a woman. The photo was meant to show its subject as pensive and caring. Instead, it looked as if she'd had a bowl of glass for breakfast and was ready to spray fragments from her eyes at whoever had the misfortune of gazing at the picture too long.

Careful to keep his own eyes from meeting those in the photograph, Sanchez raised his hands in supplication. His dark, pockmarked face was somber.

"To you, Senorita Primera, we dedicate this new, fresh wave of bloodshed."

With the reverent tone taken by Sanchez, silence had descended upon the wide two-stall garage in which they were assembled. And in that moment of respectful, solemn silence, the gathered leadership of MIR was shocked when the woman in the picture seemed to speak.

"Oh, great, not her again."

It was disorienting. The picture was in front of them, but the voice came from behind. The man's voice.

The men and women of MIR wheeled around. A thin young man stood behind them, arms crossed in disgust over his chest. He was looking beyond the group of scruffy terrorists. The photograph of America's First Lady glared back at him. "You know," Remo griped, walking closer, "I have this feeling that you can trek into the middle of the Sahara, you could jump from a plane in the dead center of the Arctic Circle, you could hide out on the dark side of the moon, for God's sake, and I don't think you'd ever find a place in the universe where you're gonna be safe from those two." Only a few MIR members carried guns. Confusion quickly surrendered to professionalism. The weapons flew up and were leveled on Remo. The unarmed terrorists, including Eduardo Sanchez, took safety behind the rest.

"Who are you?" Sanchez demanded. "What do you want?"

"Besides mandatory muzzles for every politician and his wife in the forty-eight contiguous states?" Remo said, his voice thin. "What I want is for dirtbags like you to slither back under the rocks you climbed out from. And before this turns into twenty questions, I know what you're up to. I know part of the secret deal you cut for your pardons was to keep your noses clean until the President was out of office. I know he's gone by the end of the week, and I know you planned to celebrate this great peaceful exchange of democratic power by blowing up a couple of planes heading for the mainland from the San Juan airport. I knew everything but that." He pointed to the First Lady's picture.

For the first time, Remo noticed something lying on the floor beneath it. The thing had feathers. "Dammit, don't tell me you're sacrificing chickens to her?" he demanded.

Sanchez's spine stiffened. "We owe her our freedom," he sniffed. "If she had not wished to curry favor with the Hispanic community during her Senate campaign in New York, her husband would never have released us."

"Yada-yada-yada," Remo droned. "Let's just get this over with. I have a cab waiting."

When he took a step toward Sanchez, the raised guns rattled more alert. Remo was a hair away from the nearest gunman.

"I do not know how you learned of our plans, but you are not from the pig United States government," Sanchez insisted. "The President who released us still serves. He fears the wrath of his wife, so would not send anyone against us."

"You only heard from one part of the government," Remo assured the terrorist, "The part that studies polls and does focus groups and reads frigging tea leaves and Ouija boards to see what's the right or wrong thing to do on any given day. I'm not from that part of the government. I'm from the other part. The good part."

"There is no other part." Sanchez grinned malevolently. "We were given pardons by the President himself, thanks to the intercession of his lovely wife. We are free men. Free to do whatever we want. And you are a dead man."

The smile Remo returned was cold. "Been there, done that," he said. "At least five times. I've lost count." Not a facial muscle twitched as he studied the MIR leader.

Sanchez couldn't believe the stranger's nerve. He was as cool as they came, not even giving a hint of concern at the weapons that were trained on him.

"Presidents come and Presidents go," Remo continued. "The part of the government I work for isn't even really part of the government. We've lasted through eight presidents, about to go on nine, and we're still standing. We say the hell with what Jeanne Dixon and Dick Morris have to say. We do what's right because it's the right thing to do." And nearby, another terrorist spoke.

"We protected," the rotten-toothed man said, sneering. His cunning eyes were rimmed in black. A crooked yellow smile split the dark swath of his five-o'clock shadow.

Remo didn't like the satisfied smirk the man wore. In fact, he didn't like it so much that he decided to wipe the smile off the man's face. He did so with a sideways slap so fast that none in the room could hope to follow his hand.

Remo succeeded in wiping away the smile along with the rest of the man's face. Dislodged flesh and bone struck the grimy black wall of the garage with a hard wet splat.

So fast did this happen that the man didn't have time to relax his smile. As his body fell, his face remained fixed to the wall, a now toothless grin gaping like a happy mask at the other shocked MIR terrorists.

Seeing how quickly the stranger in their midst could move, the men and women of MIR, so used to delivering faceless death from safe distances, reacted like true terrorists confronted by risk to their own precious lives and limbs. They threw down their guns and threw up their hands.

"We surrender!" several cried.

"Prison in America is not so bad," Eduardo Sanchez agreed numbly as he eyed the smear of bloody bone that was once the face of his most trusted lieutenant. "Maybe if we go back to jail, Ed Asner will start returning my calls."

"Nope," Remo said firmly. "No jail. Not this time."

He was looking beyond the forest of raised hands. An old Ford Escort sat rusting in one corner of the garage. The car belonged to Sanchez.

"You are not here to arrest us?" the MIR leader asked. When he tore his gaze from the bleeding skull on the floor, his eyes were deeply worried.

Remo didn't answer. At least not directly. "Hey, you guys like the circus?" he said cheerily.

Hesitation from the crowd. "Uh..."

"Of course you do," Remo insisted. "Everyone likes the circus."

Like an elderly woman herding a flock of park pigeons, Remo guided the fifteen remaining terrorists back toward the car. When one or two tried to escape, he coaxed them back into place with a sound smack to the side of the head.

Going around the far side of the car, Remo quickly sealed the doors. Coming back around, he sprang the two doors on the nearer side. "Everybody in!" he proclaimed.

A wash of fresh worry passed over the crowd. "We will not all fit," offered a male terrorist.

"That's negative thinking," Remo warned. "We don't allow negative thinkers in the circus."

And lifting up the man bodily, he tossed him onto the far side of the rear seat. The terrorist cracked his forehead on the door. He fell back into the seat, dazed.

Sensing no escape, the others began to climb nervously inside the car. By the time only five of them were in, the sitting room was gone. The three in the back were already squeezed uncomfortably in place.

"The car is full." The next terrorist in line shrugged. She was a woman in her early fifties. She licked her lips nervously.

"That attitude'll get you thrown out of the big top, missy," Remo cautioned with a waggling finger.

And grabbing her by the neck, he tossed her onto the laps of the three men. When she tried to sit up, she found she couldn't. Another terrorist had been thrown in on top of her. His broad bottom pressed down on her face.

Another, then another terrorist flew in through the door. When the back was full, Remo piled more men and women in the front.

"There isn't room!" one voice cried desperately.

"Sure, there is," Remo insisted. "The nuns from the orphanage took us all to a circus when we were kids. There must have been thirty clowns stuffed in a car even littler than this. Just think skinny."

He braced the front door shut with his foot. He'd already slammed and sealed the back.

There was only one terrorist left. Heel holding the door in place, Remo reached for Eduardo Sanchez. "No, no, no," Sanchez insisted. He shook in fear even as Remo dragged him to the car. "This cannot be. You cannot be from the government. We were promised that we would be protected as long as the current President served."

"His term's up January 20," Remo said. "Yours is just running out a couple of days early." Springing the door, Remo stuffed Sanchez inside. It was a tight fit. The fourteen other terrorists inside moaned and yelped as Remo jiggled the door closed on the press of warm human flesh. He sealed the door with a metal-fusing slap.

Someone opened the sunroof. Hands clawed the air.

"Please keep your hands and feet inside the clown car at all times," Remo said. As a warning, he slid the sunroof sharply into the cluster of upraised arms. A few bones cracked audibly. The arms quickly retreated inside the car.

As the MIR leadership groaned, Remo did a quick search of the surrounding area. In one of the many crates stacked in the garage, he found something that looked like a cartoon bomb Snidely Whiplash might use. Several sticks of dynamite had been fastened together with black electrical tape. A digital clock was fastened to the side of the bomb, ominous wires strung to the explosives. The LED display of the clock was dark.

Remo brought the bomb back to the car. By this time, the windows were filled with nervous fog. Remo rapped his knuckles on the rooftop.

"Quick question before the finale," Remo called at the nearest steaming window. "How do you set this thing?"

There was a squeak of damp flesh on wet glass. A scrunched-up eye looked out from a mass of limbs.

The eye widened in abject fear.

"Let me out and I will show you," came the muffled voice of Eduardo Sanchez.

The terrorist's fat lips were plastered across the small triangular vent window on the passenger-side door.

Remo frowned at the pursing flattened lips. "Didn't they teach you anything in clown college? No one exits the clown car until the final act," he warned. "How 'bout if I press one of the little buttons?"

The car began to rock on its springs. A chorus of nos filtered out through the ball of crammed flesh. "Okay, maybe not."

Remo's frown deepened as he studied the bomb more carefully. The look of confusion on the face of his captor was not lost on Eduardo Sanchez.

"If you let me go, I will show you how to set it," the MIR leader promised, his strained voice growing crafty.

Remo looked down at the man's one visible eye. "I don't believe you," he said.

"I promise," Sanchez insisted. "I give you my solemn, most holy and sacred word."

Remo gave the terrorist a deeply skeptical took. "You've made other promises in the past," he suggested. "Like not to blow up any more innocent people, for instance."

"That was politics," Sanchez dismissed. "This is a personal pledge. From me, Eduardo Sanchez, to you..." His voice trailed off. He suddenly realized that he didn't know the name of the scary, bomb-holding man who had stuffed him and the entire future ruling congress of the People's Puerto Rico into his hatchback.

"Tell you what," Remo offered. "I give you a counter promise. Show me how to set this, then I'll let you go."

Sanchez was reluctant to take the man at his word. On the other hand, he didn't appear to have much of a choice.

"Very well," the terrorist relented.

Nodding, Remo used the suction of his fingertips to pop open the small triangle of glass at the corner of the passenger-side window. A gush of nervous body odors flooded from the car's interior.

Wiggling like a snake shedding its skin, Sanchez managed to work one arm out the window.

"How long do you wish me to set it for?"

Remo considered. "Three minutes," he decided.

"That will not give us much time," Sanchez warned.

"Plenty of time," Remo assured him.

As Remo held up the bomb to the terrorist's eye, Sanchez carefully entered the time. When he took his finger away, the clock had begun to tick a three-minute countdown.

"Now let me out," Eduardo Sanchez insisted, wriggling his arm back inside the car.

Remo leaned in close to the terrorist's one visible eye. "Sorry." He smiled. "That was just a terrorist's promise. Besides, the Local Brotherhood of Clowns, Mimes and Tumblers would put my ass in a sling if I violated the sanctity of the clown car."

With a gentle push, he slipped the bomb through the small triangular window. It bumped against several thrashing legs on its way down to the foot well.

The small car began to shake like a can of paint in a hardware store mixer. Screams and muffled curses rose from out of the car's sweat-drenched interior.

"I know one group of clowns who don't know the clown code," Remo warned. "I'm gonna have to report you to Bozo. And if you thought America was tyrannical, wait'll you see what he does with a seltzer bottle."

And with that, he left the garage and its carload of terrified terrorists.

The last image the horrified eye of Eduardo Sanchez saw before the window in front of him steamed up for the last time was the First Lady's grinning face. As the fog enveloped her image, votive candles surrounding her carefully coiffed hair in an ethereal nimbus, the soon-to-be-late Eduardo Sanchez had a sickening realization.

"She is angry with us," the terrorist whined as her face faded forever from his sight. "I told you we should have sacrificed more chickens."

WHEN REMO SLIPPED Out the front door of MIR headquarters, his cab was already slowing to a stop. He hopped into the back seat.

In the rearview mirror, the driver noted the cruelly satisfied smile on his fare's face.

"You ever wonder how they fit all those clowns into that little car in the circus?" Remo asked in satisfaction.

The driver frowned confusion even as he began to drive down the winding street. "There is a trapdoor on the bottom of the car. The clowns climb up from beneath the floor."

Remo snapped his fingers. "I knew there had to be some kind of trick," he said, his brow creasing. And as his fingers snapped, there came a muffled thud from somewhere far behind them. Remo alone felt the gentle rumble of earth beneath the cab.

He felt good. For the moment, he had forgotten about the future. It was a feeling he could get used to.

He settled back comfortably in the seat of the cab for the winding trip back to the airport.

WHEN HE SAW the thin man leaving MIR headquarters, Corporal Rolando Rodriguez stopped dead. He loitered on the street corner near a group of rowdy drunks until the cab drove away. Tucking the small box he was carrying tightly under his arm, he hurried across the street to the rotted old building.

The first thing Rodriguez did upon entering the garage was vomit. The walls were smeared with globs of flesh-like hurled meat. Eduardo Sanchez's car was curled apart at the top like a stubbed-out cigar. Twisted black metal sent threads of smoke into the fetid room.

Rodriguez backed into the office. As he put his box down, the contents rattled. They were the new identifying pins. The ones designed by their leader. Had he not been sent to retrieve them, Rolando would be dead, too.

With shaking hands, he found Sanchez's little black book and dialed the special number. When the woman answered, he felt his frightened breath catch.

"iHola!" she said with quiet menace. In the background, a man spoke Spanish in slow, measured tones.

"There has been a catastrophe!" Rodriguez wailed. "Many of the movimiento are dead." He quickly described the grisly scene in the garage.

"Who did this?" she demanded once he was through. The white-hot rage roiling below the barely controlled surface threatened to crack the ice in her tone. So softly did she say the words that her Spanish accent seemed to disappear, lost in her swelling anger.

"I don't know," Rodriguez cried. "A man. He was thin, with short hair. He wore a T-shirt. I couldn't really see that well. It was dark." Something suddenly came to him. "But his wrists were thick. Very thick. Like the trunk of a tree."

There was a soft intake of air on the other end of the line. In the ensuing moment of silence, the muffled man's voice continued to drone in the background. When the woman finally spoke, there was fresh menace in her tone.

"I've met him before," she snarled.

Rodriguez was surprised. "What do you want me to do?"

Her voice was perfectly level. "He is a threat to my goals. I will find him, then you will kill him." The oblivious man continued to drone continuously in the background as she slammed down the phone in Rolando's ear.

Chapter 3

Lippincott, Forsythe, Butler had been the most prestigious brokerage house on Wall Street since before the time horse-drawn surreys filled the muddy lane that would one day become the most famous financial district on Earth.

Legend had it that an agent of LFB brokered the original purchase deal for the island of Manhattan between the Dutch governor general and the indigenous Indian tribe. It was a testament to the reputation of this distinguished old house that the story was not dismissed out of hand as apocryphal.

The firm occupied one of the original Lippincott buildings in lower Manhattan. There were several. Pricey real estate was easy to come by to the family that had practically dived like lemmings over the side of the Mayflower in order to shout dibs over much of the new country.

Over the years, the Lippincott family-along with its poorer millionaire relatives, the Butlers and Forsythes-had weathered all the financial storms of a young nation.

It was a comfort of sorts to all who worked for the Lippincott family of corporations to know that the businesses for which they spent their days slaving would last long after they had passed from this realm into the next.

Lawrence Fine was just the sort of employee to derive such solace. Whenever he passed through the opulent lobby and rode the gilded elevator up to the fourteenth floor, Lawrence marveled at his small role in financial history.

The founding Lippincotts had worked in buildings on this very location. Of course the original structures had been replaced over the years, but beneath the tar and concrete of Manhattan was the same soil trod upon by builders of a commercial empire that had stretched across centuries. Atop that same hardpacked earth, future Lippincott generations would preside over financial markets yet to develop.

There was history here. In a sense, the entire economic history of America. Lawrence Fine usually felt it as a palpable presence around him. Usually. But not this day.

This day he found the lobby a garish distraction and the elevator a confining box pulled too far off the ground by too-slender cables. Why did it remind him of a coffin?

On the fourteenth floor, Lawrence stepped into the recycled air of the main LFB offices. His head swam as he made his way down the hallway and into the rows of cubicles.

In strategic locations around the floor, scrolling electronic boards kept track of the movements of the

New York Stock Exchange. Company abbreviations and numbers ran across the long rectangular boxes from left to right, moving so quickly only a trained eye could see anything more than just an endless yellow blur. Lawrence Fine possessed such an eye.

The scroll on one board was nearing the end of its repetitive cycle. Flashing quickly, it reached the Rs.

Behind his wireless glasses, watery eyes took in the latest information. Although he had just come from the trading floor, information could change in a heartbeat.

Pausing, Lawrence watched the latest data on the company that most concerned him fly by. When it did, he breathed a relieved sigh. Up a quarter point in the past ten minutes.

Lawrence started through the cubicle aisle. His leather briefcase swung in alternate time to his pumping legs.

Behind him, heads stuck out from cubicles. It was a morning ritual. The taunts trailed behind him. "Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk."

"Soitenly, Moe."

"You had a hallucination. No, I had a hunk of pipe."

The words were meant to be insulting. However, as usual he had no idea what they meant. This morning, Lawrence Fine didn't care. He had a very important meeting to get to.

They had given him his own office while he was working with this special client. For the past three years, this had been a career goal, but thanks to the client he'd been given, Lawrence found himself missing his old cubicle.

He stepped from the cubicle sea and into the adjacent hallway. The vague sick-building smell was replaced by an odor of rich wood and leather.

Lawrence had only just stepped into the corridor when he caught sight of the man coming toward him.

His heart sank.

He didn't need this. Not today.

It was Arthur Finch. Distantly related to the Butlers, Finch had been with the firm for only three months and had already moved from the cubicles to a small office. The privilege of breeding.

Finch's face broke into a broad smile when he spied Lawrence coming toward him.

"Hey, Moe, where'd you get the sunglasses?" LFB's latest management trainee called down the hall to Lawrence.

Lawrence frowned at the non sequitur. He hardly ever knew what Finch was talking about.

"I'm not wearing sunglasses."

"Of course not, knucklehead," Finch smiled. They were side by side now. Finch was still wearing the same idiot's grin he had sported since the moment he learned Lawrence's name. He was the one who had inspired the taunts from the other workers during his three months of goofing off in the cubicles. When he'd left, the jokes had stayed. It was a quarter of a year later, and Lawrence still didn't want to admit that he hadn't the foggiest idea what everyone was laughing about.

"Hey, I saw the Corleones a few minutes ago," Finch said, stopping Lawrence with a palm to the shoulder. With his forefinger, he pressed his nose to one side.

"They're here already?" Lawrence asked anxiously.

Finch nodded. "They brought a washtub full of cement. One of them wanted to know your shoe size."

Lawrence tensed visibly. "You shouldn't make fun of them," he whispered.

"Why? They can't hear me."

"Please," Lawrence begged. "And they're not thugs." He pulled out a handkerchief, wiping sweat from his forehead.

"Gee whiz, Larry, lighten up."

Larry. All his life he'd been Lawrence. That had stopped the minute Finch showed up at the brokerage house.

"Excuse me," Lawrence said. He stepped around Arthur Finch. Spine rigid, he marched down the hall. "If they try any funny stuff, start a pie fight and escape in the confusion," Finch called after him.

Doing a quick one-legged shuffle, the Butler progeny backed up. Spinning, Arthur Finch marched merrily down the hall in the direction opposite the terrified Lawrence Fine.

Lawrence arrived at his small office thirty seconds later. When he opened the door, his nostrils were assaulted by the sickeningly familiar mixture of noxious colognes.

There were three men in the room. Two were huge mountains of flesh and muscle. They stood just inside the door. The third was an oily little man in a shiny blue suit. He sat in a chair before the tidy oak desk.

"I'm not late, Mr. Sweet," Lawrence pleaded with the attorney as he pushed the door closed. He whimpered as he eyed the two behemoths.

"Not to worry," Sol Sweet replied. "We're early."

Lawrence breathed a sigh of relief. His briefcase a makeshift leather shield, he stepped past the two bodyguards and sank into his chair.

"The stock's performing well." Sweet smiled as Lawrence settled his briefcase onto the blotter.

In his element now, Lawrence Fine nodded. "I just checked the board. It's gone up another half point since I entered the building."

"What about block trades?"

"Not many now. But remember, it's only 9:00 a.m. And because of the nature of this, um, business, word of mouth is carrying us at the start. I'd say things are going very well. Better, in fact, than I predicted."

"What about clearing and settlement? Has everything been ironed out?"

Lawrence nodded. "Absolutely. We're a clearing corporation, as well. You chose LFB specifically because we were a large enough concern to handle all financial requirements and responsibilities."

At this, Sweet flashed a row of barracuda teeth. "LFB was chosen, Larry, because its guiding principle has always been greed," the lawyer said. "Your founders ran guns to the Indians, as well as to the pilgrims. Their descendants backed the Colonies and the Crown during the Revolution. Their sons secretly swore allegiance to the North and South during the Civil War. LFB was even a clearinghouse for Nazi funds during the end of World War II. Don't think you can coast on prestige with us. This company is big, corrupt and well-connected. That's why we picked it."

As he spoke, Sweet leaned across the desk. Lawrence Fine sat quietly as the man stabbed out a long-distance number on the touch tone. Sweet turned on the speakerphone.

Lawrence realized the moment the voice came on the line that the phone call had been set up in advance. Otherwise, the man who spoke would never have answered.

"Is that you, Sol?"

It was a warm rasp. The overpronunciation of every word was familiar to Lawrence Fine. He had heard it on television a number of times. Always on the news.

Don Anselmo Scubisci. The "Dandy Don" of the Manhattan Mafia. Although he was the one behind this operation, Lawrence had never actually spoken to the man before. When he heard the familiar voice, he felt his stomach clench.

"Yes, Mr. Scubisci," the attorney replied. "I'm here with Larry Fine."

"Lawrence!" Don Scubisci's voice enthused. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you. How are you today?"

"I'm-" Lawrence's voice was a barely detectable squeak. He cleared his throat. "I'm fine, Mr. Scubisci."

"I'm so glad to hear that. I understand from Solly that you have been quite successful in your handling of our little business venture. The powers that be at LFB were wise to give you this assignment. I'm very pleased."

Pride mixed with fear. "Thank you, Mr. Scubisci."

"No, I thank you, Lawrence. I've been monitoring the situation from here. We are up two points since trading began this morning. Up overall for the week. Very nice."

Sol leaned in to the speaker. "New Jersey helped, Mr. Scubisci," the attorney said. "Since the story hit the wire services today, we've been performing well. The discreet word we put out on the street has pushed the value up."

"Excellent," Don Scubisci said. "Now, Sol, what about Raffair corporate headquarters?"

"Renovations and remodeling are finally complete. We'll be up and running tomorrow. The day after at the latest."

"And my office?"

"Will be waiting for you, Mr. Scubisci."

"Good, good," Don Scubisci said. "Sorry, but this is going to have to be a quick call, Lawrence. I have an appointment with my physical trainer in five minutes. I just wanted to call with a personal expression of gratitude for the long hours you've put into this for us. It's greatly appreciated. Keep in touch, Solly. Goodbye, gentlemen."

The line went dead.

Their business over, Sol stood. The two flanking bodyguards bundled in beside him.

Lawrence Fine remained at his desk, holding his breath as he stared at the speaker. Until now, the man who was his de facto boss in this matter had stayed firmly in the abstract. But now...

The way he studied the speaker, it was almost as if he expected the most notorious crime figure in modern New York history to come crawling out through the plastic mesh.

"This is the last face-to-face we'll need for a while," Sol Sweet announced, breaking Fine's trance. "Now that Raffair HQ is set, we'll be transferring from our temporary digs. You can call down there if you need me."

As the men turned for the door, Lawrence stood. "Um, I don't know if I should say this," the broker offered weakly. "But, um, I can get into a lot of trouble with the SEC if this thing goes south."

Sol's dead-fish eyes were flat. "Cold feet, Larry?"

"No," Lawrence said hastily. "God, no. It's just that the, um, feds wouldn't be happy with any of this."

What little spark of light that remained in them drained visibly from Sol Sweet's eyes. "Of course they wouldn't, Larry," the attorney said. "And please don't say feds. It doesn't sit well on your tongue. Besides, neither you nor any of us are gangsters."

Lawrence squirmed. "Well, it's..." He dropped his voice low. "It's just that you mentioned something happening in New Jersey. I heard this morning about some drug raid that went bad. A bunch of federal agents were killed."

It was the closest thing to a direct question Lawrence Fine dared ask. If there was a link, things here at LFB could be a lot worse than he'd imagined.

Sol Sweet's answer was terse.

"That's the price of doing business," the attorney said coldly. "Larry, your personal, ethically questionable Raffair stock has doubled in value in the last three days. If you're having any pangs of conscience, you should take them up with your checkbook."

Their meeting at an end, he offered the LFB employee his back. Without a backward glance, the attorney and his small entourage left the office.

Lawrence sank back into his chair. He closed his eyes.

It was the phone call from Anselmo Scubisci that had rattled him. If he had been thinking more clearly, he never would have mentioned New Jersey. He shouldn't have said anything to the Mob lawyer. He should have just let it go.

After a long time, Lawrence opened his eyes. He noticed his name plate was ajar. He hadn't seen before that it had been moved. Lawrence picked it up. The brass was cold.

His given name had been crossed out. By the looks of it with a set of keys. In the narrow space above, the name "Larry" had been scratched into the brass.

Larry Fine. For some reason, people loved to call him that. Lawrence had no idea why.

He let the nameplate slip from his fingers. It struck the desk with a thud.

Chapter 4

Remo's flight was an hour away from landing at Boston's Logan International Airport when the commotion began. It came from the back of the plane.

"Whadaya mean no more! Gimme a drink, now!"

Over the past two decades, everyday airfare had been drastically reduced. The practical result was that the sort of people who used to take buses had now taken to the sky, turning commercial planes into Greyhounds with wings. In recent years, the stories of obnoxious and dangerous behavior on airplanes had been multiplying at an alarming rate.

When Remo looked back, he expected to see someone relieving himself on a service cart. Instead, he saw a harried flight attendant standing in the aisle next to a seated passenger.

"I'm sorry, sir," the flight attendant offered with a weak smile, "but don't you think you've had a little too much to drink?" She blew a stray lock of hair from her face.

Fire raged in the man's bloodshot eyes. His mouth opened and closed in silent shock. And as his brain tried to catch up to the words that would not come, Remo found himself studying the man's face with narrowed eyes.

He looked familiar. Then it hit Remo.

On assignment in Africa three months ago, Remo had run into a group of men in an East African restaurant. He'd succeeded in removing all but one of them. In a moment of sudden realization, he knew that he was looking at the one that got away.

"I'm not drunk," Johnny "Books" Fungillo snarled at the flight attendant.

The woman shook her head. "I didn't say you were," she insisted pleasantly. "But we'll be landing soon, and I thought you might like to freshen up a little first."

"I'll freshen up your lunch cart," Johnny belched furiously. Big drunken hands began fumbling at his belt.

With a shriek, the woman tore off down the aisle. "Eek! Code 9, code 9!" she yelled to the other flight attendants as she ran.

It was the most dreaded distress signal in their entire chosen field, dubbed the midair "Poop Alarm."

The other flight attendants reacted like trained soldiers. Serving carts bounced and rattled as if encountering mad turbulence as they raced them from the danger zone. The entire crew of flight attendants disappeared into the galley.

A worried excitement filled the cabin. In the moment of chattering confusion, Remo slipped up to Johnny Books.

The gangster was still trying to work the buckle on his belt. His clumsy fingers were having a difficult time maneuvering the little silver clip.

"If monkey can't dress himself, monkey shouldn't wear people pants," Remo advised.

The words soaked into the liquor-swamped mind of Johnny Books Fungillo. He looked up with belligerence that quickly faded to confusion. "Hey, I know-"

A gasp. Johnny's confused expression flashed to abject terror. With a lunge, he grabbed underneath his jacket.

Remo could sense by the way he carried himself that there was a weapon there. Somehow, Johnny had smuggled it onto the plane undetected.

"No, no, no. No guns for monkey," Remo warned, quickly pinching Johnny's elbow between two delicate fingers. The big man's darting hand froze in place. "Not until monkey stops throwing feces at the nice lady."

Before Johnny could grab his gun with the other hand, Remo tapped him in the middle of his forehead. All movement stopped as the gangster froze in place.

Johnny Fungillo tried desperately to move. He could not. Sweat beads formed on his forehead as he struggled in vain. Helpless, his wide eyes flitted fearfully to Remo.

Remo wasn't even paying attention to Johnny.

Snaking a hand up under the man's jacket, he found both holster and gun. They came free with a gentle tug that trailed nylon tendrils.

The holster's soft material was strangely frictionless. Using his body to shield himself from other passengers, Remo snapped the gun into two fat halves, which he deposited in the in-flight magazine sleeve. The cloth bulged at the weight.

"How'd you get this on the plane?" Remo asked, genuinely interested.

But when he looked at Johnny, the gangster's unblinking eyes stared helplessly from his frozen face. "Oh, yeah."

His curiosity wasn't enough to bring Johnny out of it. He tugged the thug's eyelids down. They shut like dark window shades over Johnny's petrified eyes.

Remo stuffed the holster into the sagging seat pocket. He was back in his seat by the time the galley curtain slid open.

A group of flight attendants appeared with buckets and sponges. Each wore a pair of big yellow rubber gloves. Clippy clothespins held their nostrils tightly shut. They seemed surprised to find the unruly passenger still in his seat. Better yet, he appeared to be sound asleep.

Relieved that the passenger had not relieved himself, they decided to let sleeping dogs lie. On silent toes, the entire crew tiptoed back up the aisle.

They hid out in the galley, refusing all passenger entreaties for peanuts or seat-belt instructions for the rest of the blessedly silent flight to Boston.

TWO HOURS LATER, as baffled Boston paramedics were driving the comatose Johnny Fungillo across the windswept Logan tarmac, Remo's cab was dropping him off in front of the Massachusetts condo he shared with the Master of Sinanju.

The building he called home was an old remodeled church. A decade ago, when a contract negotiation demanded a house, Remo's employer had bought the entire complex, turning it over to the exclusive use of Remo and his teacher.

The building was big, homely and located in a city that was regularly featured on the local Boston news for the daily murders that took place there. It was a far cry from the tidy little home with a picket fence and a loving wife Remo had dreamed of once upon a time.

With a wistful sigh, Remo trudged up the stairs. He was pushing open the front door when he heard the sound.

It was a cry of indescribable pain. And the voice that produced it was unmistakable.

Remo felt his heart catch. "Chiun," he breathed. The shrill cry had come from far upstairs. From the foyer, Remo took the entire main staircase in two massive strides. He was already running when he hit the second-floor landing.

More screams. They were killing him. Torturing him.

Fearing not the force that could harm the Master of Sinanju, Remo flew on, his only thought to aid his teacher.

The next flight of stairs led to a closed door. Remo picked up steam as he rounded to the staircase. He took all the steps in one leap, twisting in air and slamming against the door with the heels of both feet.

The door assembly splintered into a million wooden shards. Daggers of pine ripped across the bell-tower meditation room, impaling themselves in walls and crashing through windows.

Remo soared into the room in the wake of the door remnants. Eyes alert, every muscle tensed, hands raised to ward off whatever danger might be lurking there.

But rather than an unknown enemy, Remo found himself peering into a pair of shocked, familiar eyes. The hazel orbs were set into a delicate face of bone that had been lovingly wrapped in a thin veneer of parchment skin. As Remo swept into the room, a mummified mouth formed a startled O.

Chiun, Reigning Master of the House of Sinanju, raised his wattled neck from out of the collar of his kimono like an angry snapping turtle. Seated in a lotus position on the floor of his meditation room, Chiun appeared completely unharmed. His spine was erect in his red silk kimono, his bony hands folded delicately to his knees. In the room, there was no sign of either torturer or torturer's tools.

"Remo, what is the meaning of this?" the ancient Korean demanded, incomprehension pinching his singsong voice.

Breathless, Remo relaxed his muscles. "What the hell is going on in here?" he snapped, exhaling tension.

"I asked you first," Chiun accused. "Why have you crashed in here like a demented bovine?"

"I heard screaming," Remo insisted.

"Do not be ridiculous," Chiun huffed, waving a dismissive hand. "I warn you, Remo, if you are going mad again, I refuse to allow it. I have put up with quite enough of that already."

Face stern, the Master of Sinanju rose with silent fluidity from the floor. He clucked as he inspected the fan-shaped debris field.

"Let's get this straight," Remo stressed, coming up beside the old man. "I am not crazy, I have never been crazy and I definitely heard you screaming."

"I will have Emperor Smith prepare a padded room at Fortress Folcroft for you," Chiun droned. "If you are having another nervous breakdown, you may discuss your childhood bed-wetting with one of his quacks rather than vent your anger on my doors."

Harold Smith was their employer. Folcroft Sanitarium was the private mental health institution he ran, which also doubled as home to the secret organization CURE.

"Hah-hah. They're my doors, too," Remo said. Chiun gave him a withering look. A hand lined with ropy veins appeared from the folds of his kimono. With a tapered fingernail, he picked at a large wooden chunk that still clung to the archway. The hinge it was connected to was torn and twisted. When the Master of Sinanju looked back at his pupil, his accusing eyes were hooded.

"I thought you were being tortured," Remo explained, scowling at the old man's silent admonishment. It sounded ridiculous to even say such a thing. Chiun obviously agreed.

"Oh, Remo," he said sadly, the harsh light flickering from his eyes. It was replaced with knowing sympathy.

Remo raised a warning finger. "Don't start," he threatened. "I'm as sane as you are. I'm saner than you are. I'm the freaking poster child for mental stability."

Chiun's face was a placid pool. "All those present who did not attempt to blow up a foreign nation's capital with nuclear booms, please raise your hand." The Master of Sinanju's hand alone appeared, fluttering high in the air.

"Oh, can the crap," Remo snarled. "There were extenuating circumstances there. Besides, they weren't even my bombs."

With a smile of flickering satisfaction, the old man lowered his arm. "I only consider myself fortunate that, in your madness, you were not more concerned. Had you been, you might have brought a wrecking ball to bear against the walls of Castle Sinanju. Clean up this mess."

With that, the old man turned on a sandated heel.

He marched back to the center of the room, settling back to the rug. For the first time, Remo noticed the small stack of sleek black equipment piled there. "What's all that stuff?"

"None of your business," Chiun sniffed.

"It looks like stereo equipment."

Chiun rolled his eyes. "I will tell you, O Nosy One, after you remove this mess."

Remo could see there would be no arguing. With a sigh, he began collecting the largest chunks of door. He propped them against the wall. As he worked, Chiun fussed with the equipment on the floor. A long extension cord ran over to a wall outlet. Remo saw a number of plastic boxes stacked in neat piles at the Master of Sinanju's scissored knees.

"You can't blame me for being worried," Remo commented as he hefted the last of the big door slabs. "It sounded like you were raping roosters in here."

"All was joy until you charged in here like a boob in a China shop," Chiun replied, uninterested.

"That's bull," Remo corrected dryly.

"No, it is truth," Chiun maintained. He fixed his pupil with an acid eye. "Less talk, more work."

It took Remo ten minutes to tug all the wooden darts from the wall. With a dustpan and brush, he picked up the shattered glass and smaller wood fragments.

"Finished," he said as he dumped the last dustpan of splinters into a paper shopping bag. "I'll have to pick up a new door at the hardware store tomorrow. Guess I'll have to hire someone for these windows." A thin, cold wind snaked through the shattered panes. Neither man felt the cold. "So what's with the stereo stuff?"

For the past few minutes, the Master of Sinanju's mood had been lightening. With Remo's work finished for the moment, he stood, proudly extending a shiny plastic CD case to his pupil. His wrinkled face beamed.

"Behold!" Chiun announced grandly.

Remo inspected the album. His face fell at once. On the compact disc, an overweight woman in a cowboy hat sat on a split-rail fence. It was a testament to the skill of the fence's engineers that it didn't splinter beneath her wide derriere. She looked like a hippo on a park bench. At the top of the CD was the name Wylander Jugg.

"Oh, God, no," Remo moaned, his stomach caving in. It was all clear to him now. "That caterwauling I heard was you singing, wasn't it?" he accused weakly.

"I do not know what your demented ears think they heard, but it is possible that I did burst into song. Her voice is infectious."

"So's syphilis. And at least that's fun while you're getting it. Where'd you ever hear of Wylander?"

A brief thundercloud passed over the old Asian's face. "You left on the radio in your car when you went into the video store last week."

Remo remembered. For reasons he hoped would never be brought up again, Chiun avoided video stores like the plague.

The old man's dark moment passed.

"I chanced to hear her lilting voice as I switched channels. With but one strain, I knew I had found true love." Chiun drew the case to his narrow chest.

"Chiun," Remo said, forcing a reasonable tone, "everybody hates country music. The only thing entertaining about it is George Strait's driving record and the guy who does the Kenny Rogers impersonation on 'Mad TV.'"

Chiun raised a thin eyebrow. "As usual, I have no idea what you are talking about. I will have to remember to thank the gods for this continued blessing before I retire this evening." He turned the CD in his hand, examining Wylander Jugg carefully. "She is lovely." He sighed.

"If 'lovely' is redneck slang for 'fat as a house,' sure."

"She is not fat," Chiun dismissed. "She is simply well proportioned."

"If I was one-tenth that well proportioned, you'd have me doing squat thrusts till my colon dropped out."

"You are jealous of her comeliness." As he glanced rapturously at the photo once more, a contented smile kissed Chiun's dry lips. "Her beauty is on the inside," he insisted.

"So's Jonah, Pinocchio and about a million soggy Big Macs," Remo countered.

With a thin scowl, Chiun shook his head. "Really, Remo, your lack of depth amazes me. At last your nation has produced an art to rival the daytime dramas of old, and you, soulless as you are, deride it."

"Chiun, let's face facts here. Your tastes and mine have never been quite the same."

"Another small favor for which I will thank the gods."

Chiun sank to the floor amid his CD collection. "Snipe all you want," Remo said. "I like what I like. And I don't like country music."

"That is because you refuse to evolve," Chiun replied. "You are content to leave things exactly as they are, little realizing that despite your protestations, things change."

At that, Remo fell silent. He had managed for a time to banish the weighty thoughts that had plagued him of late.

Chiun noticed the heavy silence. As he pretended to fuss with his plastic cases, he turned a half-interested eye on his pupil.

"Have you given any thought to the words of my son, Song?" he questioned absently.

Remo's head snapped up. "What? Oh. No, not really." His troubled look made clear what was truly on his mind.

Chiun nodded. "It is a difficult time, this long goodbye between Master and student," he said, his voice soft.

The words brought another, greater pause.

The truth was, Chiun was as eager as Remo to forget that aspect of their shared future. The Master of Sinanju's eventual retirement and Remo's inevitable ascension to Reigning Masterhood. But the old Korean had seen many winters, and so understood better than his pupil what an impossible task it was to hold back the future. It would come whether they wanted it to or not.

"Can we just leave that one alone for a while, Little Father?" Remo asked quietly.

The old man nodded. The wisps of hair that clung to scalp above each of his shell-like eats were cobwebs stirred by cold eddies of air.

"There is always your future pupil," Chiun offered, his tone lightening. "That was the purpose of Song's visit. What thought have you given to that?"

"I haven't run an ad in the Help Wanteds yet," Remo said. A moment's hesitation. "But, yeah, I'm giving it some thought." He felt guilty even admitting it.

Chiun nodded in satisfaction. "Good. We will have to visit Sinanju in the autumn. Most of the winter babies will have been born by then."

Remo frowned. "Can't they just send us their fall-baby catalog?" he said sarcastically. "I told you, Chiun, no wacky breeding rituals and no pulling some Sinanju infant from his crib while mamasan's in the kitchen getting the rice-flavored Similac. We do this, we do it my way. In my own time."

He expected an argument. He expected yelling. He expected every trusted standby for ingrate all the way back to the now never used pale piece of a pig's ear. Instead, he was greeted with calm acceptance. Chiun's face showed no hint of emotion. "As you wish," the old man said. He returned to his CDs. Popping one open, he removed a silver disc.

"That's it?" Remo asked. "As you wish? Aren't you gonna kvetch?"

At this, Chiun shook his head. "I do not kvetch, I instruct. And it is not my place to instruct in this matter. You have admitted that you are thinking of your protege. You have accepted fate. The rest will happen as it is meant to." Head bowed, he turned to his stereo.

Remo recognized the truth in his teacher's words. He locked them away in a quiet part of his heart. For another time. Crouching, Remo braced hands on knees.

He scanned the CD titles. In addition to the Wylander CDs, there were a dozen more.

"You have any Nitty Gritty Dirt Band?" Remo asked hopefully. He remembered the group from the 1970s.

"No," Chiun replied as he fed a CD into the player at his elbow. "But in addition to the enchanting Wylander, I have something called a Garth Brooks. I am about to play his music now."

When the old man looked up, he found that he was alone. His hazel eyes caught but a glimpse of his pupil's fleeing back as the younger man flew from the meditation room.

A proud smile crossed the Master of Sinanju's face. Even departing in haste, his pupil had not upset any of the natural air currents in the room. His loafers made not a sound on their way to the ground floor. Chiun only knew he had fled the building when the front door slammed shut four seconds later.

There was no doubt about it. Remo was a worthy pupil. Who would one day soon make a worthy teacher.

Justifiably proud of his own accomplishment, the tiny Korean reached out a long, sharpened fingernail. When the CD started, Chiun's face became a mask of utter contentment as he allowed the music to wash over him.

Chapter 5

Commander Darrell Irwin was standing above the radar station aboard the USS Walker, a nuclear-powered cruiser patrolling the Windward Passage between Haiti and Cuba, when he noticed the errant blip.

"What's that?" Irwin asked the seaman seated at the screen. He pointed at the phosphorescent dot. "We thought it was a fishing boat, sir," the young man replied earnestly. His eyes were wide and bright.

Irwin frowned at the eagerness in the sailor's voice.

The kid was practically an infant. His dirty blond hair was shaved to his pink scalp. His eyes tracked the moving boat with eager interest. He was about the same age as Irwin's own son back home in Florida. He still had baby fat, for crying out loud.

There was no doubt about it. The enlisted men these days were joining up straight out of grammar school. That was the only explanation. There was no other way they could look so much younger than Commander Irwin.

"So is it a fishing boat or not?" Irwin demanded.

"Too big, sir," the seaman said. "We're thinking it's one of those big cabin cruisers."

"Heading for land?"

"East of Guantanamo if she holds course."

"Smack dab into Guantanamo if she holds course," Irwin corrected. He noted the blip with a frown.

"It'll be in visual range in ten minutes, sir."

"Let's keep an eye on her."

The boat came close enough for visual inspection in just over seven minutes. When it passed by the nose of the Walker, Commander Irwin went out on deck to see it.

Irwin and the two lieutenants who accompanied him had brought binoculars to view the boat. They proved to be unnecessary.

It was a cabin cruiser. Cuban registry. The luxury boat was eighty feet long and traveling at a good sixty knots as it buzzed the prow of the much bigger naval vessel.

"Are they nuts?" one of the lieutenants yelled, gripping the rail in amazement.

The boat came so close it nearly rammed the Walker. It slipped off toward land, trailing a wake of angry white foam.

Irwin whipped up his binoculars.

Frantic men ran along the deck. Even more crammed the bridge, screaming and pounding on equipment. When Commander Irwin lowered his glasses, his face was grave.

"She's out of control," he intoned ominously. As the calm sea churned white in the wake of the runaway luxury cruiser, Commander Darrell Irwin raced to the bridge of the Walker. He had to warn Guantanamo.

THE BIG CABIN CRUISER did not veer east at Guantanamo. It continued on, straight through the outer defenses of the island's United States naval base.

By this point, most of the men on the luxury boat had gone out on the deck. Arms raised above their heads, they waved in desperate fear as the ship plowed ahead.

The Navy brass on the Cuban base were unsure what to do.

According to every report, the boat was heading straight into the heart of the Guantanamo base. But if the looks on the faces of the men aboard were any indication, they weren't some kind of suicidal terrorists. Somehow, their boat had gone out of control.

There would be hell to pay if the United States Navy torpedoed a civilian Cuban ship from a base that Cuba had for years wanted off the island.

For the military, it was the most tense moment on the small Caribbean island since October of 1962. The Navy's paralysis ate up enough time for the situation to resolve itself. With Cuban nationals screaming and leaping from the deck, the cruiser plowed into the broad side of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, which had been docked at Guantanamo after being towed from the Mideast six months before.

Running full out at the moment of impact, the cabin cruiser's nose was pulverized back to midship. Wood and metal ruptured and splintered, skipping and splashing across the water of the bay.

The men who had remained aboard were thrown forward off the deck, slamming like meat-filled bags against the gunmetal-gray side of the massive aircraft carrier.

Only then did the Navy snap into action. Smaller ships circled in, fishing battered survivors from the water. Crewmen were quickly deployed to the half-submerged Cuban boat. Medics prepped the bleeding crew of the crippled ship for air transport to medical facilities at Guantanamo.

And as helicopters swooped in from shore to land on the broad flight deck of the nearby carrier, the first square bag floated to the surface.

At first, no one noticed the plastic-wrapped package.

It was quickly joined by another. Then another. Eventually, a sharp-eyed sailor spotted the yellow bags bobbing gently in the bay waters.

The first helicopter was lifting off for its short hop to land as one of the bags was being fished from the drink. Using a Swiss army knife, a sailor sliced the bundle open. A white crystalline powder dumped through the slit onto the sailor's shoes. The young man looked up in amazement.

As officers and enlisted men exchanged dark glances, bag after bag slowly bobbed like corks to the once more calm blue surface of Guantanamo Bay.

Chapter 6

"Just keep your head down and your mouth shut," the CIA director ordered Mark Howard on the ride over from Virginia. When he spoke, he didn't even glance at the man who shared the back seat of his government sedan.

It was painfully obvious that the CIA director wasn't the one who had requested Howard's presence at this high-level intelligence meeting. He had been hostile to Howard from the moment the younger man got in the car at Langley.

In tense silence, they drove through the earlymorning streets of Washington, D.C.

It had snowed the night before. Just an inch was enough to paralyze the nation's capital, which in many ways still considered itself a small Southern town. Luckily, it had just been a dusting. Not that it would have mattered in this of all weeks. With Inauguration Day at week's end, city government was reacting to everything-crime, emergencies, weather-with shocking efficiency. In a month, when the parties were over and the balloons and confetti had all been swept away, the local government would revert to its regular incompetence. Though it was only a little after 7:00 a.m., the commuter traffic was heavy. It was bumper to bumper all the way to the end of Pennsylvania Avenue. When the White House came into view, Mark Howard felt the flutter of butterflies in his gut. The Washington Monument rose high to the south as the CIA director's car crossed over to the Fifteenth Street entrance of the most famous address on Earth. A Marine guard stood at attention as they passed through the wrought-iron gates. Driving onto the grounds, they parked near the West Wing in the shadows of twisted hundred-year-old trees. Only when the engine was silent did the CIA director at last look directly at Mark. His gaze was harsh. "Remember," he warned. "Mouth shut."

He popped the door and headed up the short flight of stairs to the big stone archway.

Mark nodded to himself. "I guarantee it," he grumbled, still not positive why he was even here. Although he had an inkling.

Plastering on a professional face, the young analyst hurried from the car and trotted up the stairs to the Executive Wing of the White House.

MARK HOWARD COULD only assume that this strange turn of events had something to do with the mysterious, unexplained background check. It had all been very thorough, very detailed. More meticulous even than when he had joined the CIA fresh out of college.

Howard assumed it was somehow related to "Black Boris," a deep-cover mole alleged to have been squirreled away at Langley for years. Mark had always suspected that Boris was a myth-the Loch Ness Monster of the spy game.

Since the background check came not long after the well-publicized incidents of Chinese spying at Los Alamos, Mark assumed this was just some new attempt to flush out someone who probably didn't even exist. Until, that is, he learned that he alone was being investigated.

He found out the truth after dropping a casual comment to a fellow analyst at lunch in the cafeteria. Afterward, a few more discreet inquiries confirmed the fact that no one else was being scrutinized like Mark Howard.

The knowledge that he was being singled out for some reason made for a few tense weeks.

Then one day, as abruptly as the investigation had started, it stopped.

Most people would have let the matter drop. Indeed, Mark would have. Gladly. If not for the "feeling."

That was what he had learned to call his special gift. The feeling. It was a strange sense, an intuition he'd had since childhood. Back then, when a ball was lost in the woods, Mark would know precisely where it was, even if he hadn't been playing the game. The other kids would come and find him and bang, there it was.

It worked with animals, too. He'd found lost dogs, cats, even a rabbit that had gotten out of Mr. Grautskeeb's hutch. The saddest day of his childhood back in Iowa was that time when he was six when he'd found Ronnie Marin's missing collie in the weeds out behind the tool shed. She'd been there for two days. No one had bothered to look for her there. No one but little Mark Howard.

As he grew older, he realized that this ability of his could be applied in other ways. At the CIA, it allowed him to draw together meager, disparate facts and assemble them into a whole with remarkable accuracy.

While Mark didn't consider the feeling a psychic thing, he had to admit his brain worked differently than other people's. It was more an ability to intuit on a level greater than the average man on the street. Which was probably why he found himself holding the rewritable CD on that day not long after the unexplained background check ended.

Mark didn't know why he'd fished the silver disc from the back of his drawer. Sitting in his drab little cubicle in the bowels of CIA headquarters in Virginia, he studied the disc. Fluorescent light reflected off its gleaming surface.

He'd made the disc more than six months before. On a day that would prove to be one of the strangest of his young career, a man who identified himself as General Smith had called looking for an analyst.

Mark had been given the urgent task of locating a ship at sea. A geosynchronous spy satellite over the Atlantic was turned over to him for the task. After Mark had located the ship, General Smith had briefly commandeered Howard's computer to confirm his findings. It should have been impossible, but the lemon-voiced man on the phone was able to access Mark's computer with ease.

When he was through, Smith had thanked Howard for his assistance and had receded into cyberspace, never to be heard from again. All Mark had to show for that weird afternoon was a single CDROM of satellite images. And the feeling.

Instinct had compelled him to dig deeper.

Rather than let the matter drop, Mark kept track of the general's ship through surreptitious means. Howard was stunned when, mere hours after it arrived in the Mideast, a previously unknown type of nuclear weapon was detonated in Israel. Chaos had descended on the entire region for several frightening days.

When the situation finally stabilized a week later, Mark learned that the men suspected of deploying the device had been found dead in an oasis in Jordan. The cause of death was listed as "unknown."

Mark didn't know why, but after reading that short report, something clicked. It grew worse a few months later.

The Mideast had largely recovered when a new crisis developed, this time in East Africa. The defense minister of that country had hatched a crazed scheme to turn his country into the crime capital of the world. But although everything seemed to be in place for him to succeed, his plot had somehow miraculously imploded.

It was then Mark knew for certain he was looking at another piece of a larger puzzle. Sifting through the East Africa data, he found one report overlooked by everyone else at the CIA. It mentioned a young white and an elderly Asian who were somehow involved with the native Luzu tribe at the time of the crisis. And in the moment he read that report, it all became clear.

General Smith-who probably wasn't a general at all-was the leader of some secret force. The white and the Asian were his operatives. Mark didn't know for certain how he knew this to be so. He just knew it was true.

Later, when he went back to look at the computer report, he found that all references to the two men on the ground in East Africa had been expunged. Someone had covered their tracks. And that someone was computer literate and could access the CIA's files.

Smith.

The ramifications were huge. When he found the files deleted, Mark had immediately retrieved the CD-ROM from his desk. Deleting its contents, he used a borrowed cigarette lighter to melt the disc into unusability. Once it was warped out of shape, he snapped it into small pieces and flushed them down the toilet.

Woodenly, he returned to his desk.

For Mark, this was the most exciting, frightening moment of realization he'd ever experienced.

The events in the Mideast and Africa had been big. They had each in their own way threatened to destabilize the world as America perceived it. And yet they had not.

There was something big lurking beyond the known fringes of American government. Alone in his cubicle that amazing day, Mark understood with blinding clarity that the clearance it was given pointed like a neon arrow to only one place.

THE OVAL OFFICE WAS bigger than Mark expected. In the rooms beyond came sounds of packing. Through the door that opened on the office of the President's personal secretary, boxes were stacked high.

A person unseen could be heard gently sobbing. Mark assumed it was someone who didn't want to relinquish the reins of government at the end of the week.

The men in the Oval sat on the two long sofas near the fireplace. In addition to the CIA, there were agents from the FBI, NSC and the Justice Department present. Mark sat quietly off to one side of the senior government officials.

The President came shuffling in ten minutes late. America's departing chief executive looked as if he'd slept in his clothes. He wore a heavy wool bathrobe, open wide. The belt dangled, lopsided, and dragged on the floor behind him. His green sweatpants were stained, and his ample belly threatened the seams of his ratty Global Movieland T-shirt. His unlaced sneakers scuffed morosely on the carpet as he made his way to his desk.

On one of his last days in office, the leader of the free world had given barely any attention to his omnipresent makeup. A few thick smears of orangetinted rouge had been glopped haphazardly on both cheeks. The tiny broken veins in his big nose faded into the wide rosacea blotches that marred his otherwise pasty face.

He didn't acknowledge the chorus of "Good morning, Mr. President" that trailed him to his tidy desk.

There was no sign in the Oval of the move that would take place this weekend. The President had refused to allow anyone-either government or political employees-to touch so much as a single scrap of paper in his office. In this way, he hoped to put off all reminders of the few fleeting hours that remained for him at the White House.

No one said another word as the President took his seat and swiveled away from his guests. He sat quietly for a moment, his bleary eyes trained on the Washington Monument. When at last he spoke, his hoarse voice was faraway.

"Cure," he muttered, the bitter word directed at the bleak January sky.

The men behind him frowned in confusion. No one spoke.

"Cure, my ass," the President grumbled as he looked out the window. His words were directed at the monument, at the sky. At something far, far beyond that famous room. "They didn't cure nothin' for me. Two lousy terms. Wouldn't even help with a third. FDR got four, for chrissakes. Four. Instead, I get some rigmarole about some Twenty-second Amendment that I never even heard of until I got into office in the first place. That and some lemon-voice technocrat lecturing me on 'operational parameters.'" His tone grew mocking. "'We do not exist to indulge your political whims,'" he growled quietly. "Sanctimonious bastard."

His mumbled words were met with baffled silence. That was, by all but one man.

Alone in his corner, Mark Howard's eyes betrayed intrigue. Although muttered, the President's "lemon-voiced technocrat" comment hadn't gotten past the young analyst. His thoughts flew to the mysterious General Smith.

When the silence in the room at last became intolerable, the NSC man spoke up. "Mr. President, are you all right?" he asked, leaning forward.

After an interminable pause, the President finally spun slowly to face the men in the room. His puffy eyes were flat. "Let's just get on with this," he said gruffly, rubbing the sleep from his face. "What's going on in Cuba?"

They all knew the situation to which he referred. Since the previous day, the runaway boat that had found its way into Guantanamo Bay had become a minicrisis.

"Castro is furious," the CIA director said efficiently. "He claims the boat's Cuban property, that it had medical supplies aboard and that it was seized illegally."

"Blah-blah-blah," the President snapped. He waved away the man's words with a soft white hand that had never seen a single day's work. "What do you think about this, Mark?"

Mark Howard assumed he hadn't heard correctly. He had a stack of papers on his lap. When he looked up from them, he found all eyes in the room had turned to him.

The Oval Office had grown deathly quiet. The only sound was the person crying in the next room. For the first time, it sounded like a man.

"Um," Mark Howard said slowly. "Me?"

"Yeah, you," the President said, annoyed. "Didn't you write some memo or something about this?"

Howard was surprised anyone had read it, least of all the President of the United States.

Mark had detected a pattern in organized crime that had been evolving over the past month. Even before the previous week's botched DEA raid in an old New Jersey airplane hangar, Mark had linked the emerging pattern to a company called Raffair. He didn't know why. The feeling again. It hit him while he was going through the NYSE listings in the newspaper. His finger was tapping "Raffair" even before he realized it.

The fact that audiotapes collected from the abandoned DEA van had mentioned prominently the name Raffair merely clinched it for Howard. He had filed a report yesterday.

Since the CIA's responsibilities were to advise the President and NSC on international developments, Mark assumed that his memo would be turned over to the SEC or FBI at best. At worst, it would be ignored completely. The fact that it had been read by the President shocked him.

He could feel the eyes of the other men burning into him. The CIA director seemed particularly agitated.

In the outer room, the sobbing continued. "There, there," the disembodied voice of the President's secretary consoled. "I know getting a new job's scary, but it must have been even scarier when you were inventing the Internet. Here, let me get you some nice warm cocoa."

The door closed carefully, silencing the crying man.

In the Oval Office, Mark cleared his throat. "The incident in Cuba is part of something larger that's emerged in the last month or so, Mr. President," he began. "I think it's linked to a company called Raffair."

"I know," the president said impatiently. "I read your report. Why do you think it's connected?"

Mark glanced at the CIA director. The older man's eyes were locked on his.

Howard knew he'd be laughed out of the room if he mentioned the feeling. He'd spent his entire adult life avoiding explanations for his gift. Fortunately, it wasn't necessary to get into detail here.

"Simple," Mark began, fidgeting uncomfortably. "Raffair was mentioned during a drug raid that went wrong late last week. I happened to check the company's stock price the next day. Turns out it went up a couple of points. After yesterday's screw-up in Cuba, Raffair's stock went down. I thought I smelled a pattern, so I did a little digging. Turns out every time Raffair's stock dips, there's been some kind of action against organized crime the day before. Otherwise, they've had nothing but smooth sailing for the past month, ever since their ISO."

Mark tried not to meet the disapproving gazes of the other men. He kept his eyes focused on the President.

Behind his desk, America's chief executive nodded.

It was as if the others weren't even there. Howard had heard this about the President. The commander in chief had an unerring ability to make a person feel as if they were the only other human being on the face of the planet.

"You sure about all this?" the President asked, biting his lip in thoughtful concentration.

"Yes, sir," Howard said. "Raffair took its biggest hit last Monday when the President-elect mentioned his new drug policy. The stock really took a tumble that day."

The President's face soured at the mention of his successor. "That reminds me," he grumbled to himself. "I've got a meeting to set up with him. Betty!" he shouted.

His secretary's door opened. A middle-aged black woman stuck her face into the room. Behind her, the crying had only gotten worse. The man was blowing his nose loudly.

Although it was barely 7:30 a.m., the President's secretary already looked worn out. "Yes, Mr. President?" she asked wearily.

"I need to have a meeting with the incoming President."

The crying in the outer room grew worse. "Oh, gawd!" the man bawled, his voice filled with uncharacteristic emotion.

The secretary rolled her eyes apologetically. "I'll contact the transition people, Mr. President." She nodded. With an exhausted smile, she ducked back into her office.

Behind his desk, the President shook his head. "Cure," he said to himself, his hoarse voice laced with bitterness. "I'll show him cure." He rose to his feet, slapping his hands on his desk. "That's it. Everybody out."

The men in the room exchanged baffled glances. "But ...but our briefing," the FBI director said, his tone betraying confusion.

"Go brief yourself," the President said as he padded to the door. "I've got my own problems. Come next week, I don't even have a place to live. Worse, I could stay in New York. With her." He shivered visibly as he left the room.

Behind him, the President's bewildered advisers began gathering up paperwork and briefcases. Mark Howard didn't even notice the evil glance the CIA director gave him as he collected his own satchel from the floor next to the sofa. His thoughts were somewhere else, far beyond the confines of the Oval Office, a room that now seemed much smaller than it had just a few minutes before.

In the space of this one small meeting, the entire world had collapsed and coalesced into an unrecognizable shape. Numbly, Mark rose from his chair and walked to the door.

Smith, the background check, the President. It was all tied in. Something was very definitely going on. And whatever it was was huge beyond the measure of it.

Mark Howard could feel it.

THE PRESIDENT DID his best to ignore the packing crates stacked in the hallways of the West Wing. In the main mansion, he took the private elevator, getting out at the family quarters.

He closed his eyes in strained patience when he heard the familiar low rumble to his right.

Down the hall, the President's Labrador retriever exposed its teeth, growling menacingly as he passed. Scraps of shiny paper were spread on the floor around its paws.

His wife had sent the dog for some kind of special obedience training while the chief executive was in Europe the previous year. When the President got back home, the dog's attitude had been completely changed. It now growled and snapped at him whenever he came near. Every White House picture of the current President became a chew toy. He tried to ask his wife what she'd done to the animal, but she only smiled that emasculating smile of hers and flew off for another listening tour of New York.

He left the dog to chew on the state photograph of himself and Israel's Prime Minister Barak. Rounded shoulders sagging, he ducked into the Lincoln Bedroom.

The cherry-red telephone was in the bottom drawer of the nightstand. In another few days, he'd be showing the phone to his successor.

Sitting on the edge of the high bed, the President lifted the receiver. The phone had no dial. It didn't need one. Before it could ring twice, the call was answered.

"Yes, Mr. President?"

Efficient, as usual. The President scowled at the thought of the tart-voiced man on the other end of the line.

"I'm scheduling a meeting with the President-elect," the chief executive said, his voice flat. "Just like you asked."

No hint of emotion. "Thank you, Mr. President."

The President only grunted. "Still don't know why I have to do it. Why don't you just have those people of yours sneak you in here so you can talk to him yourself next week?"

"It has always been done this way, with but one exception. And that was only because of dire circumstances. It is best for the outgoing President to inform the incoming President of our existence. To do it some other way might suggest a rogue intelligence group."

"Yeah," the President said, dabbing at the thick rouge on his cheek. His finger came back orange. "Guess so. Hey, I've got something I'd like you to look into before I'm gone." He rubbed the makeup between thumb and forefinger.

A pause. "Yes?"

That snide tone. Filled with suspicion and condescension.

"It's just a small thing," the President said. "Someone's brought something to my attention about a company called Raffair." He went on to give the broad details as outlined in Mark Howard's report.

"That is not a typical assignment," came the lemony conclusion once the President was through. A moment of thoughtful consideration followed. "However, I will see if there is something larger at work there. Is there anything else?"

"No," the President said. "That's it."

"Goodbye, sir."

The line went dead.

The President replaced the phone, sliding the nightstand drawer closed with his ankle. "Goodbye to you, Smith," he said quietly.

More than anything, this President wanted a legacy. His last year in office had been about nothing but that, with little success. Until now. Although it wouldn't be written in any history books, he was about to get a real legacy.

The old man on the phone was a throwback to another era. It was the dawn of a new century. Time for new thinking. For young blood.

As he was getting up from the bed, there came a growling and scratching at the door. With a beleaguered sigh, the President picked up a book from a stack on the nightstand. There were similar stacks all around the family quarters. His campaign manifesto, Between God and Man. How Great I Am had done extremely poorly in stores back in '96. Luckily, the President had recently found a new use for the cases that had been recalled.

He opened the door a crack, waving the cover with his picture through the opening. When the growling reached a fevered pitch, he flung the book down the hallway.

As the frantic trampling of the presidential dog receded in one direction, the President threw the door to the Lincoln Bedroom open and ran like mad in the other.

Chapter 7

Remo had walked the streets of Quincy late into the night, returning home in the wee hours of the morning. When he got back, the old church was blessedly silent. It was one-thirty by the time he crawled into bed.

His blissful sleep was shattered at 6:00 a.m. by the full-throated yodeling of the full-figured Wylander.

Apparently, Chiun didn't want to miss a single warbled note. While upstairs, he played the music softly enough, but when he ventured to other areas of the house he turned up the volume. Right now the Master of Sinanju was scouring the basement fish tanks for breakfast, Wylander was threatening to shatter the remaining windows in the bell-tower meditation room and Remo was on his way out the kitchen door. He had his hand on the doorknob when the wall phone rang.

Scooping up the phone, he jammed a finger in his free ear. "Make it quick," he warned.

The familiar voice of Harold W. Smith was as sour as a sack of trampled grapefruit.

"Remo, Smith. I-" the CURE director stopped dead. "What on earth is that din?"

Remo closed his eyes. "It's called a Wylander, Smitty," he said. "And get used to that name, because I have a feeling it's gonna come up during our next contract negotiations. Chiun's got that old Barbra Streisand gleam in his eye." He hopped to a sitting position on the counter. "What's up?"

"Er, yes," Smith said uncertainly. "I was actually calling for two reasons. First, to let you know that the bodies of the MIR terrorists have been discovered and second, to tell you that I have another small assignment for you."

The CURE director went on to tell him of the President's request that they look into Raffair, as well as more detailed background information Smith himself had dredged up following his conversation with the chief executive.

"Why don't we just run out the clock on this guy?" Remo asked once he was through. "He's gone on Saturday. Besides, this sounds like a nothing job."

"Perhaps," Smith said. "However, my relationship with this President has been-" he searched for the right word "-strained. I have decided that it would do no harm to indulge him in this one last matter."

"Leave on a high note, huh," Remo said. "I gotcha. Guess this is your way of apologizing for not crowning him King of North America and Sovereign Ruler of Guam, the Virgin Islands and American Samoa. Okay, Chiun and I will go rattle a few cages. It'll probably be good to get him out of here anyway. I think the neighbors are already assembling with torches and pitchforks."

Not wishing to ponder the ramifications of what Remo was saying, the CURE director forged ahead. Smith gave Remo the New York address of Lippincott, Forsythe, Butler.

"An agent for that firm guided the IPO for Raffair. Perhaps he can tell you how a company can do so well without having an apparent owner or generates revenue without producing a clear product. His name is Lawrence Fine."

Remo raised a skeptical eyebrow. "You're kidding, right?" he asked.

"Why?" Smith asked, puzzled.

Remo opened his mouth to explain. But then he remembered a story Smith had told him about the days when the future director of CURE and his wife were dating. They had gone to see a Marx Brothers movie, and Smith had spent the entire evening complaining about the fact that Groucho's mustache was only painted on and that Chico was obviously not Italian. For Smith, these transgressions shed serious doubt on the notion that Harpo was an actual mute. It was the last movie the Smiths saw together. The cultural vacuum the old man lived in would make an explanation pointless.

"No reason," Remo said. "We'll get right on it." As he spoke, he cocked an ear toward the hallway stairs.

The music seemed to have stopped. The silence lasted only a few seconds. Chiun had apparently bought a multi-CD player. Wylander's eardrum-detonating whooping began anew.

"I'm not kidding about Wylander, Smitty," Remo growled into the phone. "You'd better get on the blower to Monster Island, 'cause when the next contract comes due you're gonna need an awfully big cage for country's King Kong."

He slammed down the phone.

CHIUN AGREED to abandon his new lady love to accompany Remo to New York.

The short commuter flight was relatively incident free, with only two wet T-shirt contests and one midair chug-a-lug competition. Two drunken businessmen who threatened to defecate midway through the flight did so to protest the in-flight movie. Since it was an Adam Sandler film, Remo didn't blame them. The flight attendants were hosing down the carpets when he and the Master of Sinanju deplaned.

On the cab ride into the city, the old Korean was a picture of wrinkled contentment. He almost appeared to be in a state of grace. As they crossed the Williamshurg Bridge, Chiun let out a satisfied sigh.

"I know what's going on," Remo said abruptly. The wizened Asian continued to stare wistfully at the East River. His aged hands were clasped together in his lap, forming a tight knot of bone.

"Remind me to record such an historic moment in the sacred Sinanju scrolls," the Master of Sinanju replied.

Remo ignored the sarcasm. "Country music," he pressed. "I know why you like it so much."

Chiun turned a bland eye on his pupil. "Is there a way I might be spared this?" he asked.

"No, listen. You like Ung poetry, right?

A cloud formed on Chiun's brow. "Of course."

"Right," Remo nodded. "You like it even though it doesn't even rhyme, and everyone in the universe but you thinks it sounds like shit."

Chiun's eyes grew flat. "There are limits, Remo, to how much I will indulge you," he said in a level tone.

"Work with me here," Remo insisted. "Ung sounds awful, it's repetitive and totally devoid of any depth or beauty. Basically, it's Korean country music except with butterflies instead of barflies. That's why you like country music."

He nodded, a knowing look on his face.

Chiun's level gaze never wavered. "One day many years from now, Remo, scientists will crack open your granite skull and announce, 'Behold! Here was a being with the aspect of Man, yet possessed with a cavern between his ears!' School children will take field trips to see the hollowed head of Empty-Skulled Man."

He turned his aged face back to the cab window. The looming Manhattan skyline was reflected darkly in the glass.

"Empty head, but full heart," Remo smiled. "And I know I'm right."

"You are never right," Chiun replied without turning. "And you get more not right with every passing day."

LIPPINCOTT, FORSYTHE, Butler occupied most of a somber Wall Street building within shouting distance of Trinity Church. A plaque above the door read, simply, LFB. So celebrated was the firm that no more advertising was needed.

As their cab dropped them off, Remo took note of the police cruisers parked in front of the building. "Something's up," Remo commented as he and Chiun stepped around the police cars. "Maybe we should use a back door."

"You may climb through an alley window if you wish," Chiun sniffed. "I, however, will use the perfectly serviceable door before me."

Lifting up the hem of his purple kimono, the old man marched across the sidewalk. Eyes on the cop cars, Remo followed. Side by side, the two men strolled into the lobby.

The confusion inside was such that no one stopped them as they crossed to the elevators. They accompanied a pair of police officers up to the fourteenth floor.

The doors opened on the sedate LFB logo. It was etched into a small bronze plate that was secured to the wall above a vacant receptionist's desk.

The cops walked from the elevator area down past several lobby desks, Remo and Chiun trailing. "Remember, Little Father," Remo whispered. "We're looking for a guy named Larry Fine."

"Yes," Chiun droned. "I don't know why you trusted that that was not some new manifestation of Smith's madness."

"Let's give Smitty a break, okay?" Remo said as they walked. "He's been living a waking nightmare these past few years. We're only here so he can make nice with the President before he leaves office."

"Then this is truly a waste of all our time," the Master of Sinanju muttered. "For Smith has already told us that we will visit the Corpulent Pretender in but a few day's time to administer the Emptying Basin."

This was the Sinanju selective-amnesia technique used to erase all memory of Smith, CURE and Sinanju from the minds of departing Presidents.

"Too bad we can't use that technique on 270 million more Americans," Remo said. "Make them forget the last eight years ever happened."

They followed the policemen through a wide archway and into a large, drab room filled with small cubicles. Coming toward them up the long gray aisle was a sheet-draped gurney.

"Uh-oh," Remo said. "I hope that's not who I think it is."

While the gurney was still at a distance, Remo stopped near a group of LFB employees. They were watching the approaching covered gurney with sick fascination.

"I'm looking for Larry Fine," Remo announced. Judging by the looks he received, his instinct about the gurney's occupant was correct. "Lawrence," a sniffling woman corrected. She dabbed her mascara-smeared eyes with a sopped Kleenex. "His name was Lawrence. Those thugs murdered him in his own office."

All of a sudden, it wasn't funny to make fun of his name. That happened not long after Fine's body was discovered, his neck nearly sawed through with a garrote wire.

Chiun fell in with the passing coroner's office procession. An unseen fingernail bounced the gurney's wheels over Remo's loafers on its trip out of the office. The Master of Sinanju continued with the rest out into the hall.

One of the office workers lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "I hate to say it, but I'm just glad LFB didn't assign me to work with those racketeers."

"I knew something was wrong the moment I laid eyes on them," the weeping woman said. "Poor, poor Larry. I mean Lawrence." She blew her nose into her dripping tissue.

"Does all this have anything to do with Raffair?" Remo asked as she picked bits of tissue from her moist fingers.

All eyes turned to him. The crying woman took sudden notice of Remo's too casual attire. She froze in midsniffle.

"Are you with the police?" she asked suspiciously. "What's your name? Where's your identification?"

He rolled his eyes as he reached into his pocket for his phony ID. "My name's Remo-" he began. A shocked intake of air. Before he knew what was going on, the woman before him let out a bloodcurdling scream.

"What the hell's wrong with you?" Remo asked as she shrieked bloody murder.

The other LFB employees dove for their cubicles. Cops spun Remo's way. Some were already running toward him.

"He's one of the killers!" the woman screeched.

"What?" Remo said, stunned. "No, I'm not." By this time, he was surrounded by police, their guns drawn.

"Let me see some ID," one of the officers demanded. "Slowly. "

Remo reached back into his pocket. When he searched his wallet, he came up empty. He checked his other pocket. The only things there were a small figure carved from stone and a crucifix he'd been carrying around as good-luck charms for the past few months. He suddenly remembered leaving Smith's newly issued IDs on his bureau back at Castle Sinanju.

"Oops," he said sheepishly. He eyed the many guns. "I'm out of practice. Is this a good time to offer a bribe?"

The woman screamed once more before jumping behind a cubicle wall.

"Face on the floor!" an officer commanded.

"No," Remo corrected. "Feet on floor. See feet go. Go, feet, go."

And before the cops knew what was happening, he was gone from their midst. When they spun, they saw him flying up the aisle toward the main entrance.

Gunfire erupted in Remo's wake. He flew into the hallway amid a hail of bullets.

The Master of Sinanju was with the coroner's men near the elevators. He frowned deep displeasure as Remo raced up to him.

"What have you done now?" Chiun demanded as Remo slid to a stop beside him.

"Nothing," Remo said. "Told somebody my name. The rest's a blur."

Chiun's wrinkled furrows grew deeper. "If you must say something stupid, do not say anything at all."

Police officers began spilling into the distant hall. When they yelled for Remo to stop, the two men from the coroner's office immediately leaped behind the broad receptionist's desk beneath the LFB plaque.

"I like my name," Remo challenged, hurt, just as the police opened fire.

Standing before the closed elevator doors, the two Masters of Sinanju weaved and dodged around the incoming volley of bullets. Several screaming shards of hot lead thudded into the sheet-draped corpse beside them.

"By all means, then, remain here and like your name to your heart's content," the Master of Sinanju began. With a ping, the doors slid open. "I, however, like my life more."

As bullets whizzed by his parchment-draped skull, the old man ducked aboard the elevator car. Remo shot a final glance at the still-firing police. Arranged at the end of the hall, they were frustrated by their inability to sight down on their quarry. They continued shooting as Remo jumped inside the elevator car. He stabbed the button for the first floor. "Can they not halt our descent?" Chiun asked as the doors slid shut. He tucked his hands inside his voluminous kimono sleeves as the elevator began its swift slide downward.

"You've seen too many movies. By the time they figure out how to shut it down, we'll be long gone."

"How?" Chiun asked skeptically.

Remo smiled. "I've seen a lot of movies, too." Reaching up, he pulled down the cheap suspended ceiling. Behind it was a small trapdoor. He gave it a push, and the door slapped against the roof of the car.

"Rock, paper, scissors for who goes first?"

Chiun was peering up through the hole. "Hurry up, retard," he said peevishly.

"Guess I volunteer," Remo muttered.

Hopping up, Remo snagged the open mouth of the trapdoor with both hands and slid his thin frame easily through the narrow opening. In a flash, he was on the roof. The grimy dark walls of the elevator shaft were close.

They were already closing in on the eighth floor. "Get the lead out, Little Father," he called down into the car.

"Do not rush me," Chiun complained.

Through the opening, Remo saw the old Korean carefully gathering up the hems of his purple kimono into a tight ball.

They were approaching the sixth floor.

In the elevator car, Chiun's exposed ankles tensed. The instant they did, it seemed as if he were locked in place as the elevator continued to descend. The hole closed down around him. For a moment, as the trapdoor slid down around his shoulders, his flowing robes made him look like a wrinkled jack-in-the-box. A second later, he cleared the door and joined Remo on the roof of the car.

"What now?" the Master of Sinanju asked, releasing his bunched kimono.

"We make like all of Wylander Jugg's highschool blind dates and jump for the nearest available door," Remo replied.

They were passing the second-floor doors. Remo's feet left the roof of the car. Chiun's sandals hopped away a split second after his pupil. They landed simultaneously on the narrow ledge before the closed doors.

Behind them, the empty car continued its descent. Even as it was stopping one floor below them, Remo and Chiun were prying open the second-floor doors. They stepped out into the corridor. As they did so, shouted voices began echoing up from the depths of the elevator shaft.

They quickly found a fire exit. Before the police figured out what had happened, they'd taken the stairs down to the street. As sirens of the first backup police cruisers rose over the snarl of Wall Street traffic, they were walking briskly away from the Lippincott, Forsythe, Butler building.

The two Masters of Sinanju melted in with the foot traffic near Trinity Church.

"I suppose this means we hit a dead end with Larry Fine," Remo commented as they strolled down the street.

Chiun shook his head. "Our trip was not wasted," he replied. "In spite of your best efforts to make it so."

Remo raised a curious eyebrow. "Why? You get a chance to sneak a peek at the body before the fireworks started?"

The Master of Sinanju nodded. "And?" Remo pressed.

As they walked, Chiun stroked his thread of beard thoughtfully. "In days gone by, it was common for emperors to slay the builders of their palaces to keep secret any hidden treasure rooms or escape passages."

"I know that," Remo frowned. "Why, was there a secret passage back there?"

When he craned his neck back to see the LFB building, he found it hopelessly out of sight. Beside him, Chiun's impatience at his pupil's persistent obtuseness manifested itself with a weary drooping of his bald head. With a single delicate nail against Remo's chin, he guided the younger man's gaze away from the vanished LFB building. "Please, Remo, make an attempt to focus your thoughts." The Master of Sinanju sighed. "If not for your sake, for the sake of our village. Smith's dead stooge built a house of finance," the old man explained. "He was removed because his services were no longer required by the Romans."

Remo blinked. "Romans?"

"Or whatever ugly name they go by now," Chiun waved dismissively.

The notch in Remo's brow deepened. "Larry Fine probably wasn't Italian, Little Father," he said slowly.

"That would not prevent him from working for Nero's sons," Chiun said. "If you need further proof, when did the constables begin shooting at you?"

"After I told that ditzy woman my name," Remo said.

"Which is a Roman name," Chiun stressed. "She probably took one look at you and mistook you for one of them." He dropped his voice low. "Given the mongrel soup out of which you flopped, I really cannot blame her for her error, Remo. In the right light, you can pass for nearly everything that walks, crawls or swings by its tail from a banana tree."

"Don't knock my roots," Remo warned thinly. "When I shook my family tree, a Master of Sinanju fell out."

Chiun couldn't argue with that. He therefore ignored it. "The woman feared the Romans because she knew the stooge was in league with them," he said.

"So how do you know?"

Chiun raised himself to his full height. "The smell of death is strong," he intoned. "The smell of boiled tomatoes, even stronger. At least two mashed-tomato eaters were involved in this killing."

"Even if you're right, I don't know that it means anything," Remo said. "I'll give Smitty a call and let him know what happened to Fine."

"Be sure to tell the emperor to direct his oracles to search for those of Roman descent," Chiun instructed.

"I'll tell him your theory," Remo agreed. "But his computers look for criminal stuff, not people's ancestry. Unless they're in the Mob or something, we've hit a dead end. Of course, I'm keeping a good thought that maybe these guys who are following us can tell us."

He'd sensed the two sets of eyes focused on his back almost since they'd left the LFB building. As he spoke, the car that had been slowly following them through the Wall Street traffic screeched to a stop.

Two men were springing from the front seat when Remo and Chiun turned. They wore fatigue pants, camouflage jackets and heavy boots. Black ski masks obscured all but their eyes and mouths.

"We need one of them alive, Little Father," Remo said.

"Do whatever you wish," Chiun sniffed. "They are interested in you, not me."

It was true. All their attention appeared to be focused entirely on Remo.

At the front of their car, both men drew long knives from their jackets. Bringing their hands back expertly to their shoulders, they swept their arms downward. With twin hums, the knives sailed at Remo's chest.

He caught one blade with a broad sidestroke, batting it harmlessly to the sidewalk. The second he smacked sharply by the handle, twisting it in midair. The knife had not fully stopped flying in one direction before a firm nudge from Remo sent it zipping back from whence it had come.

The blade buried itself deep in the nearer man's face. His mask seemed to sprout an extralong snout, and he dropped to the sidewalk, dead.

A frightened shudder rose palpably among the throng of pedestrians. Remo ignored the scattering crowd, moving directly for the second masked man.

When he saw Remo coming at him, the second man's eyes went wide inside his ski mask. He had apparently thought two knives would do the trick, for as he searched his khaki jacket for another weapon he came up empty.

There was only one thing left for him to do. Turning, the man flung himself onto his belly out in the street. He skidded directly under the wheels of a passing New York Transit Authority bus. His body made a sickening crunching sound before being dragged up into the slush-encased wheel well of the big bus.

"So much for getting answers from them," Remo grumbled as the bus rolled to a ponderous, squeaking stop.

He hurried back to where his first attacker had fallen. Chiun stood above the body.

"I do not recognize this symbol," the old man said when Remo stopped beside him. He pointed to the dead man's coat.

There was a simple white button pinned to his chest. On it, what looked like a pair of wavy black parentheses enclosed a plain black oval. Remo pulled it loose.

"Me, either," he said. "But we better let Smitty know we've made some new friends." He pocketed the button.

As a crowd began to form around the two fallen bodies, the two Masters of Sinanju melted back into the crush of onlookers. They were long gone before the fresh sound of sirens rose in the cold city air.

Chapter 8

With his arms stretched out wide to either side, Sol Sweet resembled a tidy little scarecrow. A long wand bent in a U-shape was passed up and down both sides of his body. He had gone through the same drill many times in the drab room.

He took in his surroundings with an impatient eye.

The cinder-block walls were painted green. Bare white recessed ceiling bulbs glared out through wire mesh. A desk was bolted to one wall. It was fashioned from the same metal as the door. Both door and desk were starting to rust.

That was all. The U.S. government hadn't spent much on upkeep for Missouri's Ogdenburg Federal Penitentiary. Most of the budget these days went for color TV, cable, gym equipment and other vital human necessities people on a limited budget in the outside world couldn't afford.

"You're taking an excessive amount of time," Sweet accused, his nasal voice clipped. In his head, he was already sketching out his formal complaint.

The nearest prison guard didn't seem to even hear him.

"He's clean," he announced to his partner. He pulled the wand away.

"It's about time," Sol whined angrily.

The second guard had been going through the attorney's briefcase at the desk. He passed it back to Sweet.

Briefcase clutched tightly, Sweet followed one of the guards to the interior steel door. Once they'd been buzzed through, Sweet preceded the guard into a narrow hallway. They passed into another, larger room.

There was a long table inside, bolted to the floor. Two chairs were arranged on each of the two longest sides.

"It'll be a couple more minutes," the guard said. He backed into the hallway and closed the door. The wait was shorter than usual. Five minutes later, the door opened once more. A new guard ushered a prisoner into the visitor's room.

The media reports of the strain prison had put on Don Anselmo Scubisci had been accurate.

The Manhattan Mafia Don had lost a considerable amount of weight. His shoulders were narrower, his face more angular and his protruding belly all but absent. Sol Sweet was amazed every time he saw this thinner Anselmo Scubisci. Put a paper bag of greasy peppers in his hand, and he'd be the spitting image of his father, the late Don Pietro.

The Dandy Don had at least retained the fastidious sense of style he'd always been famous for. His gray prison slacks were sharply creased, his shoes were polished and his shirt was clean and starched.

Anselmo Scubisci smiled at the sight of his lawyer.

"Solly, you're looking well," he said, wrapping his arms around the smaller man in a paternal hug. Sol Sweet didn't like to be touched, so he was relieved when the guard spoke up.

"Mr. Scubisci," the man warned.

"What? Oh, yes. Yes, of course. I'm sorry," Don Scubisci said, releasing Sweet. He sat at the table. "Could we have some privacy, please?" Sol asked the guard.

The young man glanced into the hallway. "Make it quick, okay?" he suggested. He stepped from the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

"Nice kid," Scubisci confided when the door clanged shut. His voice had a faint rasp due to a brush with throat cancer two years before. "Maybe we can find a better-paying job for him when I get out."

Sol's face was serious. "No new news as far as that's concerned, I'm afraid," he said, sitting across from his client. "The appeal process has been very slow."

Don Anselmo scowled. "I'm a businessman, Solly, that's all. Why are they even wasting time on me when they should be going after real criminals?"

"Mr. Scubisci," Sweet said reasonably, "the charges against you, while totally without merit, are nonetheless very serious."

"Serious," Scubisci mocked, waving a contemptuous hand. He shook his head in disgust. "Let's just get on with this."

The lawyer nodded. Thumbing the hasps on his soft leather briefcase, he reached inside. "Another letter arrived. As per your standing order, I brought it to you at once."

Sweet pulled a business-size envelope from a larger yellow envelope. He slid it halfway across the table. Anselmo Scubisci placed a delicate hand flat over the airmail stamp.

"Did anyone else see this?" he said, his voice level.

"Just the usual person."

Scubisci nodded. He swept the letter over to his side of the table.

The first thing he checked was the seal. As usual, it had been stamped over the flap. The mark was still intact. The legend "A.S. c/o A. Scubisci" had been printed carefully in bright red ink on the front. The address was a special postal drop set up by Scubisci's lawyer.

Nodding his satisfaction, Don Scubisci left the letter near his elbow. He wouldn't tear the seal until he returned to the privacy of his cell.

"I also have another reason for this visit," Sol said somberly. "Some unfortunate news about a business associate of yours. Larry Fine. Apparently, he was murdered. A terrible, brutal crime, I'm told."

Scubisci buried the glimmer of a smile. His first in a long time. "When did this tragedy take place?"

"This morning," Sweet replied efficiently.

Don Anselmo nodded thoughtfully. "The world has gotten very dangerous. I hate to say this, Solly, but when I hear of all that's happening on the outside, I sometimes feel safer in here."

As he was speaking, the door opened. The young guard reappeared, his face nervous.

"I don't want to rush you, Mr. Scubisci, but if you're gonna take much longer, I'll have to stay in here."

Anselmo Scubisci's eyes were flat as he pushed up from the table. "It's okay," he rasped. "We're through."

He didn't bother to shake hands with Sweet. Collecting his airmail letter, he nodded crisply to his lawyer. "Keep in touch, Sol," he said. It was a command. Letter in hand, Don Scubisci was ushered from the room.

As he waited for the guard who would take him back outside, Sol Sweet gave only a passing thought to the strange envelope. It was just the latest of many Scubisci had received in recent months.

As usual, Sol wondered what was in the envelopes. Not that he'd ever try to check. He valued his life too greatly to be so foolish.

When the guard came to collect him, he banished all thoughts of the mysterious letters. Sol followed the man out into the hallway, grateful for the parking lot and his rented car and the miles of empty highway that waited for him beyond the high prison walls.

Chapter 9

The walls that enclosed the sprawling, snow-covered grounds of Folcroft Sanitarium were a prison to but one man. The others who passed through the high gates with their attendant stone lions-be they staff, visitors or patients-all left in their time. There was only one individual who had been committed to Folcroft for life.

Dr. Harold W. Smith would not have considered himself a prisoner. After all, he could come and go as he pleased. And yet most of the time he did not go. Most days and for much of the day, Harold Smith could be found in the same place he had been the day, the week, the year before.

As director of CURE, which operated in secret from behind the high stone walls of this exclusive mental-health facility and convalescent home in Rye, New York, Harold W. Smith was as much a prisoner as any man with a life sentence. It was only the cell that was different.

In his Spartan administrator's office, Smith sat behind his broad onyx desk. Through the one-way picture window at his back could be seen the churning black waters of Long Island Sound. Whitecaps formed on the wintry surface like Poseidon's grasping claws. Smith failed to notice.

His arthritic fingers moved with swift resolve across the edge of the desk. Below the surface, an illuminated keyboard tracked his sure path with bursts of soothing amber. A buried monitor reflected a constant data stream in the owlish glasses perched on Smith's patrician nose.

The CURE director had spent hours attempting to unravel the complicated finances of Raffair, with little success. As a corporation, Raffair was a mess. But it was clear that it was a mess with a purpose: to thwart an investigation such as the one Smith was attempting.

Still, in spite of the roadblocks he'd encountered, some rough outline of the beast had begun to take shape. Raffair was big and popular. Like a lot of high-technology stocks that had fueled the economic boom of the nineties, there seemed to be not enough revenue generated by the company to justify the inflated price of its stock. Yet like those high-tech stocks, ordinary people were eager to invest. Interest in Raffair's stock had further driven up the price, rewarding handsomely those who had bought into the company in the month since its initial offering.

The pattern was the same one that had developed of late for on-line bookstores, auction houses or Internet service providers. Yet in those cases, though greatly inflated, there was a clear product or service provided. With Raffair, there was none. Individuals were sinking their money into a ghost of a corporation that seemed on the surface to do little more than accept the influx of capital.

To Smith, it was clear that Raffair was nothing but a massive front for something. But for what, he had no idea.

With a troubled sigh, he rubbed his tired eyes. Sinking back into his cracked leather chair, he spun to face Long Island Sound.

Winter's wind attacked the rolling waves. Frothy foam collected at the shore near the rotted boat dock that extended into the Sound from Folcroft's back lawn.

Smith removed his rimless glasses, dropping his hand down beside his chair. The days when he could stare at his computer for hours on end without a break were long gone.

A thin UV coating on his glasses, as well as in his desk just above his monitor, was meant to shield his eyes from damage. If it worked, he was lucky to have the protection, for at this point in his life the years he'd spent sifting through cyberspace had caused an enlargement of his optic nerve. Possibly a precursor to glaucoma. Another sign of the march of time.

The signs had been there for some time now. There was no denying it. Smith was old. His body was beginning the inevitable betrayal visited on all living things.

At first, it had been small things. Tired eyes, creaking bones. Silly things that could be dismissed or ignored. But like a snowball rolled down a steep hill, the small things had begun to grow large.

His hands ached.

Understandable, of course. After all, he'd spent forty years pounding day after day on a computer keyboard. But an understanding of the reason didn't lessen the pain.

The worsening arthritis in his gnarled fingers made it difficult to type. Some mornings, it took him a full hour before he could work out all the overnight kinks.

The creaking bones had given way to aches in nearly all his joints. His right knee in particular was giving him problems lately. Some mornings, it was as if there were nothing beneath the skin but bone on bone.

These were problems of the flesh, however, and could be easily ignored. Indeed, Smith had put the minor aches and pains to one side even as they grew to distractions. Most troubling to him of late were his lapses in concentration.

It was not yet a memory problem, nor did it seem to be developing into one. Yet. But there were moments when weariness combined with age would take hold and Smith would find himself lost in a gray fog. They were not technically daydreams, for Harold Smith did not dream. But they were instances of lapsed consciousness during which his tired brain seemed to close itself off from the world.

Smith had always prided himself on his sharp mind. Even that seemed to be betraying him of late.

And a man in his position could not afford to lose his faculties.

It was fitting that his daydreams should be filled with clouds of gray, for Smith himself was cast in shades of gray. From his grayish skin, to his flinty gray eyes, to his three-piece gray suit, he was an emotionless figure from the age of black-and-white. A gaunt representative of the World War II generation, he was a man out of time. An anachronistic throwback to an era that an increasing number of Americans were beginning to view as ancient history.

In truth, all was not gray for Harold Smith. In his vest pocket was a small pill-not gray, but white. Fashioned in the shape of a coffin, it held a special place near his heart, not emotionally but literally. On his last day as head of CURE, Smith would remove the pill and swallow it. The fast-acting poison would kill him in a matter of minutes.

He had considered taking the pill several times over the past few years.

The current President had placed a strain on Smith like none of his predecessors had. He seemed unwilling to see CURE for what it was, an emergency firewall to deal with threats both domestic and foreign. There had been a number of instances where the President had wanted to use the resources of CURE for personal or political gain. The most recent was his less than subtle suggestion that Smith help him to remain in office beyond his constitutionally mandated two terms.

Of course Smith had refused. The President had withdrawn into silence broken by occasional bouts of surliness. Smith fully expected that the change of power would come in Washington this weekend without his ever having to speak to the President again. He was surprised when the chief executive called. Even more surprised to learn what it was he wanted Smith to do.

Investigate Raffair. It seemed like such a minor thing-something that shouldn't interest the outgoing leader of the free world. More for the office he held than for the man himself had Smith agreed. A final act of professional courtesy for a man who would almost certainly be one of the last Presidents Harold Smith would serve.

Beyond his picture window, the Sound continued to churn white. Smith blinked the water away. Replacing his spotless glasses, he turned back to his desk. His hands had not yet brushed the keyboard when the blue contact phone on his desk jangled to life.

"Smith," he said crisply.

"Only me, Smitty," Remo's voice announced. "I've got some bad news and some weird news out of New York."

"I have seen the preliminary police report," Smith said. "Fine was murdered in his office."

"That's the bad. By the sounds of it, in broad daylight in a building full of people," Remo said. "We didn't have much time to ask around, so you're gonna have to keep your eyes peeled for police reports if you want us to follow up."

"Why?" Smith frowned. "Did you have difficulty there?"

"We had difficulty everywhere," Remo said. "As far as the inside-the-building part goes, there was screaming, shooting, running. You know, the usual."

Smith pursed his lips. "Remo, I have a report here of two men who eluded police capture at the LFB building this morning," he began cautiously.

"Did they baffle their pursuers by effecting an amazing escape from a moving elevator car?" Remo asked proudly.

Shutting his eyes, Smith pinched the bridge of his nose. "That was you and Chiun," he said dully.

"Escaping, yes," Remo agreed. "But it was my idea to use the trapdoor."

"It was also his idea to get us shot at, Emperor Smith," the Master of Sinanju's squeaky voice called from the nearby background.

"Technically, that was more the cops' idea than it was mine, Little Father," Remo said.

"Remo," Smith interrupted wearily, "I should not have to remind you to exercise discretion."

"Discretion had nothing to do with this one, Smitty," Remo said. "The folks there were already wired about Larry Fine's Raffair business partners long before we even showed up. Chiun's thinking it's some kind of Mob hit."

"I said nothing of the kind," the Master of Sinanju called. "I merely correctly observed that the stooge's killers were sons of the Tiber."

"Tiber?" Smith sounded puzzled.

"Does he mean they were Italians?"

"At the risk of getting picketed by the antidefamation league, yeah," Remo said. "At least that's the vibe he got from sniffing around the body."

"Hmm," Smith mused. "The Mafia angle might fit with what little I have learned of Raffair so far. They seem marginally connected to trucking, construction, waste removal and the like. However, on the surface, Raffair's activities appear to be legal."

"Yeah? Well, dig deeper," Remo said. "Because by the looks of it, they've got roving hit squads out trying to stab innocent pedestrians."

"What are you talking about?" Smith asked. Remo quickly told him about the two masked men he and Chiun had encountered on Wall Street. "That does not make sense," Smith said once he was through. "If you are telling me everything, you did nothing at LFB to provoke such an attack." "I'm glad you're with me on this one, Smitty," Remo said. "All we were doing was minding our own business. Oh, and the guys with the knives were wearing some kind of button. I never saw the design before. I gave a cabbie a couple hundred bucks to drive it out there."

Smith's brow was troubled. "I am curious to see it," he admitted. "I would have to say, however, that this attack-whatever the reason-is unrelated to your visit to LFB. Perhaps it was a simple assault."

"I don't know," Remo said uncertainly. "They seemed to be targeting me specifically."

"Nonetheless, I doubt we need be concerned that it has anything to do with Raffair." Smith's voice remained troubled.

"If you say so," Remo grumbled. "I have my doubts, though. And while we're on the subject, what the hell kind of name is Raffair?"

This was something that had vexed Smith from the start. "It strikes me as somewhat familiar," he admitted. "Although I have no idea from where I would know it." His brow wrinkled above his tired eyes. "No matter. After the events in Fine's office, as well as your encounter in the street, it would be best for you and Chiun to return home. I will do further research on this end."

"You're doing a lot of work for a guy who's gonna be out of office in a couple of days, Smitty," Remo suggested. "Just in case you forgot, Chiun and I are due to make him forget all about our little quilting bee this Friday night."

Alone in his Folcroft office, Smith's spine stiffened at Remo's reminder. His thoughts turned to his earlier concerns for his own memory.

"I had not forgotten," the CURE director replied tightly. He moved to his keyboard. "Raffair has established several offices around the country," he said as he typed. "When you arrive in Boston, perhaps you should check the one there before going home."

He read Remo the address from his monitor. "Can do," Remo agreed. "And we'll do our best to keep from getting shot at. Scout's honor." With that, the buzz of a dial tone replaced Remo's voice. Smith hung up the phone.

He sat there for a moment, staring off into space. Remo's flippant attitude toward the events in and outside the LFB building had become the norm. There was a time when even he would have recognized what a potentially serious breach of security his and Chiun's actions of this morning represented. Not anymore. That Remo was long gone. In a lot of ways, his attitude was now Chiun's.

Perhaps it was Smith's own fault. Maybe he had been too forgiving of these lapses. It just seemed that there was no way to rein in Remo and Chiun.

A muted ringing shook him from his reverie.

It was the special White House line. The President was no doubt looking for another update.

For the first time in a long time, Smith let the phone go to two rings. Finally, with an exhausted groan, he stretched his gnarled hand to his bottom desk drawer.

Chapter 10

Mark Howard scanned the Associated Press report for the third time.

The news story out of New York was short. A junior executive at Lippincott, Forsythe, Butler had been murdered. Mark wouldn't have given the story a second look if not for the connection to Raffair.

As it was, he studied the terse text carefully. His green eyes-flecked at pupils' edges with creeping brown-were alert, straining to see something he might have missed.

There was nothing.

No feelings came to him as he exited the report. There was no need. It didn't take any weird supernatural instinct to tell him that somebody was covering their tracks.

In the privacy of his drab cubicle, recycled basement air hissing through rusted vents, Mark leaned back in his cheap blue swivel chair.

He'd picked up the chair himself at an office supply store after his last one had broken. The way the CIA's budget had been going these past few years, he would have been lucky if they'd requisitioned him an orange crate to sit on.

He had been trying to put that morning's White House meeting out of his mind. There was something extralegal going on at the highest level of American government. And somehow-at least peripherally-Mark Howard was involved. Since he had no control over it, he'd opted to ignore it.

On his desk sat a manila folder. He'd begun assembling a file on Raffair after the botched DEA raid the previous week.

There had been a lot to sift through. Mark had spent many monotonous hours collating the material, most of it on his own time. Still leaning back, he stretched out a hand, pulling the folder into his lap. Absently, he flipped open the cover.

The alphabetized listing of Raffair's offices was on top. The first was Boston, followed by Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans and New York.

For some reason, his eyes strayed to the short paragraph he'd assembled on the Boston office.

The building had been recently purchased by a Paul Petito. Mark found the transaction listed in the real-estate transfer section of the Boston Blade. According to public company records, Petito was Raffair's Boston branch manager.

Mark was surprised to learn after digging only a little further that Raffair wasn't that particular about whom they hired.

Petito had a criminal history dating back to his teens. Although he seemed to have dabbled in everything from extortion to burglary, apparently his real passion lay in counterfeiting. According to Mark's information, Petito had been released from his most recent prison sentence two months ago. He had bought the Boston Raffair building one month later.

Earlier in the day, Mark had printed the phrase "funny money?" in the margin beside Petito's name. Picking up a pen from his desk, he underlined the words.

Doodling absently on the paper, Mark allowed his thoughts to stray back to his early-morning meeting in the Oval Office.

The President had been deeply angry about something. Part of Mark's special gift allowed him to sense very strong emotions. Although it didn't take a mind reader to know that the President was unhappy about something, Mark alone had sensed how embittered the chief executive truly was. The well of resentment he wallowed in was deep and wide. And by the sound of what he'd muttered, a good chunk of his anger was directed at Mark's own General Smith.

How this involved him, Mark had no idea.

With a sigh, he pulled himself out of his thoughts. When he looked back down at his notes, he was surprised to see that his wandering pen had written something.

The words "Asian" and "white" were now written in the margin next to his other notation. An arrow beside the sloppily printed words steered directly to the word "Boston."

Shocked, Mark looked down at his fingers. It was as if someone else's hand had taken root at the end of his arm.

He had long grown used to the strange episodes that had been with him all his life. They were all easily identifiable, falling into the same neat categories. But this...

This was new.

Mark glanced back down at the paper.

Another word was written beside the others. It was this one that had caused him the most concern. The word was "death."

In the cool of Langley's basement, Mark felt a shiver of fear. Standing woodenly from his chair, he took the single doodle-filled sheet from the top of the slender Raffair file.

Somewhere in the CIA headquarters, there had to be a shredder that wasn't broken. Paper in hand, Mark Howard went off in search of it.

Chapter 11

Seymour Botz had just about had it with the constant talking. Not that he'd ever dare say so. Under ordinary circumstances, Seymour didn't have much of a spine, but when dealing with Louis DiGrotti, the timid accountant from Boston's Whitehall and Marx was without vertebrae, spinal cord and most of the musculature in his upper and lower back.

"I ain't seen one walrus since I got here," Louis DiGrotti snarled. Even with his tough Bronx accent, every word he uttered sounded like a whining complaint.

"Walrus?" Seymour asked, trying to sound interested.

"Yeah," DiGrotti nodded. "Them's the ones what got them big teeth in the front." He demonstrated with a pair of pencils from his desk. "I thought I seen one yesterday," he said, spitting out the pencils, "but it was just a dog."

It had been like this ever since Louis DiGrotti had shown up at Boston's Raffair office from New York. The big man-who, according to reputation, was adept at mangling much more than just the English language--knew Boston was north of his regular haunts. Geography not being one of his strong suits, DiGrotti had assumed it was somewhere roughly between the wilds of untamed Canada and Santa's magic workshop.

Even though he'd been in town for two weeks without getting run down by an advancing glacier, he still hadn't been disabused of his preconceived notions.

"I tooked a pitcher of it just in case," DiGrotti continued. On his desk was a small disposable camera. He had a drawerful. Louis was going to make a photo album of all the amazing animals he encountered while in exile in the Boston tundra.

"I guess it coulda been a walrus," he mused. "It was real small, though. Maybe it was a baby walrus. Or a cat."

Across the room at his own desk, Seymour did his best to tune out the other man's voice.

DiGrotti had already taken dozens of snapshots of a moose that was actually a shrub, a fire-hydrant penguin and a sleeping polar bear that was really a snow-covered Volvo.

"Youse know what really pisses me off?" DiGrotti said. "Dem reindeer. I been up every night till two since I got here and I ain't seen one. My neck's killin' me."

He rubbed at the back of his neck with a massive hand. Both hand and neck were covered with hair. So was the rest of his hulking body.

Back home in New York, he was known as Louis the Bear. Some said that he bathed in Rogaine. Of course, they had sense enough to say this behind his furry back. In addition to his physical resemblance to his animal namesake, Louis the Bear had a temper as great as the average grizzly and the strength to back it up.

Seymour Botz was aware enough of Louis DiGrotti's intimidating size to not test his temper. The accountant continued to work as the big man talked.

"I figured the reindeer would be the easy ones to find what with all that sky up there," Louis complained. "They must be hidin' out with all the walruses."

Frowning deeply, he picked up his camera. He was picking at the lens when the bell above the front door suddenly jingled to life.

Louis glanced up, a hopeful expression tugging at his five-o'clock shadow. But instead of a wayward reindeer, it was two men who had just entered Raffair's Boston offices. Face sagging once more, Louis tossed his camera to his desk.

"Damn Rudolphs," he growled.

The two men didn't seem to hear him. As they crossed to the desks, they continued an argument that had started outside.

"I'm not saying you can't listen to her," the young white guy was saying.

"You are absolutely not saying that," the old Chinaman interrupted icily.

"I'm just saying that the neighbors might appreciate it if you didn't turn it up so loud when you're not in the room. At least until I can replace the broken windows," Remo said.

"And who broke the windows?" Chiun replied frostily. "Besides, our neighbors are Vietnamese. If I can get used to the sounds of cats being strangled every night at dinnertime, they certainly cannot complain about the lovely Wylander."

"Wylander gives the cats a run for their money," Remo muttered. "Let's just try to keep the volume down, okay?"

"Absolutely not," Chiun sniffed. "Will you next muzzle the nightingale or whippoorwill? Where will your callous attacks on beauty end? I must draw a line in the sand."

At his desk, Seymour Botz eyed the new arrivals with concern. "Can I help you gentlemen with something?" he asked, his eyes bouncing from one man to the other.

"Just a sec," Remo said. "The only birds you can link to Wylander Jugg are the three hundred that give up their lives every week to fill her buckets of extra crispy."

Seymour cast a confused eye at Louis DiGrotti. The big man was reacting to the two visitors not with bemusement but with concern. Eyeing Remo and Chiun, he was slowly sliding a furry hand beneath his jacket.

Seymour shot to his feet as if his chair were on fire.

"You want stock!" he sang, hoping to cut off any violence. "I can give you a list of Boston brokers!"

Fumbling at the papers on his desk, he held a sheet out to Remo.

Remo turned a bland eye on the computer printout.

"Not interested," he said. "I believe in gold not stock."

"Don't think you can get around me that way," Chiun cautioned.

Remo ignored the old man. "Look," he said to Seymour Botz, "I just wasted a whole day flying to New York to visit a dead man and I've apparently got a night of Grand Ole Opry and angry phone calls to deal with, so why don't we just make this easy for everybody concerned and tell me who's pulling the strings on Raffair."

Botz tensed. "I don't know what you mean," he sniffed.

"Well, first off, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's dirty," Remo suggested. "Otherwise, the office Furby wouldn't be pointing that gun at us."

"He is pointing it at you, not us," Chiun corrected. "People must be instinctively drawn to your negative energy."

Botz spun to Louis DiGrotti. When he saw the gun in his huge hand, his eyes went wide. "What do you think you're doing?" the accountant cried.

"Friggin' reindeer," DiGrotti growled. "If them and the walruses ain't gonna help me do what I wanna do, I'm at least gonna do what I was sent here to do."

With that pronouncement, he squeezed the trigger.

A sound like a sharp thunderclap exploded in the small office. It was followed nearly simultaneously by the meaty thwack of lead against forehead.

As the smoke cleared, Louis the Bear blinked. And frowned.

Remo still stood before Seymour Botz's desk. Behind the desk, Seymour's mouth was open wide. For some reason, a thick maroon dent dotted the center of his forehead.

When the accountant lurched forward onto his blotter, the spray of brain and bone from the back of his blown-out head could be seen decorating the office wall.

"Wha... ?" Louis questioned, unable to wrap his tiny brain around what had just transpired.

A clamping pain on his wrist drew his attention. When he looked down, he found himself staring into the upturned face of the Master of Sinanju. Chiun squeezed, and Louis DiGrotti's hand sprang obediently open. His gun thudded to the floor.

"Tell me, Remo, have you ever met someone who did not shoot at you?" Chiun said blandly as Remo stepped over.

"Never happened till I met you," Remo replied. He turned to DiGrotti. "Okay, spill it, fuzzy. What's the deal with Raffair? And make it snappy before you start shedding all over my pants."

"Raffair?" DiGrotti said, blinking. He was coming out of it. One eye glanced down at his gun. It was lying on the floor near the leg of his desk.

"Okay," Rerno declared. "Let's remove all distractions."

He bent and scooped up Louis's gun, handing it back to the thug.

Louis would have used the handgun on his assailants had something strange not happened to the weapon on the way up from the floor. It had apparently disintegrated.

Woodenly, Louis looked at the fragments of scrap metal in his hand. They rattled. When he looked back up, Remo was slapping a cloud of metal dust from his palms.

"Your teeth are next," Remo said flatly. Feeling true fear for the first time in his life, Louis "The Bear" DiCrrotti offered a wide, agreeable smile. Thinking better of it, he slapped a hand over his mouth protectively.

"Whatever you wanna know, I'll tell you," he promised, his voice muffled by his big furry palm. Remo opened his mouth to speak, but the Master of Sinanju suddenly forced his way in front of his Pupil.

"I have a question," he announced imperiously.

"Chiun, can we get this over with?" Remo griped.

"Silence, hater of beauty," the old Korean snapped. He trained a steely hazel eye on Louis DiGrotti. "You will speak truth, hairy one?" he demanded.

Both hands now clamped over his mouth, DiGrotti nodded. "Uh-huh," he mumbled.

"Then tell my loutish son who has two tin ears how much you enjoy the singing of the lilting siren Wylander."

Behind a faceful of overlapping hands, DiGrotti's brow dropped low. "Wylander?" he asked from between his fingers. "Ain't she dat heifer country star? She's awful, ain't she?"

His guileless eyes stared hopefully down at the old man as he nodded at the truth of his own words. DiGrotti continued nodding even as he saw the faint rustle of fabric at the old man's kimono sleeve. He thought he was nodding even as he felt the sudden pressure against his neck. He was only marginally certain he'd stopped nodding when his head slipped off his shoulders and the floor came racing up to meet him. He hit, rolled, stopped nodding and stopped processing all conscious thought at the exact same moment.

Remo jumped forward even as Chiun's hands were returning to his sides.

"What the hell did you do that for?" he demanded as DiGrotti's headless corpse toppled backward to the floor.

"I was merely saving you from wasting any more precious time," the old man said. "If this shaggy thing would lie about the comely Wylander, he would lie about anything."

He flicked a single droplet of blood from one tapered fingernail before replacing his hands in his kimono sleeves.

"Next time, could you check with me before doing me a favor?" Remo had to take a step back to avoid the widening pool of blood.

"It was not only for you," the Master of Sinanju sniffed. "By insulting the fair Wylander with his words of hate, he offended all of what it means to be truly American. Such a slur could not be allowed to pass unpunished on this most solemn and holy week for your fledgling nation. I was merely doing my patriotic duty."

"Why don't you let me worry about the national honor and you worry about not getting filmed lopping people's heads off," Remo said sourly. "Or didn't you notice that?" He aimed a finger ceilingward.

In the far corner of the room, a single motionless video camera peered out across the office.

"Of course I noticed," the Master of Sinanju replied blandly. "Now go and collect the tape. You may use it as an educational tool when we return to Castle Sinanju. I will be in the car."

With that, the old man spun on one sandaled heel and marched from the building.

Alone, Remo shook his head. "Old buzzard," he muttered.

He ducked into a back room. At the ceiling, the camera wires ran in from the front. When he followed them to a supply shelf, Remo expected to find a VCR.

The wires continued out into a back hallway.

He began to worry when he found that the cable wire ran up a dark stairwell.

Three flights up, the cable snaked out onto the roof. Remo's stomach sank when he saw where it led.

A squat white satellite dish was affixed to the icy roof ledge. Tilted up, it was aimed in a southerly direction. The fat black cable was connected to the back of the dish.

With troubled eyes, Remo looked up at the night sky. The city lights dulled the diamonds of the stars. A cold breeze blew up, tousling his short hair and flapping his chinos. When he spoke, Remo's voice was small.

"Uh-oh," he said to the desolate wind.

Chapter 12

There wasn't even a hint of movement. Maybe a tiny flutter of purple. If you looked hard enough.

Louis "The Bear" DiGrotti was just standing there one minute, hands over his mouth, scared-Louis the Bear actually scared-and the next minute, he was in pieces on the floor.

"Damn, his head just up and drops off," one of the men in the small bedroom said, his gruff voice amazed.

Behind him came a terrified peep. It was the tenth time they'd watched the video, and it still shocked Paul Petito.

"Maybe it was already loose," Mikey "Skunks" Falcone suggested. "Like a tooth."

"Heads don't just come loose," Petito insisted.

"I had a toenail that did once," Mikey Skunks said. "And toenails ain't supposed to come off. Maybe Bear's head's like my toenail."

"No," Petito stated firmly. "That old Chinese guy chopped it off."

On the TV screen for the tenth time that evening, Chiun flicked a dollop of blood from the tip of his index nail.

Although the three men in that room had seen the tape multiple times, the man they had beamed it to in New York was viewing it for the very first time. Apparently, he hadn't expected so grisly a scene.

"Oh, my God," Sol Sweet's nasal voice gasped over the speakerphone.

For several long seconds afterward, Anselmo Scubisci's lawyer could be heard retching over the crisp line.

Paul Petito couldn't blame him. He'd had the same reaction the first few times they'd watched the images that had been beamed into his Massachusetts home. Fingers stained black with old ink wiped sweat from his forehead.

"My God, he just-" Sweet's voice finally managed to say. "How did he do that?"

"I guess with them fingernails," Mikey Skunks suggested. "They're pretty long. Maybe he's got, I don't know, razors or something taped to the backs."

Sol Sweet seemed to not even hear the speculation. "This isn't-" he began. "I mean, it can't... Who are they?"

"I don't know, Mr. Sweet. Coupla guys, I guess. Hey, you want us to do 'em?"

Paul Petito's eyes went wide. He wheeled around. Mikey Skunks was calmly watching the screen. Along with the other New York import, he sat on the edge of Paul's bed, a bored look on his face.

There was a pause on the line as Sol Sweet collected his thoughts. "Yes," he ventured finally. "Now, let me think. I'm not sure I heard the last thing you said, but I think our mutual employer would want you to do what he'd do under these same circumstances." He didn't want to get roped into giving any direct orders. These days, there was no telling who might be listening in on private conversations.

Mikey Skunks scratched his cheek thoughtfully. "I'm pretty sure Don Anselmo would want us to kill them, Mr. Sweet," he suggested.

There was another gasp from the speaker, this one panicked. The line abruptly went dead.

"Yeah," Skunks nodded. "He wants us to kill them." Tongue jutting between his broad lips, he thumbed the VCR remote, rolling back the tape once more.

"So how do we find them?" Petito asked.

He sounded ill. This business at the Boston Raffair office was like some awful dream. Paul Petito was just a counterfeiter. He'd been roped into this for selfish reasons that had nothing to do with killing or being killed.

"We get a picture from here," Skunks said, waving at the image of Remo and Chiun on the screen. "Then I guess we circulate it, start asking around. Can you get their pictures from the TV?"

Petito nodded. "I know a guy who can do it digitally," he said weakly. As he spoke, he was vaguely aware of the front door opening.

Skunks heard the sound, too. "It's about time," he snarled. "We're in here!" he hollered.

By now, the tape had rolled back to the start. Remo and Chiun were standing at the desks in the Boston Raffair office when Paul Petito's bedroom door opened. A fourth man entered the room, lugging two big paper bags. The warm smells of greasy sausage and tomato sauce poured from the bags.

"What, we eating in here?" he asked with a scowl.

"Shh!" Skunks snapped at the new arrival. "Here," he said, pointing at the TV.

On the screen, Louis DiGrotti's head was just rolling off his neck.

"What the hell?" The new man gaped. "Was that the Bear?"

Skunks and the others nodded.

"How did he-?" The man with the bags froze midsentence.

On the screen, Remo had just stepped forward. He was plainly visible now, standing next to the Master of Sinanju.

Two shopping bags dropped to the worn carpet. White foam containers split open, spilling red sauce all over the floor. Flecks of red splattered on shoes, wall and bed.

As the others jumped angrily away from the mess, the latest arrival remained rooted in place. He continued to stare in shock at the satellite-fed taped image on the crystal-clear screen.

Remo's cruel face remained in sharp focus.

The man standing in the puddle of sauce shook his head in uncomprehending shock. In the center of his forehead, between his wide-open eyes, was a large purple bruise.

When he at last spoke, his voice was small. "Oh, shit, not him again," gasped Johnny "Books" Fungillo.

Chapter 13

"This is inexcusable," Harold Smith accused, struggling to control his anger. "How could you allow yourself to be filmed? I thought that you and Master Chiun could avoid cameras."

"Avoid, yes," Remo said aridly. "When we need to. But I didn't think we had to here. I figured this was just some other dumb-ass stop that didn't matter. Besides, I thought I could just snag the tape. How was I supposed to know it'd be hooked up to a satellite dish?"

When Smith exhaled, a rusty noise escaped like a wounded genie from the mouthpiece of the pay phone.

Chiun glanced up, his wrinkled face puckering with displeasure at the sound.

"Your enemies will quake in fear when they behold the terrifying wrath of the Master of Sinanju, Emperor Smith!" he called loudly. Dropping his voice low, he said to Remo, "Remind me to do something to aid his breathing the next time we see him. Those wheezing jackass brays are becoming depressing."

"Please tell Master Chiun that I am less concerned about my enemies than I am about the organization," Smith said tersely.

Remo cupped the phone. "Smitty says-"

"I heard," Chiun said thinly.

The old Korean stood near the curb a few feet away from Remo's sidewalk phone. Hands clasped behind his back, he turned his gaze back to the street where he'd been watching Boston traffic, leaving Remo and Smith to discuss their white nonsense.

"Anyway, I didn't know what I should do, Smitty," Remo said, "so I figured I'd better call."

"What you should have done was avoid the camera in the first place," Smith said tartly.

Remo's brow darkened. "Hey, I didn't want to schlepp off on this hare-brained assignment for Captain Diddlepants in the first place," he warned. "So take the snot somewhere else or Chiun and I are outta here."

Smith sighed again. "I'm sorry," he said. "I suppose recriminations are pointless anyway until we find out what it is we are dealing with." He gave a thoughtful hum. "You're certain it was a satellite dish?" he asked abruptly.

"Yeah, I think," Remo replied. "It was one of those cockamamie Frisbee-looking things."

"And you're sure there was no video equipment on the premises?"

"The cable went right from the camera to the dish. I might not be too good with gadgets, but I can follow a wire."

"Perhaps it is a private security company," Smith mused.

"Great," Remo said. "Gimme an address and I'll get the tape from them."

"One minute, please."

A few seconds of gentle tapping on his special keyboard, and the older man was back on the line. "This is strange," the CURE director said. "I checked to see if there was a local security firm in the employ of Raffair, Boston. When I found none, I checked nationally. There is no record of any security company anywhere doing business in any way at all with Raffair."

"So what?" Remo said. "Maybe they're just a little too trusting."

An impatient hiss came from the curb.

"They do not need hirelings, for they are guarded by their own reputation," the Master of Sinanju called over his shoulder. He was now studying the parked cars that lined the side of the road. A black Mercedes had caught his eye.

Smith had heard the old Asian's words. "It is strange for an operation that spans the country to not have at least some outside security," he agreed. "But if Raffair is inspiring fear, it must be purely by word of mouth, for there is no electronic record."

"Not word of mouth alone, Smitty," Remo disagreed. "If they've got a guy at every office like the one whose head Chiun lopped off here, most people'd have sense enough to tread lightly."

Smith's tone grew strained. "He decapitated him?" he asked wearily.

"Oh. Didn't I mention that?"

Ignoring Remo's sheepish tone, the CURE director plowed on. "I will attempt to find out where the signal might have been sent," he said. "Until I uncover a lead, you and Chiun may return home."

"Raise a flag," a squeaky voice volunteered behind Remo. It was followed by a piercing metallic scratching sound, like fingernails on a blackboard.

When Remo glanced back, he found that the Master of Sinanju had taken more than a passing interest in the parked Mercedes. Bored, the old man was drawing the edge of one long fingernail across the door panel. In the nail's wake, a shiny line of exposed silver glinted in the streetlights. A slender corkscrew of peeled paint curled down into the curbside snow pile.

"Knock it off, Chiun," Remo groused. Apparently, the noise was such that only sensitive eardrums were bothered by it. Somewhere distant, a pair of dogs howled.

The wizened Korean ignored his pupil.

"Didn't you say there were other offices, Smitty?" Remo asked. He scowled as he plugged his free ear. "Maybe we could find out who saw us from them."

"Unwise," Smith said, unmindful of the persistent noise on Remo's end. "We do not need another compromising incident today. Your images could have been sent to them by now. If this is the case, were you to show up at another Raffair office at this point, it is likely they would shoot first."

"It is more likely that they would hold their manhood and run, Emperor," Chiun proclaimed as he continued etching the door. "Any blackguard with designs on your throne would be cowed by my demonstration. Thanks to Sinanju, you may rest your regal head on silken pillows, confident in the knowledge that Fortress Falcroft is safe."

"Please inform Master Chiun that it is not Folcroft that concerns me," Smith said seriously. "The Boston Raffair office is very close to your own home. It is the two of you who could be in danger."

At that did Chiun raise his head. His weathered face was astonished.

"Just when I think the lunatic can't get more insane," he said. Shaking his head in amazement, he returned to his work. A trapezoid shape familiar to Remo had begun to form on the car's door panel.

"I don't think Chiun's sweating this one too much, Smitty," Remo informed the CURE director. "Nevertheless, please remain cautious, Remo. We still don't know who it is we are dealing with. And it's a good rule of thumb for the two of you to keep a low profile whenever you are in Massachusetts."

"Point taken," Remo said. "And speaking of risks to life and limb, did you find out anything from that button I sent you?"

"Oh, I had forgotten," Smith admitted. He seemed irritated with himself for the lapse. "I searched several iconography databases. The design on the button was unknown to all of them. Since it appears on the surface to be meaningless, we can assume that the two men who attacked you were nothing more than common street criminals."

"They weren't decked out for mugging, Smitty," Remo said. "My money still says they're with Raffair."

"And I assume not, but I will keep an open mind," Smith said. "According to the New York coroner's office, neither man carried identification, so we may never know. However, I will continue to monitor that situation, as well as Raffair. If anything new turns up in either case, I will call you at home." With that, Smith terminated the call.

Turning from the phone booth, Remo joined the Master of Sinanju at the curb. Chiun was etching a final, bisecting line through the center of his silver trapezoid.

"He seems more on edge than usual," Remo commented as the last thread of curling paint fell to the snow.

"Water cannot be more wet than wet," Chiun observed, uninterested. "There," he proclaimed, extending a palm to the simple trapezoid design he had engraved on the car door. "The symbol of our House, engraved as it should be. With the Knives of Eternity and not with some silly machete."

Remo glanced at the old man, dark surprise clouding his face. "The Luzu blabbed, didn't they?" he accused.

Chiun shrugged as he clasped opposing wrists.

"Do not blame the messenger," he said. "It is you who must resort to tools because you refuse to grow your nails to their proper length. My only hope now is that your own student will be more traditional."

Turning from his pupil, he began padding down the sidewalk. Although sand had been spread liberally on the path to provide traction on the ice, his soles made not a single scuffing mark or sound.

Remo trotted up beside him, a thoughtful expression on his face. "Speaking of the Luzu, how traditional are they-I mean with succession and all? Like for king, for instance."

Chiun raised a thin eyebrow. "The eldest son succeeds the father," he replied.

"Hmm," Remo said. "And that big fat chief they've got now, is Bubu his eldest son or his only son?"

They had met the tribal chief and his offspring while in Africa on their last assignment.

"Chief Batubizee is fortunate to have five sons other than the one you met," Chiun replied cautiously. "Each is in line to succeed the other. Why do you ask?"

"Oh," Remo shrugged. "No reason. The sign of Sinanju." He jerked his head back in the direction from whence they'd come. "You just reminded me of all that nonsense back in East Africa is all." Dodging the suspicious slits that were the Master of Sinanju's eyes, he quickly changed the subject. "You know, Smitty might be right, by the way. Until he finds out where our faces were beamed, it might be smart for us to lay low for a while."

The tiny Korean gave him a baleful look. "A Master of Sinanju does not scurry down a hole like a frightened rabbit. Smith forces us to lurk in shadows too much as it is."

"Different world than it used to be, Little Father," Remo pointed out. "No more pharaohs' courts and royal assassins. Gotta adapt to the times."

"Do not remind me," Chiun droned. "What I would not give for another Herod or Attila. Even a Borgia or two. But cruel fate has given me a Smith, and so Smith I must endure."

Beside the tiny Asian, Remo's face was pensive. He seemed lost in private thoughts.

"We all have our crosses to bear, Little Father," he said softly.

Chapter 14

When the President of the United States trudged into his secretary's office from the hallway, he did his best to ignore the large plastic storage totes and cheap collapsible cardboard boxes that were stacked four-high around the room.

"That package arrive from CIA yet, Betty?" he asked.

His frazzled secretary nodded. "Yes, Mr. President," she said, handing him an envelope from the top of the mess on her desk. It was embossed with the emblem of the Central Intelligence Agency. "You've got an 11:00 p.m. meeting with the incoming President this Friday night, like you asked."

"Mmm," the President said absently as he headed for the nearby door to the Oval Office. With one pudgy pale finger, he broke the seal on the envelope. He tapped the contents into his free hand as he shouldered the door open. The President took only two steps into the room before he froze in midstep.

"Betty!" he thundered hoarsely.

His secretary stuck her head into the room. "Sir?"

"Where the hell's my desk?" he demanded. He waved the envelope toward the spot where his desk had sat for the past eight years. It was the same desk JFK had used.

The desk was gone. Brilliant yellow light from the floor-to-ceiling windows on the wall behind cascaded over the vacant area, shining brightly on the permanent indentation the heavy desk had made in the carpet, as well as emphasizing the many spots and stains on the rug.

"Oh," his secretary said worriedly. "It was gone when I came in this morning. I assumed you asked the GS staff to move it."

"No," he answered flatly. "I didn't."

"Oh," she said again. "Do you want me to look for it?"

He shook his head with quiet anger. "Don't bother," he grumbled. "I'll be upstairs."

CIA documents in hand, he left the Oval Office. Things had been turning up missing at the White House for the past year or so. Since they'd never owned a real home of their own, the only furniture the President and First Lady had in storage during their years in Washington was a few torn beanbag chairs and a couple of broken lava lamps.

His wife needed furnishings for the house she'd acquired in New York and so had been helping herself to odds and ends around the Washington mansion for months. Lately, however, the items had been getting larger.

An entire set of Bellange chairs was gone from the Blue Room, and someone had pried the carved marble mantel from around the fireplace in the Green Room. The chandelier and table had gone missing from the State Dining Room, and nearly the entire collection of antique books dating back to President Fillmore had slowly disappeared from the library. The Smithsonian had just gotten word that the Steinway grand piano had somehow vanished from the East Room late last week.

The President had hoped to blame the strange disappearances on a bureaucratic snafu at the Smithsonian Institution. But now with his own desk among the missing, he wasn't sure if he shouldn't just blame the White House staff, sic the FBI on them and sneak away in the confusion. After all, it had worked for two straight presidential terms.

On top of the stolen-furniture problem, his wife had dropped yet another doozy of a dilemma in the President's lap right after he'd gotten off the phone with Smith yesterday. Her ambition was always getting him in trouble. He had no idea how this new mess was going to play out.

He was still wondering what exactly he should do when he entered the family quarters.

He was greatly relieved to find the First Dog nowhere in sight. As the elevator doors closed behind him, the only sound he could hear was the meowing of the unseen First Cat. Documents in hand, he hurried down the hall to a small study.

This room was as cluttered as most in the White House these days. He found a clear spot on the sofa and settled down to read the documents.

The President had called Mark Howard personally and asked the young man to send over the information. To cover the trail, he'd had Howard courier them through the CIA director's office.

Though obviously curious, Howard had accepted the unusual orders without question. The kid was intelligent, quiet and obedient. With any luck, he'd be loyal to boot.

The President quickly went through the information. There wasn't anything of any great interest. Still, he had to find something. He'd made a promise, after all, to the one person in the world he couldn't betray.

Taking but one sheet of paper, the President stood.

There were a number of paper shredders plugged in in perpetuity in this room. Some were battery operated just in case the regular power sources and emergency backup systems ever went out. Most of the shredders were battered and wobbly from overuse.

Selecting a big workhorse model that had been an anniversary gift from an order of Buddhist nuns, he ran the bulk of the papers and the CIA envelope through the machine.

With his lone piece of paper in hand, the President left the disordered study and headed down the hall toward the Lincoln Bedroom.

IT WAS ONLY 9:00 a.m. and Harold Smith was ready to call it a day. He had spent the previous long night attempting to learn where Remo and Chiun's satellite images had been beamed. He'd had no luck. Morning's light found fatigue and anxiety etched deep in the gray lines of his face.

In days gone by, many a sleepless night had Smith remained at his desk. He had been finding out these past few years that at his age it wasn't as easy as it had once been.

But he could not leave. He was right to be concerned.

What should have been a simple visit to the Boston offices of Raffair had turned into a security threat to CURE.

More than anything else, Smith worried about secrecy. The very existence of CURE was an admission that America and her Constitution had failed. If the organization were ever to become known beyond the tight inner circle of Smith, Remo, Chiun and the President, the consequences would be dire.

The rooftop satellite could have beamed Remo and Chiun's images anywhere. Some unknown entity had a glimpse of CURE's enforcement arm in action.

For Smith, the one silver lining in all this had been the thought that Raffair wasn't likely to involve the authorities in the events at their Boston offices.

To do so would be to invite the sort of scrutiny they obviously shied away from. However, the bodies had been discovered by a customer who had entered the building after Remo and Chiun. Word of the deaths had gotten out. Still, as long as the company held on to the tape, there was hope.

Raffair itself continued to be a dead end. Smith had connected a number of small-time criminals to the company, but a larger corporate structure had yet to emerge. Given events in Boston, he would prefer to go after the Hydra's main head rather than send Remo and Chiun up the chain of command.

Beneath the onyx surface of Smith's desk, the word "Raffair" was printed in ghostly fashion on his buried computer screen. The patient cursor blinked methodically, partially obscuring the first R with every strobelike flash.

As usual, the name sparked something in the deepest recesses of Smith's mind. He had begun to assume that it was just his tired brain playing tricks on him.

Surrendering for a moment to his weariness, Smith turned to face the picture window.

The wind was not as severe today. The black waters of Long Island Sound rolled to shore in soothing waves. The old boat dock rose and fell in time with the water. It was by way of that very dock that a much younger Harold Smith had first entered the grounds of Folcroft Sanitarium.

Farther out across the sound, a few boats bobbed in the wan winter light. Smith had seen many such boaters while ensconced in his Spartan office. Decades' worth.

For Harold Smith, this view had always had a calming effect. Someday it would belong to someone else. Either a new head of CURE or the next director of Folcroft. In a brief moment of introspection, Smith wondered if his replacement in that lonely chair would find pleasure in the view. And in that moment, the telephone rang.

"Yes, Mr. President," Smith said once he'd pulled the red phone from his desk drawer.

"Any progress, Smith?" the hoarse voice of the President of the United States demanded.

"None of any significance," Smith admitted, leaning back in his chair. "My people went to New York to check with the firm that helped launch Raffair as a public company. However, the lead there had been severed before they arrived. Beyond that, the financial structure has not been easy to unravel. There are various trusts and offshore banks to which the money is being funneled. It is clearly an illegal venture, but it has been created by an as-yet-unknown agent."

"Hmm," the President said. His voice had taken on a vague, distant tone. "I understand there are regional offices. Why not try going through one of them?"

Smith frowned. "That has already been attempted," he said carefully. "There was some difficulty at the Boston office. My people were put in a compromising position."

"I know what that's like," the President muttered bitterly. "Were they injured?"

"It would take extraordinary circumstances for them to sustain injury," Smith said. "However, without going into great detail, the situation was less than ideal. I am attempting to use the resources at my disposal to minimize the security risk to CURE."

"You do that," the President said. "In the meantime, what about your people? They still in the Boston area?"

"Yes," Smith admitted. He deliberately did not mention that Remo and Chiun called the Commonwealth of Massachusetts home.

On the other end of the line, Smith heard the faint sound of paper rattling.

"Have them check into someone while they're there. Could help you out. It's a counterfeiter named Paul Petito."

Smith pursed his lips. "I know of him," he said slowly.

The name had turned up in his own research. Though curious as to how the President of the United States would know of a man like Petito, the CURE director held his tongue.

"Yeah, I got a source that says he's linked to Raffair. Might be a good idea to check him out. Move up the chain of command from there." The President's voice suddenly grew more cheerful. "Here, kitty-kitty," he said off the phone.

Smith assumed that the presidential cat had just wandered into the Lincoln Bedroom. A moment later, he heard the sound of contented purring close to the phone.

"At least someone in this town hasn't abandoned me," the President said warmly.

"Mr. President, I'm not sure how much more I can do in this matter," Smith said, trying to steer the chief executive back to the topic at hand. "However, I will see what can be done with Mr. Petito."

"Thanks, Smith," the President said, the warmth still lingering in his tone. "You know, man's best friend ain't a dog," he added knowingly. "Those fickle fleabags'll turn on you faster than a drunken ex-press secretary. Cats are the pets that are the real loyal ones. Nice pussy." This last phrase was uttered lovingly off the phone.

As soon as the President had said it, there came a violent hissing from nearby. It was followed by a yelp of pain from the chief executive.

"Dammit!" the President snapped into the receiver. "She even had the damn cat brainwashed for voice commands."

Smith sat up straighter in his chair. "Is everything all right, Mr. President?" he asked, concerned.

"No," the President said sourly. "Who knew you could have a cat reclawed? Just keep looking into that stuff, Smith. I've gotta go find some Bactine." With a final angry huff, the chief executive severed the connection.

Smith slowly replaced the red phone. The frown on his gaunt face had only deepened during their conversation.

While Presidents often informed Smith of wrong-doing, in the nearly forty-year history of CURE, not one chief executive had ever been interested in something so small.

A counterfeiter. Why would the commander in chief be concerned with something so trivial? Smith glanced down at his computer screen. The word "Raffair" blinked up from the sinister depths of his desk.

Wondering what could be going through the President's mind, Smith stretched a hand for the blue contact phone.

FOR THE SECOND MORNING in a row, Remo's peace was shattered by the full-throated yapping of Wylander Jugg. Rather than get into another argument, he'd ducked outside, ignoring the nasty looks given him by two women pushing baby carriages down the sidewalk in front of Castle Sinanju. He spent the bulk of the day hiding out at the dollar movie theater, returning home as the setting sun was just beginning to touch the tops of the nearest buildings.

The condominium complex was brightly lit and blessedly silent. As he walked inside, the Master of Sinanju was floating down the main staircase.

"Why's it so quiet in here?" Remo asked. "Wylander take eating breaks in midrecord? Not that I think that'd be very quiet."

"I am resting my ears," Chiun said. "A handful of flowers is a bouquet-a field is hay fever."

He turned abruptly away from his pupil, rounding the base of the stairway. Remo trailed the old Korean down the hallway to the kitchen.

"A guy I never met before just stopped me outside to ask us to keep it down in here. His newborn's got colic, and Wylander's keeping her awake."

"Impossible," Chiun sniffed. "If anything, she should be lulled to sleep. Tell this whoever-he-is that his disagreeable offspring will only cause some man grief later in life. He should drown her in Quincy Bay at once and spare her poor future husband."

In the kitchen, Chiun began poking through the cupboards. He crinkled his nose in displeasure. "Good way to make friends," Remo groused, leaning against the counter.

"I do not need friends. I have you."

Although he smelled a scam a mile away, Remo still felt his heart lighten. "Okay, what do you want?"

"Duck," the old man answered. "Preferably ruddy duck."

"Aw, c'mon, Chiun," Remo said, the beginnings of a smile evaporating. "You've got a hundred fish tanks in the cellar."

"I do not feel like fish."

"Okay." Remo sighed, pushing away from the counter. "There's duck in the freezer."

The Master of Sinanju shook his head. "No," he insisted. "You thaw it improperly. I want fresh duck."

"Frozen or fresh tastes the same to me."

"Your barbarian's palate goes well with your Philistine's ears," Chiun droned. "We will go out to eat."

"But I've been out all day," Remo complained. "I had to put up with two hours' worth of that wet-eyed moping that Tom Hanks calls acting, not to mention some sci-fi mess with Jann Revolta in dreadlocks that made me want to start a freaking crusade against that dipwaddle Hollywood cult of his. Can't we just spend a quiet stress quiet-night at home?"

Chiun waited until he was finished. The old Asian wore a deeply thoughtful expression. "I wonder if the restaurant will have ruddy duck?" he mused. "Oh, well. Whatever the house duck is will suffice."

Remo opened his mouth to speak when the phone squawked abruptly to life.

"Oh, and Smith called," the Master of Sinanju offered absently as his pupil reached for the telephone.

"Hello," Remo said into the receiver as he gave the old Asian a peeved glance.

"Remo, it is about time." Smith sounded more agitated than normal. "I have tried to call a dozen times today."

"I spent the afternoon in exile," Remo said aridly. "What's up? You find out where our faces got beamed?"

"Not yet," Smith replied. "The biggest impediment to that search is the easy acquisition of such technology by private individuals. One need no longer hire a service to set up a system like the one you encountered."

"Okay, so we go to question B. What about the guys who attacked me?"

"Nothing on that front, either, I'm afraid," Smith said. "But there is something else you can look into. The man who purchased the building you were filmed in lives near you. Perhaps he can offer a lead, if not to Raffair itself at least to where the satellite image was directed."

Remo scrunched up his face. "I thought we were gonna give the small fries a rest until we could go after the big kahuna."

"There are no small matters where you are concerned, O Emperor," Chiun called. "For anything that gives your soul a moment's distress is an enemy of tranquillity that must be dealt with harshly by your humble servants. Point us to he who vexes your thoughts, and Sinanju will make him rue the day he had the temerity to trouble your sweet mind."

Remo cupped the phone. "You're still angling to go out to eat," he accused.

Chiun's face was bland. "We are going out," he said firmly. "As long as we are, we might as well humor His Royal Grayness. Plus I am tired of his phone calls disturbing my peace every five minutes."

Frowning, Remo took his hand off the phone. "Okay," he sighed. "Looks like we're going out. Who is this guy?"

Smith gave him the name and address of Paul Petito. Remo jotted it down on a pad next to the phone.

"Got it," he said once the CURE director was through. "Although I still don't know why we're wasting our time with all this. I was sure you'd get tired of this whole 'let the President leave with a smile on his face' thing after last night's fiasco. Plus aren't there any maniacs with weather machines or neo-Nazis bent on world conquest out there yet?"