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DESTROYER #33: VOODOO DIE

CHAPTER ONE

Nothing in Rev. Prescott Plumber's past prepared him for making death so easy for anyone who wanted to die, and if someone had told Plumber he would devise a prized war weapon, he would have smiled benevolently.

"Me? War? I am against war. I am against suffering. That is why I became a medical doctor, to use my skills for God and mankind." That is what he would have told people if he had not ended his life as a puddle on a palace floor.

When he left for the small jungle and volcanic rock island of Baqia, south of Cuba and north of Aruba, just off the sea lanes where British pirates had robbed Spanish treasure ships and called it war, the Rev. Dr. Plumber explained to another graduating student at medical school that serving God and mankind was the only worthwhile medical practice.

"Bulldooky," said his classmate in disgust. "Derma-

tology, and I'll tell you why. Unlike surgery, your insurance premiums aren't out of sight, And nobody ever woke a dermatologist up at four A.M. for an emergency acne operation. Your nights are your own, your days are your own, and anybody who thinks they ought to have a face as smooth as surgical rubber is always good pickings."

"I want to go where there is suffering, where there is pain and disease," said Plumber.

"That's sick," said the classmate. "You need a psychiatrist. Look, dermatology. Take my advice. The money's in skin, not God."

At the Baqian National Airport, Rev. Plumber was met by the mission staff in an old Ford station wagon. He was the only one who perspired. He was taken to the offices of the Ministry of Health. He waited in a room, whose walls were covered with impressive charts about ending infant mortality, upgrading nutrition, and providing effective home care. When he looked closer, he saw the charts were bilingual advertisements for the city of Austin, Texas, with Baqia stickers pasted over Austin's name.

The minister for health had one important question for this new doctor serving the mission in the hills:

"You got uppers, senor?"

"What?" asked Dr. Plumber, shocked.

"Reds. You got reds? You got greens? I'll take greenies."

"Those are narcotics."

"I need them for my health. And if I don't get them for my health, back you go to the States, gringo. You hear? Eh? Now, what you prescribe for my bad nights, Doctor, greens or reds? And my bad mornings, too."

"I guess you could call them greens and reds," said Dr. Plumber.

"Good. A pickup truck of reds and a pickup truck of greens."

"But that's dealing in drugs."

"We poor emerging nation. Now what you do here, eh?"

"I want to save babies."

"Dollar a kid, senor."

"Pay you a dollar for every child I save?" Dr. Plumber shook his head as if to make sure he was hearing right.

"This our country. These our ways. You laugh at our culture, sefior?" ,

The Rev. Dr. Prescott Plumber certainly didn't want to do that. He came to save souls and lives.

"You get the souls free and because I like sefior and because you are my brother from way up north, and because we are all part of the great American family we let you save the babies for twenty-five cents apiece, five for a dollar. Now where else you get a deal like that? Nowhere, yes?"

Dr. Plumber smiled.

The mission was in the hills that ringed the northern half of the island. The mission hospital was cinderblock and tin roofed with its own generator for electricity. Only one Baqian city had electricity and that was the capital, Ciudad Natividado, named for the Nativity of Christ by a Spanish nobleman, in gratitude for five successful years of rape and pillage between 1681 and 1686.

When he had first arrived at the mission, Dr. Plumber was amused to hear drums thumping in the distance. He decided it was probably the natives' signal system to alert everyone that a new doctor had ar-

rived. But the drums never stopped. From morning till night, they sounded out, forty beats a minute, never stopping, never varying, steadily insinuating their sound into Dr. Plumber's brain.

He was there alone for a week, without a patient, without a visitor, when one high noon the drums stopped. They had already become such a part of his life that, for a moment, Dr. Plumber did not realize what had happened, what strange new factor had intruded itself into his environment. And then he realized what it was. Silence.

Dr. Plumber heard another unusual sound. The sound of feet. He looked up from his seat at an outdoor table where he had been going over the mission's medical records. An old man with black trousers, no shirt, and a top hat, was approaching him. The man was small and hard-looking, with skin the color of a chestnut.

Plumber jumped to his feet and extended his hand. "Nice to see you. What can I do for you?"

"Nothing," the old man said. "But I can do for you. I am called Samedi." He was, he explained, the hun-gan, the holy man of the hills, and he had come to see Dr. Plumber before he would allow his people to visit the mission hospital.

"All I want is to save their bodies and their souls," said Dr. Plumber.

"That is a very big all-I-want," the old man said with a faint smile. "You may have their bodies to treat, but their souls belong to me."

And because that was the only way he would ever get any patients, Dr. Plumber agreed. At least for the time being, he would not try to convert anybody to any religion.

"Fine," Samedi said. "They have a very good reli-

gion of their own. Your patients will begin to arrive tomorrow."

Without another word, the old man got up and walked away. As he left the mission compound, the drums began again.

The patients arrived the next day, first a trickle, then a flood, and Plumber threw himself into the work he knew God had meant him to do. He treated and he healed.

Soon he installed an operating room with his own hands. He was a bit of an electrician, too. He rebuilt an X-ray machine.

He saved the life of the minister of justice and was thereafter allowed to save babies for nothing, although the minister of justice pointed out that if he saved just two good-looking female babies, he could put them to work in fourteen or fifteen years at the good hotels, and if they didn't get diseased, they would be good for at least $200 a week apiece, which was a fortune.

"That's white slavery," said Dr. Plumber, shocked.

"No. Brown is the lighest color you get. You don't get white ones. Black ones, they don't make too much. If you get blonde white one by some accident, you made, yes? Send her to me. We make money, no?"

"Absolutely not. I have come here to save lives and to save souls, not to pander to lust."

And the look the Rev. Dr. Plumber got was the same as the one given him by the medical student who planned on dermatology. The look said he was crazy. But Dr. Plumber didn't mind. Didn't the Bible tell him he should be a fool for Christ, which meant that others would think him a fool, but they were those who had not been blessed with the vision of salvation.

The dermatologist was the fool. The minister for health had been the fool, for right here in the Lord's dark brown earth was a substance, called "mung" by the villagers, which when packed against the forehead relieved depression. How foolish it was, thought Dr. Plumber, to deal in narcotics when the earth itself gave so much.

For several years, as he rebuilt the mission clinic into a full-fledged hospital, Dr. Plumber thought about the earth called mung. He made experiments and determined to his satisfaction that the mung did not seep through skin and therefore it had to affect the brain by rays. A young assistant, Sister Beatrice-unmarried, like the doctor himself-arrived at the mission one day with the distinction of being the first white woman to pass through Ciudad Natividado without being propositioned. Her stringy brown hair, thick glasses and teeth, which looked as if they had collided beyond the ability of modern orthodontics to straighten them out, had more to do with her freedom from pesty men than her virtue.

Dr. Plumber fell instantly in love. All his life he had saved himself for the right woman and he realized that Sister Beatrice must have been sent to him by the Lord.

More cynical Baqians might have pointed out that Caucasians working among the natives for three months tended to fall in love with their own kind within five seconds. Two minutes was an all-time record of composure for a white working among Baqians.

"Sister Beatrice, do you feel what I feel?" asked Dr. Plumber, his long bony hands wet and cold, his heart beating with anxious joy.

"If you feel deeply depressed, yes," said Sister

Beatrice. She had been willing to suffer all manner of discomfort for Jesus, but somehow suffering discomfort seemed more religious while friends and relatives were singing hymns in the Chillicothe First Church of Christianity. Here in Baqia, the drum sounds twenty-four hours a day pounded at her temples like hammer thuds, and cockroaches were cockroaches, and not a bit of grace about them.

"Depression, my dear?" said Dr. Plumber. "The Lord has provided from his earth."

And in a small laboratory he had built with his own hands, Dr. Plumber pressed the greenish black mung to Sister Beatrice's forehead and temples.

"That is wonderful," said Sister Beatrice. She blinked and blinked again. She had taken tranquilizers at times in her h'fe and to a degree they had always made her drowsy. This substance just snapped you out of it, like a rubber band. It didn't make you overly happy, to be followed by a trough of unhappiness. It didn't make you excited and edgy. It just made you undepressed.

"This is wonderful. You must share this," said Sister Beatrice.

"Can't. Drug companies were interested for a while, but a handful of mung lasts forever and there's no way they can put it in expensive pills for people to take over and over again. As a matter of fact, I believe they might kill anyone trying to bring it into the country. It would ruin their tranquilizer and antidepressant market. Put thousands out of work. The way they explained it, I'd be robbing people of jobs."

"What about medical journals? They could get word to the world."

"I haven't done enough experiments."

"We'll do them now," said Sister Beatrice, her eyes

lit like furnaces in a winter storm. She saw herself as assistant to the great missionary scientist, the Rev. Dr. Prescott Plumber, discoverer of depression relief. She saw herself appearing at church halls, telling about the heat and the drums and the cockroaches and the filth of missionary work.

That,would be so much nicer than working in Baqia, which was the pits.

Dr. Plumber blushed. There was an experiment he had been planning. It had to do with rays.

"If we shoot electrons through the mung, which I believe is actually a glycolpolyaminosilicilate, we should be able to demonstrate its effect on cell structure."

"Wonderful," said Sister Beatrice, who had not understood one word he had said.

She insisted he use her. She insisted he do it now. She insisted that he use full force. She sat down in a wicker chair.

Dr. Plumber put the mung in a box over a heavy little gas generator that provided electricity for the tubes that emitted electrons, smiled at Sister Beatrice, and then fried her to a gloppy stain seeping through the wicker.

"Oh," said Dr. Plumber.

The stain was burnt umber and the consistency of molasses. It seeped through what had been a plain white blouse with a denim skirt. The thick-soled plastic shoes were filled up to the top with the slop.

It smelled like pork fried rice left out in the tropical sun for a day. Dr. Plumber lifted the edge of the blouse with a tweezer. He saw she had worn a little opal on a chain. That was untouched. The bra and snaps were untouched. A cellophane bag that had

held peanuts in her shirt pocket was safe, but the peanuts were gone.

Quite obviously, shooting electrons through the substance destroyed living matter. It probably rearranged the cell structure.

Dr. Plumber, a man who had found his one true love only to lose her immediately, made his way in a daze to the capital city of Ciudad Natividado.

He turned himself into the minister of justice.

"I have just committed murder," he said.

The minister of justice, whose life Dr. Plumber had saved, embraced the weeping missionary.

"Never," he screamed. "My friends never commit murder, not while I am minister of justice. Who was the communist guerilla you saved your mission from?"

"A member of my church."

"While she was strangling a poor native, yes?"

"No," said Dr. Plumber sadly. "While she was sitting innocently, helping me with an experiment. I didn't expect it to kill her."

"Better yet, an accident," said the minister of justice, laughing. "She was killed in an accident, yes?" He slapped Dr. Plumber on the back. "I tell you, gringo. Never let it be said of me that one of my friends ever went to jail for murder while I was minister of justice."

And thus it began. El Presidente himself found out about this wonderful thing you could do with mung.

"Better than bullets," said his minister of justice.

Sacristo Juarez Banista Sanchez y Corazon listened intently. He was a big man with dark jowls and a flaring black handlebar mustache, deep black eyes, thick lips, and a flat nose. Only in the last five years had he admitted to having black blood and then he did it with glory, offering his city to the Organization of Af-

rican Unity, saying, "Brothers should meet among brothers." Before that, he had explained to all white visitors that he was "Indian-no nigger in this man."

"Nothing better than bullets," said Corazon. He sucked a guava pit from a cavity in his front tooth. He would have to appear again at the United Nations, representing his country. He always did that when he needed dental work. Anything else could be left to the spirits, but major cavities could only be trusted to a man named Schwartz on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. When Dr. Schwartz found out that Sacristo Juarez Banista Sanchez y Corazon was the Generalissimo Corazon, Butcher of the Caribbean, Papa Corazon, Mad Dog Dictator of Baqia, and one of the most bloodthirsty rulers the world had ever known, he did the only thing a Bronx dentist could. He tripled his prices and made Corazon pay in advance.

"Better than bullets," the minister of justice insisted. "Zap, and you got nothing."

"I don't need nothing. I need the dead bodies. How you going to hang a dead body in a village to show they should all love Papa Corazon, with all their minds and hearts, if you don't have no dead body? How you do this thing? How you run a country without bodies? Nothing better tihan bullets. Bullets are sacred."

Corazon kissed his thick fingertips, then opened his hands like a blossom. He loved bullets. He had shot his first man when he was nine. The man was tied to a post, his wrists bound with white sheets. The man saw the little nine-year-old boy with the big .45-cali-ber pistol and smiled. Little Sacristo shot the smile off the man's face.

An American from a fruit company came one day

to Sacristo's father and said he should no longer be a bandit. He brought a fancy uniform. He brought a box of papers. Sacristo's father became El Presidente and the box of papers became the constitution, the original of which was still in the New York office of the public relations agency that wrote it.

The American fruit company grew bananas for a while, and hoped to expand into mangoes. The mangoes didn't catch on in America and the fruit company pulled out.

Whenever anyone asked about human rights after that, Sacristo's father would point to that box over there. "We got every right you can think of and then some. We got the best rights in the world, yes?"

Sacristo's father would tell people that if they didn't believe him, they could open the box. Everyone believed Sacristo's father.

One day Sacristo's father heard that someone was planning to assassinate him. Sacristo knew where the assassin lived. Sacristo and his father went to slay the man. They took Sacristo's personal bodyguard of fifty men. Sacristo and the fifty men returned with his father's body. The father had fallen, bravely charging the enemy. He was killed instantly when he led the charge. No one thought it strange that he was killed by a bullet in the back of the head when the enemy was in front of him. Or if anyone thought --it strange he did not mention it to Sacristo, who had been following his father, and was now El Presidente.

For allowing a potential enemy to kill his father, Sacristo personally shot the generals who were still loyal to his father.

Sacristo loved the bullet. It had given him everything in his Me.

So El Presidente was not about to listen to tales that there were things better than bullets.

"I swear to you on my life it is better than bullets," said the minister of justice.

And Sacristo Corazon gave his minister a broad fat smile.

"As a figure of speech," said the minister, suddenly panicked by having wagered his life.

"Of course," said Corazon. His voice was soft. He liked the very big house of the minister of justice, and while it looked shabby on the outside there were marble floors and baths on the inside, and pretty girls who had never left the minister's compound.

And they were not even his own daughters. It was a fact of life that any family with a pretty daughter let her be deflowered by El Presidente or one of his cronies, or kept her forever behind closed doors. Now Corazon was a reasonable man. If a man prized his daughters, he could understand that man hiding them. But not the daughters of other men. That was sinful. To keep a girl from your leader, from El Presidente, was immoral.

So the minister of justice brought this thing that was supposed to be better than bullets. A missionary from the hill hospital came with a very heavy box. It was a two-foot cube and required great effort to move it.

The missionary was a doctor and a preacher and had been in Baqia several years. Corazon gave him the usual flowery praise due a messenger of God, then told him to perform his magic.

"Not magic, El Presidente. Science."

"Yes, yes. Go ahead. Who you going to use it on?"

"It's a health device and it failed. It failed to help

and it ..." Dr. Plumber's voice crackled and faltered with his great sorrow. "It killed and it did not cure."

"Nothing more important than health. When you have health, you have everything. Everything. But let us see how it does not work. Let us see how it kills. Let us see if it is better than this," said El Presidente, and drew a shiny .44-caliber chrome pistol with mother-of-pearl handles, inlaid with the seal of the presidency and a good luck charm that, according to some of the voodoo priests, helped make the bullets go straighter, bullets having a mind of their own and at times defying the will of El Presidente.

Corazon pointed the shiny big-barreled pistol at the head of his minister of justice. "There are some who believe your box there better than bullets. There are some who bet their lives on it, no?"

The minister of justice had never realized how big, how truly big the barrel of a .44 was. It loomed like a dark runnel. He imagined what a bullet might look like coming from it. If there were time to see. He imagined there would be a little explosion down at the other end of the barrel and then, thwack, he would not be thinking anymore because .44s tended to take out very big pieces of the brain, especially when the slugs were of soft lead with little dumdum holes in the center. There was a bullet waiting at the other end of that barrel.

The minister of justice smiled weakly. There was another element here, too. There were Western ways and island ways. The island ways were rooted in the hill religion known to the outside world as voodoo. Anyone bringing in the Western magic of science was pitting it against the island magic of voodoo.

Western magic was the plane. When the plane crashed, that was island magic. The island had won.

When the plane landed safely, it had won, especially when it landed safely with gifts for El Presidente.

So what was pitted now between the old reliable pistol and the machine of the missionary doctor was island magic in Corazon's hands and gringo industrialized magic in the hands of the bony, sad Dr. Plumber.

A pig was brought into the presidential chamber, a huge, domed, marble-floored formal room for giving medals, receiving ambassadors, and sometimes, when El Presidente had drunk too much, sleeping one off. He could lock the thick ironclad doors here and not be murdered in a drunken sleep.

The pig was a sow and reeked of recent mud, which was dried gray on her massive sides. Two men had to poke her with large sharp sticks to keep her from trampling everything in sight.

"There. Do it," said Corazon suspiciously.

"Do it," said the minister desperately.

"You want me to kill the pig?"

"It have no soul. Go ahead," said Corazon.

"I've only done it once," said Dr. Plumber.

"Once, many times, always. Do it. Do it. Do it," said the minister of justice. He was crying now.

Dr. Plumber turned the switch on the battery that started the ignition on the small generator. Three, quarters of the device was devoted to producing electricity which, in a civilized country, could be gotten with a wire cord and a plug and a socket. But here in Baqia, everything had to be overcome. Dr. Plumber felt very sad and while it was only two days since the awful accident with Sister Beatrice, she became more beautiful with each passing minute. His mind had even achieved what breast cream, exercise, and suc-

tion cups had failed at: He imagined her with a bosom.

Dr. Plumber checked the mung supply. He checked the level of power. He pointed a small lenslike opening in the front of the box at the pig and then released the electrons.

There was a zap like a tight piece of cellophane snapping and then a smell of roasting rubber and the 350-pound pig smoked briefly, crackled once, and settled into a greenish black glop that spread across the marble floor.

Not even the hide was left. The wooden poles that had been poking the pig were cinders, but the metal points were there. They had hit the floor as soon as the pig melted. And the goo rolled over them.

"Amigo. My blood friend. My holy man friend. I really like Christ," said Corazon. "He one of the best gods there ever was. He my favorite god from now on. How you do that?"

Dr. Prescott Plumber explained how the machine worked.

Corazon shook his head. "Which button you push?" he asked.

"Oh, that," said Dr. Plumber and showed Corazon the red button that started the generator and then the green one that released the electrons.

And then a horrible accident ensued. Corazon accidentally killed his minister of justice just as Plumber had accidentally killed beautiful Sister Beatrice. The room smelled like a smoldering garbage dump.

There were goose bumps on Dr. Plumber's skin. The rays created vibrations in people standing too near a target.

"Oh, God. This is awful," sobbed Dr. Plumber. "This is horrible."

"Sorry," said Corazon. And he said "Sorry" again when he accidentally put away a captain of the guard whom he suspected of blackmailing an ambassador from another country and not giving his president a cut. This was at the palace gate.

"Sorry," said Corazon and the driver of a car disappeared from the window of a sedan and the car went crazily off the dusty main road of Ciudad Natividado and into the veranda of a small hotel.

"I believe you did that on purpose," sputtered Dr. Plumber.

"Scientific exploration has its price, yes?" said Corazon.

By now his guards were hiding, no one was in a window, and everywhere Corazon lugged the heavy thing, people hid. Except for tourists in the Hotel Astarse across the street. They watched, wondering what was going on, and Corazon did not zap them. He was no fool. He was not going to frighten away the Yankee dollar.

And then his luck changed. He found a soldier sleeping on duty in the palace.

"Punishment is needed," Corazon said. "I will have discipline in my army."

But by now Dr. Plumber was sure the machine had fallen into the hands of someone who killed on purpose. He put himself in front of the snoring Baqian corporal, who was sprawled in the island dust like a dozing basset hound.

"Over my dead body," said Dr. Plumber, defiantly.

"Okey-dokey," said Corazon.

"Okey-dokey what?" demanded Dr. Prescptt Plumber, American citizen and missionary.

"Okey-dokey over your dead body," said Corazon, and with a bit of English-for with his natural talent

Corazon had found the rays took English somewhat like a billiard ball-he threw a little curve into the bony Dr. Plumber. A gold-covered bible suddenly appeared, resting on the metal part of a zipper, all atop a dark smelly puddle where Dr. Plumber had stood.

The Bible sank into the slop, pushing the strand of zipper beneath it. There were little bumps at the edges. Dr. Plumber had worn old-style shoes with nails in the heel. The nails remained.

When word reached the American State Department that one of its citizens had been coldly murdered just for the fun of it by the Mad Dog of the Caribbean, Generalissimo Sacristo Corazon, and that Corazon had in his sole possession a deadly weapon he alone understood, the decision was clear:

"How do we get him on our side?"

"He is on our side," explained someone from the Caribbean desk. "We've been putting about two million a year into his pocket."

"That was before he could turn people into silly putty," said a military analyst.

He was right.

Generalissimo Sacristo Juarez Banista Sanchez y Corazon called a special third world resource conference at Ciudad Natividado and, in unison, 111 technological ambassadors voted that Baqia had "an inalienable right to glycolpolyaminosilicilate" or, as the chairman of the conference said, "that long word on page three."

The world response was eight books on how Corazon had been slandered by the industrialized world's propaganda, a resurgence of interest in the deep philosophical meaning of the island's voodoo religion, and an international credit line for Corazon of up to three billion dollars.

The ships were stacked up outside Natividado harbor for miles.

In Washington, the President of the United States called the top representatives of his intelligence, diplomatic, and military establishments together and asked, "How did that lunatic down there get hold of something so destructive and what are we going to do to get it out of his hands?"

To this call for help, the answer was generally contained in long memos, each declaring, "You can't blame this department."

"All right," said the President, opening another meeting on the subject. "What can we do about this maniac down there? What is that weapon he's got? Now I want to hear suggestions. I don't care whose fault it is."

The gist of the meeting was that each department didn't have to handle it because it wasn't their responsibility, and no, they didn't know how the gizmo worked.

"There are only two things you people know. One, you're not guilty and two, don't ask you to do anything lest you become guilty of something. Have all these Congressional hearings made you into cowards?"

Everybody looked at the CIA director, who cleared his throat for a long time before replying. "Well, Mister President, if you don't mind my saying so, the last time somebody in my job tried to protect America's interests like that, your Justice Department tried to send him to jail. It doesn't exactly inspire us all with extracurricular zeal. No Congressional hearing ever blamed anybody for what he didn't do. None of us wants to go to jail."

"Isn't there anyone who cares that an American cit-

izen has been killed? In all the reports, that was the least important thing," said the President. "Is there no one who is worried that a mad dog killer is on the loose with a dangerous weapon we have no defense against because we don't know how it works? Doesn't anyone care? Will someone speak up?"

Generals and admirals cleared their throats. Men responsible for the nation's foreign policy looked away, as did the chiefs of intelligence.

"To hell with you all," said the President in a soft Southern drawl. His face flushed red. He was as angry at the defense establishment as he was at himself for swearing.

If there wasn't any legal organization that could take care of this mess, then there certainly was an illegal one.

Midday, he retired to the Presidential bedroom in the White House and, reaching into a bureau drawer, put his hand on a red telephone without dials. He hated this phone and hated what it represented. Its very existence said his country could not operate within its own laws.

He had thought of abolishing the organization to which this one telephone was attached and which operated in emergencies, doing things he didn't want to know about. He thought at first he could quietly put the organization to rest. But he found he could not.

In a pinch, there was only one group he could count on and he sadly realized that it was illegal. It represented everything he hated.

It had been created more than a decade earlier, when covert operations were standard. And so deadly and so secret had been this organization, called CURE, that it alone, of all America's intelligence net-

work, had escaped public inquiry without ever coming to light.

The CIA and military alike were open books, while no one but the President knew of CURE.

And, of course, its director and two assassins. The government, his government, supported two of the deadliest killers who ever existed in all the history of mankind and all he had to do was say to the director of CURE: "Stop."

And the organization would cease to exist. And the assassins would not work in America anymore.

But the President had never said stop, and it bothered his righteous soul to its deepest roots.

Even worse, he was about to find out that day that now he no longer had that illegal arm.

CHAPTER TWO

His name was Rerno and the lights went out all around him. To most people in New York City, it was light, then suddenly blackness, in the summer night. The air conditioners stopped, the traffic lights disappeared, and suddenly people out on the street noticed the dark sky.

"What?" said a voice from a stoop.

"It's the 'lectricity." And then frightened noises. Someone laughed very loud.

The laughter did not come from Remo. He had not been plunged into sudden darkness. The lights did not go out for him in a split second.

For him there had been a flutter of light and then it died, in the street bulb above 99th Street and Broadway. It was a slow giving up, quite obvious if your mind and body rhythms were attuned to the world around you. It was only an illusion that there was

sudden blackness. People helped this illusion, Remo knew.

They were engrossed in conversation, tuning out other senses to concentrate on their words, and they only tuned back the senses when they were already in darkness. Or they were drinking alcohol, or had loaded their stomachs with so much red meat that their nervous systems devoted all energies to laboriously processing it in an intestine designed for fruits and grains and nuts, and in a bloodstream that had ancient memories of the sea and could absorb quite well those special nutrients that came from fish. But never hoofed meat.

So it was dark and he had seen it coming and someone shrieked because she was afraid. And someone else shrieked because she was happy.

A car came up the block and lit it with its headlights and there was a noise in the streets of the city people, a mingling of nervous voices trying to establish contact in what they thought was a suddenly unnatural world.

And only one man in the entire city understood what was happening, because he alone had reawakened to his senses.

He knew that young men were running up behind him. It was not strange to listen for that or to know where their hands were and that one had a lead object he was trying to crack down on Remo or that the other had a blade. They moved their bodies that way.

You could explain it in a few hours to someone, using motion pictures of how every person gave obvious signs of their weapons by the way they moved their bodies. Some you could even tell what sort of weapon they had by looking at their feet alone. But the best way was feel.

How did Remo know? He knew it. Like he knew his head was on his shoulders and that the ground was down. Like he knew he could slow-catch the force of the lead object and readjust the boy's momentum to send him down into the concrete sidewalk so that he cracked his own ribs on collision.

The blade was simpler. Remo decided to use force.

"You're going to kill yourself with your own knife," Remo said softly. "Here we go."

He clasped the young man's hand around the knife so it could not let go and pressed it into the stomach, and feeling the blade had a sharpness to it he very slowly brought it up to where he felt the heart muscle throb against it.

"Oh, God," said the young man who knew now he was going to die and had not expected anything like that. He had done hundreds of stickings in New York City and no one had ever given him trouble, especially not when he worked with someone who used lead.

Sure, he had been arrested twice, once for cutting up a young girl who wouldn't give him any, but then he only spent a night in youth detention and he went back and settled with her.

He got her in an alley and he cut her up good. So good that they had to bury her in a closed coffin and her mother wept, and asked where justice was, and pointed a finger at him, but that was all she could do. What was she going to do? Go to the police? He'd cut her up worse then. And what would they do? Give him a lecture? Put him up for a night in jail?

There was nothing that was going to happen to you for sticking someone in New York City. So it came as a great surprise to this young man that there would

be some sort of violent objection from this person about to be mugged.

After all, he wasn't wearing a gang jacket, or riding around like he was connected to the mob, or wearing a gun. He had looked like a simple citizen of New York City, the kind anybody could do anything to. So what was this great pain he felt in his body? Was the guy a cop? There was a law against killing cops, but this guy didn't look like a cop.

They had been watching him just before the lights went. They had seen him buy a single flower from someone on Broadway and give the old woman a ten-dollar bill and tell her to keep the change.

And he had bills in his pocket. Then the guy took the flower, smelled it, and tore off two petals. And he chewed the damned things.

He was about six feet tall but skinny, and he had high cheekbones, as if he might have been part Chink or something. That's what one of the guys said. He had real thick wrists and he walked funny, like a shuffle. He looked easy. And he had money.

And when he turned into 99th Street, where it was not as well-lit and where no other citizens would come to his aid, where he was just beautiful pickings, the lights went out. Beautiful.

He didn't even wait. He knew he had a partner with a lead pipe, because that's what his partner was ready to use while the lights were on.

They closed in on the guy at the same time. It was beautiful, double beautiful. Wham. He should have collapsed. But he didn't.

He hardly moved. You could feel him not move. You could make out that your partner fell onto the sidewalk like he was dropped off a roof. And then the

guy spoke to you very softly and he had your hand in his and you couldn't even let go of the knife. And he punctured your belly and you slammed desperately at your own hand trying to get the knife out of it so it wouldn't tear your insides out, but it felt like someone had taped your belly button to the heating coil of an electric stove and that burn kept going up and you couldn't let go.

If you could have, you would have bitten your hand off at the wrist just to let go.

It hurt that bad.

When the heart went, when the muscle was pierced and his blood flowed out of his stomach and now very fast out, all over the place, and he finally was able to let go of the knife because the guy was walking on up the street, then it dawned on the young man, in the final clarity of the last moment of life, even a seventeen-year-old life, that this guy he had planned to stick had snuffed out his life without missing one slow shuffling step.

The young man's whole life was not even a missed step in the evening of that strange guy who ate the flower.

The city was dark and Remo moved on. There was some blood on his left thumb and he flicked it off.

The problem with people in the city, he knew, was that darkness, relying on your senses instead of mechanical means to produce artificial daylight, was the natural way. And suddenly people who did not even breathe properly found themselves having to use muscles they had never used before, atrophied muscles like those used to hear and see and feel.

He himself had been trained with great pain and great wisdom to learn how to revive the dormant skills of man, the talents that had once made man

competitive with the wild animals but now had turned this new species into walking corpses. The spear itself had made the human animal dependent on an outside thing, and not until the dawn of history in a fishing village on the west Korea bay did any man regain the pace and skill that reawakened what man could be.

The skill was called Sinanju, after the village in which it was created.

Only the Masters of Sinanju knew these techniques.

Only one white man had ever been so honored.

And that man was Remo and now in one of the great cities of his civilization the lights went out. And he was troubled.

Not because people were as people had been since before Babylon, but because he was now different.

And what had he done with his life? When he had agreed to undergo training, to serve an organization that would enable his country to survive, he thought there was a thing-justice-that he was working for.

And that changed as he became more like the Master of Sinanju who trained him. For then the perfection of being part of the House of Sinanju, the greatest assassins in all history, was enough. The doing of what you did was its very purpose. And one morning he awoke and he didn't believe that at all.

There was a right and there was a wrong and what was Remo doing that was right?

Nothing, he told himself. He moved on up to Harlem, walking slowly and thinking. Mobs had begun to loot and burn, and he came to the edge of one delirious crowd and saw it straining at an iron fence that shielded windows.

The sign behind the windows read: "Down Home Frozen Ribs."

It was obviously a black manufacturing plant. Not a big one either.

"Get 'im. Get 'im," yelled a woman and she was not yelling at Remo. Something up in front of the crowd was struggling against the mob, trying to keep it from breaking through the fence.

"Get the uppity nigger. Get the high-pants nigger. Get the uppity nigger," the woman yelled again. She had a quart bottle of gin in one hand and a baseball bat in the other.

If the crowd had not been black, Remo would have sworn it was made up of the Ku Klux Klan. Remo did not understand the hate. But he knew someone was struggling for what he had built. And that was worth protecting.

Remo moved, edging through bodies like a bowling ball through pins, glancing his own force against the stationary mass of those in front. The movement itself was like an unbroken, uninterrupted run and there was a shotgun pointing at his belly, and the man in front of the iron gate was black, and his finger was squeezing on the trigger as Remo flipped up the barrel and the blast went off above his head.

The mob hushed for a moment. Someone up front tried to run away. But when they saw the shot had been fired harmlessly and that the man wasn't going to kill, they charged again.

But the black man turned the barrel around and using the stock of the gun like the end of a club swung at Remo and then the crowd.

Remo avoided the wild slow arch of the gun butt, then worked the edge of the crowd toward the middle, until the man realized Remo was on his side. Then Remo took the center. In a few moments, he

had a small barrier made of groaning people in front of the fenced factory front.

The crowd stopped pressing forward. They called to others passing by to get the white man they had trapped there. But there was too much fun out in the streets, where the only credit card you needed was a hammer and friends to help you tear away any protection in front of anything. Besides, this white man had a way of hurting people, so they turned and ran.

Remo stayed the night with the man, who had come from Jackson, Mississippi, as a little boy, whose father had worked as a janitor in a large office. The man had gotten a job in the post office and his wife worked and his two sons worked and they had all put their money into this small meat plant. Remo and the man stood out front and watched other shops go.

"Ah guess that's why I stayed here out 'n front wif a gun," the man said. "Mah sons are off buyin' direck from some farms in Jersey and ah didn't wan' to face them sayin' everything is gone. Death'd be easier than seein' this here go. It's our lives. That why I stayed. Why did you help?"

"Because I'm lucky," Remo said.

"Ah don' unnerstand."

This is a good thing. This is a very good thing I do here tonight. I haven't done a good thing in a long while. It feels good. I'm lucky."

"That's pretty dangerous do-goodin'," said the man. "Ah almost shot you and ah almost banged you upside the haid with my shotgun, and if ah didn't get you, them mobs would. They's dangerous."

"Nah," said Remo. "They're garbage." He waved at the running crowds, laughing and screaming, dropping looted dresses from overladen arms.

"Even garbage can kill. You can get smothered by

garbage. And you move slow, too. Ah never saw no one fight like that."

"No reason you should have," Remo said.

"What that fightin called?"

"It's a long story," Remo said.

"It ain' like karate. And it ain' like tae kwan do. Mah sons taught me that, for when I alone in the factory. You somethin' like that, but it ain' the same."

"I know," Remo said. "It only looks slow but it's really faster, what I do."

"It like a dance, but you very still about it."

"That's a good description. It is a dance, in a way. Your partner is your target. It's like you will do whatever you have to do and your partner is dead from the beginning. He sort of asks you to kill him and helps you do it. It's the unity of things." Remo was delighted at his own explanation, but the man looked puzzled and Remo knew he could never tell him what Sinanju was.

How do you explain to the whole world that it was, from its very first breaths, breathing wrong and living wrong? How did you explain that there was another way to live? And how did you explain to someone that you had been living that way and after more than ten years of it, you had decided it wasn't enough? There was more to life than breathing right and moving right.

When the sun came up red and glinted on the broken glass in the streets, when the police finally decided the streets were safe enough to return to duty, Remo left the man and never told him his name.

Without electricity, New York City was dead. Shows did not open and the arteries of the city's work force, the subway system, was a corpse of stopped trains waiting for the current of Me.

It was hot and it felt like New York City had gone away for the day. Even Central Park was empty. Remo dawdled by the pond and when he got back to the Plaza Hotel it was noon. But he did not enter. He was stopped outside by a voice.

"Where have you been?" came the high squeaky voice.

"Nowhere," said Remo. "You are late."

"How can I be late? I never said when I'd be back at the hotel."

"Woe be to the fool that would depend on you," said Chiun, Master of Sinanju, folding his long fingernails contemptuously into his golden morning kimono. "Woe be unto the fool that has given you the wisdom of Sinanju and, in return for this supreme knowledge, gets white lip. Thank you, no thank you, for nothing." "I was thinking, Little Father," said Remo. "Why bother to explain to a fool?" said Chiun. His skin was parchment yellow and his wisps of white beard and tufts of thin white hair around the borders of his skull quivered with the anger that was in him.

The skin was wrinkled and the lips were tight He avoided looking at Remo. One might think this was a frail thin old man, but if one should test it out too thoroughly upon this Master of Sinanju, he would do no more testing on anyone ever.

"Okay, if you're not interested," Remo said. "I am interested. I am interested in how one can pour a lifetime into an ingrate who does not even say where he goes or what he does or why he does it. I am interested in why a venerable, disciplined, wise, kind leader of his community would squander the treasure of wisdom that is Sinanju on someone who blows about like a dried leaf."

"All right. I was out last night because I had to think "

"Quiet. We don't have time. We are to go on a plane to Washington. We are now free of our bonds and we can work for a real emperor. You have never known this. It is far better than Smith, who I never understood. An insane emperor is like a wound to his personal assassin. We have been working with wounds, Remo. Now we are off."

With a flutter of his long fingernails, Chiun waved at bellboys. Fourteen ornately lacquered trunks stood on the white steps of the Plaza, partially blocking one of the entrances. Remo wondered how Chiun had gotten the bellboys to carry the heavy trunks down fourteen flights of stairs. When he saw one burly porter wince in fear as he passed Chiun, carrying a trunk to a cab, Remo knew. Chiun had that wonderful way of convincing people to help a poor little old man. It was called a death threat.

Two cabs were needed to go to the airport.

"What's going on?" Remo asked. He knew that Chiun never quite understood the organization or Dr. Harold Smith, who ran it. To Chiun, it did not make sense to have an assassin and then keep it secret. He had told Remo, if you make known your ability to kill your enemies, you will find yourself with very few enemies. But Smith did not listen.

And even worse, Smith never used Remo and Chiun "effectively," according to Chiun. "Effectively" meant for Smith to ask Chiun to remove the current President so Smith could declare himself emperor. Or king.

And of course, at the same time he would proclaim the House of Sinanju official assassins to the nation and the Presidency. Chiun had it all worked out. He

had seen the recent American inauguration ceremony on television. Smith, who ran CURE and would under Chiun's plan run the country, would walk five paces ahead of Chiun in the parade and Chiun would wear his red kimono with the gold-threaded tana leaves. When Chiun told Smith how it would be, Smith said:

"Never."

"The green kimono, then, with the black swans."

"Never. Never."

"Gold is for mornings. Your inaugurations are afternoons," Chiun had explained reasonably.

"I will never assassinate our President. I don't want to be President. I serve the President. I serve the nation. I want to help him," Smith had said.

"We don't miss, like some of the amateurs walking around your streets," Chiun had replied. "You have nothing to fear. We can put you on your President's throne this very week. And our rates will be virtually the same. This is a big country with a turbulent, rebellious population. We might have to go a mite higher. But you would never miss it. Your cities alone are bigger than most countries."

"No," Smith had said. "I don't even want to discuss it."

Remo had interceded. "You're never going to convince Chiun that you are not a minor emperor who should be plotting against the big emperor, now that you have the House of Sinanju on your side. You're never going to convince him that there is only one form of government, with many different names like democracy and communism and monarchy. He thinks it's one man on top and most everyone else trying to take it away from him."

The conversation had all taken place two days ago in the waiting room of Newark Airport.

"And what do you think, Remo?" Smith asked. "I think I am not going to Baqia." "May I know why?" asked Smith. He was a gaunt, thin-lipped man and the years had not worn well on him. He was still in his middle age, but he already looked old.

"Yeah," said Remo. "I don't care what happens to the Caribbean. I don't care who kills who. All I know is that everything I've ever done for this outfit hasn't made two spits' difference in a rainstorm. We were supposed to make the Constitution work outside the Constitution, give it that extra little edge. Well, the country's become a garbage can and I don't see how one more corpse is going to help it, one way or another, and so it's no to Baqia. I don't care who is able to do what or which agency can't do what. No."

And Chiun had nodded affirmation to this. "However," added Chiun to Smith, "if you should change your mind about becoming emperor, I am sure Remo might be persuaded how good life can be working for a real emperor."

"I'm not going to Baqia," Remo said again. "He'll go if you sit in the White House throne," said Chiun.

And that had been that. Smith had been shaken. Chiun had been angry because, as he said, Remo never understood the business aspects of assassinry and never listened when Chiun tried to explain, either.

Now, if Remo could believe what he was hearing in the cab on the way to LaGuardia Airport, Chiun had spoken personally to the President of the United States, who had invited him down for a visit.

"That's impossible," Remo said. "We work for an organization that doesn't exist. Its purpose is not to

exist. It's secret," Remo whispered harshly. "They are not proud in this country of employing assassins."

"Not until now. But nations grow," said Chiun.

"You mean we're supposed to walk right in the front door of the White House?" asked Remo.

"Not exactly," said Chiun.

"Aha. I thought so."

"But we will be received by the President himself."

"Ridiculous," said Remo. They had met the President once before, to show him how vulnerable the White House was to attack, that it was as open as a massage parlor to people who had made lifetime studies of walls and doors and windows. Remo had gone back to reinforce the lesson. The President hadn't listened and Chiun had met the President again when he was saving his life from a killer. Chiun had not waited for thanks.

That night, Chiun's bulky baggage checked at the Washington Hilton, they made their way into the White House and were in the oval office by 10:33 P.M., the time Chiun said the President had specified.

The two waited in the dark office.

"I feel stupid," Remo said. "We're going to sit here until morning and then scare the ditfrimmy out of some cleaning woman. Or whatever they use to straighten out an ultrasecure office."

"Ditfrimmy?" asked Chiun. "I have never heard of ditfrimmy."

"I made it up. It's a made-up word. I make up words sometimes."

"So do most babies," said Chiun with that calm feeling of having helped his student realize his proper place in relationship to the Master of Sinanju, who now waited in the American emperor's throne room, as Chiun's ancestors had waited in throne rooms for cen-

turies, to assure pharaoh or king or emperor or President that this enemy or that would breathe his last, provided proper tribute was guaranteed to the little village of Sinanju on the west Korean bay.

The door opened. A crack of light was in the room. Someone just otitside the door spoke.

"Guaranteed, Mr. President, sir. Impossible, sir, for anyone to get into your oval office, sir, without us finding out, sir. You're in a tight seal, if I may say so, sir."

"Thank you," answered the soft Southern voice.

And the President entered his office, shut the door behind himself, and personally turned on the lights.

''Hello," he said.

"Greetings to the heir of Washington and Lincoln and Roosevelt," intoned Chiun, rising, then bowing low. "Hail to the triumphant successor of Rutherford B. Hayes and Millard Fillmore. Of the redoubtable James K. Polk and Grover Cleveland. Of the beneficent James Madison and Calvin Coolidge the Great."

"Thank you," said the President with a small embarrassed smile. But Chiun was not finished.

"Of Ulysses Grant the Wise, of the handsome Andrew Johnson. Woodrow Wilson the Triumphant and Hoover the Magnificent. To say nothing of Andrew Jackson . . ."

"Thank you," said the President.

"Of William McKinley," said Chiun, who had read books about the new American land and like so many travelers found that the descriptions did not fit the people. "A happy robust people," had said the old Korean history of the world. It gave the United States a quarter of a page in a three-thousand-page volume, the first two-hundred-eighty pages of which were the

definitive work on the early dynasties o£ the Korean peninsula and their effect on the world.

"Of Grover Cleveland again," Chiun said with a delighted squeak.

"Thank you," said the President. Remo stayed slumped in his chair and wondered if the President kept anything in the drawers of the big polished desk in the oval office. The President offered his hand to Chiun. Chiun kissed it with a bow. He offered it to Remo. Remo looked at it as if a waiter had brought him creamed liver and scrod or some other untasty thing he had not ordered.

The President withdrew his hand. He sat on the edge of the desk with one leg raised along its edge, dangling from the knee. He examined his hands, then looked directly at Remo.

"We're in trouble," he said. "Are you an American?"

"Yes," said Remo.

"I heah you don't want to work for your country anymore. May I ask why?"

"Because he is an ingrate, O gracious President," said Chiun. "But we can cure him of that." And to Remo, in an angry tone but in Korean, Chiun warned that Remo should not mess up a good sale with his childish antics. Chiun knew how to handle this President. And one way was never let him know how little you thought of him.

Remo shrugged.

"Thank you," the President said to Chiun. "But I would like this man to answer."

"All right, I'll answer," Remo said. "You say work for the country. Bulldooky. I'm working so that this slop can stay afloat. Work for America? Last night I worked for America. I helped a man save his little factory. What did you do?"

"I did what I could. That's what I ask of you."

"Did you really? Why didn't the police protect victims last night? Why didn't you order them to? Why didn't anyone order them to?"

"The problems of poverty-"

"It wasn't a poverty problem. It was a police problem. There's right and wrong in the world and you people and people like you fudge up the whole damned thing with your sociology. Everyone knows right and wrong except you politicians." Remo looked away in anger.

Chiun assured the President that Remo's sudden outburst was nothing to worry about.

"As a student nears perfection, there is often a throwback to pretraining ideas. The Great Wang himself, when he was close to the height of his powers, would play with a toy wagon his father had made him, and this while in service to Cathay."

Chiun wondered if he could interest the President in something closer to home. Perhaps the kidnaping of his vice president's favorite child. This often assured an emperor that the one destined to take his throne in case of an accident would remain loyal.

"Ambition," said Chiun sadly, "is our greatest enemy. Let us cure the vice president of this woeful malady."

"That's not what I want," said the President. He did not take his eyes off Remo.

"A congressman," offered Chiun. "Perhaps a painful death at a public monument with a cry of 'death to all traitors, long live our divine President.' That is always a good one."

"No."

"A senator horribly mutilated while he sleeps and the word discreetly spread among other senators that

he was plotting treason." Chiun gave a big happy wink. "A most popular item, that one."

"Remo," said the President. "The Central Intelligence Agency is afraid to get its hands dirty anymore, assuming it could ever do what we need done. There is a madman on an island close to America and he's got something that fries people to the consistency of Crest toothpaste. The Russians are interested in it. So are the Chinese, the Cubans, the British, and God knows who else, but our people sit back here terrified of making a mistake. We are incapable of dealing with a menace close to home. Do you think I would have asked you here to beg you to take an assignment? We're in trouble. Not just me, not just the office, not just the government. Every man, woman, and child in this country and possibly the world is in trouble because somehow some killer got hold of one of the most frightening weapons I have ever heard of. I am asking you to get control of that weapon on behalf of the human race."

"No," said Remo.

"He doesn't mean that," said Chiun.

"I think he does," said the President.

"At one time, Greek fire was a strange and frightening weapons, O Imperial Glory of the American People. Yet, it died, and why?" asked Chiun.

"I don' know why," said the President. He stared at Remo, who did not lift his eyes to make contact.

"Because that Byzantine emperor, the last to control the formula for the fire that burns when you add water, insulted the House of Sinanju and his fire proved no menace to the hands of Sinanju. He died with his supposedly invincible weapon. If you want something done along that line, it would be simple."

"Done," said the President.

"You'll be sorry," said Remo.

"No sorrier than I am now," the President said.

"Would you like the Baqian tyrant's head for the White House gate?" asked Chiun. "It is a traditional finish to this sort of assignment. And, I might add, a most fitting one."

"No. We just want the weapon," the President said.

"A splendid selection," said Chiun.

CHAPTER THREE

When the Third World Conference on Material Resources left Baqia after a triumphal unanimous declaration that Baqia had an inalienable right to that big word on page three, Generalissimo Sacristo Cora-zon declared a general amnesty to all prisoners, in honor of Third World brotherhood.

The Baqian jail had forty cells but only three prisoners because of a very efficient system of justice. Criminals were either hung, sent to the mountains to work in the great tar pits, which provided 29 percent of the world's asphalt, or released with apologies.

The apologies came after a $4,000 contribution to the Ministry of Justice. For $10,000, one got "profuse" apologies. An American lawyer once asked Corazon why they didn't just declare a person innocent.

"That's what we do when we buy off a judge," the lawyer said.

"It lack class. For ten tousan', you got to give something," Corazon answered.

Now, in the hot dusty road leading from the main highway to the prison compound, set back in a dry powdery field that looked like a desert, Corazon waited with his black box at his side. It was on wheels now and had padlocks and a new profusion of dials. The dials were not attached to anything; Corazon had attached them himself in the darkest part of the night. If Generalissimo Corazon knew anything, it was how to survive as ruler of Baqia.

His new minister of justice and all his generals were there. It was a hot day. The new minister of justice waited outside the prison's high gates for the signal from Corazon to release the prisoners.

"Umibia votes yes," called out someone drunkenly. It was a delegate who had missed his plane back to Africa and joined the Corazon caravan, thinking it was a taxi to the airport.

"Get that fool out of the way," snapped Corazon.

"Umibia votes yes to that," called out the man. He wore a white, glistening suit, sprinkled with the refuse of two days of heavy drinking. He held a bottle of rum in his right hand and a gold chalice some fool had left in a little stone box in a Western religion church.

He poured the rum toward the gold chalice. Sometimes he made it into the bowl. Sometimes the rum added a new flavor to his suit. He wanted to drink his suit but the buttons kept getting in the way.

This was his first diplomatic assignment and he was celebrating its success. He had voted "yes" at least forty times more than anyone else. He expected a medal. He saw himself being honored at another conference as the finest delegate in the entire world.

And then he made his first serious mistake. He saw the big dark face of Generalissimo Corazon with all his medals gleaming in the noon sun. He saw his Third World brother. And he wanted to kiss him. He was also standing upwind of the Generalissimo. The Umibian delegate smelled like a saloon that hadn't opened its windows since Christmas.

"Who is that man?" asked Corazon.

"One of the delegates," answered the minister for foreign affairs and head chauffeur.

"Is he important?"

"His country doesn't have oil, if that's what you mean. And it has no foreign agents," whispered the minister.

Corazon nodded.

"Beloved defenders of Baqia," he boomed. "We have declared an amnesty in honor of our Third World brothers. We have shown mercy. But now there are those who confuse mercy with weakness."

"Bastardos," called out the generals.

"We are not weak."

"No, no, no," called out the generals.

"But some think we are weak," said Corazon.

"Death to all who think we are weak," shouted one general.

"I am a slave to your will, oh, my people," said Generalissimo Corazon.

He estimated the drunken weave of the Umibian ambassador. He knew everyone watched. And so he carefully began turning the dials he had attached the night before. Because if his government ever found out that all you had to do was point the machine and start the engine that did whatever it did, one might be tempted to jump the Generalissimo and become the new leader. Corazon understood a very simple

rule of governing. Fear and greed. Make them frightened enough and satisfied with their stealing enough and you had stable government. Let any one of those things get out of whack and you had trouble.

"One point seven," said Corazon loudly and turned the blue dial a bit. He saw two ministers and a general move their lips. They were repeating the number to themselves. It was the ones who could memorize without moving their lips that he had to fear.

"Three-sevenths," said Corazon and flicked a switch three times. He licked his right thumb and put the thumbprint on top of the box.

"My spit. My power. O powers of machine, the powerful one of this kingdom shares his power with you. Alight. Alight and recognize power. My power. Me big number one."

And very quickly he hit every dial with a turn or a flick, and just about midmaneuver he flipped the real switch that triggered the gas engine.

The engine purred and whatever was supposed to happen was happening.

There was a loud crack from the machine and then a cool greenish glow enveloped the delegate from Umibia. The man smiled.

Panicked, Corazon smacked all the buttons again. The machine crackled again. The glow again enveloped the Umibian diplomat. He smiled, teetered backwards, then regained his forward momentum towards Corazon. He wanted to kiss his Third World brother. He wanted to kiss the world.

Unfortunately, black gooey puddles just off Route 1 in Baqia had no lips and could not kiss. The bottle of rum fell into the dry dirt and spilled wetness into the dust, a small irregular circle similar to what was now left of the Umibian delegate. Even the buttons were gone.

The generals cheered. The ministers cheered and all pledged their lifelong fealty to Corazon. But the Generalissimo was worried. For some reason the machine had taken longer to work this time than it generally did. This the generals and ministers did not know, but Corazon did.

The minister of agriculture borrowed a riding crop from a general and poked around in the goo until he latched onto something. He lifted it up, borrowed a cup of water from a soldier with a machine gun in his lap, and cleaned off the goo. A new Seiko watch. He offered it first to the Generalissimo.

"No," said Corazon. "For you. I love my people. It is your watch. We are sharing. This is socialism. A new socialism." And he pointed to the jail door and said, "Open the gates."

And the minister of defense swung open the big jail doors, and three people came out into the roadway.

"By my beneficence and in the surety of my great power, you are all free in honor of the Third World Natural Resource Conference or whatever. I free you in honor of our having inalienable rights to everything."

"That one's a spy," whispered the minister of defense, pointing to a man in a blue blazer and white slacks and a straw hat. "British spy."

"I freed him already. Why you tell me now? Now we gotta find other reasons to hang him."

"Won't help," said the minister of defense. "We're crawling with them. Must be a hundred spies from all over the world and other places."

"I know that," said Corazon angrily. For on Baqia a man who did not know things showed weakness and the weak were dead.

"Do you know that they are killing themselves all over Ciudad Natividad? In our very capital?"

"I know that," said Corazon.

"Do you know, El Presidente, that our army has difficulty controlling the streets? Every nation has brought in its best killers and spies to get our precious resource," said the minister of defense, pointing to the black box with dials. "They have filled the Astarse Hotel. They want that."

"Who has the most here?"

"The Russians."

"Then we blame the Central Intelligence Agency for tampering with our internal affairs."

"They only got one man and he can't carry a gun even. They're afraid of their own people. The Americans are weak."

"We'll have a trial, too," Corazon said with a grin. "The best trial in the Caribbean. We'll have a hundred jurors and five judges. And when time comes for verdict, they will stand up and sing-'Guilty, guilty, guilty.' Then we hang the American spy."

"Can I have his watch?" asked the new minister of justice. "Agriculture just got one."

Corazon thought a moment. If the American spy was the middle-aged gentleman with the gray jeep who said he was a prospector, then that man had a gold Rolex. That was a very good watch.

"No," said Corazon. "His watch is the property of the state."

The trial was held on the afternoon the American was called into the presidential palace. One hundred jurors proved too unwieldy so they settled on five. Since Corazon had heard that in America juries were of mixed races, he had three Russians sit on the jury

because he realized, wisely, to a television camera white is white.

The verdict was guilty as charged and the man was hanged by noon. Corazon gave seashell wrist bracelets in thanks to all the jurors. The bracelets came from a novelty shop in the basement of the Astarse Hotel. Two of the jurors, both Russians, wanted to see how the Generalissimo's wonderful machine worked. They had heard so much about it and they would love to see it before those evil imperialist American capitalist CIA warmongering adventuring spies stole it.

Corazon laughed. Agreed. Promised he would. Sent them to the far side of the island and waited for his men to return to tell him that the Russians were disposed of. His men didn't return. Ooops, better be careful.

Corazon called in the Russian ambassador to talk out a special peace pact. Anyone who could survive on a strange island against Corazon's soldiers was to be respected. So Corazon talked of friendship treaties.

The news of the treaty between Baqia and Russia arrived in America at the same time as the news clip of the "American spy" being hanged.

A commentator for a major network who had a smothered Virginia drawl and a righteous but somewhat jowly face asked the question: "When is America going to stop failing with spies, when we can succeed so much better with moral leadership, a moral leadership that Russia cannot hope to offer?'

About the same time that this commentator, who was addicted to labeling happenings he didn't understand as good things or bad things, went off the air, a heavily-lacquered steamer trunk was dropped carelessly on the sticky asphalt runway of the Baqian In-

ternational Airport and America's diplomatic prestige was about to spring back from the depths.

The trunk was one of fourteen, each with its original polished wood carefully painted. This one was green. The porter did not think that some old Oriental, especially one traveling under an American passport, was anything to concern himself about. Particularly since the porter had more important things to do, like tell the army captain standing under the wing about a second cousin's ability to crush a cocoanut with rum and make a drink that would leave you stupefied.

"You have dropped one of my trunks," said Chiun to the porter. The old man was a picture of repose. Remo carried a small tote bag, which had everything he would need for months: another pair of socks, a change of shorts, and another shirt. Any time he stayed more than one day in one spot, he bought everything else he needed. He wore gray summer chinos and a black T-shirt and didn't particularly like the Baqian International Airport very much. It looked like aluminum and grass dropped into a scrub swamp. A few palm trees dotted the sides of the airport. Far off were the mountains where it was said the greatest voodoo doctors in the world practiced medicine and, as Remo listened, he could hear the thump of the drums, sounding out over the island as if it were the Baqian heartbeat. Remo looked around and sniffed. Just another normal Caribbean dictatorship. To hell with it. This was Chiun's show and if the United States wanted Chiun to represent it, let them find out what a Master of Sinanju was like.

Remo did not know much about diplomacy but he was certain Ming dynasty terror would not be too effective here on Baqia. Then again, who knew? Remo

stuffed his hands into his pockets and watched Chiun deal with the Baqian captain and porter.

"My trunk has been dropped," said Chiun. The captain, who had a new gold-trimmed captain's hat and new black combat boots, shined so he could see his face in them, outweighed the old Oriental by one-hundred pounds, fifty of it hanging over his own black belt. He knew the Oriental was carrying an American passport, so he spat on the runway.

"I talking, Yankee. I don't like Yankee and I don't like yellow Yankee most of all."

"My trunk has been dropped," said Chiun.

"You talking Baqian captain. You show respect. You bow."

The Master of Sinanju folded his long fingers into his kimono. His voice was sweet.

"What a great tragedy," he said, "that there are not more people here to listen to your beautiful voice."

"What?" said the captain suspiciously.

"Let me punch that old gook in his face, yes?" asked the porter. The porter was twenty-two, with a fine young black face and the solid healthy gait of one who regularly exercised his body. He was 18 inches taller than Chiun and towered above the captain, also. He put two of his massive hands on either side of the green lacquered trunk and lifted it above his head. "I crush the yellow Yankee, yes?"

"Wait," said the captain, his hand on his bulging .45-caliber pistol on his belt. "What you mean, yellow man, that I sing nice?"

"Very nicely," said Chiun, his voice as sweet as a nightingale. "You will this day sing 'God Bless America' and mean it so profoundly that all will say your voice is as sweet as lark's whisper."

"I choke on me tongue first, yellow man," spat the captain.

"No," said Chiun. "You choke on your tongue later."

There was a bit of delicacy required in this. The green trunk held tapes of American daytime television dramas and they might not have been packed that solidly. They had to come down gently from above the porter's head, where he still held the trunk, so with a smooth and constant rhythm Chiun's hands flashed out and closed on the left knee of the porter and then the right. It looked as if the old parchment hands were warming the knees. The captain waited for the porter to drop the trunk and crush the fool.

But then the captain saw the porter's knees do what he had never before seen knees do. There were the shoes. There were the shins and the knees just seemed to sink inside the pants down into the shoes-and the porter was eighteen inches shorter. And then the waist seemed to collapse and the old Oriental in the kimono moved around the porter like a peeling machine and a look of horror was on the porter's face, his mouth opening to scream but the lungs were a . mess just beneath his throat and the trunk teetered on the top of his head momentarily, but then his chin was on the runway and his hands were stretched out lifeless beneath it and, with one long fingernail, the Oriental was under the trunk, working the porter's head, until the green lacquer glittered above its blood and pulp base. The television tapes were safe.

The porter was not much more than a stain.

"God, He bless America," sang the captain, hoping the tune somewhat resembled the gringo song. He sure smiled big for his American friends.

"We all called Americans," laughed the captain.

Those are not the word to that great nation's song

which has wisely chosen to employ the House of Sinanju, Remo will teach you the words. He knows American songs."

"I know some of them," Remo said. "What are the words?" begged the captain. "I dunno," said Remo. "Hum something." The captain, who always loved the United States with all his heart-he had a sister in the States and she loved America almost as much as he-ordered his company to make sure not one ounce of harm came to any of the trunks. He would shoot the first man who dropped one of the trunks. Personally he would do the shooting.

A corporal from Hosania Province, famous for the locals' laziness, complained about some dead and sticky meat underneath the green trunk on the runway.

The captain shot him through the head as an object lesson to all the soldiers in his command how neighbors should love each other and no one loved America more than the captain. Especially yellow Americans.

Eighty-five Baqian soldiers marched from the airport to the Astarse Hotel singing "God, He love America" to a conga beat. The fourteen trunks went atop their heads like some fat snake with shiny square parts.

The procession passed the presidential palace and went into the front door of the Astarse. "Best room in house," said the captain. "I'm sorry, captain. But all the rooms are filled." "Rooms, they never filled at the Astarse. We have tourist problem."

"They fill now, hey hey," said the clerk. "They got weapons upstairs you never see. They got "em big." And the clerk spread his arms. "They got 'em small."

And the clerk closed two fingers together. "And they use 'em good. We lose three soldiers yesterday. Yes, we do."

"I work at airport," said the captain. "I hear trouble here, but I don't hear what kind."

"Sure. Them soldier fellas, they don't tell you, captain, so when there's an order to come here, dummy fellas like you, you come and get killed, fella. That's what you get, fella."

'The bastards," muttered the captain. He was thinking of his superior officers. They must have known. They were offering assignments to watch tourists at lower rates. A captain in the Baqian army, like other Spanish-speaking officers everywhere, no matter what their politics, engaged in rugged-individualism capitalism.

They believed so fiercely in the free market system they would put a banker to shame. It was an honored tradition, no worse in Baqia than anywhere else in the Caribbean. One paid for a commission in the army. That was an investment. As an officer, you used your rank to earn back the investment with a profit. Sometimes, if you were poor, you repaid with loyalty. You bought good assignments. An airport with its commerce was fairly good. But a tourist hotel with its prostitutes and illegal smuggling sales was a delight in the generals' eyes. The captain had known there was trouble because the price for a hotel assignment was going down.

He had thought it was worth the risk and was going to put in a bid for the job. But now this generous clerk had warned him. Generous? The captain had suspicious second thoughts.

"Why you tell me this?" asked the captain. He hoisted his belly up briefly, a notch above his gunbelt.

"I don't want to be here when everybody tries to settle who has what room."

The captain rubbed his chin. This problem. He looked back at the delicate Oriental with the wisps of white hair. The captain smiled very broadly. He was not about to forget the porter, who was now a form of tapioca on the main runway of the International Airport. Then again, if a clerk gave something for nothing, there must be something horrible upstairs.

"I give you free information," confided the captain, "It is in return for your free information. You better give that nice little old yellow man a room."

"I will, senor captain, right now. But first evict its occupants. You might want to start with the Bulgarians on the second floor. They have the machine gun covering the hallway and they put sandbags around the walls of their room, and this morning when I complained because they didn't send the bellboy back and they had no right to keep him upstairs that long, because we shorthanded down here, they send me this."

The clerk took a hatbox from beneath the counter and, turning his head, removed the cover. The captain peered in. Wrapped in wax paper were severed human hands.

"You look at remains of bellboy."

"He must have been a wonderful bellboy," commiserated the captain.

"Why you say that?" asked the clerk.

"How much help has three hands?"

The clerk peered into the box. "And the second cook, too. I didn't even know. And the Bulgarians are the peaceful ones."

The clerk went down a list. There were Russians and Chinese, British, Cubans, Brazilians, Syrians, Is-

raelis, South Africans, Nigerians, and Swedes. There were also fourteen free-lance adventurers. All of them there to try to steal Baqia's new weapon.

"And I'm not counting the liberation groups still in the field waiting for rooms," said the clerk.

"Who's out now? Any of the rooms empty?" asked the captain.

"I'm afraid to check, but I think the British lobbed a couple of mortar shells down a stairwell early this morning. They usually do that when they go out for tea or something."

The captain clicked his heels and saluted.

"Senor American, we have a wonderful room for you," he said.

Crawling on their bellies, the first wave of Baqian enlisted men managed to get two trunks up the main stairway. One wedged open a door with a crowbar. The South Africans had opened up with small-arms fire that had been answered by the Russians, who thought the Bulgarians were at it again. Two Baqian corporals struggled back down the stairs, one clutching an arm shattered by a bullet that had left it dangling.

They had opened up a passage to move all the trunks into the second-floor east room and, except for a small booby trap at the door, there seemed to be no British presence in the room.

The clerk had been right. Second floor 2-E was temporarily unoccupied. All fourteen trunks managed to be winched and dragged into the room with only one more casualty. A young boy from the docks, who had just finished basic training a week before and whose father had paid to have him assigned to the airport, where he would have a chance for promotion without danger, caught a direct hit in the forehead.

He was brought down under a sheet that would have been white had it ever been washed.

When the way was cleared for the yellow American with the very unusual hands, Chiun entered 2-E. He stepped over the white sheet covering the young man just outside the entrance.

The captain waited nervously. He wanted to politely say goodbye to this dangerous American and also get out of the hotel with as many living men as possible.

"Where are you going?" asked Chiun. "We have taken you to room, yes? You like, yes?" "The towels are not clean. The sheets are not clean." Chiun looked toward the window. "Where is the bay? This room does not have a view of the bay. Those beds have been slept in. Where are the maids? Ice? There should be ice. I do not like ice, but there should be ice." Chiun examined the bathroom.

"The other rooms, they are no better, senor," said the captain.

"The ones that look over the bay are," said Chiun. "I bet they have clean towels and sheets too."

"Senor, we are greatly afraid, but someone of your illustrious wisdom and abilities and personage could succeed where we have failed. Should you arrange for another room, the Baqian armed forces stand ready to deliver your trunks. In salute to your magnificence."

Chiun smiled. Remo muttered under his breath that now he was going to hear how Chiun was finally getting the proper respect. Groveling servitude, like the captain's, always brought out the best in Chiun. Speech down, the captain backed out of the room. Chiun raised a single long fingernail toward Remo.

"As an assassin, you must learn not only to carry out your emperor's wishes, but to go beyond them to

what not only is good but appears good. Your President thinks he wants a machine, quietly delivered, and the respect of the people of Baqia, and the world."

"Little Father," said Remo, "I think the President wants us in and out without trouble, with the doohickey that Corazon has. I think that's what he wants."

"There is a lack of elegance to that, you know," said Chiun. "It is like a thief, stealing."

"I was in the same oval office with the President that you were. I heard what he said."

Chiun smiled. "And if he wanted typical shoddy workmanship, he would have used American. He would have given the assignment to you. But no. He gave it to me. He has chosen Sinanju and thus his name, whatever it is, will shine in history."

"You don't know the name of the President of the United States?" asked Remo incredulously.

"You keep changing them," said Chiun. "I learned one. He had a funny name and then there was someone else. And soon there was someone else. And one of those was an amateur assassination." Chiun shook his head. He did not like America's penchant for amateur assassinations, hate killings, and all manner of devilment that made these people barbarians. What they needed and what they would now get was elegance, the sun source of all the martial arts, Sinanju.

Across the main street in the presidential palace compound, Dr. Bissel Hunting Jameson IV, second assistant director of the British Royal Academy of Science, did not know that his room had been taken by someone else.

He and his staff were all immaculately attired in

white summer trousers, blue blazer with Royal Academy seal, white bucks, school ties, and Walther P-38's tailored into their shirts. They held straw skimmers in their hands and they were the only ones ever seen in Baqia who could cross Route 1 in midday, midsummer, wearing these clothes without raising a sweat.

It was as if this race of men had been bred with internal cooling systems.

The offer being made by Dr. Jameson, in rich aristocratic English emanating from the bowels and resonating out through the mouth, with each vowel a trumpeting declaration of basic natural superiority, was this:

Britain shared Baqia's destiny. Britain too was an island. Britain, like Baqia, had national interests and faced currency problems. Together, Britain and Baqia could march forward exploiting both Baqia's new discovery and Britain's experience in manufacturing secret devices.

By the time Dr. Jameson finished, if one did not know that Baqia was an island slum of shacks and abandoned sugar fields and Britain was an industrialized nation somewhat on hard times, an observer would have concluded that Her Majesty's government and the current dictator of a rock protrusion in the Caribbean shared a common heritage and future.

Corazon listened to these white men.

They had paid what was now the standard fee to see the machine in operation. In gold. Corazon liked gold. You could trust gold. He especially liked Kru-gerrands.

Corazon's minister of treasury pocketed two coins as he counted. Corazon noticed this. Corazon felt good. He was an honest treasurer. A thief would have

stolen fifteen coins. There were stories about men who stole nothing, but they were just stories, Corazon knew. The gringos stole also, he knew. But they seemed to have it better organized, so you never saw the coins disappear while they explained they were really trying to help you.

"For you," said Corazon, "we will execute a rapist right before your eyes with my great powers."

"We wait anxiously," said Dr. Jameson. "Being somewhat of an expert on the subject of voodoo, although not of course such an authority as your excellency, we have never heard of a 'protector spirit' such as the one in your box." Dr. Jameson smiled.

"The white man's powers are one thing, the black's and brown's are another. That is why you no understand. I do not understand this atomic bomb of yours and you do not understand my protector spirit," said Corazon, who had coined the phrase when the Russians had been there earlier that morning for their demonstration.

"Bring on the vicious rapist that he may taste the vengeance of his community. Yes?"

Dr. Jameson's delegation eased the minicameras and microinstruments out of their pockets. Sometimes, with an unsophisticated device in its early stages, its very design might divulge its secrets.

Generalissimo Corazon kept the machine under a blue velvet drape at his left beside the gilded Presidential throne chair, which was set on a small platform.

The vicious rapist turned out to be a middle-aged black woman with a red bandana and an orange dress.

"Excuse me," announced Corazon. "We did the rapist this morning. That one is guilty of arch treason

and plotting to blow up Ciudad Natividado and other horrible things."

The woman spat.

"Sir," whispered an aide into Jameson's ear. "That's the madam of the whorehouse. She's a second cousin to the Generalissimo. Why would he be killing her on that obviously trumped-up charge?"

Corazon watched the gringo aide whisper in the gringo ear and he had a question of his own. Criminals were one thing. But a second cousin who also had some control with spirits and who sent some of her brothel profits to El Presidente was another.

"Why we kill Juanita?" asked Corazon.

"She was making magic against you," said the new minister of justice.

"What kind?"

"Mountain magic. Saying you are a dead man."

"A lie," said Corazon.

"Yes. Most yes," said the minister. "You are all-powerful. Yes."

Corazon squinted at Juanita. She knew her women and she knew her men. She knew her magic. Was this some strange game? Did she say it at all? Should he ask her? Wouldn't she lie?

Corazon thought deeply about these things and finally he summoned her to him. Two soldiers held her wrists at the end of chains. They followed her.

Corazon leaned forward and whispered into his second cousin's ear.

"Say, Juanita, what is this they tell me about you, that you make the magic against me, heh?"

One of the Britons just behind Dr. Jameson eased a dial in his pocket and turned his left shoulder toward Corazon and the woman. Everything being whispered would be picked up by the miniature directional mike

built into the small shoulder pad on the left side of his jacket. Even if Corazon did not give Britain the secret of the machine, M.I.5 could break the secret, and that would at least come in handy to show the Generalissimo the power of Great Britain. Something along the lines of "We have ears everywhere."

Juanita whispered something back. And Corazon asked again why she had made magic against him.

And Juanita whispered something else in her cousin's ear.

Generalissimo Sacristo Corazon bolted upright. Instead of the languid snakelike motions of a serpent ready to strike, Corazon himself jumped.

He grabbed the velvet cover from the black box and threw it in the face of his new minister of justice. He spat on the marble floor. He spat on the box. He spat into his cousin Juanita's face.

"Whore," he called her. "I make you into nothing."

"No matter," said the woman. "Nothing, it matters. Nothing. Nothing."

Corazon, not so wild as to forget his greatest enemies were always his closest allies, turned the phony dials he had mounted on the machine. Secret British cameras and other instrumentation among the Jameson party went into action.

"I give you last chance. Last chance. Whose magic is strongest?"

"Not yours. Never yours."

"Goodbye," said Corazon. "And now look at whose magic is strongest."

For a moment Corazon worried. The last time he had used the machine, it had taken too long to thaw the Umibian ambassador. He pressed the control button. The little gasoline engine whirred away, activating the cathode tube by providing electricity. The

cathode rays interacted with what the natives called mung and the power was built up. It was released with a crack and a green glow, and the brightly colored orange dress sighed and collapsed over a dark puddle that had been the madam of the finest brothel in Baqia.

"Impressive," said Dr. Jameson. "We would like to join with you, Britain and Baqia, sister islands in a joint defense."

"Liar," boomed Corazon. "Liar, liar, liar. She was a liar. Liar."

"Quite, your excellency, but as to the matter at hand . . ." began Dr. Jameson. "The matter is a liar died a liar's death, yes?" "Yes, of course," said Dr. Jameson. He bowed. The British agents bowed and they left the palace. But they did not return immediately to their hotel rooms. They picked up a bit of South African tail, so to speak, and quite neatly they lured the African agents, posing as businessmen, into a side road, where the good old boys from Eton dispensed with the former colonial Afrikaaners.

Not much to make ado about, Dr. Jameson realized. You allowed the car to follow one of your cars, which led their car into where your chaps waited, and when they slowed to surround your stalled car, some very effective chaps from your show put on a rather neat display of Walther P-38 bullets into their foreheads. Jameson and his men had done it scores of times before, not only to enemy agents but to those of friendly countries-Americans, Israelis, French, Canadians. It didn't matter. The only immorality in spying was being caught.

"Good show,"'Dr. Jameson told his men.

A South African, dying from a grazing miss that had taken off his left ear, raised a hand for mercy.

He held onto the steering wheel of one of the ambushed cars as if it were life itself.

"So sorry, old boy," said Dr. Jameson. "Cartwright, would you please?"

'"Course," said a bony-faced man. He was a bit sorry he had missed the first time. He put the fellow away with a .38 slug into the right eyeball, which popped like a grape pierced by a javelin. The head went back across the front seat as though yanked by snap pulleys.

It was neat, but then Dr. Jameson had put this unit together in a neat and proper manner. A simple ambush was not about to put anyone out of sorts.

They had worked at their craft with British pluck and a reasonableness so absent from that island's politics or journalism, and so had become that very rare thing: competent. Cartwright turned off the South African's motor.

"What say we do our readouts on the instruments here?" said Dr. Jameson. "The delays from using laboratories back home are really not worth it. Who wants to wait a month to find out that some chambermaid who handled something had tuberculosis or something, what?"

These questions were not really questions. That so-casual air Dr. Jameson had learned to affect encouraged success rather than heroism, and asking a question instead of giving an order kept the whole thing in proportion. No one on his M.I.5 team was about to say no or maybe to any of Dr. Jameson's questions.

The first readout was from the directional listening device.

"Be nice to find out what the brown-berry bugger got so frothed about, what?" said Dr. Jameson.

Corazon spoke in Spanish to his cousin and she in island Spanish to him. It was not the finest, Castilian and had overlays of Indian words.

Corazon surprisingly had given his cousin a chance to live. All she had to do was to acknowledge that his power was the greatest on the island. And even more surprisingly, she refused to do this on the grounds that she and Corazon were dead anyhow and why bother. Dr. Jameson shook his head. He couldn't quite believe what the translator had just told him.

One of his crew, the expert on local culture, pointed out that the people of Baqia were quite fatalistic, especially the holy people connected with the island's voodoo religion.

"Give me a literal on that," said Dr. Jameson. He filled a small pipe with a stiff Dunhill mixture. The aide rewound the small tape recorder attached to the directional mike. He talked in English, translating the island Spanish.

"Juanita says "You dead and to die. Your force weak. You little boy. Mimado.' That means spoiled brat. Tfou trumpet big things. But you no big thing. You steal president's chair. When big thing and you come together, you lose.' Corazon says, 'Don't say that.' And she says, 'Real power on this island be with the force in the mountain. With the religion of our people. With the voodoo. With the undead. The holy man up there, he be one big power. He gonna be king. And now another big power come and he going make the holy man in the mountains king. And you going to lose.' Something like that. Not clear. And Corazon says, 'You got one more chance/ and she

says, 'You got no chance at all,' and then, of course, he does in the poor old thing."

"Wonder," said Dr. Jameson, "who is this man in the hills? And what is this other man, this other force that's going to make the man in the hills king? And why didn't she tell him what he wanted to hear?"

"I think it would be like denying her religion," said the aide.

"Seems strange," said Dr. Jameson. "Dying probably denies her religion, too. She should have just told the mad bugger anything he wanted to be told."

"Not their culture, sir. This is voodoo. This is spirits. A smaller spirit acknowledges a greater spirit and the worst thing that can happen is that a smaller spirit does not acknowledge its relative weakness. That apparently is what Corazon has done. He's failed to acknowledge the supremacy of this holy man in the mountains. His cousin refused to commit the same thing."

"Seems strange," said Jameson. "I'd rather be an apostate than a puddle."

"Would you?" said the aide. "Would we? Why do we risk our lives in this work rather than tend shop or something in Surrey, sir? Why is running over to the enemy and getting rewarded handsomely something that just isn't done?"

"Well, ummm," said Dr. Jameson. "Just not done."

"Precisely. It's our taboopsir. And denying their voodoo is theirs. So there it is."

"You culture people are bonkers. You make the most absurd thing sound logical," said Dr. Jameson.

"One person's heroism is another person's insanity," said the aide. "It all depends on the culture."

Dr. Jameson waved the man to silence. Legends bothered him. They confused things. Instrumentation,

on the other hand, was the great solver of life's puzzles.

Corazon had showed them the machine and, with the miniaturized instruments hidden on their bodies, they had recorded its power and its sounds and its waves.

The conclusion of the experts-"just rough, of course, sir"-was that'at the point of impact, a rearranging signal was sent to the cells in the human body. In other words, the cells rearranged themselves.

"In other words?" said Dr. Jameson. "I haven't followed a bloody word."

"The machine sends out a signal that triggers matter to alter itself. Organic matter. Living matter."

"Good. Then if we have the signal we can make the bloody machine ourselves."

"Not quite, sir. The types of rays and waves in the world are infinite. The triggering device in Corazon's machine is probably some substance we know nothing about."

"Then how did that savage in medals figure it out?"

"He probably just lucked into it," said one of the scientific members of the team. "Just a guess, until we get lab reports, but I think the machine works off the human nervous system. That poor woman's dress was cotton. That was organic material. But it was unaffected."

"I felt a bit woozy, sir," offered the youngest member of Jameson's team. "When the machine went on, I felt woozy."

"Anyone else?" asked Dr. Jameson.

They had felt tingles. Only one man had felt nothing, and that was Dr. Jameson himself.

"You had a spot of brandy before our meeting, sir," offered an aide.

"Yes. True," said Jameson.

"And there was that Umibian. We heard that Corazon had to hit him twice with the rays before he went. He was drunk as a lord, sir."

"Nervous system. Alcohol. Perhaps," said Dr. Jameson. "Perhaps we could assault the presidential palace roaring drunk, eh? And then we'd be immune to the machine."

The men chuckled. Unfortunately things were not that simple. The whole island, especially the capital of Ciudad Natividado, was seething with foreign operations. One might successfully get his hands on the machine, losing quite a few men in the process, but then be too weak to get it out of the country. Because all the other agents seeing one with the prize would join together to thwart the winner. Whoever got the machine first would have to fight a mini world war. Alone.

Dr. Jameson had grown to love this keen working group of effective killers. They could get on with the dirty work and leave it behind. He would match his stout band against anyone else. But not against everyone else. The odds were just too great.

It was a weird island, this. And a weirder situation. The key to a situation with so many weird variables was to stay orderly and not try to match weird with weird, witch doctor with witch doctor, but just stay with what you knew. Keep the British square, so to speak. Let the others make the mistakes. Yes. Dr. Jameson sucked on his pipe and watched the scrub and palm whiz by his window on the dirt road.

Had Corazon stumbled onto some sort of magic? The dials on the machine were not all functioning. Unless, of course, the most destructive machine ever

invented used parts from a Waring blender and a spring-motor from an Erector set.

In Ciudad Natividado, the British point man reported that their room in the hotel had been occupied by an aged Oriental and a skinny white man who, when confronted with the working end of a Walther P-38, replied that he wasn't that happy with the island, his own government, any other government, the day, the hotel, the man pointing the gun, or the taped soap opera blaring out of a television set that had been brought to play the tape, which he had seen twenty-two times and didn't like the first time, either. However, if the British agent wanted to do himself a favor, he would not interrupt the show. Especially since in this heat, he would also be doing the white man a favor because the white man didn't feel like disposing of bodies, but in this heat you couldn't just let them lie around.

Yes, the white man had responded further, he was aware it was a pistol being pointed at his face and, no, he did not know it was a Walther whatchamacall-it and it made no difference whether the man intended to shoot or not.

"Say anything else?" Dr. Jameson asked.

"Yes, sir. He didn't like those drums beating all the time either."

"Sounds like a nit," said Dr. Jameson over the radio.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, remove them from the room, if you would."

"By force?"

"Why not?"

"Yes, sir. Kill?"

''If you have to," radioed Jameson.

"It is for a room, sir. Only a room."

"On Baqia, that is enough."

"They look so defenseless, sir. Not a weapon on them. And the white man is an American, sir."

"It's been a hard day," said Dr. Jameson. "Please." And he waited in his car, with the rest of his team in their cars, for the word that the room had been cleared out. When twenty minutes had passed, Dr. Jameson sent another man with a radio transmitter that worked and told him to report back that indeed the room had been cleared out, and if the first agent's radio had failed to work properly there would be what-ho in the supply room back in London.

The second agent did not return, either.

CHAPTER FOUR

Remo looked at the pistol. There was a way a man cradled a pistol butt that was a fairly certain indication of when the trigger would be pulled.

Most people tended not to notice these things, because when you are looking at someone you think is about to kill you, the perceptions of trigger fingers and how the ridges of the skin rest on the gunmetal trigger just aren't there. Unless they were trained to be there. It was like hitting a baseball with a bat. It would be an impossible thing for someone who had never seen a baseball come at him before, but it was just a regular occurrence for a major leaguer who had hit baseball after baseball.

So Remo knew the man wasn't about to pull the trigger because he just wasn't ready for it. The pressure of the finger ridges wasn't there.

"Yeah, okay, thank you for the threat and come back when you're ready to kill," Remo said.

Remo shut the door.

Chiun sat lotus-position before the television set. Old actors were young again on this television screen, brought down to Baqia from the States in the luggage along with the tapes. Chiun did not like the modern soap operas. When sex and violence began to appear, he called it blasphemy and refused to watch the new shows. So he had taken to rewatching what he called "the only redeeming thing in your culture, your one great art form."

For a time, Chiun had tried to write his own soap opera, but he had spent so much time working on the title, the dedication, and the speech he would make when he received an Emmy that he never quite got around to writing the script. It was one of the things that Remo never mentioned to him.

"What is wrong with love and concern and marriage?" Chiun asked.

He answered himself. "Nothing," he said.

Now he mouthed the words of Dr. Channing Murdoch Callaher telling Rebecca Wentworth her mother was dying of a rare disease and that he felt he couldn't operate on the mother because he knew who Rebecca's real father was.

The organ music heightened the drama. Chiun's lips ceased to move as a commercial for a soap powder came on. It advertised that it had more zyclomite than any other cleaner. Remo knew the commercial was old, because modern commercials advertised that cleansers were zyclomite free.

"Who was at the door?" asked Chiun during the commercial.

"Nobody," said Remo. "Some British guy."

"Never speak ill of the British. Henry the Eighth always paid on time and purchased regularly. Good

and noble Henry was a blessing to his people and a pride to his race. He showed that no matter how funny a person's eyes were, he could still show that he had a Korean heart."

"You know what you're going to do here?" asked Remo.

"Yes," said Chiun.

"What?"

"See what happens to Rebecca," Chiun said.

"Rebecca?" asked Remo, shocked. "Rebecca lives for seven more years, has fourteen major operations, three abortions, becomes an astronaut, a political investigator, a congressperson, gets a hysterectomy, and then gets raped, shot at, and inherits a department store before her contract with her studio runs out, whereupon she is run over by a faulty truck that was supposed to be recalled to Detroit."

Chiun's eyes moved slowly, as if searching for someone to share his shock at such a dastardly deed as destroying many many hours of what a poor, delicate kind gentle soul took his small pleasures in. There was no one else in the room but an ungrateful pupil.

"Thank you," said Chiun. His voice was laden with hurt.

There was a knock at the door again. The Briton in the blue blazer, light summer slacks, and the dandy Walther P-38 was at the door. This time the finger was closed on the trigger and the butt was set to take the slight kick. He was ready to kill.

"I'm afraid, old boy, you're just going to have to toodleoo off, what?"

"No," said Remo. "We just got here."

"I really don't want to kill you, you know. A bit of a mess."

"Don't worry. You're not going to kill anybody."

"I am pointing the gun directly at your head, you know."

"I know," said Remo. He rested one hand against the doorjamb.

Chiun glanced over at the intruder at the door. Not only was his joy with the show spoiled by the revelation of the next six-hundred episodes, of which four-hundred were absolutely the best, but now Remo was going to put a body in the room while the main show was going on. He wasn't going to wait until the next commercial, Chiun knew. And why? Why would Remo kill that man at the door during the show, instead of waiting until a commercial?

Chiun knew the answer.

"Hater of beauty," he snapped at Remo.

The Rritish agent took a tentative step back. "I don't think you realize with whom you're dealing," he said.

"That's your problem, not ours," Remo said.

"You're a dead man, you know," said the agent. He had the forehead of this casual American directly in line with his gunsights. He would blast out the frontal lobe with such force there probably would be a king-sized hole in the back of the head, also.

"He's gonna shoot, Little Father. You hear him? He's gonna shoot now. It's not my fault."

"Beauty hater," said Chiun viciously. . "If you'll bother to look, you'll see his hand is gonna move that gun. Any moment now, he's gonna squeeze that trigger."

"Any moment now," said Chiun in a whiny, imitative voice, "he's going to squeeze the trigger. He's going to squeeze the trigger. So let's all interrupt

anything that's going on because he's going to squeeze the trigger."

The agent had waited long enough. He did not understand why these two so casually faced death. Nor was he all that concerned. He had killed many men before and sometimes there was a dumb disbelief on the part of the victim. At other times fear. But never casual cattiness like between these two. Still there was a first time for anything.

He squeezed the trigger. The Walther P-38 jumped in his hand. But he did not feel the kick. And the white man's forehead was still there. AH of it. Un-punctured. What wasn't there was the Walther P-38 or his hand. At his wrist, there was the incredible wrenching like a giant tooth being taken out of his arm. He had felt force but no pain.

And he hadn't seen the man's hands move. He did catch a glimpse of a finger moving between his two eyes and he could have sworn he had seen it go in up to the fist knuckle of that hand and it was like a very big door had slammed on his head. He could have sworn that. But he wasn't swearing anymore. His last thought was a memory and by the time his body hit the floor he was not feeling anything.

His nerve endings were sending messages, but that part of the brain that was to receive them had been traumatized into a loose bloody pudding.

Remo wiped his finger off on the man's shirt and stacked him neatly in front of the room with the Bulgarians in it. A Kalishnikov assault rifle poked its way out of the door.

Someone asked a question in Russian, then French, and finally English.

"Who you?"

"Me me," answered Remo, covering the forehead mess of the British agent with the straw skimmer.

"Who me?" came the voice from behind the partially opened door.

"You you," said Remo.

"No, you," said the voice.

"Me?" asked Remo.

"Yes. Why you?"

"Me me. You you," said Remo=

"What you do out there?"

"I'm putting a body away because the air conditioning doesn't work and they tend to stink after a while.

"Why at our door?"

"Why not at your door?"

Remo thought that was a good answer. Obviously whoever was behind the door did not because he fired off a burst from the Kalishnikov.

Back in the room, Chiun noted gunfire down the hall, which did not help the drama.

"Sorry," said Remo.

Chiun gave a nod, but not one that accepted Remo's excuse. It was a nod that acknowledged that Remo, one way or another, had found and always would find a way to trifle with an old man's pleasure. And sure enough, Remo did again with another Englishman and, this time, two shots into the room and a hand grenade down the hall.

This disturbance not entirely ruining Chiun's afternoon, Remo then announced that he saw a whole team coming around the building. They all wore blazers and straw skimmers. Their leader was a man with a pipe.

"Isn't it interesting that we are attacked always

while Rebecca is making her most beautiful speeches ?" Chiun said.

"They attack when they attack, Little Father," Remo said.

"No doubt," said Chiun.

"They really are," said Remo.

The groups had come in what was known as a reserve triangle. Up the front of the street, up an alley on the side, and with two triangle tops, which was two men on each side, two men frontal and two behind them.

It was a really good team, Remo estimated. They moved together. They obviously had worked together before. You could tell that by the coordination without many commands. New people were always shouting or signaling to each other or running off in different directions. Remo took a position on the roof so he could see how each group came on. A dark man wielding two heavy .44s stared nervously around. He didn't know who to defend against first. He cursed in Russian and backed off into a corner.

Remo saw two skimmered heads go into the front of the building while another pair threw a grappling ladder to the window sill of Chiun's room and two in the alley started up a fire escape.

"Just working," Remo said to the man with the two 44s. "You stay there."

Chiun had taught him that when working multiples it was always best to concentrate on something that had no direct relationship to the action of the multiples. Like breathing. Remo concentrated on the breathing and let his body take care of the other work. He was out over the ledge of the building and down along the side, slapping at each sill and keeping the rhythm of his inner lungs aligned with the breath

itself, when lie met the two coming up the grappling hook line to Churn's window.

"Oh," said one, going back down to the dusty alley alongside the hotel. The other's Walther was rendered useless by going buttfirst through his own sternum, creating great problems for the heart, which found gun handles even more hazardous than cholesterol.

Across the street, peering out a slight crack in the Venetian bunds in one of the upper rooms, Generalissimo Sacristo Corazon saw the thin white man come down off the roof and knew, without anyone telling him, that his cousin Juanita had been telling the truth about a stronger power than his.

He had never seen a man drop like that. He had seen bodies fall from buildings. He had even seen divers jump off cliffs in Mexico. And once he had seen a plane blow up in the air.

But this white man. He dropped faster than someone falling. He dropped faster than someone in a dive. It looked as if he had harnessed gravity to enable himself to go down a wall faster than was normal.

The white man's body cleaned the rope of the two men like two exposed peas being nicked from an open pod.

"Who? Who that man?" demanded Corazon, pointing through the Venetian blind toward Remo.

"A white man," offered a major. He had a .44-cali-ber pistol in his holster, identical to Corazon's. His father had been in the hills with Corazon's father. When the senior Corazon had become President, the major's father had refused to be promoted to general. He died an old man. The lesson was not lost on his son, whose name was Manuel Estrada. When the young Corazon became El Presidente for life, Manuel

Estrada also refused to be promoted to general. He also hoped to have a long life. But unlike his father, he planned one day to have everything.

The senior Estrada had had a family motto. It was "Nobody ever got shot for being a little thief." Manuel Estrada had a motto, too. It was "Wait your turn."

Major Estrada was just about the only man in the entourage whose hands did not sweat when Corazon was near. He had high cheekbones that showed his Indian blood and wine dark skin that showed his African. His nose was proud, a reminder of the night a. Castilian bedded a slave brought to work the sugar.

He heard Corazon scream at him that anyone could see it was a white man, but from what country was this white man?

"A white country," said Estrada.

"What white country? Find out. Find out now, Estrada, now."

Corazon watched Remo move along the front of the Astarse Hotel. His movements looked like a shuffle and appeared slow, until you realized the movement of the limbs might be slow but not of the body itself. It was moving almost in a blur. It went into the two Britishers like water through a ball of sand.

Remo's feet raised no dust. Corazon muttered. It was the strange power Juanita spoke of.

He uttered some prayers. "Lord, remove this evil thing from our blessed island. In your son's name, we humbly pray, so you do this little thing for us."

These words did the chief of state utter, looking down at Remo. He was still there. Well, if prayers to the Lord didn't work, a good holy man had other tricks.

"Power of darkness and stench of the devil, bring-

ing down on men a curse eternal, land on that one there."

Corazon saw the white man take on two more Britishers. Looked like he could dodge bullets, too.

Corazon spat on the palace floor. "To hell with both of you," he said. It was like dealing with superpowers who were intent on ignoring him. What good were gods anyway if they didn't listen to you?

Suddenly the man stumbled. "Thank you, Beelzebub," said Corazon, but it wasn't a stumble. Remo had slid sideways to move off into the back of the alley. Corazon cursed his gods again.

That was the problem with too many people today, he thought. They were afraid to punish their gods. But he kept reminding them that if they messed around with Sacristo Corazon he wasn't going to fall down on his knees, saying, "I love you, anyhow." What was he supposed to be, some kind of Irishman? You messed with Corazon, god, forget it. You don't get so much as a candle.

But that was with Western gods. There was one god that Corazon did not call on. It was the god of the wind and the night and the cold and it lived in the hills and in its honor those voodoo drums beat twenty-four hours a day, and Corazon did not call on that god because he was afraid of it. Even more than he was afraid of this force . . . this white man across the street.

He had his own force. He had the machine. Like any commander, he knew his limits. Even with a great weapon. After a battle, everyone says you won because you had the great weapon. But before the battle, you must consider what happens if you use your great weapon and it does not work.

Nothing was worse than pointing a gun at some

one's head and hearing a click because the chamber was empty.

What if his machine did not work against the new force?

Juanita had said the new force would triumph and bring kinghood to the holy man of the mountains.

And just that veiy day, the Umibian delegate had gotten two full doses from Corazon's machine before he had collapsed.

The machine was losing power, he had thought. But Juanita had gone quickly. Did the machine still work the way it should or not? Corazon had to think carefully before he used it. He could not afford to aim, fire, and leave someone standing. Then, even if he did live, which was doubtful, all the money would go. The embassies would return to lazy one-man operations. The ships would leave the harbor and Baqia would be almost as bad as before the Spanish came.

One did not use one's major weapon lightly. But how to use it? When Corazon was thinking, he liked to have a woman. When he was thinking deeply, he liked to have two women. Very deeply, three. And so on.

When the fifth woman had left his private rooms, which were a minifortress within the fortresslike presidential palace compound, Corazon knew what he would do.

Major Estrada had the Britisher, Dr. Jameson, in tow. Dr. Jameson was still in a state of shock.

"I don't believe it. I don't believe it," he gasped.

"Who was that man who did those awful things to your people?"

"I don't believe it," Jameson gasped. He sucked on the pipestem, which was now minus a bowl. He had lost his entire crew. It was impossible. No one man

could do that. And besides, what would M.I.5 say about the lost instrumentation? This was hardly a neat operation.

"Who was that man?''

"American."

Corazon thought about this. With any other country that had a force like that, you would give respect. But Americans, he had learned, could be made ashamed of their force. They could be made helpless. Americans like to be abused. Quadruple the price of a raw material and they would hold conferences at their own expense to explain to the world that you had a God-given right to that raw material and so could set any price you wanted. They had forgotten what everyone else knew. Force gained you respect. America was insane.

If it had been the Russians who had that force with them, Corazon would have gone directly to the Russians, run the hammer and sickle up the Baqian flagpoles, and declared his everlasting friendship.

But you didn't do that with Americans. When America or any of its allies used force, it became the focus of ill will at the United Nations. People from all over condemned the U.S. warmongers. As the Russian had reminded Corazon today:

"Be a full-fledged member of the Third World, supporting us in everything, and you can't commit a crime. Only America and friends of America can commit crimes. And we can give you two hundred American professors swearing you are being picked on unfairly if you should ever have to start a real bloodbath. And we're the only ones still making gas ovens for human disposal. And no one says a word."

The Russian pointed out that good, safe governments had to kill all the time. It was the only sure

way of getting respect. With communism, one could do it free of criticism. And never have to hold an election.

Now Corazon did not like Russians as people, but as a leader one had to make sacrifices.

"Break the relations with America," said Corazon.

"What?" asked Major Estrada.

"Break the relations with America and bring me the Russian ambassador."

"I don't know how to break the relations with a country."

"Do I have to do everything?"

"All right. When?" asked Corazon.

"Now," said Corazon.

"Anything else?"

Corazon shook his head. "It is big thing, breaking the relations with a country. People read this to me all the time."

"Who reads?" asked Estrada.

"The minister of education. He reads."

"He's a good reader," admitted Estrada. He had seen him read for an audience once. The minister of education had gotten through a big fat book with no pictures in one short afternoon. Once, Estrada had asked a so-called smart American how fast he had read that book and the so-called smart American said it had taken him a week. Baqia had a good minister of education.

"Another thing," said Corazon. 'Take care of this man here." He nodded to the dazed Dr. Jameson.

"Bring him to the British consul?" asked Estrada.

"No," said Corazon.

"Oh," said Estrada, and with his .44 put two thumping slugs into the blue blazer. One of the slugs blew the breast patch off the jacket.

"Not here, stupido," yelled Corazon. "I want him shoot here, I shoot him here myself."

"You say take care of him. You say break the relations with America. You say get Russian ambassador and get him here. Hey, what's all this, eh? I got one afternoon."

"Anybody else as stupid as you, Estrada, I shoot."

"You can't shoot me," said Estrada, putting his smoking pistol back in the holster.

"Why not?" demanded Corazon. He didn't like hearing a thing like that.

"Because I the only one you know who won't shoot you if I get a chance."

The Russian ambassador perspired profusely. He rubbed his hands. He wore a very floppy suit. He was a middle-aged man and had served as a consul in Chile, Ecuador, Peru, and now here in Baqia. He had his own ratings for countries, on a scale of one to ten. Ten being the most likely to get killed in. He didn't mind living for socialism but he certainly didn't want to die for it. He rated Baqia at twelve.

He had three children and a wife at home in Sverdlovsk. He had a sixteen-year-old dark-eyed island beauty here in Baqia. He didn't want to go home.

When he heard the Generalissimo wanted to see him, he didn't know if it was for his own execution, someone else's execution, or just a request to give more help to another Third World country aspiring to break the chains of colonialism, which was just another word for a shakedown. The Russian ambassador was Anastas Bogrebyan. He was of Armenian descent. He had one purpose on this island and that was to oversee all operations aimed at getting the device that disintegrated people, and failing that to make sure no

one else got it. On important scientific matters that had to be done right, the Russians now sent Armenians. It used to be Jews, but too many kept right on going once outside Russia.

"I love Russia and communism and socialism and all that stuff," Corazon told the ambassador. "And I am thinking what can I do for my Russian friends, I am thinking?"

Corazon tapped the blue velvet drape over the special machine. Bogrebyan had dealt with natives before. He knew he wasn't going to get this machine right away. Not without bargaining.

"What is the very best thing I can give my friends, the Russians?"

Bogrebyan shrugged. Was it really possible he was going to give the machine itself to Russia? No, it was impossible. Even though he was hearing what he was hearing, Bogrebyan did not think Corazon was the kind of man to surrender so easily what he knew was the only thing that was pumping money into his country. Moreover, this man who had lived all his life by stealth and death was not about to panic into giving something away when he could put on the squeeze. And then Bogrebyan saw the squeeze.

Corazon announced he was breaking diplomatic relations with America, but he was afraid.

"Afraid of what?" asked Bogrebyan.

"What America will do to me. Will you protect me?"

"Of course. We love you," said Bogrebyan, knowing there was more to come.

"There are American CIA killer agent spies here, on my sacred soil of Baqia."

"There is no place of value that does not have spies from everywhere, comrade," said Bogrebyan shrewd-

ly. He had a honker of a nose with a few small hairs on the end of it. Perspiration collected on the hairs. But Bogrebyan's soul was cool.

Corazon grinned. He had a round face like a big dark melon.

"You protect us?" he said.

"What do you want?"

"I want Americans dead. Over there. In the Astarse. Americans, yes?"

"Perhaps," said Bogrebyan. "But we want something in return. We want to help you use your new device for the good of all mankind. For peaceful purposes. For us."

Corazon knew he had been outmaneuvered, but he was not about to give up.

"Or I might join those killers over there. In the Astarse. Throw myself at their mercy. It can happen."

Now Bogrebyan wondered why Corazon himself could not take care of the Americans. Cautiously he said, "We'll see. There are many, many spies here now. We are not quite sure, comrade, why you fear these two."

"Comrade," said Corazon, embracing the Russian. "Get them, you get my magic." But in his heart the great fear was growing. It was possible the Russians would fail. "Do not fail," Corazon blurted. "Use enough men and do not fail."

In the evening he went to his window overlooking the Astarse. He waited for the Russians. They would be coming soon. Bogrebyan was not a stupid man. The sun set red down Baqian Route 1. He saw the Russians then, down the road, strolling quite casually. Twenty-five men with guns and ropes and light mortars. All pretenses were gone. It was going to be a war.

Corazon's heart beat with a dash of joy now. It might work. It might very well work, he thought.

He had heard among other things that morning that one of the lower officers who worked at the airport said there was an old Oriental one should be afraid of who was part of the American team. Old men died quicker when helped to their deaths. And then to his further joy Corazon, peering from the palace window, saw that another equally strong group of Russians were coming from the other direction on Route 1.

The Russians were pulling out all the stops. The melon face had a big white-toothed wedge of a smile from ear to ear. Corazon would have sung the Russian national anthem if he had known it.

He saw heads peer out windows in the Astarse. He saw the same heads disappear. He saw men jump out windows. Run out through the alley limping. The Astarse was clearing like a sink of roaches when the light was suddenly turned on. Some men left their weapons.

The Russians began to chant, smelling their triumph. A bold move. A strong move. Corazon knew that when you dealt with Russians, you dealt with action. But nothing like this had he expected.

One little old man in a gown stood at a window in the Astarse. He was in the second floor. He had wisps of white hair, Corazon noticed, as he looked more closely. His arms were folded over themselves. And Corazon saw it was not a robe he wore but a light blue garment from the Orient. He had seen them before.

Corazon made out the features in the fast-failing light. The old man was an Oriental. He looked up the

street and smiled, and then down the street and smiled.

He was smiling at the Russians. And it was the smile of a man who had just been offered an interesting dessert.

And then with horror Corazon realized the full meaning of that smile. The Oriental thought of Russia's major attacking forces as mere amusement. The calm look was not the ignorance of an old man but contentment, the confidence of a melon chopper who had chopped melon all day and was not about to be excited by a few more.

The Oriental looked up, across the street into the presidential palace, and caught Corazon's eyes. And very quietly, he smiled again.

Corazon ducked behind the Venetian blinds. In his own palace, in his own country, he was afraid to look out of his own window. He knew what would happen.

"Juanita," he muttered to the soul of the dead. "If you are around, I acknowledge your Tightness."

CHAPTER FIVE

Major Manuel Estrada broke relations with America as well as he could. But first he had to get rid of the Englishman's body, then get one of the cleaning people to clean up the blood in the Generalissimo's receiving room, then find some people to bury the body, and, of course, to share the knowledge of these heavy burdens with his friends at the cantina.

Somehow the cantina got into the work mix before some of the other duties, and when he left the cantina, it was dark and someone was lying drunk in the middle of Route 1. Estrada kicked the man.

"Get up, drunken man," said Estrada. "You foolish drunken thing. Do you not have things to do? Foolish drunken man."

Estrada tripped over him from a standing position. Then he felt the man's face. It was cold. The man of course was dead."Estrada apologized to the man for calling him a drunkard. Then Estrada noticed the

blue blazer and the head wound. It was Dr. Jameson, the Englishman.

Estrada pushed his hands at air. While others might not understand what this meant, Estrada did. He was abandoning this job for now. He had more important things to do.

Let the dead bury the dead, someone had once said. He knew that man who said that was a pretty smart man. It was Jesus in the Bible. And Jesus was God. Therefore, it would be a sin for Major Manuel Estrada, the living, to bury the dead. It would be a sin against Jesus. And it was not good to be a sinful man.

So let Dr. Jameson lie.

The American Embassy was a modern sprawling aluminum and concrete structure that someone once told Major Estrada represented an Indian prayer in tangible form. It was to show America's and Baqia's common Indian heritage. Two peoples, one future.

Now Manuel Estrada might not be the smartest man on the island. But he knew that when someone told you that you and he had something in common, he wanted something.

Estrada was always waiting for the Americans to ask for something. He did not trust their generosity. Never had. They never asked for anything, so he resented them. That resentment was going to make the evening's job easier.

He careened to the front door of the embassy and banged on it. A well-dressed American marine in formal blue pants and khaki shirt festooned with medals opened the door.

Estrada demanded to see the ambassador. He had a message from El Presidente, Generalissimo Sacristo

Corazon himself, for the ambassador himself. The ambassador rushed to the door.

The ambassador, no slouch at island politics, had monitored the Russian buildup. He knew they had made some sort of deal with Corazon.

"You," said Estrada.

"Yes?" said the ambassador. He was in his bathrobe and slippers.

"Get out this country now. Get out here. Go. We no like you. This breaks the sex."

"What?" asked the ambassador. "Oh, you mean break relations."

"Yeah. That's the thing. Do it and go. Now. Good. Thank you. Very much thank you," said Estrada. "That's the word. Break relations. Broken. Broke. Done. Forever. We don't want see you round here forever. But don't worry, American. These things never last. Hasta luego. Let us drink to our separation. You leave the embassy liquor. We watch it for you."

In America, the news was received solemnly. There could be little doubt any longer that the Russians had gotten hold of the secret machine that could make a major war an easy victory.

The national commentator who had earlier seen Baqia's wavering as a sign of an absence of moral leadership by America now said this was further evidence "that if we're going to rely on ships and guns we're not going to make it."

The commentator appeared on national television several nights a week and did not know what an army was, did not know how things got done, and still believed America had kept a foreign country out of a war by slipping one of the leaders a million dollars.

Which was like stopping a Mafia hit by offering the button man a gift of milk and cookies. In any other country at any other time, the commentator would have been politely humored. In America he was heard by multimillions.

The President listened to him. He did not, like anyone else who knew what was going on in the world, respect the man. But he did know that the commentator, while never being a good newsman, was an excellent propagandist.

Something had gone wrong in Baqia. The President waited for the proper time and was at his room with the special red telephone to CURE.

"What is going on in Baqia?" the President asked.

"I don't know, sir," came back the acid voice of Dr. Harold W. Smith.

"We're getting our heads handed to us. Those boys are supposed to be good. And they haven't done anything. Call 'em off."

"You assigned them, sir," Smith reminded him.

"I don't need an I-told-you-so at this point."

"I was not being sarcastic, sir. You have made an arrangement with Sinanju, sir. They are not like civil servants. Before Rome existed as a city, sir, Sinanju already had an elaborate procedure for ending service to an emperor."

"What is it?"

"I am not exactly sure," said Smith.

"You mean you took it upon yourself to hire a killer and can't get rid of? Because you don't know the correct procedure?"

"No, sir, we did not. Emphatically we did not. Sinanju was entered into contract to train one of our men. We never agreed to unleash the Master of

Sinanju. We have never done it. You did it. For the first time."

"Well, what happens now?"

"I would advise you to let that person work out what he is going to work out. Surprisingly, in international politics not much has changed since the Ming dynasty. It may go wrong. But I would bet that it will probably go right down there."

"I don't bet. Give me guarantees."

"There are none," Smith said.

"Thanks for nothing," said the President. He rammed the red telephone into the back of the bureau drawer. He stormed out of the bedroom and down to his business offices in the White House. He wanted the Central Intelligence Agency and wanted them now and he would cut any orders the CIA wanted. He wanted CIA presence in Baqia. Now.

Delicately, the CIA director explained that he had fourteen bound volumes in his office that would prove that the CIA couldn't do what the President wanted. His message, in essence, was "Don't ask." We may not know what's going on in the world and we may embarrass you often and we may rarely succeed in foreign adventures, but baby, back here in Washington where it counts, we know how to play it safe, and nobody messes with us.

The President's response, in essence, was "Do it or I'll have your ass."

"But our image, Mr. President."

"To hell with your image. Protect the country."

"Which one, sir?"

"The one you work for, you idiot. Now do it."

Til need it in writing."

Now, since it was a direct order and since the President was going to commit himself in writing,

and since the CIA could always explain later to columnists and congressmen that they had not gone into this thing on their own but were pushed, it was somewhat safe to go ahead.

Times like these were dangerous. First, they must not be accused of using illegal force, even though those who were most likely to make the charge were America's enemies. Secondly and probably equally important, the CIA must not be accused of discrimination.

Thus, after careful analysis, it came down to one agent as the only person who could safely protect the CIA in times like these.

"Hey, Ruby. It fo' you. It some Washington fella."

Ruby Jackson Gonzalez looked up from a bill of lading. She had opened this small wig factory in Norfolk, Virginia, because that was where she could buy human hair cheapest. The sailors off the ships brought her duffel bags of it from around the world. The business was thriving.

She also had a very healthy government check each month-$2,283.53-which came to more than $25,000 a year clear for just signing the checks.

At twenty-two, Ruby had enough smarts to know the government didn't pay her all that money for a smile. She had gotten the smarts despite going to New York City public schools.

During Afro-pride classes she smuggled In a McGuffey reader her grandmother had given her and hid it inside the cover of a Malcolm X coloring book given to high school students. She taught herself to write by copying over and over the neatest script she could find. When the school discarded the old mathematics books in favor of new "relevant texts" that concentrated on the complicated concepts of "many"

and "not so many," she dug into the big garbage bags and collected a whole set. With those, she taught herself to add, subtract, multiply, and divide and for $5 a week she got some boy from a private school in Riverdale to teach her about equations and logarithms and the calculus.

Thus, at graduation from high school, it was she who was chosen to read each classmate what his or her diploma said.

"Them big words," said one boy. "Ah hope Dart-muff don' speck us to know all them big words."

Ruby had killed a man by the time she was sixteen. In the ghetto there was a horror for young girls that was not spoken of outside. Grown men would sometimes wrestle them into a room for a mass rape. It was called "pulling the train."

Ruby, whose smooth skin looked like light chocolate cream and who had a sharp sudden smile like the opening of a box of candy surprises, could make most men do pleasant double takes. She was attractive and, as her body filled out and she became a woman, she could sense men looking at her in that way. In a different place, it would have been a stroke to one's ego. But in the ghetto of Bedford-Stuyvesant, it could mean finding yourself kidnaped in a room for a day or two and only possibly being able to get out alive.

She carried a small gun. And they got her in school.

She had been so careful, yet it was a girlfriend who tricked her. She was in love with one of the boys, but he fancied Ruby and her lighter skin. So Ruby's friend asked her to come into an empty gym to help her with some work. Ruby moved through the big doors, reinforced to shield the outside from the sound of cheering crowds and grunting players.

A big black hand was over her mouth immediately

and someone was telling her to relax and enjoy it, because if she didn't she'd only hurt herself.

She worked her hand into her panties just before someone ripped them off and had her hand -on the little pistol her brother had given her.

She fired once in front and the young man behind her head squeezed harder till she saw blackness and light sparkles. She put the gun right behind her ear and fired. She felt herself fall to the floor. She had been released. She saw a big young man walking, stooped over, holding his right cheek with his hand. Blood flowed down his arm. He was wounded in the cheek. Panicked, he ran into her. And, panicking, Ruby unloaded the gun into his belly. It was small-caliber, but five shots made his intestines into pulp and he died from loss of blood at the hospital. The other boys fled.

Thereafter Ruby Jackson Gonzalez walked the halls as if she went to school in a place where girls were protected.

The boy's death was one of eight shootings that year in the school, down 50 percent from the year before. By this reduction in classroom homicide the principal won a pilot study grant to determine why his school was better able to control crime this year than last. The conclusion of the study group, led by a man who had gotten his Ph.D. in intergroup dynamics, was that the school had better intergroup dynamics that year.

Meanwhile Ruby graduated and when this government job at a phenomenal salary came along she took it. The elaborate CIA cover lasted an hour and a half with her. She knew that the CIA was the only outfit in the country that paid so much for so little, except the Mafia, and she wasn't Italian.

She also had a pretty solid idea of why the CIA would want her. As a woman, a black, and carrying a Spanish surname, she was an entire equal opportunity program for them. She made them look good on the statistics.

It was three wonderful years just collecting checks, but all the while Ruby knew it had to end sometime. There was nothing really free in the world, she knew, and only idiots expected it.

The end came with an afternoon visit by a naval officer familiar enough with her salary scale and employment record to be accepted for what he was, her superior in the organization.

He wanted to talk to her at greater length but they couldn't do it here in her factory on Granby Street in Norfolk, Virginia. Could she come to the naval base that afternoon?

She could, and she didn't return. Like the encounter in the gym back in high school, she had been ambushed. This time by a bureaucracy.

She could, if she wanted, refuse the assignment. No one was forcing her. No one was forcing her, either, to accept those healthy checks each month, the naval officer said. When he explained that the assignment wasn't especially dangerous, something in Ruby told her that her chances were no more than 50-50.

And when he explained that "an American undercover presence must be maintained at a minimal level," she knew it meant that she'd be going in alone. If she got into trouble, don't call them, they'll call you.

That was no matter. She had known all her life that it was her responsibility to protect her own life and that all the help this very good-looking officer

promised her wouldn't be worth two spits in a hurricane.

She had never heard of Baqia before. On the plane there, America's intelligence presence at a minimal level asked the passenger in the next seat what Baqia was like.

"It's awful."

The plane landed and Baqia was a madhouse. There was one hotel in the country, called the-Astarse. "If you be a spy," said the hotel clerk, "you be right at home here."

And, he said, they had recently had a vacancy because all the occupants in the room had been killed. There were more bodies lying around unburied in this hotel than in a big city morgue.

There was no room service and there was a very big lump in the bed. The lump was a dying man. He spoke Russian.

"How can I use that bed?" demanded Ruby. "There's a man dying in it."

"He be dead," said the clerk. "You wait. We see lot of lung wounds. They always kill. Don't worry you pretty little head."

Ruby went to the window and looked out into the street. Across the dusty road was the presidential palace. In the window directly opposite her was a fat black man looking like an overdressed doorman at a white hotel. He had a lot of medals. He grinned at her and waved.

"Congratulations, sweetheart, chiquita. You now selected as the lover of our sacred leader, Generalissimo Sacristo Corazon, praise his wonderfulness forever. He is the greatest lover of all time."

"He look like a turkey," Ruby said.

"Shut you eyes and pretend you getting a tooth drilled down below. He be over very fast, you don' even know how fast. Then you come back to me for some real loving."

Ruby sensed her survival depended on submitting. She could endure any man, provided it was just one man. And maybe she would luck out, steal Corazon's machine, and be on the next plane home before he knew it was missing.

There was no forma! greeting from El Presidente when Ruby entered his sleeping rooms. Corazon was nude except for his pistol belt. He kept a velvet-covered box near the side of his bed.

He acknowledged that he might not be up to par. He had grievous problems. He might have backed the wrong side in an international matter.

Would the beautiful lady, he asked, possibly accept only the second greatest lover in the world, which he was when he was not the greatest, that being when he was not worried about international politics.

"Sure. Go ahead. Get it over with," Ruby said.

"He is over with," said Corazon. He was putting on his riding boots.

"Oh, wonderful," said Ruby. "You're the greatest. My main man. Wowee. That is doing the do. Wow. Some lover."

"You really think so?" asked Corazon.

"Sure," said Ruby. One thing you had to say for the man. He was neat. He didn't even leave moisture.

"You like the Astarse Hotel?" asked Corazon.

"No," said Ruby. "But it will do."

"You meet anybody there? Like an old yellow man?"

Ruby shook her head.

"Or a white man with him who does strange things?"

Ruby shook her head again. She noticed he stayed very close to the velvet-covered box. It was like an old wooden table model television set. She saw a few dials underneath one folded-back flap of the blue velvet. Corazon put his body between her and the box and Ruby knew that it was the secret weapon she'd been sent to find.

"Sweetheart, how you like to be rich?" Corazon said.

"No." Ruby shook her head. This whole job had more bad omens than a flock of ravens flying over a torture chamber. "Ever since I been a baby, I think money's just too much trouble. And what I need money for? With a big beautiful man like you, Generalissimo." Ruby smiled. She knew her smile did things to men, but it did nothing to this man.

"If you no help me now, you not my woman," said Corazon.

"I'll just have to deny myself." She fastened her belt and blew the dictator a kiss.

"It not hard. You go to yellow man and white man and give them two little pills when they drink. Then you come back to your lover, me. Eh? Great plan."

Ruby Jackson Gonzalez shook her head.

Corazon shrugged. "I charge you with treason. Guilty as charged. Go to jail."

This little indictment and trial over with, Ruby found herself being manhandled to a prison compound seventeen miles outside Ciudad Natividado on Baqian Route 1.

Meanwhile Corazon knew he had to do something about the two Americans without delay. He had broken relations with the United States, put himself in

the hands of the Russians, and the Russians now claimed they had given forty-five lives to Baqia.

Which was true, but it only meant that forty-five Russians couldn't handle the two Americans.

And now the American woman wouldn't poison the pair and his own generals and ministers seemed to disappear, for fear they would be asked to attack the two devils in the Astarse Hotel.

The only one who was around was Major Estrada and Corazon did not want to use him. First, Estrada wasn't smart enough to do it and second, Corazon didn't want to lose the one man he knew who wouldn't kill him if he got a chance.

He thought briefly of going to the priest in the hills and throwing himself on his mercy. Maybe Juanita's prophecy could be made wrong. Maybe these Americans wouldn't team up with the holy man in the hills to overthrow Corazon?

He couldn't do it. It would loosen his grip on Baqia, and if that grip slipped he would be dead before the sun set. Show weakness and a dictator was finished.

There was only one thing to do. He had to make friends with America. This meant exposing himself to criticism from international organizations for human rights, which only recognized them for people who were friends of the United States. And it meant condemnation in the U.N. pickets in front of his three embassies in Paris, Washington, and Tijuana, and all sorts of general nuisance by people whose tails twitched when Moscow barked.

No matter. It would buy time. Make friends with America and maybe they would slow down whatever it was those two Americans planned to do. And that would give Corazon time to get into the hills and

get rid of that holy man. And with him dead Juanita's prophecy could not come true.

Corazon sighed. He would do it.

He sighed again. Ruling a country was hard work.

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CHAPTER SIX

The cable was marked "Top Secret Super Duper," so the secretary of state knew it was from Baqia when the thin blue sheet, folded into a self-envelope, was placed on his desk.

The message inside was from Generalissimo Cora-zon and was brief:

"We starting relations with you again, okay?"

The secretary of state chewed a Mylanta for his stomach, which bubbled like a noxious vial of chemicals from a horror movie. Nothing in the curriculum of the Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs had prepared him for this. Why hadn't they told him about people like Corazon and governments like Baqia's?

They had broken off relations two days earlier by announcing that they weren't going to have sex with America anymore. No reason. Now they were re-

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opening diplomatic relations with a kindergarten note. Okay?

And it wasn't just Baqia, it was everywhere. Foreign policy seemed so easy when you were just lecturing about it. But when you tried to practice it you found the theories and the plans getting swamped by the people you had to deal with, people whose foreign policy might be dictated by whether or not they liked their morning meal.

And so the United States had lost its initiative in the Mideast, and every time they though they had put it back together that lunatic with a striped pillow case on his head would threaten to shoot somebody else and it would all come unglued. The United States had thrown its lot with the revolutionary rabble in South Africa and Rhodesia and, when the governments of those countries backed down with concessions, the revolutionaries rejected them. China seemed about ready to retreat back behind its traditional closed doors and no one knew who to talk to to try to prevent it.

And then there were natural resources. Was it some kind of cosmic joke of God to have the nitnats of the world breed and multiply over the oil and the gold and the diamonds and the chrome and the asphalt and now the mung?

He sighed again. Sometimes he wished that all the one-term talk of this President were true, so he could go back to college and lecture. At least a lecture was orderly, with a beginning, middle, and end. Foreign policy was nothing but middles.

He told his secretary to get Generalissimo Corazon on the telephone. If mung was that important, he would welcome El Presidente back into the American

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family of nations, assuming El Presidente Icnew what the American family of nations was.

His secretary was back on the line in three minutes.

"They don't answer," she said.

"What do you mean they don't answer?"

"Sorry, sir. There's no answer."

"Well, get me the deputy El Presidente if they have one ... or the minister of justice ... or that dopey major that Corazon trusts. Yes, Estrada, I think it is. Get me him."

"He doesn't answer, either."

"He what?"

"I tried him. He doesn't answer, either."

"Is there anybody there I can talk to?"

"No sir, that's what I've been trying to tell you. The switchboard operator-"

"Where is she?"

"In Baqia."

"Of course she's in Baqia. Where in Baqia?"

"I don't know, Mister Secretary. They only have one operator in the whole country."

"What'd she say?"

"She said that the government had taken the day off. Call back tomorrow."

"The whole government? A day off?"

"Yes, sir."

The secretary of state popped another Mylanta.

"Okay," he said.

"Do you want me to try tomorrow, sir?" the woman asked.

"Not unless I tell you to. By then they may decide not to have sex with us anymore."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Forget it. Sorry."

So the secretary of state had no explanation of

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Baqia's change of heart when he called the President of the United States to notify him that the relations were on again, okay?

"Why do you think they did it?" the President asked.

"Frankly, sir, I don't know. If I could find a way to take credit for it, I would. But I can't. Maybe the CIA puUed it off."

As luck would have it, the director of the CIA was in the White House, signing up for a new lawyers' insurance program. It was like Blue Cross and Blue Shield, but instead of paying for medical care it paid legal fees for government officials when they were indicted. Almost everybody on the White House staff and in the CIA had signed up.

The President asked to see the CIA director. 'The Baqians have opened relations with us again." The CIA director tried not to show his surprise. All the personnel they had sent and had Ruby Gonzalez pulled it off? How? From jail? He had been advised by a friendly embassy of the fate of the CIA's last spy.

"That's good news. We were really making a major effort there," the director said. "I'm glad we got such quick results." He was thinking. Maybe Ruby Gonzalez did have something to do with it. There had been at least fifty foreign spies killed there since Ruby left the States. Maybe there was something, after all, to hiring minorities.

"According to my information, you had very minimal presence there," the President said. "That's what you finally agreed to, if you remember."

"That's not exactly how it worked out," said the director. "We sent a woman. We sent a black. We even had someone named Gonzalez. And I guess it all

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worked out pretty well. The foreign bodies are piling up like garbage outside a French restaurant."

"Have you gotten reports from your agents?"

"Not yet," said the director.

"Where are they now?"

"I don't exactly know."

"What have they done while they've been in Baqia?"

"I don't exactly know," the director said desperately.

"You don't know what's going on there any more than I do, do you?" the President said.

"Actually, sir, I don't know exactly why Corazon decided to reinstate relations."

"Never mind. I do," the President said.

He dismissed the CIA director and went to the red telephone in the upstairs bedroom drawer. He lifted it off its base and the familiar voice of Dr. Harold W. Smith answered.

"Yes, sir."

"Congratulations. The Baqians have reopened relations with us."

"Yes," said Smith. "I was just informed."

The President was silent for a moment. He also had just been informed and the secretary of state only fifteen minutes earlier. How had Smith found out so fast? Did his sources extend right into the White House and the State Department? The President decided not to ask. He didn't want to know too much about how Smith worked.

"Do you know how it happened?" the President asked dryly.

"There have been forty-eight deaths of foreign agents in the last forty-eight hours," Smith said. "I

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would imagine our personnel had something to do with that. Did you send in CIA personnel?"

"Reluctantly, they agreed to send people," the President said.

"One of their agents is in jail, I am told," said Smith.

"Well, get him out. But primarily, we want that mung machine."

"The agent's a her," Smith said.

"Get her out, then. But the machine is really important. And, Doctor, I want to apologize for trying to call off your people earlier. I suspect they work differently from what I'm used to."

"They work differently from what everyone is used to, sir."

"Just tell them to keep at it."

"Yes, sir," said Smith.

Because the Baqian government had shut down for the day, the three telephone lines into the country were open and Smith had no trouble reaching Remo and Chiun in their hotel room.

Remo answered.

"This is Smith, Remo. How does it go on the-"

"Just a minute, Smitty. Is this business?"

"Of course it's business. Do you think I called to pass the time of day with you?"

"If it's business, talk to your man in charge. I'm retired, remember?" He held the phone out. "Chiun. It's Smith for you."

"I am here at the order of the President," Chiun said. "Why would I talk to underlings?"

Remo talked into the telephone again. "The President sent him here," he said. "Why should he talk to you?"

"Because I just talked to the President," Smith said.

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Remo extended the telephone again. "He just talked to the President, Chiun."

Chiun rose from his lotus position as if he were levitating from the floor.

"This would not be a bad job," Chiun said. "If it were not for all these distractions."

"Suffer. It's your turn in the barrel now."

Chiun fixed his face in a broad smile before he spoke into the phone. He had learned that in a popular women's magazine as a way to appear vital and "with it" when speaking on the telephone. He did not know what "with it" meant, but he was sure vital was good.

"Hail, noble Emperor Smith. Greetings from the Master of Sinanju. The world trembles before your might and bows before your wisdom."

"Yes, yes," Smith said.

"I have not yet gotten to the good part," said Chiun. "Where the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky and yea, even the fishes of the sea rise up to proclaim their loyalty to you."

"Chiun, what's wrong with Remo?"

Chiun glanced carefully at Remo, who was sprawled on the bed, to see if anything about him had changed in the last few moments.

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all. He is the same as ever. Slothful, vile, indifferent to responsibility, uncaring about obligation, ungrateful."

Remo recognized the description. He waved a hand in acknowledgment.

"He is leaving this difficult assignment to me," Chiun said. "Because he is jealous that the President gave it to me directly, this responsibility to make the Baqians recognize our government as its friend."

"Well, you've done a good job on that."

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"We do what we do," said Chiun, who did not know what Smith was talking about.

"Yes?" said Smith. "Just what is it you do?"

Chiun glanced at Remo and drew a series of circles around his temple with his right index finger.

"We make our presence felt," Chiun said. "But always as a mere reflection of your glory," he added quickly. "Yours and the real emperor's."

"Well, now the real part of the assignment remains," said Smith.

Chiun shook his head. That was the trouble with emperors. They were never satisfied. There was always something else, to do.

"We stand ready to execute your orders," said Chiun.

"You stand ready," Remo called out. "I've quit."

"What did he say?" Smith asked.

"Nothing. He is just talking to himself. And since he cannot get an intelligent answer, he has taken to bothering us in our conversation."

"All right," Smith said. "The first and primary obligation is still the machine. We have to get it before anyone else does."

"We will do it."

"And there is an American agent in jail."

"And you want her killed?"

"No, no. She is in prison. Corazon put her there. We want her released."

"And you want the jailer killed? So he will take no such liberties again?"

"No, no. I don't want anybody killed. Just free this agent. Her name is Ruby Jackson Gonzalez."

"That is all?"

"Yes. Can you do it?"

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"Before the setting of another sun," Chiun promised.

"Thank you."

"Such excellence of service is only your due, Emperor," Chiun said before hanging up. He told Remo, "I can't wait until my President decides to get rid of Smith. The man is a lunatic."

"Your President?" asked Remo.

"The House of Sinanju has a saying: 'Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.' My President."

"What does Smitty want you to do?"

"That machine again. Always everybody is worried about some machine. Now I ask you, how can they have an important machine in this country, which cannot even keep a hotel room clean?"

"You knew the machine was your assignment when you took this job," Remo said.

"And there is someone in jail whom Smith wants freed."

"How are you going to do that?" asked Remo.

"There is no way to do anything in this country. One cannot get clean towels or running water or decent food. I am going to the President, this Cortisone, and tell him what I want done."

"You think he'll listen to you? His name's Corazon."

"He will listen."

"When are you going?"

"The best time for the doing of a task is the moment of realizing the task exists. I am going now," Chiun said.

"I'm going with you," said Remo. "I haven't had a laugh all week."

Chiun went to the drapeless window of the room and as Remo watched he waved his arms and pointed

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in elaborate gestures. He finally turned away with a satisfied nod.

"What was that all about?"

"The President, Corazon, was there. He looks in our window all day long. I told him I am coming."

"He's the President?" Remo asked. "I thought he was a Peeping Tom."

"He is Corazon."

"He's probably running like hell right now," said Remo.

"He will wait," Chiun said as he went to the door.

"What's the name of this agent you're supposed to get free?" Remo asked.

"Who knows? A woman. Ruby or something. I did not hear the rest. All American names sound alike."

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Both the lieutenant of the guard and the sergeant of the guard had decided they were going to have their way with Ruby Gonzalez, rape being allowed when the prisoner involved was a political enemy, had offended the sainted person of El Presidente, and was good-looking enough to make the effort worthwhile.

Neither of them had scored because Ruby, out of the goodness of her heart, had warned each of them of the other's plan to put him out of the way-the sergeant wanting to do the lieutenant in so he could be promoted to the lieutenant's job, the lieutenant wanting to get rid of the sergeant so his undeserving brother-in-law could buy himself the sergeant's commission.

Ruby sat on the floor in her cell. There was a stuffed bag on legs that was supposed to be a mattress but she knew, without ever having been in

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jail that women prisoners who spent time lying or sitting on their beds asked for trouble.

Sooner or later, she knew, the sergeant or the lieutenant would be back with a gun for her. She had promised each of them that she would use the gun on his enemy, thus ensuring her benefactor's life and success. After the murder, she would be allowed to escape and no one would ever hear from her again and the Washington government would put $73 million in a Swiss bank account for the one who helped her.

The hardest part of the whole concoction had been deciding on the amount of money the U.S. would pay for her ransom. She figured she could probably get $5,000 out of the CIA. But thousands, she knew, wouldn't impress a Baqian. It sounded too much like hundreds. A million was right, but an even million sounded like a made-up number, like a fake. So she settled on $73 million. The seventy-three had the undeniable ring of truth, aided along by the fact that most Baqians couldn't calculate up to seventy-three.

It would work, she decided. Particularly since she had decided, from the time she met the first guard at the jail, that she could buy the entire Baqian civil service for the price of a three-pound can of decaffeinated coffee.

AH she could do was wait for whichever guard was fool enough to give her a gun.

She didn't like waiting, doing nothing. So while she sat on the floor of the jail cell she began planning how she was going to expand her wig store. Financing would be no trouble. That problem had been resolved two years ago.

When she had first wanted to start her business, she had gone to the bank for a loan and the banker had

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laughed at her. The idea of a woman, twenty-one years old, black to boot, asking for a business loan without any collateral, well, it was just ridiculous and they weren't in the business of throwing away depositors' money, after all.

His high humor had lasted four hours after Ruby had left. Then the first pickets showed up in front of his bank, carrying signs advising black depositors that a new black-owned and operated bank was opening soon that would value their business and treat them like people. The sandwich boards they were carrying had a telephone number to call for information. The banker called the number.

Ruby answered.

The next day, she had her loan.

She had paid off the five-year note in two years, and her credit was now solid gold. She scratched numbers in the dust on the concrete floor of her cell. Twenty thousand dollars, that's what it would take to expand her buying system, so she had something more reliable than sailors carrying bags of smuggled hair. It would be easy.

They did not look like much. The American was skinny and had only thick wrists to indicate that he might have some power in his body. Corazon had thought the Oriental to be old. But he was more than old. He was aged and so frail that Corazon knew women from his mountain village who could fall on him and crush him.

But there was the evidence of the past two days. The dead British, the dead Russians. Corazon would be cautious.

"The people of Baqia welcome you visitors to our

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beautiful island," he said. "We have always loved Americans."

Chiun waved away the small talk with a bony hand that protruded from the sleeve, of his orange kimono.

Corazon would not be discouraged.

"If there is anything-"

"Towels," Chiun said, "dean towels. Clean sheets. Anything else, Remo?"

"For openers, that's all right," Remo said.

"Done," said Corazon, although he could not understand why someone would want clean sheets and towels. "You will be happy to know that we have reinstituted the relations with your country."

Chiun turned to Remo. "What is he talking about?"

"Who knows?" Remo said.

"Does he think I'm an American?" asked Chiun.

"Probably. AH you patriots look alike," Remo said.

"Generalissimo Corazon was talking about the bonds stronger than blood, the bonds of friendship and love that traditionally united Baqia and America.

"Enough," said Chiun. "We do not care about that. We care about towels and sheets."

Very strange, thought Corazon. "All right," he said. "Is there anything else?"

"That will do for now," said Chiun.

Remo pulled on the sleeve of his robe.

"Chiun, you forgot the woman. Ruby what's her name."

"And one thing more," Chiun told Corazon. "In one of your prisons, you have a woman."

"Lot of times, we have the woman in the prisons," said Corazon.

"This is an American woman named Ruby. She must be set free."

"You got it. Anything else?"

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"Remo, anything else?" "The machine, Chiun," Remo reminded him. "And one thing more," said Chiun. "We want your machine. Our President said this was very important, to get your machine."

''Wonderful," Corazon said, beaming. His magic machine was kept at the prison under guard. To show his good will and his honesty and his loyalty to America and all the things it meant to him, he would meet Remo and Chiun at the prison. He would free the woman. And he would give them the machine. He was tired of it, anyway. He explained this loudly to an aide whom he ordered, "Get a car for these two wonderful Americans and do it quick or your ass be in the frying pan, boy."

"It be in front soon," Corazon told Remo and Chiun after the aide had left. He looked at the two men shrewdly. "I like you two."

"It is allowed," Chiun said. Remo sniffed. "You two pretty hot stuff, too," said Corazon. "You do some job on Russians and like that. I never saw anything like that." Chiun nodded.

"I think now that I got relations again with the United States I gonna ask your President, let you two stay here. You help me train my men and they be best anticommunist fighters in all the Caribbean and those enslavers of the human mind never gain no foothold here in Baqia."

"We work only for the President of the United States," said Chiun. "Actually, this one . . ." He pointed to Remo. "He takes his orders from some underling, but I work directly for the President and it is

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well-known that we of Sinanju find loyalty more important than mere wealth. So we must refuse your offer."

Corazon nodded sadly. He understood loyalty and morality and honesty. He had heard about them once.

Remo leaned toward Chiun. "Since when, Little Father? Since when all this loyalty to the United States? Since when have you stopped -trying to promote side jobs?"

"Shhh," said Chiun. "I just told him that. There is no point in working for this one. He won't pay. I can tell. Look at the cheap furniture in this room."

The aide returned to announce, "The car is ready, Generalissimo."

Corazon rose from his gilt throne chair. "You two go ahead. The driver will know where to take you. I will meet you there, just to make sure that this Ruby is freed and that my men give you the machine, the way you want the machine. Because I want only the friendship and the relations between our countries."

Wordlessly, Chiun turned and walked toward the door. He said to Remo, "I don't trust this one."

"Neither do I," Remo said. "I've heard these love-America speeches before."

"I don't think we're ever going to get clean towels," said Chiun.

Corazon stood near the corner of the window, peering through the crack between the drape and the window frame. As soon as he saw Remo and Chiun's car pull away for the drive to the prison, he hollered for his aide to get his helicopter ready in the palace courtyard. Then he rolled the mung machine out from behind a curtain and toward the door to the elevator which would take it to the helicopter pad.

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A half hour later, Remo and Chiun's car parked outside the open prison gates. They walked up to where Corazon stood by his helicopter.

"My men are getting the machine," he said. "The prisoner is in there." He pointed to a door in, the corner of U-shaped central courtyard. "Here is the key to the cell."

Remo took the key. "I'll go get her," he told Chiun.

"I will go with you. For some reason, this Ruby person is important to my employer and so I want everything to go smoothly, to show them that if they give their assignments to someone who knows how to perform them competently, they will get satisfaction and full worth for their gold. That is the way of Sinanju."

"It's also the way of Sears Roebuck," Remo said testily. "Come along if you want to."

They went through the wooden door and were in a dark dank hallway. At the bottom of a flight of steps, a cell door, with bars set into it at eye level, faced them.

"I will wait here," said Chiun.

"You trust me to go down that flight of steps all by myself?" Remo asked.

"Just barely," Chiun said.

Inside her cell, Ruby Jackson Gonzalez tucked into her waistband the gun the sergeant of guards had given her. She heard the footsteps on the stairs. That would probably be the lieutenant on his way down for his promised assault on her.

When the sergeant had given her the gun, Ruby had told him what to do.

"Tell that lieutenant I wouldn't have any of you," she said. "Tell him like I got the hots for him."

"He never believe," the sergeant said. "He is a most

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ugly man. How could he believe you reject me for him?

"Here," Ruby said. She flicked out a sharp index fingernail and dug a furrow down the sergeant's cheek. The little gap first filled up with blood and then a red trickle curled down his cheek.

The sergeant slapped his hand to his cheek. He looked at it when it came away red, then glared at Ruby.

"Bitch," he snarled.

He took a step toward her but Ruby smiled, a wide white smile that knew everything in the world.

"Hey, my honey," she said. "Now he believe you. That little scratch prove it. And when I get him, then you gonna be the lieutenant. New uniform, more money, you gonna be dashing. You have all the women you want. With that seventy-three million, you be bad."

He wanned to her smile.

"You, too?" he asked.

"I be the first and the best. And I see you messing with any other women, I take your head off," she said.

The smile wrung all the threat out of Ruby's words and forced a return smile from the guard.

"I bet you would," he said.

"You better bet," she said. "You too good-looking to let out loose." She stepped forward and blotted the guard's face with a handkerchief from his shirt pocket. She left a faint dried trail of blood on his cheek.

"There. Now you tell him and he believe you."

The sergeant nodded and left. Now Ruby heard the steps coming down the worn stone stairs. It should be the lieutenant but these didn't sound like the lieu-

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tenant's feet. He wore heavy boots and liked to clomp around, trying to frighten people. But these footsteps were light and even, almost like a cat's pads.

She thought maybe the lieutenant already had taken his boots off, preparatory to spending the rest of the day in Ruby's bed.

"Sheeit," she said to herself.

She stood behind the door as the key opened it and the heavy door slowly swung open. She put her hand on the butt of the revolver, underneath her long white man-tailored shirt.

The door creaked to a stop. She heard a voice, distinctly an American's voice.

"Ruby?" the voice called.

It wasn't the lieutenant.

Ruby took her hand off the revolver and stepped out from behind the door. Her eyes met Remo's.

"Who you?" she asked.

"I've come to get you out."

"You from the CIA?" she asked.

"Well, something like that."

"Go 'way, dodo. You gonna mess me up around here," Ruby said.

"Hey, have I got the right place?" Remo said. "This is a jail and you're a prisoner and I've come to get you out."

"And if you from the CIA, you gonna mess everything up and we all get killed. If I get outa here on my own, I know I'm gonna get outa here. I let you take me outa here, I figure we all be shot before we goes twenty feet."

Remo reached over and chucked her under the chin.

"You're cute," he said.

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"And you're country. Why you wearing them white socks with them black shoes?"

"I can't believe this is really happening," Remo said. "I come to rescue a woman from jail and she's bitching about the color of my socks."

"You couldn't rescue me from a tub of warm water," Ruby said. "Man don't care 'nough to dress right, don't know 'nough to do right."

"Hell with it. Stay," said Remo. "We'll go back in our jeep by ourselves."

Ruby shook her head. "Oh, I might as well go with you, make sure we gets out all right. How long you been gone from Newark?"

"Newark?" Remo said.

"Yeah. Say, you hard o' hearin' or you just dopey? Newark. It in New Jersey. How long you been gone from there?"

"How do you know that?"

"We all know how people talk in Newark 'cause we all gots relatives that lives there." .

"I had expensive speech teachers help me get rid of my accent," Remo said.

"They took you, dodo. Get your money back."

"The government paid for it."

"No wonder," Ruby said. "Government always gets taken."

She was following Remo up the stone steps. Chiun stood inside the closed door, looking down at them.

"You think I dress funny, wait till you see this," Remo said to Ruby. "Chiun, you've finally met your match. This is Ruby."

Chiun looked at the young woman with disdain.

Ruby bowed to him, low from the waist.

"At least she knows how to greet someone," Chiun told Remo.

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''Tour robe is beautiful," she said. "What you pay for it?"

"This is a replacement of a very ancient robe that was unfortunately spoiled for me by a slug of a laun-dryman," Chiun said.

"Yeah, it was made in America. I see that. What you pay for it?"

"Remo," said Chiun. "The amount." "I think it was two hundred dollars." "You was taken," said Ruby. "They makes these robes in a little place near Valdosta, Georgia. I know the owner. He lots them out for forty dollars. So a hundred percent for wholesale and a hundred percent for retail and you shouldna paid no more than one-sixty."

"See, Remo, how you allowed us to be cheated again?" Chiun's voice was indignant.

"What do you care?" Remo said. "You didn't pay for it."

Ruby waved a hand at Chiun. "Listen up," she said. "Next time you needs a robe, talk to me. I get you something really good and the right price. Don't listen to this turkey no more. He wearin' white socks." She leaned close to Chiun and whispered. "He might be getting a rake-off for himself. Watch him."

Chiun nodded. "How true. Selfishness and greed are so often what one gets in return for dedication and love."

"Let's get out of here," Remo said in disgust. He moved toward the door behind Chiun.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait," Ruby said, the words strung together so quickly that they sounded like a railroad conductor spitting out the name of a single lake in Wales.

"Who out there knows you in here?" she asked.

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"Everybody," Remo said.

"Who everybody?"

"The warden. The guards. El Presidente himself," Remo said. "He came down to free you too."

"The big ugly dude with the medals?"

"Yeah. Generalissimo Corazon."

"You think he don' have no guns trained on this door right now?" Ruby asked.

"Why should he?"

" 'Cause he a jerk. That man liable to do anything. Come on, we go upstairs and over the roof."

"We go out the front door," Remo said stubbornly.

Chiun put a hand on his arm. "Wait, Remo," he said. "There is wisdom in what this one speaks."

"You're just trying to con her into cutting the price of a robe," Remo said.

"Bunk it," Ruby said. "You go out the front door. The old gentlemans and I go upstairs. We mail your body wherever you want it sent."

She touched Chiun's elbow. "Come on. We go," she said.

Chiun allowed himself to be led up the stone steps. Remo watched them for a moment, glanced at the front door, then shook his head in disgust, and went up the steps, too. He slid by them to lead the way. "Glad you finally coming around," Ruby said. "If you want to walk with us, why don't you put that .38 you're carrying in the middle of your belt?" Remo said.

Ruby felt her shirt. The .38 was in the left side of her belt, covered by her long blouse.

"How you do that?" she said to Remo. "How you know I got a gun? How he do that?" she asked Chiun. Her voice rose into a coloratura squawk.

No one answered.

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"You was looking and you saw the piece," Ruby said. She made it sound like an indictment for a capital crime.

"I didn't see it," Remo said.

"He didn't see it," Chiun agreed. "He hardly keeps his eyes open at all to see anything."

"How you do that?" Ruby insisted, her voice still a screech. "How you know it be a .38?"

This she had to know. Ruby saw instantly that there was real value in learning how to tell when someone was armed. She could copyright the method or patent it, if it was mechanical, then sell it to storekeepers in cities around America. They'd pay top dollar for a foolproof way of knowing that someone coming through their front door was carrying a gun.

"How you do that, I say?" she shrieked. Her voice, when she chose to use it that way, was high-pitched and abrasive. It sounded like it should be giving a locker-room critique to a high school football team losing 48-0 at half time.

"Anything if you stop screaming," Remo said. He was still leading the way up the steps. "You have the gun near your left hip. It throws off your balance when you walk. I can hear the heavier pressure on your left foot. The amount of pressure tells the weight of the gun. Yours weighs out as a .38."

"He really do that?" Ruby asked Chiun. "That dodo, he don't seem smart enough to do like that."

"Yes, that is what he did," Chiun said. "Sloppy, sloppy work."

"What?" asked Ruby.

"He did not tell you that your pistol has in it only three cartridges. If he were as alert as he should be, lie would be able to tell that."

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"He really did that? You really do that?" Ruby demanded.

"Yes," said Chiun.

"Pipe down," Remo told Ruby. "Your voice is like ice cubes cracking."

"How you learn to do that?" Ruby asked him.

"He taught me," Remo said.

"I taught him," Chiun said. "Of course, he does not leam as he should. Still, even a chipped pitcher is better than none at all."

"I want to leam how to do that," Ruby said. She was calculating. A half million storekeepers at a thousand dollars each. No, cut the price. Five hundred dollars each. Two hundred and fifty million dollars. Overseas rights. Around the world sales. Military application.

"I give you twenty percent of everything," she said to Chiun, softly so Remo would not hear.

"Forty percent," said Chiun who did not know what Ruby was talking about.

"Thirty," Ruby said. "I don' go no higher. And you take care of the turkey." She pointed at Remo.

"Done. A deal," said Chiun, who would have taken twenty percent if he knew what it was all about. He felt he had the better of it because he was stuck with taking care of Remo anyway.

"You got it," said Ruby, who would have given forty percent if she had to. "And no backing off now. We got a deal."

Remo pushed open the upstairs door. They were on a flat roof two stories about the central courtyard of the U-shaped compound.

They leaned over the edge and looked down where Generalissimo Corazon stood by his helicopter, a metal box in front of him. Corazon moved over to

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squat behind the box, peering through a tube that served as a gunsight, aiming it at the door.

"Where are they?" Corazon grumbled to Major Estrada, who stood next to him, leaning against the plane, smoking.

"They'll be along," he said, smoking casually.

"See," hissed Ruby to Remo. "You go and you trust-in' that big clown. He jiving you."

"All right, all right," Remo said. He leaned back and looked around the roof. There was a guard tower twenty yards away, rising ten feet above the roof, with a guard staring out at the Baqian countryside, his back to them.

"Wait here," Remo said. "Let me take care of that guard."

He moved slow and low across the top of the roof toward the guard's tower. At just that instant, the guard turned around. He saw Ruby and Chiun standing twenty yards away from him and Remo running toward him. He threw his rifle to his shoulder, drew a bead on Remo, and . . .

Boom. The guard's head exploded away as Ruby put a .38 slug between his eyes.

"You did not have to do that," Chiun clucked. "He could not have hit Remo."

"Don" matter to me none," Ruby said. "He coulda hit me if he'd a mind to. I'm watching out for number one." She smiled at Chiun, a warm afterthought. "Without me, your twenty percent goes down the tubes."

"Forty percent," corrected Chiun.

"Thirty," Ruby conceded. "But you take care of him."

Remo turned toward them in disgust as the guard

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toppled over the low rail of the tower and fell heavily on the roof. His rifle clattered as it hit and bounced.

Remo ran back. "Let's get out of here."

In the courtyard below, Corazon saw them, poised on the roof, silhouetted against the almost white Baqian sky.

He grabbed the mung machine in his arms and wheeled around. With no attempt at deception, he pressed the firing button. The machine hummed for a split second and then there was a loud crackling noise.

His aim was off. The green glow of rays bathed the roof, but missed the three Americans. Instead they hit the door of the roof entrance, rebounded, and bathed the three in a dim glow.

Remo said, "We better . . ." His voice slowed down. "Go . . ." he tried to say, but the word would not come from his lips. He looked at Chiun, a surprised beseeching expression on his face, like a wordless cry for help. But Chiun's eyes already had rolled back into his head and his legs gave way under him and he fell to the roof. Remo collapsed on top of him.

Ruby had no time to wonder why the misaimed rays had Foppled Remo and Chiun but had not harmed her. Time to think about it later. First things first. Number one. She moved to the far edge of the roof, ready to make the risky two-story jump down and start running. As she poised on the edge of the roof, she looked back. Remo and Chiun were lying together, looking like a pile of mixed laundry, Remo all cotton and Chiun all silk brocade.

She turned again to jump, then looked back once more.

She sighed and came away from the edge of the

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roof. She picked up the guard's rifle as she raced back to Remo and Chiun.

"Sheeeit," she said. "I just knew that turkey'd muck everything up."

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CHAPTER EIGHT

From down in the courtyard Corazon could not see that the first blast from the mung machine had felled Remo and Chiun. So he kept spraying the rooftop with bursts of energy from the device, but because the two men had fallen to the tarpaper roof the machine's rays passed harmlessly over them.

Still, Ruby Gonzalez wasn't going to take any chances.

She lay down on the roof to steady her aim, drew a careful bead on the mung machine, and fired her .38. The slug went wide and smashed a piece of metal out of a corner of the box.

"Damn borrowed gun," she spat. "No wonder this country don' amount to nothing."

She started to hoist the guard's rifle to her shoulder, but Corazon and Estrada already were hustling the mung machine back into the safety of the helicopter.

"Don't just stand there, fools," Corazon shouted to

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troops and guards who hid under the first floor overhang of the buildings. "Get up there. Capture them."

Corazon was hiding behind the helicopter when Ruby pinged a rifle shot into the soft side of the plane.

She glanced toward Remo and Chiun.

"C'mon, you two. Get up," she said. "Cmon now. Get yo' butts movin'."

They lay still and unmoving.

Ruby fired two more rifle shots to slow down the troops who were clambering up the steps leading to the rooftop that faced hers from across the courtyard. The position was desperate.

If Remo and Chiun couldn't move, she could not hold out much longer. She couldn't do much damage with borrowed guns, but if she kept firing and forced the soldiers to take her with overwhelming firepower, it was probable that the white man and the Oriental would be killed by stray bullets.

The soldiers were now on the rooftop across from her and had begun laying down a line of bullets.

"We all gets dead and nobody saves nobody," Ruby said to herself. She leaned over to Chiun and spoke into his ear, hoping he might hear her. "I be back for you," she said. "I be back."

She rolled away from the two men so they would be less likely to get hit by soldiers returning her fire. She fired two more shots from the rifle.. Every time she fired, she noticed all the soldiers ducked their heads.

She moved back toward the wall leading to the countryside surrounding the prison compound. As she neared the edge she fired two more shots and then shouted at the top of her voice.

"Stop firing! We surrenderr

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Before the soldiers could look up from their hiding places, Ruby jumped off the roof, twenty feet to the ground below.

The soldiers waited on the opposite roof for further evidence of the surrender.

Corazon's bellowing voice filled the now-silent compound.

"They said they surrender, you idiots. Get over there and get them." He carefully remained hidden behind the helicopter.

Reluctantly, the soldiers began to move, afraid of a sneak attack by the one woman arrayed against them.

When no bullets were fired, the bravest of them stood up. He was not shot down so all the rest stood and began to run to the other side of the roof.

When they got there, they found Chiun and Remo lying unconscious on the roof. Ruby was gone.

"The lady be gone," a sergeant shouted to Corazon. He wondered if her successful escape, even though not quite as planned, still entitled him to $73 million. "But the two men be here."

"Bring them down," Corazon said. "And search for her."

The soldiers looked over the edge of the wall at the land outside the prison compound.

The terrain stretched away flat and empty for miles in all directions. The woman could have found no shelter in that barren landscape. Running, she would have been picked out as easily as an ink blot on a marshmallow. The soldiers scanned in every direction.

Ruby Gonzalez had vanished.

The soldiers dumped the bodies of Remo and Chiun in the dirt in front of Corazon. "They been shot?" he asked.

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The soldiers shook their heads.