Air Raid

"I am listening now. Tell me who they are."

Dilkes sighed, opening his eyes. "Sinanju, Olivier. Those men were Sinanju."

A pause on the line. "I thought they were mythical."

"They are absolutely real," Dilkes insisted. "The old one was the reason I left America twenty-five years ago. He is the Master. I've since learned that he's taken a pupil. An American, if the stories I've heard are accurate."

"The younger one acted like an American." There was a growling contempt in the voice.

"It was them. It's amazing you met them and got out alive," Dilkes said. "Olivier, do you have any idea how rare a thing that is? In all of recorded history, there are only a handful of men who've done what you have."

It was the wrong thing to say. The fear that had been there at the start of the conversation was slowly overcome by arrogance.

"I almost had them, Benson."

Dilkes sat up rigid in his chair. "No," he insisted. "No, you didn't. And don't even think about going back after them. You live in isolation, Olivier. You've never appreciated that there are forces out there that you and I will never understand. You've achieved a well-deserved reputation, but it's only the reputation of an individual. Sinanju is the reputation of our entire career."

"Thank you, Benson. I will try to come down for a visit in the spring."

"You're a dead man if you try to engage them," Dilkes said in final warning.

The phone buzzed loud in his ear. With a hot exhale of air, he dropped the receiver back in its cradle. So few men in his line of work lived to enjoy retirement. He had just spoken to another that would not.

Getting up from his comfortable living-room chair, Benson Dilkes went back out to his yard and his prize roses.

Chapter 14

He sent back the ice because it wasn't cold enough. His lunch was too hot. Then it was too cold. Then it wasn't lunch at all anymore because he'd thrown it on the waiter's tidy uniform.

The bulbs in the overhead lights were too bright. Someone was sent for replacements.

While he waited, some marauder with mallets for hands improperly fluffed his pillow. Since everyone knew a pillow once improperly fluffed could never be fluffed properly again, both pillow and fluffer would be thrown off the plane the minute they landed in Brazil.

In the back of the jet, people searched for a persistent rattle that only he could hear. Agents and record company executives, promoters and accountants, the flight crew and various personal staff scurried around the cabin, chasing after a sound that wasn't there. They'd been looking, straining their ears, since the jet took off from London.

"I want it found by the time we touch down or there'll be sackings all around," Albert Snowden snapped over his shoulder. He was chewing on an ice cube as he talked. "Still not cold enough," he snarled, spitting the too-warm ice into the forehead of the lentil-covered waiter.

As the terrified man scurried around the floor of the plane in search of the wayward chunk of ice, Albert settled angrily back in his seat.

He was always angry. Even an entire private planeload of people-his people, his employees-bending over backward to service his every whim couldn't soothe the perpetual state of agitation that was, for Albert Snowden, the very stamp of miserable life itself.

He had always been peevish. Even back when he was a nobody working a starvation-wages job as an English teacher at a boys' school in Saint Albans, twenty miles outside of London.

Albert Snowden. He hadn't gone by that name in years.

The last time he'd used it was that long ago winter when he'd taken a sabbatical from teaching. He went to London to indulge in his avocation. Rock and roll music.

Everyone thought Albert was insane for even thinking he might have a career in music. Crazier still for thinking he could front a band.

"You're tone-deaf, Albert," his voice coach had told him. "When you sing, it sounds as if your genitals are being pressed between two very large flat rocks. That is not a pleasing sound to hear, Albert. I would demonstrate to you on an animal, but the RSPCA would stop me for inflicting pain on that animal. Which they will do to you if you subject an audience to that voice of yours. Go back to teaching. Go back now. If not for me, man, do it for queen and country."

But in spite of such negative encouragement, he had persisted in his dream.

A few days after firing his voice coach-who had taken to wadding cotton in his ears during their sessions-Albert was at an open-mike night at a London club. As luck would have it, he met up with a young American who was looking for a lead singer for his band. Called Fuzz Patrol, the band would consist of only three main members. In those heady days of joyful masochism, Albert and his voice just happened to be in the right place at the right time. He quit teaching altogether and joined the band on the spot.

They started out in small venues, eventually graduating to bigger clubs.

From the moment he began with Fuzz Patrol, Albert was on the lookout for a suitable stage name. As fate would have it, he happened to be pricked by a bee before a small gig in Los Angeles one night. After he threw a forty-five-minute temper tantrum backstage, someone suggested he call himself Prick. They claimed they'd come up with it from the bee. A lot of people who had known Albert thought otherwise.

That night for the first time, Albert introduced himself to an audience as Prick. The name just felt right. From that moment on, Albert Snowden was dead. It was Prick who stepped off that stage and into a new life.

The name change seemed to work like a lucky talisman. It was during that small L.A. booking that Fuzz Patrol was spotted by a scout from a major record label. That very night they were signed to a multirecord deal.

After that, the sky was the limit. Fuzz Patrol got national exposure on the late-night talk shows. Hit song followed hit song as their albums all went multiplatinum. They became a powerhouse in rock, both in the U.S. and internationally.

Success should have brought great happiness. But like so many people who finally achieved precisely what they set out to, Prick was unsatisfied.

It came as a shock to the rock world when Prick announced he would be leaving Fuzz Patrol. After much soul searching, he had decided that going solo was the only way he could do the sort of music he wanted to. The truth of the matter was, in the few short years they'd been together, Prick had become Fuzz Patrol. Few people outside the music industry even knew the names of the other band members.

"Why split the money three ways when I only have to split it once?" he reasoned privately to his wife at their rural English estate.

"You're so right, luv," his wife had replied. "By the way, have you met my new boyfriend? You've had his wife up for a few weekends here and there." As Prick's wife led the handsome stranger over to their very liberated bed, Prick merely sat and watched. He had important business on his mind. Some had their doubts about a solo Prick. After all, he was neither the brains of nor the talent behind Fuzz Patrol. In truth, he was just a shrieking English teacher whose incredible luck had already defied all odds.

Once more the former Albert Snowden proved his critics wrong. Prick went on to establish a solo career every bit as successful as his time with Fuzz Patrol. For fifteen years he reigned supreme at the top of the adult contemporary charts.

But satisfaction still proved elusive.

He had all the money in the world and the coveted life of a rock star. He had limos, jets, drugs and mansions.

But in a strange way, Prick missed his old life. He missed his days as a schoolmaster, standing in front of a classroom full of eager little dullards hanging on his every word. Like most small men, Prick longed to tell people what to do. That was where his political activism came in. His love of wagging his finger at people as if they were nuisance children thrust him to the front of every cause celebre.

He screamed along with the glitterati of rock on "We Are the World," the theory being that really bad music ends hunger.

He helped Famine Relief send bundles of grain to rot on Ethiopian docks.

He held hands with William Hurt and some smelly stranger with sweaty palms in Hands across America, for what reason he had no idea. He thought it had something to do with homeless red Indians or helping the endangered something-or-other.

In the arena of celebrity do-goodism, Prick was king. He could always be counted on to toe the Russian, Castro or just plain Commie line on all the right issues, provided his stance didn't negatively impact his own personal bankbook.

And above all other causes, Prick loved the rain forest.

The jungle had a primal pull on him. It was distant, huge, tropical and as alien as hell. He could say all kinds of outrageous things about it, and reporters who'd only ever seen pictures would ooh and aah with serious faces. One had to wear a serious face when discussing globally serious issues.

Prick claimed an area of rain forest the size of Alaska was stripped bare every minute of every day. Even though this would have cleared the entire continent of all vegetation in just over eleven minutes, no one challenged him. He insisted the pharmaceutical companies were in league with the lumber companies to systematically obliterate the plant that cured cancer. He decried the forced extinction of species in numbers that had never existed in the entire history of the planet. He carted natives around with him like sideshow freaks, turning their genuine plight into a sanctimonious exercise in self-promotion.

The rallying cry to save the rain forest had been adopted as his mission in life. The rain forest was therefore considered by Prick to be like his Sussex estate. His own personal property.

Like a supreme overlord returned from battle, Prick watched his vast jungle property from the window as his private jet roared up the snaking Amazon toward Macapa, Brazil.

This was a necessary homecoming.

His recent benefit concert for the Primeval Society in New York had been a disaster. The big moment that was supposed to come with But Me No Butz and Glory Whole had turned into a sissy-girl slapfest. The audience had left before Prick's closing number. Even his wife, who so loved the sound of her own voice as emcee that she sometimes continued to drone on while the acts performed, had fled the scene. At the moment she was shacked up in their Manhattan penthouse with a pile of Kleenex. and the least fey member of Glory Whole.

It had been such a bad time back there that Prick was looking forward to this special time in his jungle. He was slated to perform at the Pan Brazil Eco-Fest, a concert organized to raise awareness of rain forest devastation. With no wife and no acts bigger than himself, this was the perfect chance to recharge his precious bruised ego.

Men scurried all around him, searching under seats and in cupboards for the nonexistent rattle Prick insisted he could hear. A flight attendant was taping down bottles and glasses in the bar to keep them from shaking.

The only men not engaged in the vain search were sitting across from Prick.

The two barefoot men carried spears. They were nude except for matching red loincloths and beads of bone around their necks. Their black eyes were flat, their faces impassive as they stared blankly ahead.

Prick had found the natives on one of his many trips to South America.

Rich white men plucking natives from the jungle for their own purposes was by and large frowned upon in the modern age. In fact, America had fought a civil war over this very practice. But it was apparently still okay to do so just as long as the motives of those doing the plucking were judged pure.

Prick had even cut a record with his natives. It was mostly him screeching while they beat on hollow logs. For some reason, it didn't catch on with the listening public.

Prick didn't look at his natives. He was still staring out the window. The lush green jungle spread out like rumpled carpet as far as the eye could see.

Prick's frazzled manager hurried up the aisle, stopping next to his client.

"We're landing in ten minutes," he said.

Prick didn't even raise his eyes to the man. "Did those idiots send the helicopter like they said they would?"

"It's ready and waiting," his manager said.

"It bloody well better be," Prick growled. "I've had enough disasters for the rest of my life. Another screwup like New York, and you're all in the dole queue. You're just lucky I don't have you speared through the head for that."

He waved a thin pale hand at his two natives. "Yes, Prick. Thank you, Prick," said his manager, eyeing the two natives uncomfortably.

The men made the manager nervous. They'd been even creepier ever since their single lost the bullet and their album tanked. A record company exec had vanished at around the same time. No one was speculating out loud what had happened to him, but after the disappearance the manager had seen one of the natives wearing the man's very expensive Rolex as an ankle bracelet. And he swore the natives looked a little fatter.

"What the hell are you staring at?" Prick snapped.

The manager jumped. "Nothing," he said.

"I'm not paying you to do nothing. Leave me the hell alone."

The grateful manager almost tripped over his own feet in his haste to leave.

"And about that rattle," Prick called after him. "It's more like a hum. I want it found and I want it dehummed before we land."

"Yes, Prick," his manager said with a sharp nod. As Prick continued to stare out the window at his jungle, the cabin exploded in a flurry of fresh activity. The crew began searching frantically for a hum that didn't exist.

Chapter 15

Remo called Smith from the airport in Rio de Janeiro. The CURE director had already arranged for a flight on a turboprop to Macapa.

"Who were you talking to?" Amanda demanded once Remo hung up the phone and they were heading across the tarmac to the smaller plane. The air was hot and sticky. She was directing the skycaps who were hauling her luggage. The dainty pink bags were showing signs of wear.

"I've got an idea for a game we can play," Remo said. "It's called none of your business."

"Heh-heh-heh," said the Master of Sinanju as he padded along beside them. "None of your business."

Amanda shot the old man an evil look. "I'm starting to think you're not so nice, either," she accused. To Remo she said, "It was Daddy, wasn't it?"

"Wasn't who?"

"On the phone. You were just talking to Daddy. He wanted to check up on you, make sure I was okay. Only, it's just he won't give me the unlisted numbers. They changed them after I was-" the words were hard to get out "-cut off. Mother has a card sent to me on Christmas. Although not last year. Or this year. Yet. I thought I was gone for good. This is so unlike him to take the time to look after me like this."

Remo could see the flood waters rising in her eyes again. They were at the air stairs. He stopped. "He's a regular Robert Young," Remo agreed. "Now can we change the subject from Daddy Warbucks? Speaking for the orphans of the world, if I have to hear one more story about your childhood of ponies on the patio and hot and cold running wet nurses, I'm gonna heave all over this Mary Kay luggage of yours."

Her tears dried up. "Don't you dare," she snapped. She shooed the men with her luggage off to the cargo hold. "You made a big enough mess back in my apartment. And don't think I'm not keeping a running total of what you owe me. By the time we're through, Daddy will be writing a check to me, not you." Pushing past him, she mounted the stairs.

The plane was nearly empty. Chiun sat alone on the left side of the aisle while Remo and Amanda sat in the two seats across from him.

Once they were back in the air and Amanda got her first good glimpse of jungle, her expression softened.

"It's amazing, isn't it?" she said quietly as she looked out the window.

Remo leaned over her, peering out at the sea of green. Clouds of burned-off mist rose into the early-morning sky.

"Glad I don't have to mow it," he shrugged, flopping back in his seat.

"It's not only jungle down here," Amanda insisted. "A lot of Brazil is covered by savanna. It's like Africa in a lot of ways. Have you ever been to equatorial Africa?"

Remo was doing his best to ignore her. Chiun wouldn't let him.

"She is talking to you," the old man said blandly. He was staring out at the left wing.

"I know. But can't we pretend she isn't?" Remo asked. "I've had to put up with it the last six thousand miles."

"No," Chiun replied. "Because then she might try talking to me."

"Now, now," Amanda admonished, wagging a finger at the Master of Sinanju. "I know you're not the grumpy Gus you pretend to be."

There was a flash of silk, so fast Amanda didn't see it. Remo barely managed to snatch her hand out of the way of Chiun's razor-sharp fingernails.

"Oh," Amanda said softly. "Oh, my."

Remo's hands as they held hers were strong, but not coarse. They were the hands of a real man and not those of the perfumed sons of privilege she had dated all her life. She felt a shudder of electricity shoot through her as Remo held tight for a few lingering moments. For an instant in her tripping heart she wondered if he felt it, too.

"Hey, headlights, if you don't want a stump where your rings used to go, you'll refrain from cheesing off the pissy old Korean guy." He let her go. Amanda wasn't sure what to think. She'd definitely felt something. And while this Remo was a barbarian and, worse, an employee, there was something raw and primal about him.

"I thought we were getting a little better acquainted," she ventured hesitantly.

"Nope," Remo said. "Just didn't want your blood squishing up my new shoes."

She pouted her perfect lips. "Afraid of commitment, I see," she complained.

Remo gave her a baleful look. "Is this you coming on to me? 'Cause if it is, I wish you'd go back to yelling."

Across the aisle, the Master of Sinanju huffed angrily. "And I wish this craft would crash and spare me from having to listen to either of you," he groused, getting to his feet.

Amanda was sending a hectoring finger back his way when Remo intercepted it. With a disapproving harrumph, Chiun glided up the aisle and sank into an empty seat.

"Can't keep your hands to yourself, can you?" Amanda said, doe-eyed optimism returning.

"Put it back in your pants, Amanda," Remo said as he let go of her hand. "Besides, I'm just the help, remember?"

He got up and moved across the aisle to the seat Chiun had vacated. Amanda followed him.

"I've dated the help before," Amanda confided.

"The pool boy, some gardeners. About a dozen drivers."

"Beats a cash bonus, I guess," Remo said. "Assuming you keep your yap shut during. Which I doubt."

He got up and sat in his original seat. Getting up once more to follow, Amanda settled back into hers. "Why are you running away, Remo?" she asked. "What are you men so afraid of?"

"The usual stuff. Commitment leading to long-term relationship leading to me not being able to watch The Three Stooges in peace because you're harping at me to trim the hedges and take the cat to the vet. You want a window into a guy's mind? That's it."

Amanda's face darkened and she folded her arms. "It wasn't like I was proposing or anything," she grumbled.

"You certainly were not," a squeaky voice chimed in from farther up the cabin. "I am having a difficult enough time explaining you, Remo. When you finally do wed, it will be to a Korean maiden, not some melon-dugged ghost face. Besides, this one is damaged goods."

Amanda was embarrassed enough already. When Remo responded she felt like melting into her seat. "How you figure that, Little Father?" he called.

"She was left at the-altar," Chiun called back. "Do you not listen? She keeps going on about it."

Amanda's face grew horrified. "I was not," she insisted to the nearest person, a passing Brazilian stewardess who had no idea what was being said.

"He was probably marrying her for those millions she keeps going on about," Remo said to Chiun.

"I was not left at the altar," Amanda hissed. "There was some ...unpleasantness at my sister Abigail's wedding. That's all I said. You two are the ones who don't listen."

"I listen perfectly," Chiun said. "You talk wrong."

Remo shrugged. "Sue me for only listening to every fourth word," he said. "I'm taking a nap." Reclining his seat, he closed his eyes.

Amanda couldn't believe his nerve. The way both of these men acted it was as if she was their servant and not the other way around. She hoped that by hiring them to protect her, Daddy was signaling a thawing in his attitude toward her. The quality of help he was employing had obviously taken a dramatic downturn since she'd been frozen out of family affairs. She wanted to give him an earful before the inheritance she was counting on was completely frittered away.

Casting a last, longing look at Remo's slumbering form, she turned her eyes back to the window and the lush majesty of the Brazilian rain forest.

THEIR PLANE TOUCHED down in Macapa early in the afternoon. Remo and Chiun waited until the few other passengers on board had deplaned before gliding down the retractable stairs and out into the eighty-degree heat.

The air in Macapa was like a hot shower in July. The humidity was already soaking Amanda's blouse by the time she stepped off the plane.

"There's no one here to carry my bags," she said.

"Yeah, how 'bout that," Remo said.

Frowning at Remo, she looked to Chiun.

"The Master of Sinanju does not lift," he sniffed. "I can vouch for him on that one. No luggage, no bodies, no nothing. But don't worry. We'll wait." Scowling, Amanda collected her suitcases alongside the other passengers.

"A gentleman would help me carry these," she growled as she struggled under the pile of pink Gucci.

"I think I saw one over there," Remo said. "Lemme see if we can catch him."

He and Chiun struck off for the small terminal. Amanda puffed to catch up.

"If you're my bodyguards, you should stay with me," she complained. She adjusted a suitcase strap that was biting into her shoulder. "I've got half a mind to- Hey."

Remo heard the sound of luggage thudding to pavement. When he turned, Amanda was standing stock-still up to her ankles in suitcases. She pointed to the private hangars beyond the terminal.

"That's the CCS jet," she said. She blew a clump of damp stringy brown hair from her face.

Remo looked back to where a sleek white jet peeked out from a shadowed hangar door.

"You sure?" he asked. One jet looked like the rest to him.

Even standing on a South American airport runway in sweat-stained, off-the-rack clothes and amid a pile of ragged seven-year-old luggage, the girl who had grown up on jets still managed a look of supreme Lifton condescension.

"Okay, so you're sure," Remo said. "Stay put."

"I'm standing out in the open in broad daylight, you idiot," Amanda snapped.

"So what do you want from me? Weave a little. Come on, Little Father."

Amanda was hauling her luggage straps back up over her shoulders and cursing under her breath as the two Masters of Sinanju headed over to the long, flat building.

The big hangar door was rolled open wide. When they paused near the corrugated steel wall, they sensed no one inside.

"I smell oil," Remo said. "Not more than normal, though."

Chiun was peering in at the shadowed ceiling of the hangar. "There are none of those devices for spraying acid," he observed. His hands sought refuge in the voluminous sleeves of his kimono.

Remo glanced across the tarmac. Amanda was halfway toward them, lugging her heavy bags.

"Let's hope it just doesn't mean there's a whole new surprise inside," Remo muttered.

Without another word, the two men slipped around the wall of the hangar and disappeared inside.

FROM THE MACAPA airport security shed, Herr Hahn watched the two Masters of Sinanju duck inside the hangar.

He was sweating and panting as he sat in his chair. It wasn't fear, but exertion. He almost hadn't gotten here before them. Even now his own private jet was cooling down on the other side of the airport.

He was himself again. Back in full control.

Oh, there was a moment or two back in Geneva when he had allowed fear to take control from reason. But even that had been exciting in a bizarre way.

Other men in his profession had walked that uncertain path before-between success and failure, life and death. Possibly even Benson Dilkes himself, although Herr Hahn had his doubts about that. Since Hahn had known only success, his failure back in Switzerland had given him a certain twisted thrill. But that was gone now.

These two celebrated assassins had become the challenge of a lifetime. Herr Hahn would meet that challenge with greater caution than he had ever exercised before. And in the end, the victory would be savored as none other.

Hahn wasn't sure what they were able to sense. He knew to his marrow that they'd felt his binoculars trained on them back in Geneva. Did whatever sense they possessed extend to electronic surveillance equipment?

He had no way of knowing if they'd noticed the heat-sensing equipment at Hubert St. Clair's chalet and had simply chosen to ignore it. If so, with luck, they might do the same thing here.

There were only a few cameras at the small airport. Two at the main terminal, the rest positioned around the private hangars. Herr Hahn chose not to focus all cameras on the two men. Rather, he let the devices pan back and forth in their normal automated cycles.

He saw them deplane, then missed them for a full minute as the woman got her luggage. The cameras rotated, and he caught just a glimpse of them on their way into the hangar.

The woman was alone. She was heading in the direction of the Masters of Sinanju, but right at this one moment she was completely vulnerable.

How easy it would be to slip out of the security shed unseen. A single bullet would put an end to her. Just as it had to the dead security officer who lay on his back on the floor near Herr Hahn's briefcase.

But a gunshot would bring the two men running. This wasn't about the simple way out. This was all about tactics and victory. And maybe just maybe-one last single moment of delicious fear before Herr Hahn achieved the greatest triumph in his professional career.

DENSE JUNGLE FOLIAGE around the back and sides cooled the hangar by ten degrees. Alert now to the unexpected, Remo and Chiun made their cautious way around the CCS jet.

The door behind the cockpit was down, the attached stairs almost welcoming them inside.

"If it's a trap, I'm not getting anything from it," Remo said cautiously.

The Master of Sinanju's face was impassive. "I sense no danger, either," he admitted.

"Good," Remo said. "If it starts shaking us like a paint mixer or launches us into space, we can both take equal blame."

"Very well," Chiun agreed. "But if something goes wrong, the Sacred Scrolls will show your equal blame to be greater than mine." He nudged Remo up the stairs at the point of a long nail.

The recycled air inside the jet had grown foul the instant it was exposed to Macapa air. Remo noted another smell lingering along with the stale air. It was the same odor they'd picked up back in Switzerland.

"I smell German," Remo said. "Think it's our guy?"

The Master of Sinanju nodded. "It is too weak for whoever it is to have flown here on board this craft. The German who boarded this plane did so long after it landed."

Remo nodded. "Thought so," he said. "He must have gotten here ahead of us."

They stepped more cautiously as they continued deeper into the plane.

There was a conference area halfway down the jet. A big map of the Amazon had been left unfolded on a low table. Remo saw that a large circle had been made in blue ink around an area of jungle miles inland.

"Well, they don't think very highly of us," Remo complained. "Why didn't they draw a bunch of arrows and write 'This is not a trap' at the bottom?"

Disgusted, he tried folding the map. It was like those from the gas station. He could never fold them back up right, either.

"Chiun?" he asked after his third try.

Frowning with his entire face, the old Korean snatched the map from Remo's hands. It folded quickly before vanishing up a wide kimono sleeve. He twirled away in a flurry of robes.

There was nothing else for them inside. When they went back into the hangar, Remo popped the door to the cargo hold. A vague whiff of ammonia told them where the seeds had been stored. The hold was empty.

"We know for sure where he brought them now," Remo said. "They just better be at that hotel, because I don't feel like schlepping off into the jungle."

He was interrupted by Amanda Lifton, who chose that moment to stick her head in through the main hangar door.

"Remo, Chiun, come quick!" she cried. "Hurry!" Fearing the worst as she ducked back outside, the two Sinanju Masters flew for the door. When they emerged into the sunlight, they found Amanda standing a few yards from the hangar, surrounded by her pastel pink luggage. She was staring across the tarmac, a look of near rapturous bliss on her sweating face.

A new private jet had landed and taxied to a stop. People milled around the plane.

"You're not going to believe it," Amanda said. "I just saw him." She was craning her neck for a better look.

"Who?" Remo asked. "St. Clair?" He looked hopefully at the small crowd.

He didn't see the head of the CCS. All attention seemed to be focused around the thin, balding man in sunglasses who had just stepped into view.

When she saw the man reappear, Amanda grabbed Remo by the arm. Her digging nails pressed white finger marks in his skin.

"Geez, lady, lay off," Remo snarled.

A single tap on the back of her wrist and her hand sprang back open. Amanda hardly noticed.

"Don't you recognize Prick?" she asked.

Remo turned to the Master of Sinanju. "Did she just insult me again?" he said, assuming this was some new slang phrase he'd missed.

"Do not look at me," the old Korean said. "English when practiced by the modern British is confusing enough. I have long given up trying to keep track of whatever it is you Americans do to vulgarize it.

"Prick is a world-famous singer," Amanda explained. "You must have heard of him."

Remo looked back over at the new arrival, eyes narrowing. The man in the sunglasses wore an opennecked shirt and a pair of torn jeans. Remo realized that he had indeed seen him before.

"Oh, yeah," he said, nodding. "He's the one and only loudmouth in the music business who's always spouting off about something or other like he's the world's freaking nanny. Good thing there's not more like him or no one would ever take music stars seriously."

A pair of loincloth-wearing natives stepped down from the plane. They carried spears, blowguns and copies of Rolling Stone with their pictures on the cover. Remo recognized them from the Primeval Society benefit concert in New York.

Amanda watched Prick eagerly as he and the tribesmen stepped over to a waiting limo. The flush to her cheeks was no longer due solely to the Brazilian heat.

"He's done a great job focusing attention on the plight of the rain forest," Amanda breathed.

"Beats working for a living," Remo said. "You think he has to use that name because of truth-in-advertising laws?" To the Master of Sinanju, he said, "Chiun, can I see that map for a minute?"

The old Korean produced the map they'd found on the CCS plane from the folds of his kimono, handing it to Remo.

"He's here for the big Pan Brazil Eco-Fest," Amanda said as she watched photographers swarm the limo. Something big and papery crinkled in front of her face, blocking her view of Prick. "What's that?" she asked. Leaning back, she saw it was a map.

"Your buddy St. Clair and his hired killer left it for us to find," Remo said. "Any idea what's there?" He pointed to the circled section.

Amanda shook her head. "No," she said worriedly. "The CCS does a lot of work down here. It could be a project I don't know about. Did you say the killer was here?"

Remo nodded. "He must have got here just before us."

Suddenly, Prick was forgotten. "And you let me out here to fend for myself alone?" she said, aghast. "He could be anywhere, and you abandoned me? You-you incompetents!"

Frantically, she grabbed up only one of her bags. Using it as a pink shield, she covered her head and went running for the terminal.

Remo handed the map back to Chiun. "I'm glad we don't really work for her," he groused. "That servant-bashing is starting to get on my nerves." He cast a raised eyebrow at Amanda's abandoned luggage. "Should I?" he sighed.

"Why?" the Master of Sinanju replied blandly. "There must be something in them the street urchins of this squalid land could use."

Turning, he padded off toward the terminal. Remo nodded. "Consider it the first shot in the battle for servants' rights," he said to himself. With a mental image of dozens of Brazilian beggars dressed in Amanda Lifton's pink nighties, he struck off after Chiun.

HERR HAHN WATCHED them go. First the girl, then the men.

Hahn had seen everything he wanted to see on the security monitors. They had taken the bait. The Masters of Sinanju had the map.

It was still possible he could get one or two of them before they left Macapa but, if not, true success would inevitably come up the dark depths of the Amazon. Hubert St. Clair wouldn't approve of his actions. But this was no longer about his employer.

Leaving the body of the murdered security officer to rot in the heat of the small shed, Herr Hahn hurried out into the stifling Brazilian afternoon.