Chained Reaction

CHAPTER ELEVEN

"Look at this, Remo."

A complimentary copy of the Southern Pennsylvania Dispatch had been left in the motel room Smith had rented for access to a telephone. Smith had the paper open on the bed, opened to a double-page advertisement over the center fold.

He pointed at the pages and Remo looked at them.

AT LAST,

WE KNOW THE CAUSE

OP AMERICA'S PROBLEMS.

"So do I," said Remo. "Americans."

"Read it," Smith said.

Remo read the copy on the left-hand page. It was brief and direct.

America's blacks, it said, suffered from longstanding problems: high unemployment, poor educational facilities, narrow job opportunities, absorption in a culture that did not recognize their rich cultural heritage.

America's whites, the advertisement said, suffered from a growing inability to walk the streets of their towns and cities safely and a growing

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sense that the government in Washington was no longer interested.

"Hear, hear," said Remo.

"Bead it," said Smith.

Whites felt that the products of their labor and their work was being drained from them in higher taxes, higher prices, and more government programs from which they could see no benefit.

This caused increased irritation and conflict between the races.

But now, the advertisement said, there was an answer.

Blacks wanted primarily economic and cultural security. Guaranteed jobs, shelter, food, and the opportunity to learn of their rich background, while being with people who shared that background.

Whites wanted to know that their streets were again safe and that the government's hand was not always in their wallet, taking their tax money and using it to support the same people who made the streets unsafe.

"That's right," Remo said. "We pay too much taxes."

"You haven't paid any tax in ten years," Smith said. "Except sales tax on all the junk you buy and charge to me."

"Don't knock it," said Remo. "That should be enough to run the northeast for six months."

"Read," said Smith.

A new association had been formed, the advertisement said. It was going to bring to the American public new and specific proposals to end the racial tensions and the economic problems that had racked America for the last generation.

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"But to get it done, you have to stand up for us. A nationwide movement is now being formed, headquartered in the historic town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and we will soon be marching on Washington.

"We hope that fifty million of you Americans will make that march with us so the government will know we mean business. This is a caravan for a new America."

It went on like that, a political call to arms.

The right-hand page was filled with signatures of people endorsing the ad.

Remo finished reading it and looked at Smith.

"So? What's it all about?"

Smith pointed at the slogan across the bottom of the page:

SAVE LIVES. AVERT VIOLENCE. ENERGIZE.

"Look at that," Smith said. "S-L-A-V-E. These people want to bring back slavery."

"And that's what's behind Bleech and his army," Remo said.

Smith was thumping a fist into a palm. As ever, his face showed no emotion, but he knew that Smith felt the emotion, the revulsion against what was planned. The notion of slavery hit at the heart of his rock-ribbed New England traditions and ancestry and background.

The right-hand page of the advertisement was small type. It included column after column of people who endorsed the ad. There were forty-seven congressmen and senators, twelve governors, and hundreds of mayors. A former Republican candidate for President. Ministers, lecturers, and writ-

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ers. Three quarters of the staffs of the Village Voice, Ring Magazine, and Better Homes and Gardens.

"If this thing is so bad," Remo asked, "why the hell are all these names on it ?"

"What do they know?" Smith said. "Most people sign these advertisements without even knowing what they say. Because someone asked them to. By the time they find out it's a call to re-institute slavery, their names will have done their work. Maybe fifty million people will march on Washington."

"It's your problem," Remo said. "I'm not in this kind of work anymore."

Ruby and Chiun came in from outside where they had been in deep conversation.

Ruby pointed a finger at Remo. "It's your problem, too. You promised you help me find Lucius? Did you help me find Lucius? No, you ain't helped me find Lucius. Now, you ain't done until you do. You hear?" Her voice had steadily risen in pitch, and, because it cut through Remo like a knife, he raised his hands in surrender.

"Okay, okay, okay," he said. "I'll do it. I'll do anything. Just stop yelling at me."

"Anything?" asked Chiun.

"Not that anything," said Remo. "Do you really think I could take that screeching for the rest of my life?"

"Not for the rest of your life. Just a minute or two," Chiun said. "Then it will be over and I will manage the results of it."

"What are you talking about now?" Ruby asked.

"He's talking about breeding you and me so he can have a kid to teach."

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"Not on your life," said Ruby.

"But think," said Chiun. "Remo is white and you are brown, so a child would be tan. Now tan is not yellow, but it is closer than white or brown. That would be a start."

"You want yellow, hire yourself a Chinaman," Ruby said.

Chiun spat. "I want yellow, but not at the price of sloth or disease or treachery. I would rather have a Russian than a Chinaman."

"Then get yourself a Russian," said Ruby. "I ain't gonna do the do with him, just to make you happy."

Smith shushed them. He was on the telephone, talking slowly and smoothly into the mouthpiece.

"That's right, Chiun," said Remo. "That's the way I feel, too."

"The two of you are hopeless," said Chiun. "Anyone with half a brain could see the merits of my suggestion."

Remo fell onto the bed. "No, thank you," he said with disgust.

Ruby looked at him with curiosity.

"What you mean, talking like that?" she said.

"I'm rejecting you," Remo said.

"You not rejecting me. I rejecting you."

"We're rejecting each other," said Remo.

"No, we're not. You got nothing to say about it," Ruby said. "If I wanted you, I'd get you."

"Never."

Chiun was nodding at Ruby, patting her on the shoulder in encouragement.

"You think you're special?" she asked Remo. "I get turkeys like you any time I want."

"Not this turkey," Remo said.

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"We'll see about that," Ruby said. "You willing to pay for this? You was talking about thousands of gold pieces."

"The wealth of ages," Chiun said.

"That means two bags of sea shells and fourteen dollars worth of junk jewelry," Remo said. "And twenty-two Cinzano ashtrays that he's stolen from different hotels."

"Silence," said Chiun. "This does not concern you."

"That's right, dodo. It doesn't concern you," Ruby said.

"Funny," said Remo, putting his hands behind his head. "I would've sworn it concerned me most of all."

"Ignore him, child," Chiun said.

"We'll talk about this later when he's not around," Ruby said.

Smith hung up the telephone.

"Despite all your attempts to make it impossible," he said, "I've checked it all out."

Remo looked at the ceiling tiles and began to count them.

"I was just talking to the computers at . . ." Smith paused and glanced at Ruby. "My offices," he said.

"And are they having a nice day?" Remo asked. "How's the weather up there? I hope it's not chilling their little solenoids."

Smith ignored him. He raised his left hand to rub his right shoulder where the gun butt had smashed.

"The land in the piney woods is owned by a corporation controlled by Baisley DePauw."

Remo sat up in the bed. "That's what that

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make-believe colonel said, too, and I still don't believe it. Baisley DePauw is the left wing ding-dong liberal hoople of all time. Your computers are all wet."

"And this advertising," Smith said, "appeared in most of the daily newspapers today. It was placed by an organization funded by a foundation. The foundation is controlled by Baisley DePauw."

Remo lay back on the bed. "I don't believe it," he said.

"And Baisley DePauw has bought up three hours of television time on all the networks seven days from today."

"Not him," Remo said. "I don't believe it."

"The buses we saw today are owned by one of the DePauw companies," Smith said.

"I don't believe it."

"And last week, the day after the raid on Norfolk, two buses like that were seen driving into DePauw's West Palm Beach mansion," Smith said.

"I don't believe it," Remo said. "Not Baisley DePauw."

"The combined payroll costs of DePauw's companies is close to one billion dollars," Smith said. "Annually. Slavery will save him at least five-hundred million dollars a year."

"I believe it," Remo said. "A buck's a buck. Speaking of which, where is Lucius?"

"He be at the West Palm Beach house," said Ruby.

Smith nodded. "It seems that way."

"Then let's go," said Ruby.

"You go," said Remo. "I can't. My heart is broken. Dear, sweet Baisley DePauw. Slavery. From

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the man who gave us such great stage hits as Kill the Honkey and Up Against the Wall, Mother and who's personally gone bail for every maniacal killer in this country if they're the right color. . . ."

"None of them are the right color," Chiun said. "The right color is yellow."

"I just don't believe it. You go," Remo said.

He looked at Euby. Slowly her mouth opened. She was working herself up to screech at him. He could see it in her eyes. He clapped his hands over his ears.

But it wasn't good enough. Ruby let loose a string of curses that would have bubbled wallpaper.

"All right, all right," said Remo. "Enough. I'll go."

" 'Cause you promised," Ruby said.

Remo surrendered. "Because I promised." He looked around and his eyes fixed on Smith. "All right," Remo told Ruby. "I'll go with you, but I don't have to take him along. I don't think I could take that trip. We'll park him someplace so he can get that shoulder fixed up."

"Mama'll take care of his shoulder," Ruby promised.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

The DePauw mansion overpowered the neighboring West Palm Beach mansions like a two-carat blue-white set among diamond chips.

It sat on six acres of land, surrounded on three sides by ten-foot-high white iron fencing whose bars were too close together for a human to slide between. At the back of the mansion was the Atlantic Ocean. A large powerboat, tied up to a dock, could be seen through the estate's front gate.

Inside the gate, leaning against the white brick pillars, were two uniformed guards.

Remo drove past the estate and parked a half block away. "It's probably best if you stay here," he told Ruby.

"I'm going," she said. "Case Lucius is there."

"Brave, too," Chiun said to Remo. "Not only strong and smart, but brave, too."

"I now pronounce you man and wife," Remo said. "Will you knock it off?"

"Ingrate," hissed Chiun.

Remo got out of the car and slammed the door behind him. He was halfway to the DePauw mansion when Ruby and Chiun left the rented car.

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Remo was tired to death of being pushed around, tired of having his mind made up for him, tired of being told what to do and when to do it. Thank God for the Vega-Choppa. It was the first honest dollar he had earned since he stopped being a city policeman a lot of years before.

If he had not given Ruby his promise, he would keep walking right now, past the DePauw mansion, and never look back. Being pushed around. It was what had tired him of working for Smith and for CURE and he was tired of it from Chiun and tired of it from Ruby.

He stopped outside the tall white gate and motioned one of the guards to come over.

"Yes?" the guard said.

"Look. We can do this easy or we can do it hard."

"Easy? Hard?"

"Just let me in," Remo said.

"Are you expected?"

"No. But my winning ways will soon have everybody forgetting that."

"Then I'm sorry, sir, but..."

"Not as sorry as you will be," Remo said.

He reached through the bars of the gate, grabbed the guard's wrist and gently pulled him close. To the other guard, it looked as if the man had stepped forward so Remo could whisper something in his ear.

"Now," Remo said softly. "This is still your wrist I'm holding in my hand. We can keep it a wrist or we can make it into jelly. Take your pick."

"Wrist," the guard said.

"Good. Now call your buddy over."

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"Joe," the guard called out. "Come here a minute."

"Good," said Remo. "Very good."

"Yeah, Willie," the other guard said when he reached the fence but before he could get an answer, his left wrist was in Remo's left hand.

"Now if you both don't want your ping pong careers ended for good, open the gate." He squeezed on Willie's wrist for emphasis and the guard's hand went to the ring of keys at his waist. He fumbled them loose, and used a large brass key to open the gate. It opened and Remo released both men momentarily, slid inside, then resumed his grip on their wrists. He walked them over to the high shrubbery alongside the brick pillars, transferred his grip to their necks, and left them sleeping underneath the japonica shrubs.

When he stepped back to the ceramic tiled driveway, Chiun and Ruby were entering through the gate.

"How was that?" Remo asked. "All right? Did I open the gate well enough for you two geniuses? In your wisdom, do you approve?"

Ruby looked at Chiun. "What's wrong with him now ?" she asked.

"I can never figure out what white people are talking about."

"Me neither," said Ruby.

"Yeah? Yeah?" said Remo. "White people, hah? Big friends, you two, hah? Have him tell you about how God made man and put it in the oven and kept getting it wrong. Have him tell you that, you want to find out what a tolerant warm wonderful person he is."

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"Ignore him," said Chiun. "He knows, better than anyone else, how tolerant I am of inferiors."

"Hah," said Remo, and walked off up the long driveway.

The main house stood at the back of the property, its rear patio extending down to the water line and the docks. There were two small buildings on one side of the house and Remo cut across the slightly overgrown lawns to go to those buildings first.

The first room must have been the gardener's quarters. There were two rooms, immaculately clean. And empty.

The second building, hidden from the street by the first building, was made of fieldstone. Remo tried to look inside, but there were curtains over the windows.

There was a hasp on the outside of the front door for padlocking the small building from the outside, but the door itself was unlocked.

The three stepped into one large room, twenty-five feet square. Thin metal bunks, covered with bare striped ticking mattresses, lined one wall. In a corner was an open toilet bowl and a sink. On another wall, chains had been installed at about the height of a man's shoulders.

Ruby counted the metal bunks. Thirteen. But fourteen men had been kidnapped.

Remo heard a sound.

"You hear it, Chiun?" he asked.

Chiun nodded.

Ruby strained but heard nothing.

"What is it?" she asked. "What do you hear?"

"Some kind of machinery whirring," Remo said.

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He began to look around the room carefully. The sound was loudest near the wall of the building, next to the main DePauw house.

There was a ragged rug under Remo's feet. He kicked it aside and found a trap door with a large sunken ring cut into the wooden floor.

He pulled up on the ring and the trap door lifted noiselessly.

Now Ruby could heard the sound, too. It was a slow, steady whirring. She stood alongside Remo and looked down into the open well. Steep wooden stairs had been erected against the wall, and Remo led the way down.

They were in a tunnel seven feet high and not that wide. It stretched ahead of them for thirty feet and ended at a door. There was a piece of black plastic covering the door's windows on their side. Remo peeled a piece of it away and they lifted it slightly to peer in.

They saw a long conveyor belt and thirteen men standing alongside it. The first seven of them wrapped metal bands around sticks; the last six removed the metal bands and brought the sticks and bands back to the front of the line so the cycle could start over again.

All the men were black. They wore white cotton sleeveless undershirts. The room was illuminated by bare overhead bulbs.

Ruby sipped in her breath.

She started to cry out, but Remo clapped his hand over her mouth.

"What?" he said.

"That's Lucius."

"Which one?"

"The first one on the left side."

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Remo watched for a moment. There seemed to be nothing to distinguish Lucius from any of the other dozen men working at the conveyor table.

At the end of the conveyor belt, on a small platform, stood a wiry man with red hair. He wore a white suit and a white hat and metal-tipped boots and carried a long whip coiled in his right hand.

On the far side of the room, six feet up the wall, there was a door, and, as the three of them watched, the door opened.

Striding out onto a raised platform that looked over the room was Baisley DePauw. Remo recognized him from the newspaper photographs. Baisley DePauw dedicating the liberation library. Baisley DePauw sending his personal jet to Algeria to bring back exiled black Americans. Baisley DePauw opening his heart and his checkbook to every crack-brained anti-American movement that had come up in Eemo's remembrance.

"How are they doing?" DePauw called out to the overseer.

"All right, sir. They get faster every day," the man called back. He had a deep tomb of a voice and Remo thought it odd that for his overseer, DePauw had hired someone obviously from the streets of New York City.

"I've got another inspection today," DePauw said. "I want them singing. Slaves should sing to show how happy they are."

The whip went singing out over the men's heads, cracking sharply in empty space.

"You heard the massa. Sing."

Without slowing down their work, the slaves looked at each other.

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"Sing, I said," the overseer shouted.

The men were still silent.

"You, Lucius. You start it."

Ruby's brother looked up and smiled a fetching grin.

"What should I sing, massa boss ?"

"I don't know. Sing anything you know."

"I don't know many songs," Lucius said.

"Sing what you know. Something with a beat so you can speed up your work."

Lucius opened his mouth and the first halting words came out:

Disco Lady.

Will you be my baby?

Saturday night

to Sunday's light,

Be my baby, Disco lady.

"Stop it," DePauw roared, just as the other men began to join in the singing.

"That's not exactly what I had in mind," DePauw said. "I'll have some words printed up and they can memorize them. Something inspiring, like 'All God's Chilluns Got Shoes.'"

"I'll make sure they learn it, Mr. DePauw."

DePauw nodded and went back inside through the door, which he closed tightly behind him.

"What do you think?" Remo asked Ruby.

"They're working pretty good," she said. "I might put a line like that in my wig factory. Turn up the work."

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," Remo said.

"I won't make them sing," Ruby said.

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"I don't like that disco music either," Remo said. "Anyway, Lucius looks all right."

"He looks better somehow," Ruby said.

"Maybe work agrees with him," Remo said.

"Maybe. I wouldn't know. I never saw him work before."

Through this, Chiun had been silent. Remo looked at him and saw the hazel eyes burning with an intensity that Remo had rarely seen.

"What's wrong, Chiun?"

Chiun waved a hand at the door. "This," he said. "This. It is degrading. It is evil."

Remo cocked his head. "This from the man with all the stories of how everybody is inferior to those from Sinanju?"

"It is one thing to understand men as they are, to know their weaknesses, and to deal with them thusly. It is something else to treat man as less than man. Because he who does that defies the glory of God's creation."

Just then the whip lashed again in the slave's workroom. The overseer bellowed, "Faster," and Chiun could take no more.

"Hold!" he cried and with anger fueling the power of his awesome art, he slammed a hand against the hinge side of the huge oaken door and the heavy wood panel shivered, and fell onto the floor in the room.

And like a yellow-robed wraith, Chiun whirled into the room and shouted again, "Hold, animal."

The overseer looked to him with a face torn between shock and anger.

The slaves looked up, hope on their faces, expecting a deliverer. But all they saw was a small yellow man in a yellow robe, looking like a doll,

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whirling into the room, his eyes twisted in anger, glaring at the overseer.

The big man with the white hat and white suit and the pistol at his side, jumped down from his platform, whirled his whip over his head and lashed it out at Chiun.

Just as it reached Chiun, his practiced hand gave it a snap, to move the weighted tip into supersonic speed that created the whip's crack.

But there was no crack. Like a meat slicer, Chiun's right hand moved up alongside his head and as the whip reached him, he sliced off a neat six inches with the side of his palm.

The overseer drew back the whip again behind him, dragging it on the ground, readying an overhead slash that could slice a man's shoulder down to the bone. He brought the lash up over his head with the full power of his sinewy arm, but the lash stopped at Chiun, and then the red-haired man felt himself being pulled across the floor toward the small Oriental. He tried to let go of the whip but it was attached to his wrist with a thong. As he was being dragged, he reached to his side with his left hand to pull out his pistol.

He got the gun out, cocked it with his thumb, but never had time to pull the trigger before an almost-gentle appearing blow from an index finger pushed his lower mandible back into his spinal column with a total, terminal snap.

Chiun looked down as the final breath left the body on the floor, his eyes still glistening with intensity.

The slaves cheered and Chiun whirled toward them; his countenance so fearsome that they stopped in mid-cry and wondered for a split

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second if their salvation might be more fearful than their imprisonment.

Chiun hissed at them. "Remember you this. He who will not be a slave cannot be a slave. You disgust me, all of you, who outnumbered this vile thing and yet took his lashes in silence."

The men looked away as Remo and Ruby came into the glare of the high-ceiling'd room.

"Ruby," called Lucius.

"You all right?" she asked.

"Just tired," he said. "But all right."

From the corner of her eye, she saw Remo vault up to the platform leading to the door to the main house, the platform on which they had seen DePauw.

"Just wait here a little bit longer," Ruby said to Lucius. "We be right back." She hauled herself up onto the platform and followed Remo through the door he forced open. Behind her came Chiun and as he left the slave's workroom, the men gasped, because at one moment he was standing on the floor at the base of the little platform, and then an instant later, his body had lifted into the air onto the platform. And none of them had seen him jump.

The passageway ended at a solid wood and plaster wall. Ruby saw Remo look for a hidden switch to open the door, but instead Chiun put his hands against the two-by-four framing of the wall, pressed right, then left, determined that the hidden door slid left, and pushed against it with more force than seemed to exist in his frail, aged body.

There was a croaking sound as the locking

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mechanism surrendered and the door panel slid smoothly to the left. They were looking into a large hallway on the main floor of the DePauw mansion.

Facing them at the end of the hall were two men. They wore neat business suits, but under the suits were the beefy bodies of athletes. They reached for their guns inside their jackets.

"Hold it right there," one of them called.

"Back in the passage," Remo told Ruby and she stepped back behind the safety of the wall.

She did not see what happened next. She heard a whooshing sound, and later realized it had been Chiun and Remo moving. Then she heard two faint thudding noises. There were no shots and no groans.

"All right," Remo called.

She peered around the edge of the wall. The two guards were at the end of the hallway, lying in a crumpled pile. Their hands were still inside their jackets, still reaching for their guns.

Remo answered the unspoken question in Ruby's eyes.

"Slow, slow," he said. "They were slow. And slow is the second worst sin, next to sloppy."

"He knows we're here," said Ruby.

She pointed up toward the ceiling. In the triple junction of the two walls and the ceiling was a closed circuit television camera, with a red light on under the lens. There was another at the other end of the hallway.

"Good," said Remo. "He'll have time to pray." He looked up to the camera, pointed to it as if to say "you" then put his hands in the steeple position of praying.

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Behind the guards, a large curving .staircase led to the mansion's second floor.

In the back of the building they found De-Pauw's suite of offices. In the outside office was a small man in a neat brown suit, with a graying crew cut, and a face that looked as if it had spent the weekend at a convention of vampire bats.

As the three came into the room, he stared at them in total horror. Ruby saw on his desk a television monitor that flashed from scene to scene from the cameras around the house. He had seen Remo and Chiun enter downstairs. He had seen the guards reach for their guns, and shout for them to stop. He had seen Ruby duck back behind the wall. But he had not seen Remo and Chiun move. He had not even seen the blur of speed. Instead, he had simply seen Chiun and Remo reappear at the other end of the hall as if by magic and he had seen the two guards drop, their hands still reaching for their guns.

"Where is he?" asked Remo.

The man was not about to argue. He pointed to a heavy wooden door.

"In there," he said. "But the door's locked from the inside. I heard Mr. DePauw bolt it."

"Yeah, right," said Remo.

As Ruby watched, Remo tossed himself at the door. He should have bounced off like a tennis ball rebounding from a brick wall. But when his shoulder hit against the door, he seemed to cling there, off his feet, pressed against the wood, and Ruby heard the ripping sound of lumber as the door broke loose and swung open smoothly.

Remo winked at her. "Don't tell anybody how I did that," he said. "It's a secret."

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"A secret how he does it without denting his head," Chiun said.

DePauw's inner office was empty. But as they stepped into the room, a mechanical voice spoke out.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

"Come out, come out wherever you are," said Remo.

Chiun pointed toward a high shelf of books. The sound had come from a speaker hidden there.

Remo moved to the back windows of the office, past a desk that was filled with advertising proofs. Ruby glanced at the stack. Each ad bore the S-L-A-V-E slogan at the end and her quick glance showed clearly the design of the advertising program. It was a carefully calculated orchestration, starting with the promise of a solution to America's unrest, moving into a massive march on Washington, and ultimately to a national referendum on "Security for Blacks, Safety for Whites." Bleech's army up in Gettysburg had been trained to fight, but if DePauw's mind-bending program worked, not a shot would be fired, and Bleech's troops would merely lead fifty million people toward Washington, D.C. to force a vote on the slavery referendum.

The amplifed voice spoke again in the office. "Who are you?"

Remo gestured Chiun to the windows. Below, they could see Baisley DePauw on the back of the power boat, its motors running, a microphone in his hand.

Chiun nodded. There was a stairway leading down to the ground from the back of the office.

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Remo whispered to Ruby. "You stay here and talk to him. We're going after him."

"What should I say?"

"You've never had any shortage of words before," Remo said. "Yell at him. Pretend he's me."

Chiun and Remo went back out through the front office door. Ruby realized if they went down the rear stairs, DePauw would see them and power off in the boat before they could reach him.

"We came to sign up," Ruby said aloud in the office. She was surprised how her voice echoed off the wood walls.

"Sign up for what?" DePauw answered. On the boat below, she saw DePauw looking up at the office windows and she moved toward the corner of the window so she would not be recognizable.

"The movement," she said. "It's just what we need. What gave you the idea?" Keep him talking, she thought.

"We appreciate all the support we can get. But exactly who are you ?"

Ruby saw two flashes pass along the side of the house and out onto the bright sunlit lawn leading to the dock. Remo and Chiun were on the pier, and then they were leaping onto the boat.

"We're the people who gonna bury you, you crazy honkey shit," Ruby shouted in savage triumph, then flung open the window and started down the back staircase.

When she got to the dock, DePauw was sitting in a folding chair on the teakwood back deck of the boat. Chiun was casting off lines and Remo was trying to figure out how to make the boat go forward.

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DePauw looked at Ruby with undisguised loathing as she lightly hopped aboard the boat.

She smiled and chucked him under the chin with a finger.

"This the way it happens," she said. "First we moves into your boat, then your neighborhood, and before you know it the whole country be shot to hell."

With a lurch, Remo finally got the boat moving forward and it spun out into the warm blue waters of the Atlantic. After five minutes of running at top speed, he cut the engines back to idle and let the boat drift gently on the small hillocks of wave water.

When he came back to the deck, DePauw had his arms folded across the chest of his natty blue pin-striped suit.

"I want to see badges," he said to Remo. "Let's start with you." He started to rise from his chair, but Remo put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into place.

"We don't have badges," Remo said.

"Then just who the hell do you think you are, marching onto my boat like this, taking over, holding me prisoner?"

"Is there somehow some difference between what we're doing," asked Ruby, "and what you did to those men in your cellar?"

DePauw started to respond, then closed his mouth tightly and set his jaw.

"I'll tell you then," Ruby said. "There's one difference. You deserve it."

"You'd better take me back before you get into real trouble."

"Sorry," said Remo. "Since you people landed

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the first slaves, your family's been sucking up off America, fattening up on other people's work. Today the bill conies due."

Chiun had been staring back at the southern Florida coastline. He turned and said, "You are stupid, stupid. Sinanju, which deserves them, does not keep slaves. What therefore gives you the right?"

"Some people are fit only to be slaves," De-Pauw said. "Now that's enough talk. I want my lawyer."

"You won't need him," Remo said. "The verdict's in. For every crime that your family has ever committed against people, for two-hundred years, you're guilty. And there's no appeal of the sentence."

"That's against the law," DePauw sputtered.

"Only American law," Remo said.

DePauw looked to Chiun. The old Oriental shook his head.

"Not against Korean law," he said.

In desperation, DePauw looked to Ruby.

"Ain't against mine neither," she said. "Everybody know we lawless beasts."

In the corner of the boat, Remo ripped the anchor chain loose from its cleat, and dragged the anchor back toward DePauw who watched him in horror.

"I want a trial," DePauw said.

"You don't need one," Remo said. "You're getting justice."

He pulled DePauw to his feet. DePauw was bigger than Remo and he struggled to free himself, but Remo ignored the struggling and began wrapping the inch-thick anchor chain around his

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body as easily as if it had been an inert lump of mud.

"You can't do this," DePauw shouted. "This is America."

"Right," Remo agreed. "Best country ever. And it'll be even better after you leave."

"I want my lawyer," DePauw screamed as Remo twisted the ends of chain together in front, of DePauw's waist.

Remo stood up and met DePauw's eyes with a wink.

"Why?" he asked. "He swim better than you?"

With no more effort than it would take to dribble a basketball, Remo hauled DePauw to the edge of the boat and threw him over. There was one last scream but it turned into a gurgle as the water rushed over his plummeting body and DePauw vanished from sight.

"Satisfied, Ruby?" Remo asked.

She nodded. She looked down at the water where DePauw had vanished. There were a few bubbles breaking the surface, as if the life was boiling out of Baisley DePauw. And then nothing.

Remo put the boat in forward gear and spun it around, heading back toward the DePauw mansion.

As the boat roared toward land, Ruby stood alongside Chiun on the rear deck, looking out past the wake at the spot where DePauw had submerged.

"'S funny," Ruby said. "We come to this country in chains and we gets out of them and still there's always somebody trying to put those chains back on."

She looked toward Chiun, who slowly turned

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his face toward her, then reached out his hand and touched her cheek.

"You need never fear," he said, before turning away. "Chains find only willing wrists."

Remo neatly solved the docking problem by letting the boat run aground on the beach behind the house. The three of them walked around the back of the main house to the front door of the building that served as the slaves' sleeping quarters.

As they went in, they heard the sound of motors.

Three Rolls Royces were coming up the driveway, parking in front of the main house.

"You two go down and let everybody go," Remo said. "I'll see what this is all about."

Remo reached the front steps of the main house just as the limousines disgorged their passengers. Six men, in neat dark suits, with highly polished shoes, carrying small expensive leather briefcases.

The backbone of America. Its forward-looking, creative-thinking businessmen.

"Hi," Remo said. "Mr. DePauw sent me to meet you. You're here for the demonstration?"

The men looked at each other with smiles. One of them, with hair that was styled to look un-styled, and fingernails that had been manicured to look as if he was not wearing nail polish, nodded to Remo. "Ready to be part of the new great American experiment," he said.

"I know Mr. DePauw wants you to be part of it," Remo said. "We all do. Won't you come this way?" He turned toward the steps, then stopped.

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"Oh, you can let your drivers go. You'll be a couple of hours."

The businessmen began to give instructions to their chauffeurs when Remo broke in.

"No," he said. "Leave the cars. In case he wants to take you somewhere. Mr. DePauw will have drivers for them. There's a good sandwich shop down the block. Your men can kill time there until we send for them."

The businessmen gave instructions and followed Remo inside the house. He hustled them down the corridor to the left, toward the secret panel in the wall.

"Wait'll you see this," he said with a chuckle in his voice. "I know you're going to get a hoot out of it."

Ruby and Chiun had released the leg chains on the thirteen men and led them up the steps into the small slave shack. The men were looking for their clothing when Ruby heard Remo's voice coming through the open trap door from down in the work area.

"That's it," she heard him say. "You three wrap those things around and you three unwrap them. Got it?"

There was a pause and Remo's voice was louder.

"I don't hear you. You got it?"

Six voices answered in unison. "Yes sir."

"That's better," Remo said. "Now remember, Mr. DePauw wants you to be happy. And so do I. So you sing, just to show how happy you are. You know any songs?"

Again there was a silence.

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"Any kind of song," Remo's voice said, and it was harsh and demanding.

Instantly, one frail nasal voice began to sing tentatively.

"Good," Remo said. "Now louder. And all of you join in.

The voices came now, recognizable.

Disco Lady.

Won't you be my baby?

Ruby laughed aloud. Remo's voice again: "Thattaway. Now just keep working there and don't worry about a thing. Somebody'll be along and get you out of those leg irons. Probably no more than a couple of days."

A minute later, Remo came up through the trap door into the shack.

The black men were dressing. They looked at Remo as he came in. He met their eyes, then jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the trap door.

"You've all been replaced."

One of the black men cocked an ear to listen to the weak strings of "Disco Lady."

"Gotta admit it," he said. "Them white folks sure's got rhythm. Makes you want to tap yo' feet and dance."

Remo told them they were driving home to Norfolk in style. "Take the Rolls Royces in front. Nobody's going to miss them for awhile."

The black men ran toward the front of the shack, Lucius Jackson among them.

"Hey, Lucius," Ruby called. "You gonna go back with us?"

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"Hell, no," Lucius called over his shoulder. "I wanna ride in that Rolls Royce."

Ruby turned to Remo as her brother went outside into the sunlight. "I think I liked him better when he was wrapping that metal around those poles."

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Their car was the first back to Norfolk and Ruby led Remo and Chiun upstairs to give her mother the good news.

"Mama, Lucius is coming home," Ruby said.

Her mother inhaled a deep lungful of pipe and exhaled a smoke that looked greenish. She looked down at her feet.

"What he been doin' the last week?" she asked.

"Working," Ruby said.

Her mother looked up at her sharply.

"You sure it be Lucius?"

For the first time, she seemed to notice Remo and Chiun. "That fella you be leavin' here, I fix up his arm best I could. But then he wen' over the hotel to stay. Say?"

"Say what?" said Remo.

"Iffen he be a doctor, how come he cain't fix his own arm ?"

"Not that kind of a doctor."

Mrs. Gonzalez nodded, her dark face deepened with chasms of crease wrinkles. "Guess not. Otherwise he be able to fix hisself up."

"Where is he ?" said Remo.

"De hotel."

"Which one?"

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"One of dem."

Remo looked around to Ruby for help. She was talking agitatedly with Chiun in a corner of the room.

"Ruby," Remo squawked.

"He's at the Holiday Inn," she said. "You two can go ahead. I'll meet you there. I want to make sure Mama's all right."

Smith was sitting in his hotel room in a straight backed chair, reading newspapers. The room looked as if it had emerged from the hermetically sealed pages of a Sears Roebuck catalogue, as if no one alive had ever been in it, and looking at Smith's pinched acid face, Remo saw no reason to dispute that judgment.

"How's the shoulder?" Remo said.

"I think by tomorrow I will have been able to wash off all that green slime that woman insisted on putting on it. Then I won't be too embarrassed to go to a doctor."

Chiun opened Smith's shirt and pulled it down off his right shoulder to investigate the wound. He pressed with his fingers and nodded.

"That green slime has done very nicely," he said. "I must learn what it was. You are healing well."

"What happened in Florida?" Smith said, re-buttoning his shirt.

Remo found it hard to remember the last time he had seen Smith without a jacket and vest.

"Florida?" Smith repeated.

"Oh, yeah," Remo said. "DePauw is dead. The prisoners are free. God's in his heaven, all's right with the world, and I'm back in retirement."

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"Well, perhaps," said Smith. "But there's one thing left."

Remo's face was grim as he leaned toward Smith.

"As long as I've known you, Smitty, there's always been just one more thing."

"Listen to the emperor, Remo," said Chiun, "who knows but that this one more thing may yet bring glory to your dull life. Tell him, Emperor, tell him. What is this one more wondrous thing?"

Smith cleared his throat. "Yes, well. You know that we can operate only in secrecy. Without secrecy, CURE goes under."

"I've heard that and heard it and heard it," Remo said.

"Our secrecy has been breached. Shattered, I guess, is more accurate."

"Good. Then go out of business. Open a dry goods store someplace up in New Hampshire. Cheat the locals before they cheat you. I know a good real estate agent. If you like houses without roofs."

Chiun looked stern. "Remo, since you have been on television, you have lost all your manners. Is that what being a star has done to you? Show respect for the little people."

"Who are the little people, Chiun?"

"Everybody but me."

"All right, Smitty, I'll hear you out before I laugh in your face. Who breached security this time? And so what?"

"Ruby Gonzalez," Smith said. "And you've got to dispose of her."

Smith watched closely. Remo's face showed no emotion. He simply stood back from Smith's

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chair and looked out a window. "Why don't we talk English, Smitty? You don't mean dispose of her, you mean kill her, don't you ?"

"All right, kill her."

"Stuff it. You forgot that I quit."

"Just this one more thing."

"Never again. I'm retired. You want her hit, talk to Chiun. He's still in the business. But I won't."

Smith looked at Chiun who shook his head sadly. "Any enemy of yours, Emperor, is an enemy of mine. Point them out and they will feel the wrath of Sinanju. But not that girl with the Brussels-sprout ears. Not her."

"Why is she different?"

"She is going to give me a son. It is all arranged."

"You? A son?"

"It will technically be Remo's, of course/' Chiun said.

"I have something to say about this," Remo said without turning.

Behind his back, Chiun shook his head, indicating to Smith that Remo would have nothing to say about it at all.

"So this I cannot do," Chiun said. "Not by my hand can I lose the only good recruit my House will ever have, my chance, like all the other Masters for centuries, to pass on my secrets to someone deserving."

Remo sniffed his disgust.

"Guess you'll have to do it yourself," he said. "Get a taste of what it's like."

"I guess I will," Smith said.

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"You do that." He winked at Chiun who turned his back so Smith would not see him smile.

"I will," said Smith.

There was a knock at the door.

"It's open," Remo called.

Ruby stepped in. She had changed to a sleeveless white dress. Her skin looked as smooth and pure as melted maple ice cream. Her face shone with the young look of a woman who found all the cosmetic help she needed in a bar of soap.

"Hello," she said to Smith. She nodded to Remo and Chiun. "They told you what happened?"

Before Smith could answer, Remo said "No. We never tell him. We just tell him it's taken care of. He doesn't like to hear details because then he might, just might, realize once, just once, that somebody dies every time we make a new corpse for him. He doesn't want to hear about that. He just wants us to send him monthly lists of victims for his statistical charts."

"Gotta have charts," Ruby said mildly.

"Then you talk to him," Remo said. "He's got some business with you anyway. Chiun and I are going next door. You talk with him."

In the next room, as the door closed behind him, Remo asked Chiun, "How long?"

"What is this how long?" said Chiun.

"How long will it take for her to con him out of his socks?"

"How long do you say?" asked Chiun.

"Five minutes," said Remo.

"Three," said Chiun.

"You're on. Nobody can con Smith in three minutes. My own personal record is five minutes fifteen."

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"What are we wagering?" asked Chiun.

"Anything you want, Little Father."

"Anything?"

"Anything except that," Remo said.

In the next room, Ruby sat in a chair facing Smith, who drummed his fingertips on the small blond formica desk.

Finally Ruby broke the silence. "How you gonna do it?"

"Excuse me?"

"You. How you gonna do it? A gun or what?"

Smith sat back in his chair. "How do you know that?"

"It's not hard. You're the brains of this here operation. It's what I'd do if it came to it."

"Oh, I see," said Smith. He had never had anyone offer himself up for killing before.

"Course it might not be in your best interests," said Ruby.

"Perhaps you'd tell me why."

"Sure. Since't I came here and I knew what you were fixin' to do, I'd be kind of a dope to just walk in and let it go like that. So I took precautions."

"What kind of precautions?"

"I wrote down everything I know and I spread it around a bit."

"I've heard that many times before," Smith said.

"Yeah, I know. Somebody's always giving something to their lawyer for when they die and like that. And then you get to the lawyer first so nothing happens. Well, I didn't do that. I left everything where the CIA gets it if I die."

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Smith looked at Ruby with narrowed eyes.

She nodded.

"I figured you can maybe get to my lawyer or something, maybe make sure that what I tell him don't get out. But the CIA? They gonna have a field day when they find out what you doing when they been getting their ears pinned back for less. They never let up on you. CURE goes right down the drain."

Smith sighed and Ruby said, "Now look at the good side."

"There is no good side."

"Sure, there is. First you think I know a little bit about your organization, enough to be dangerous. And that's only part right. I know a whole lot about your organization."

"How'd you learn that?"

She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "I been with them on two separate things now. You have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to find things out. I know who you are and where you operate and what you do and what you do personally and what they do and I have an idea of what you spend and where the President keeps the phone he calls you on and what your telephone codes are. Like that. Ceppin' for you, I guess I know more about your operation than anybody in the world."

"Just what I needed," Smith said. "A woman who knows too much that I can't get rid of."

"Want me to tell you what to do ?" asked Ruby.

"What?"

"Hire me."

"Hire you? What for?"

"Nothing special. Not right now. But I hear

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things. I keep track of things. Sometimes you need special help, you call me. I smart and I don't say nothin' to nobody."

"Do I have a choice?"

"No. That's why this is your lucky day," said Ruby.

"How much do you want?"

"Make me an offer."

"Five thousand dollars."

"You fooling," Ruby said.

"Why?"

"I making twenty-five with the CIA before I left."

"For what?" asked Smith. His first salary with the CIA had been seven thousand dollars a year, but that was long ago.

"For hanging around. In three years, they call me once. They send me down to that island and I run into those two inside there. I helped you then and when I got back, I didn't go running around, telling everybody I was a big spy, helping a big secret organization."

"I'll give you twenty-three," said Smith, surrendering.

"Thirty," said Ruby.

"Split the difference. Twenty-five," said Smith.

"Splittin' the difference is twenty-six five."

"All right," Smith said, swallowing hard. "But it's banditry."

"Yeah. But now I be your bandit. And I'm gonna earn my money for you in less than five minutes."

She left Smith with a puzzled look on his face and opened the door to the other room.

"Why'nt you come in?"

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Chiun smiled at Remo triumphantly. "Two minutes and fifty-five seconds. You owe me."

"Aaah," said Eemo in disgust. "Don't worry. I'll pay you. As soon as I get my residual check from Vega-Choppa."

He walked away, but as he moved, Chiun's hands flicked into Remo's pocket and came out with a roll of bills. Chiun extricated the ten dollars Remo owed him, and tossed the rest of the money onto the sofa.

Inside, Remo told Smith, "Not so easy when you've got to see their eyes, is it?"

"You're wrong, Remo. It was a simple administrative decision."

"Here's another simple administrative decision. I quit."

Smith nodded his head. "I know. What are you going to do?"

"I told you. I'm going to get a lot of residuals from those commercials for my hands. I'm going to be rich. My hands are going to be famous. Then, who knows? Maybe next my feet. Maybe they'll want somebody to do something with his feet."

"Like a monkey," said Chiun. "They do things with their feet."

"What was the name of that gadget you advertised?" asked Smith, reaching for a newspaper from the desk.

"The Vega-Choppa," said Remo.

Smith looked at the newspaper. "I don't think you'd better count on them to support you," he said.

"Why not? Let me see that."

He glanced at the story that Smith had circled.

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Twenty-seven lawsuits, totaling over forty-five million dollars, had been filed against the Vega-Choppa manufacturer by housewives whose fingers and hands had been mangled using the device. They charged that the television commercials showing the product's ease of operation were misleading and had obviously been filmed at slow speed and then speeded up.

When the manufacturer denied this, the attorneys representing the injured women amended their complaints to include among the defendants a John Doe, who was the demonstrator of the device. They accused him of using manual dexterity to give housewives "a false sense of security that the utensil was safe for normal human beings to use."

Remo looked at Smith and, if he had been smiling, Remo might have killed him then and there. But Smith was as somber as usual.

"Let's see, Remo. Your share of forty-five million dollars in damages should come to twenty-two point five million. You're going to have to sell a lot of carrot cutters to make up for that."

Remo sighed. "I'll find some other work."

Ruby tapped him on the shoulder. "Could I talk to you please ?"

"Talk," said Remo.

"Inside," Ruby said.

In the other room, he said "What do you want?"

"Don't be so grouchy."

"It's easy for you to say. You never just lost your chance to be a rich television star."

"You'll get another chance someday."

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"Now what am I gonna do?" Remo asked.

"I don't care what you do," Ruby said. "I want to talk about what you did."

"Which was?"

"Freeing Lucius. Those other men."

"A favor to you. I owed you one."

"No, it wasn't. It was a duty to your country," Ruby said. "That was a good thing you did."

Remo sat heavily on the edge of the bed. He was silent for a moment before looking up.

"You really think so?"

Ruby nodded.

"It was a good thing. Today you made America a better place to live in. We should all have the chance to do that sometimes."

"You really think that, don't you? Really."

"I really do. I'm proud to know you."

Remo stood up. "You know, you're right. Getting rid of that creep today was worth a lot. It takes away a lot of the stench."

"It was a good thing," Ruby said again.

Remo took her hands. "You know, maybe Chiun's onto something. About me and you," he said.

Ruby smiled. "We'll just have to see about that."

"We will," Remo said. "We will."

He walked back into the main room of the hotel suite. Ruby followed closely behind him.

Chiun looked past Remo at her. She held up her fingers to make an okay ring.

As she passed Chiun, she leaned over and whispered, "You lose. He was easy. Where's my ten dollars?"

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Chiun handed her the ten dollars he had filched from Remo's pocket.

Ruby tucked it into her dress and she and Chiun watched as Remo approached Smith.

"Smitty," said Remo. "I've decided to give you another chance."

Smith almost smiled.

"But if you blow this one, that's it. Right, Chiun?"

"For the first time," Chiun said.

"Right, Ruby?"

"Anything you say. Dodo."