Cold Warrior

Destroyer 91: Cold Warrior

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Prologue

When his mind awoke, his eyes beheld only darkness. But his mind was awake. His brain, long the realm of inchoate nightmares from which there had been no awakening, no refuge, and no surcease, processed conscious thoughts.

When he tried to open his eyes, they refused him. He could feel his lids strain and tug, attempting to separate.

He made a frightened noise deep in his throat, and tasted something plastic along one edge of his thick, dry tongue. His throat felt raw.

Then he sensed presences. Something popped out of his right ear and he heard sounds again. Beeping. A steady hum. An oscilloscope. To his mind leaped the image of an oscilloscope.

"Steady, sir," a youngish voice said.

He grunted inarticulately.

Something came out of his left ear, and the sounds were all around him. There were two of them. They were hovering on either side of the bed on which he lay.

At least, he hoped it was a bed. He could not tell. It felt more like a plush-lined coffin.

Fingers took his chin and separated his jaw. The hinge muscles shot fire into his logy brain and he cried out in agony. But the thing that had obstructed his mouth, the plastic-tasting thing, was no longer there.

"Don't try to speak yet, sir. We're still in the middle of bringing you back."

His mind shot into first gear. Back!

He forced his mouth to make sounds. They sounded horrible, corpsey.

"How . . . long?" he croaked.

"Please, sir. Not yet. Let us finish the procedure."

"Grrrr . . ."

They began unwinding the bandages that sheathed his eyes.

The darkness shaded to gray, then lightened to a pinkish haze in which faint greenish sparks hung, dancing-his optic nerves reacting to the first stimuli in . . . dammit, how long had it been?

"Hmmm," an older voice was saying. "Eyelids are encrusted. Seem welded together."

"I don't see anything in the manual about a procedure covering this," the youngish voice muttered.

"May be a natural phenomenon. We'll leave them. Let the retina get used to stimulation again."

He swallowed. The effort was like ingesting a rough-textured concrete golf ball.

"How . . . long . . . damn . . . it!"

"The briefing officer is on his way, sir. We're physicians."

"Status?"

"Well, your new heart is functioning normally. The animation unit did a good job. Twenty-six beats a minute, like a Swiss clock."

"It was a heart attack, then?"

"You don't remember?"

"No."

"We've had to perform certain other . . . procedures. There was some tissue damage, with resulting loss of function."

"I feel nothing."

"Technically the nerves are still frozen. Feeling will come back. There may be some discomfort."

He said nothing to that.

Then a door clicked open, and he sensed the attending physicians had turned.

"Oh, there you are. He's conscious and responding to our voices, Captain."

"As you were." The new voice was more mature, a strong voice. One he felt he could trust. Not like those wet-behind-the-ears, over-solicitous doctors. Who the hell had hired them, anyway?

"Director, I am Captain Maus."

"Maus. What kind of a name is that?"

"German, sir."

"Go ahead. Report. How long was I . . . inanimate?"

"Let's start with the good news, sir. We currently have thriving bases in California, Florida, Japan, and France. Except for some cultural problems with the French base, expansion is continuing apace."

He absorbed that with a tight smile. The empire flourished! The captain went on.

"In the last few years the Berlin Wall has fallen, the two Germanies have reunited, the Soviet Union has broken up into a chaotic collection of autonomous states with the economic prospects of a landlocked Fiji Islands, and Eastern Europe is free."

He groaned. "That long?"

"It has been a while, Director."

He frowned. "Revenue?"

"Down in the last several quarters. The global economy has been rocky. But we're solidly in the black. There has been no downsizing-"

"Down . . . ?"

"A new business term. It means, um, to lay off staff and cut back expenditures and expansion."

"Why not just say that?"

"Businessmen don't talk that way anymore."

"Humph. With Communism dead, I don't see why they'd hide their light under a bush."

"Actually, Communism isn't exactly dead," said Captain Maus. "The Reds still control China, North Korea-although there is some wild talk of unification there-and other pockets here and there."

"Bring me a map."

"Sir?"

"I want to see this new world."

A doctor's voice: "He's not ready for this yet. The optic nerve has been in utter darkness for . . ."

The doctor's voice trailed off.

"Bring me a map," he repeated harshly.

A map was brought.

"Here it is, sir."

"Someone see to my eyes."

Again the young doctor protested. "I can't allow this. There is no telling what kind of trauma this could cause . . . ."

"Either open my eyes for me, or someone fire that idiot!"

"Yes, sir."

The young doctor's stunned voice protested in bewilderment.

"But, sir, you can't mean . . . I mean, I've been an admirer of yours since I was a boy. You can't mean what you say."

"You're on my payroll. Do your damn job."

The doctors set to work, saying, "We'll try it one eye at a time."

"Just as long you do it."

As they were pouring warm saline solution into his left eye in an attempt to loosen the encrustation there, a question popped into his mind.

"What about Cuba?"

"Sir?"

"Cuba. Is it free?"

"Regrettably, no."

"Who's in charge down there? Anyone I know?" The last was a faint hope, but he wanted something to hold on to. Something familiar.

"Castro, sir."

"Still?"

"He'd old and gray, and they're down to short rations and bicycles, but he's still clinging to power."

"Incredible!"

The other doctor said then, "We think the eye is ready now. We would suggest you take it very slowly."

"Shut up!" he snapped.

And, taking a deep breath, he willed his left eyelid to open a crack.

A white-hot needle of light seared his optic nerve and sent his brain crashing through thunderstorms of pain and shock, and somewhere in the distance he heard their frantic shouts and above them the meek, too-young doctor crying, "I told you so! I told you so! But none of you would listen!"

His last thought before he blacked out again was that he'd have that doctor fired. He had been right in the first place, and therefore should have stood his ground. There would be no place for such weaklings in the new order.

Chapter 1

In the waning weeks of the Thirty-third Year of the Revolution, Xavier Custodio went down to the beach to defend the Revolution for the last time.

In the privacy of his wood and royal palm bohio, he went through his morning routine, not knowing it was to be for the last time. First he dressed in his ragged fatigues, taking them off the clothesline where they had been hung, dripping, the night before. He squirmed into the harness that held the wooden cross snugly on his back. Then he picked up his Sovietmade Kalashnikov rifle-it had begun to rust in the tropical moisture-and a single clip of ammunition.

His machete, which he took from beside the door, was not rusted. It would never rust. Unlike the castoff AK-47, the machete was Cuban. Pre-revolutionary Cuban. It would last Xavier his entire lifetime.

With the machete swinging loose in his hand, he walked into the mangrove thicket and began to hack off a sapling. With absentminded skill, he wormed the thin bole into the back brace, so that the branches formed a canopy over his head. His machete made short work of assorted royal palm fronds and other branches.

These he slipped into rips and rents in his raggedy uniform. Once these things had been held in place by string and elastics-Russian string and elastics. There had been none since the fall of the hated capitialationist, Gorbachev.

When he was so festooned with greenery as to resemble an ambulatory bush, Xavier strode off toward the beach, his branches and fronds bouncing happily.

The Caribbean sun was coming up, promising a glorious day. Xavier enjoyed the warm, sultry rays as they seeped through his itchy camouflage. It was a walk he had been taking since the earliest days of the Revolution, when he had been a young man.

Now he was old and bent, and his beard had turned to snow. And while his camouflage bounced, his proud heart did not.

As he trudged down to the beach, Xavier Custodio wondered where the years had gone. And thinking of the passage of time made him wonder where the Revolution had gone.

No, he thought morosely. Where the Revolution had gone wrong.

Oh, it had been so exciting when he was a young Fidelista! He could remember the day Batista had fled in the middle of the night-after a New Year's Day celebration. Xavier had been in Habana when Fidel had marched in with his guerrilleros.

The santeria priests lined the road to offer the protection of their gods to the bearded man wearing the jaunty beret, who was hailed as a redeemer and the new Pizarro. Rebels shot up the parking meters. There would be no taxes levied on the people in the new Cuba, they proclaimed. Millions came out to greet their new leader, and when he appeared on the balcony of the presidential palace, to give his first historic speech to the masses, doves actually roosted in the stonework above him. One right on his shoulder.

A glorious day. It had been the dawn of a new Cuba. A Cuba for Cubans-not Americanos or Mafiosos, but the Cuban people.

So long ago . . .

In those days it had been an honor to rise with the sun and go down to the beach, even with the putrid crab-stink.

As he thought this, a scarlet land crab scuttled out of the brush on nervous, spidery legs. It lifted its sun burned pincers angrily, as if challenging Xavier's right to walk on his own island.

Without giving it a thought, Xavier stepped on the crab. It made a sound like a Dixie cup popping, and Xavier walked on.

Behind him another land crab scuttled out, clamped pincers onto the mortal remains of its brother, and dragged it greedily from sight. Crunching cannibal sounds came from a mangrove thicket.

Near a stand of sugarcane, Xavier stopped for breakfast, too. He selected a moderate shoot of cane, and cutting it so close to the ground that the shoot would not stop growing, deftly spun it in his hand as he hacked off the bitter tip, letting it drop to decompose and fertilize the still living parent stalk.

As he walked, Xavier sucked in the sweet brown sucrose juice without enjoyment.

There was a time when breakfast had been more nourishing, he thought sadly. And somehow sweeter.

There had been a time when Xavier had driven down to the beach in his 1953 DeSoto. Until the irreplaceable parts had begun to decay. A motor scooter had replaced that. Until gasoline had become scarce and a Chinese bicycle had replaced that-until its tires had been confiscated to make tires for the military trucks that had drunk the entire gas ration of the island.

Where did the Revolution go wrong? Xavier asked himself.

Was it when the leadership organized the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution in every neighborhood? Before the Revolution, to be a chivato had been a shameful thing. Now every Cuban was an informer. Every Cuban carried a secret shame.

Was it when the Russians had insisted upon converting the Cuban economy to sugarcane harvesting-even though El Lider Maximo had earlier abandoned sugarcane as an industry for peons and imperialista lackeys?

Was it when the flower of Cuban youth had been sent to Africa to fight in liberation wars that had resulted only in returning coffins?

No, Xavier thought. Things had truly begun to go awry after the Bay of Pigs.

He had been on the beach then, digging ditches. Then, as now, he had been a militiaman. Then, as now, loyal to Fidel.

The B-26s came flying Cuban Revolutionary colors. They buzzed in low, and Xavier laid down his spade to wave at them with both arms. But then he noticed something the American CIA had overlooked in their preparations: They had solid metal noses. The B-26s of the Cuban Air Force-all three of them-had Plexiglas noses.

The false Cuban warplanes opened fire. Xavier rolled into his half-dug trench just ahead of the blunt teeth of death, and lived.

The Bay was soon alive with invading forces. Xavier had helped sound the alarm. As a guide for Batallion 111, he helped capture nearly two hundred mercenaries. They thought they had captured Americans. They had taken only Cubans. Exiles.

For his bravery that day, the Maximum Leader himself had decorated Xavier and assigned him the honor of guarding Playa Giron, the beach at the mouth of the Bahia de Cochinos. It was not only an honor but a gift.

For no one ever expected the U.S. or their tools to attempt another Bay of Pigs. Certainly not at the site of their greatest humiliation. Certainly not in the Bay of Pigs itself.

Yet as he thought about it, Xavier realized that everything had changed in that first flush of triumph. For it was after the Bay of Pigs that Fidel had declared himself a Marxist-Leninist.

Xavier could recall his surprise when he'd heard the news. Then, with Latin resolution, he had shrugged his leafy shoulders and muttered, "Well, now we know what we are."

Before the Bay of Pigs, Xavier had been a defender of the Revolution. After, a defender of Socialism. And now . . .

Socialism was dead where it was not dying. And it was dying with tortuous slowness on the island of Cuba.

As he walked down to the beach, the memorials to the fallen of the Revolution began to appear at the side of the dirt road. Weeds had grown up around them. Over thirty years had passed. The young men of Cuba knew not of the Bay of Pigs. It was sad.

The land crabs began to accumulate in the road. Those that had died the day before-both eaten and not-had been baked orange by the relentless Caribbean sun.

As he sucked on the too-sweet cane, Xavier casually popped the crabs with his worn shoes. Coolie shoes. Imported from China. Suitable only for the feet of children, not men like Xavier.

How long, he wondered, before we are reduced to eating the indigestible land crabs?

How long until the long-promised fruits of the Revolution fall at the feet of the people, in whose name the Revolution was carried out?

As the warm turquoise water-so clear it was like rippling azure glass-came into view, Xavier popped with each step. The crabs died and the crabs were carried off by the buzzards and the other crabs to be eaten. But the crabs were always just as plentiful the next day.

Xavier recalled a phrase he had heard: "A revolution always eats its young."

It was not that way in Cuba. Cuba was different. Its people were different. Its leaders were different.

Down by the beach, a copy of Granma flapped among the crabs. Since it was his task to keep the beach clean as well as safe, Xavier stooped to retrieve it.

Idly he flipped through its pages. There were fifteen pictures of El Lider scattered throughout its eight pages. In each of them Fidel wore his familiar designer fatigues. In each of them his paunch hung over his cinched-tight webbed belt.

Perhaps it was his downcast mood, perhaps it was because Xavier was approaching his sixtieth birthday, but the sight of the once charismatic leader of the Revolution bursting at the seams, while Xavier actually weighed less now than he did in 1961 when he'd fought at the Bay of Pigs, brought bitter tears to his sun-wrinkled eyes.

"This Revolution did not eat its young!" he said bitterly. "El Loco Fidel ate the Revolution!"

He tore the newspaper apart, scattering fragments everywhere. What did it matter if the beach was littered with the detritus of Socialism? It was already littered with the stinking husks of the unkillable crabs. It was a beach men had died for, one whose white sands had drunk their blood-and it had all been for nothing.

Cuba had gone from being an American colony to a Soviet colony. And once the two superpowers had made their peace, they had turned their backs on the island.

Thirty years of struggle, and Xavier Custodio patrolled the same stretch of stinking beach, his leathery old man's skin rubbed raw by the branches and fronds, the promise of his youthful ideals squandered.

He let the last sob break from his sun-dried throat.

And behind him he heard a sporadic popping.

Xavier turned to see who was walking along his beach.

Behind the fronds that shielded his face, his warm brown eyes went wide.

He was looking at soldiers. They wore olive-drab, just like him. But their uniforms were clean and whole.

And on their shoulders they wore no patch or insignia. They did not need to. Xavier knew that the shameless Stars and Stripes of the United States army belonged there.

Xavier dropped to his knees, his old training taking hold. His heart pounded as he watched them. They were disembarking from rubber rafts that even now were being rent by bayonets and sunk with stone weights.

Xavier hesitated. Should he attack them? Or should he retreat and sound the alarm?

He looked to his AK-47 and its single clip-and his heart broke. The Revolution had taken his teeth. He could not fight. And his pre-Socialist machete was not equal to the hour.

Rustling and skulking like a heartless dog, he retreated into the muck of nearby Zapata Swamp and ran all the way to his humble bohio.

He would alert Habana. Because he was a Cuban, not because he cared anymore about the failed Revolution.

Less than thirty rods down the road, Xavier stopped running. He remembered that his telephone no longer worked. He could not call Habana. He would have to go to Zapata. And it was too far to run, for an aging Fidelista with the zeal sucked out of him by hunger and privation.

The President of the Republic of Cuba was wondering where the Revolution had gone wrong.

He sat in his office in the Palace of the Revolution with his advisers, the men of the mountains who had waged guerrilla warfare with him in the Sierra Maestra.

"Mi amigos," he began, exhaling clouds of aromatic tobacco smoke. "Be truthful now. Did we fail?"

"No, Fidel," said his brother, the Vice-President for Life, after a moment's consultation.

"Yet here we are, our goals unmet. Surely there have been errors? Certainly we have made some mistakes along the way?"

The advisers looked to one another. They shrugged and looked to their Maximum Leader for guidance.

"Was it in 1959, when we postponed elections, proclaiming, 'Real democracy is not possible for a hungry people'?" he asked.

"No," the Minister of Ideology insisted. "For without that decree, Cuba would not have El Magnifico Fidel to guide them to greatness."

The Maximum Leader nodded soberly. His frown deepened. He puffed thoughtfully.

"Was it perhaps a year later, when we instituted food rationing, thereby insuring perpetual hunger?"

"No, Comandante en Jefe," the cultural minister protested. "For had we not instituted rationing in 1960, there would now be no food at all."

"Good. Good. That is good. I had not thought of that."

Smiles brightened dark faces. Their leader was pleased. The rum was flowing freely now. They were drinking Cuba Libres.

"Was it when we announced our Harvest of the Century?"

"No," he was assured. "For who could have foreseen that the harvest would fail? The Revolution makes workers, not weather. The workers were with us, the weather was not."

"Good. Good. I like it," said the Maximum Leader, jotting these phrases down on a tiny note pad balanced on one big knee. The stubby pencil looked tiny in his huge fist.

His brow furrowed once more. "Perhaps we blundered when we sent our soldiers to Africa to fight oppression there. Many died. Many were widowed or left childless."

"No, Fidel," insisted the Minister of Agriculture. "For if those soldiers were with us today, they would have to be fed. There is little enough food as it is."

"Excellent point." The big bearded man rolled his fine cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, like a bear with a candy cane. "And what about the time we allowed any Cuban to leave through the port of Mariel?" he asked. "Thousands did. It was an embarrassment. It made Cuba look like a place to flee from."

"No," said his brother, in his other capacity of Defense Minister. "For they were traitors to Socialism, and what need have we to feed them?"

"Another excellent point. I shall make a speech tomorrow. It will be about the importance of food to the Revolution."

The sound of enthusiastic applause rippled around the marble room like unseeable doves.

Pounding feet came up to the door, and someone on the other side began to knock furiously.

"El Presidente!" a voice cried. "It is the Americans! They have returned! They are attacking!"

"Where?"

"Playa Giron!"

At the mention of that legendary place of class struggle, the eyes of the presidential advisers went round, their expressions turning sick.

"We are lost!" they cried, visions of Tripoli and Baghdad flashing through their rum-besotted minds.

"No," rumbled their Maximum Leader. "This is exactly what the Revolution requires."

"Que?"

"An enemy to vanquish."

The Leader of the Revolution stormed into the two-story home in a Havana suburb that had served as his emergency command post since before the first Bay of Pigs.

"Report," he snapped.

A captain seated before a radio took off his earphones and said, "A militia man discovered the incursion three hours ago."

"Three hours! Why was I not notified before this?"

"He was unable to contact us by telephone. It had fallen into disrepair."

"Then he had failed Socialism. He should have maintained the instrument better. He understood its importance. Have him shot."

"But he was a hero of the first Bay of Pigs, Comrade Fidel."

"And he was a failure of the second," the Cuban president said dismissively. "Tell me of the campaign."

"I have ordered the invaders destroyed to the last man."

"Mulo! What good are dead invaders?"

"Dead invaders cannot establish beachheads."

"And dead invaders cannot be interrogated!" El Lider snapped. "I want prisoners, not corpses!"

"Si, comrade." The captain returned to his World War II surplus radio set and began issuing rapid orders in Spanish. He listened through headphones and looked up to the hulking figure of his comandante en jefe.

"Grito Batallion reports that the invasion has been quelled. They have taken prisoners."

"Have them brought to me. No, I have a better idea. I will go to them. In a tank. We will bring cameras, and show me leaping off a tank at the battle site. It will be as it was in 1961. What need have the people for meat, when Fidel entertains them so lavishly?"

"Si."

There were only five surviving prisoners, he found when he entered the shack on the beach. The Maximum Leader was disappointed. Five was not much of an audience. He decided against televising their interrogation over TeleRebelde live. It would be recorded instead, and selected portions aired as it suited him.

They were, he was disappointed to learn, not Americanos but Cubans. He would rather have had Americanos. They were more valuable.

He began to speak. He paced back and forth, one hand crooked at the small of his back and the other busy stabbing the air with a Romeo y Julieta cigar.

"You are gusanos-worms!" he told them in Spanish. "You are betrayers!"

The men looked at one another, abashed.

Good, good, thought Fidel. He would shame them as he did the thousand-some invaders of 1961.

He had had those ones assembled in the Palencio de los Desportes-the Sports Palace. For four days he had lectured them, browbeaten them, humiliated them as the cameras rolled, recording every drop of traitorous sweat. They had wept. They had begged for forgiveness. And in the end, they had spontaneously stood up and given him a standing ovation.

Here, he would do all this again. Since there were only five survivors, it would take but the afternoon.

"You have allowed yourself to be puppets!" he continued. "Puppets of the imperialistas! You are men without conscience, lacking even a single ball between your spineless legs!"

They winced at his lashing words. The fear was in their eyes. Pleased, he pressed on.

"You have come to the paradise of the Caribbean to despoil it. Or so you parasites thought. Instead, you have tasted the bitter gall of your defeat on the sweet Socialist sands of our beach. You are fools and lackies of fools!"

A stiff-backed Cuban major cleared his throat. Annoyed, the Leader of the Revolution glowered at him. He paused and then nodded, giving the man leave to speak.

"Comrade Fidel. These men . . ."

"Spit it out!" he snapped.

"They do not speak Spanish," the major said. "We have already determined this."

The President's right eyebrow crawled upward. His left, hesitating, joined it.

He whirled on the five nervous prisoners.

"This is true?" he howled in English. "You do not speak the mother tongue of your fathers?"

They shook their heads furiously. At least they remain scared, Fidel thought.

"What manner of Cubans are these, who storm our shores now?" he raged.

One of the invaders spoke.

"Second-generation ones," he said simply.

El Lider Maximo blinked. His mouth went slack, making his rangy gray beard bunch up on his olivedrab chest like a cloud of steel wool dashing itself against a mountainside.

"Madre!" he grumbled. "I will waste no time with such as you!" he snapped, knowing his English was not equal to a five-hour harangue. Besides, the language was not nearly eloquent enough for his purposes. "Tell me who has sent you here!"

The men remained stonily silent. For the first time, he noticed under their camouflage paint how young they were. Mere boys, it seemed.

"Tell me!" he roared.

The mouths of the prisoners thinned resolutely.

"Have them tortured, and call me when they are prepared to speak," he snapped, storming from the beach.

It is not like the old days, he thought huffily as he left the shack.

It took less than twenty minutes. His cultural minister employed the Russian technique known as "making a snake." It was as simple as it was effective.

They took the strongest of the prisoners, held him down, and before the eyes of the others, split his tongue down the middle with a sharp knife.

The blood flowed alarmingly, in crimson rivers.

The others found their tongues, and began to speak rivers of words.

The Maximum Leader faced them triumphantly.

"I knew you lacked balls, but I did not think you were also bereft of spines," he spat. Glaring at one, he added, "You! Who engineered this cowardly, incursion?"

"Uncle Sam."

El Presidente, standing straight up, almost staggered at the news. He blinked. He could scarcely believe it. Had the Americanos become so bold? Always before, they had insulated themselves from blame by layers of proxy commanders.

He turned to the next in line. "What do you say? Speak your leader's name!"

"Uncle Sam."

And so it was on down the line.

"Uncle Sam."

"Uncle Sam."

Even the maimed tongueless one gurgled out two bloody words that sounded like "Uncle Sam."

This came as such a surprise that the grizzled President of Cuba let his cigar fall, hissing, into the pool of blood at his feet.

He lifted a balled fist to the height of his shoulder, and shook it furiously.

"Then it is war! At long last, it is war!"

Chapter 2

His name was Remo, and he was trying to order duckling.

The room service manager of the Fontainebleau Hotel, overlooking Miami Beach, was graciously apologetic.

"I am sorry sir, but the duck is unavailable."

"Uh-oh," said Remo, his strong face warping in concern.

"Sir?"

"My roommate isn't going to like this."

"Please convey to your roommate our deepest apologies," the room service manager said in an unctuous tone, "but as I said, the duck is unavailable this evening. "

"This is terrible," Remo said.

"From time to time there is a problem with our suppliers. It cannot be foreseen, and there is nothing we can do about this."

"You see, I have a sneaking suspicion my roommate picked this hotel expressly because he liked the duck," Remo said.

The room service manager's voice grew solicitous. "I shall so inform the head chef. I'm certain he will be gratified."

"You see, normally we don't check into a hotel a second time. We kinda like to move around, experience new things. But we were here a few months back and my roommate ordered the duck. Now here we are back at your nice hotel; and now no duck."

"I can assure you it will be on the menu by the end of the week. May I suggest our beef Stroganoff?"

"You can suggest all you want," Remo countered, "but my roommate and I are allergic to beef."

"A pity."

"We eat beef and we go into toxic shock."

"We would not want that. Would you prefer the lamb-kabobs?"

"Lamb's greasy."

"Not our lamb."

"And lamb makes us hurl."

"Hurl?"

"Puke."

"I shall have to remember the word 'hurl,' " the room service manager said dryly. "It has a certain charming . . . force to it."

"My roommate and I," Remo went on, "are on highly restricted diets. We eat fish and duck and rice and not much else."

"In that case, let me suggest the trout Almondine."

"Good suggesting, but my roommate has his heart set on duck."

"As I have explained, the duck is unavailable tonight, but it will be available again later in the week. Possibly by Thursday."

"Don't know if we'll be here that long," Remo said.

The room service manager's voice dropped several degrees Fahrenheit. "May I make a further suggestion? Why don't you ask your rather finicky roommate if, under the circumstances as I have outlined them, the trout Almondine might not be acceptable after all?"

"Hang on."

Remo cupped his hand over the hotel suite phone receiver and called into the next room.

"Hey, Little Father!"

"Trout have bones," came a squeaky, querulous voice.

Remo took his hand off the receiver and said, "He says trout is bony."

"We bone our trout, sir."

The squeaky voice came again. "Ask for the duck." "I did. They say they're out."

"Has every duck in the universe expired?" wondered the squeaky voice.

"Doubt it," said Remo.

"Then I shall have the duck. In orange sauce."

Remo spoke into the receiver. "Says he's really, really set on the duck. And he'd like it in orange sauce."

The last of the oil evaporated from the room service manager's tone.

"Sir, as I have explained-"

"Listen, by chance did you hear about the bellboy?"

"I seldom pay attention to the doings of lower-echelon personnel," the room service manager said bluntly.

"The poor guy ended up in a body cast."

"I believe something was mentioned along those lines. Regrettable."

"He nicked my roommate's trunk carrying it to the elevator," Remo pointed out.

There was a pregnant pause on the line. "This roommate of yours, by chance would he be an elderly gentleman of Asian extraction?"

"Oh, I wouldn't call him 'elderly,' " said Remo, knowing that he would be overheard by the occupant of the next room, who was sensitive about his age. "And I think you shouldn't either. That's worse than nicking a trunk."

"Understood, sir." The tone changed again. This time, it was helpful. "Well, if this is the case, there may be something we can do. Perhaps I could ask the head chef to dig a little deeper into the freezer, as it were. Ah, I trust your roommate would not be offended by frozen duck?"

"Not unless it showed up on his plate that way."

"Splendid. Then duck in orange sauce it will be. I assume you would like the same?"

"Not me. I want the trout Almondine. A side of steamed white rice for both of us, and absolutely pure natural mineral water. Got that?"

"Your meals shall be delivered within the hour," the room service manager promised. "You have our eternal gratitude for your patience."

"And you get to keep your mobility," said Remo happily. He hung up. He looked into the mirror. The face that stared back at him was distinguished by two features: the deep set of his dark eyes, and the high cheekbones. It was a strong face. Too angular to be called handsome, yet too regular to be unpleasant. In certain lights, it looked skull-like. When he frowned, it looked cruel.

Remo wasn't frowning now. He was smiling. He adjusted his smile and put an innocent expression on his face. Then he walked out into the living room of the sumptuous hotel suite, hoping his expression held.

"I got you the duck," he said brightly.

The occupant of the other room sat cross-legged on a reed mat before the hotel television set. He didn't stir a hair. Not that there was much hair to be stirred. The back of his head resembled a seamless amber egg decorated by tiny ears, whose tops nudged twin puffs of cloudy white hair set directly above.

"The duck in this place is greasy," he announced.

"It is?"

"It was greasy last time."

"Want me to call back, have them do it right?" Remo said helpfully.

"It will do no good. They are incompetent. If we demand they leech out the grease, the duck will come dry."

"Better greasy duck than dry duck, huh?"

"Better properly prepared duck."

Okay, Remo thought, he didn't drag me back here for the duck. It must be something else. Remo decided to get to the point.

"Little Father, I am curious."

"So is a monkey."

"True," said Remo, trying not to be dragged into a fight. "But monkeys can't order room service for their jungle friends. And monkeys don't usually find themselves suddenly rushing off to Miami one morning. Especially since they've been there recently."

"On what channel does Cheeta Ching come on here?"

Remo picked up the local TV directory. "Channel 6."

The Master of Sinanju picked up the remote channel-selector and punched up 6. His face came into view then. It resembled the papyrus death mask of some impossibly ancient pharaoh that had been sucked dry of all moisture. A wisp of beard clung to the papery chin. His age was impossible to gauge. Even his wrinkles seemed wrinkled.

A low sound emerged from his wattled throat, curious and faintly pleased. "The black box says 6, and behold, Channel 6 appears on the glass screen."

"I think the cable box is dead."

"Perhaps we will abide here for a time."

"Suits me. I'd just like to know why."

"We are homeless, are we not?"

"Since Smith kicked us out of our home, yeah. I guess I prefer to think of us as footloose vagabonds."

"There are many homeless in this sad land."

"To hear Cheeta Ching tell it, yeah. But what does that have to do with camping out in Miami?"

"The homeless of this land, how do they come to such a sad state?"

"Let me see. They lose their jobs. They don't pay the rent."

"Exactly," said Chiun.

"Huh?"

"We are homeless, therefore we are unemployed."

"Don't tell me we've been laid off."

"I will not."

"Good."

"We have reached an impasse in our contract negotiations with Emperor Smith," explained Chiun.

"How big and how bad?"

"Enough that we are hiding from him, with all our worldly belongings, until he comes to his senses."

"So that's why we're back in Miami. We're hiding from Smith!"

"Exactly. He will never think to look for us here, knowing that we abided in this very place but short months ago."

"Good point. How long you expect to tough it out?"

"Not long."

"Really?"

Chiun nodded sagely. "Smith will cave in shortly."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because only this morning he ordered us to a certain place, there to await further instructions."

"He gave us an assignment?"

"Not exactly. He merely asked me to go to this place and await word."

"Holy Christ, Chiun!" said Remo, reaching for the telephone. "What if it's important?"

"Then the sooner Smith will capitulate," said the Master of Sinanju reasonably.

Remo picked up the receiver. He listened to the beeping and electronic chirping in his ear as he stabbed the 1 button repeatedly-the foolproof contact number he used when he had to reach Harold W. Smith.

Normally, after a dozen or so chirps, an electronic relay kicked in and Remo got a ringing bell.

This time, the chirping simply stopped and he was listening to dead silence.

Remo hung up and tried again. This time, he didn't get so much as a chirp.

"Something's wrong with this phone," he complained, turning.

And the severed plastic line to the wall plug clicked onto his Italian leather shoes.

Remo looked down, saw the neatly snipped end, and looked toward the Master of Sinanju, who sat on his reed mat like a wispy little Buddha, as if he had not moved. Remo hadn't seen or heard him move. Chiun was the only person on earth who could slip something past Remo. His long-nailed bird-claw hands rested open and loose on the bright lavender lap of his kimono. Those deadly nails, Remo knew, had severed the line.

"I gotta contact Smith," he said. "He'll be frantic."

"Exactly."

"He'll put his entire computer system to work tracking us down," Remo said.

"Let him."

"Look, if you won't let me call him, at least tell me where we're supposed to be."

"In a certain city."

"Does this certain city have a name?" Remo wondered.

"Yes."

"What's it called?"

"Miami."

Remo blinked.

"This Miami?"

"Do you know of any other Miami?"

"No," Remo admitted. "But that doesn't mean anything. I've been to three Daytons and five Quincys in the last five years. There might be another Miami tucked up there in Alaska. Smith happen to say Miami, Florida?"

"He said Miami. I took him to mean this very Miami."

Remo's dark eyes took on a puzzled gleam. "So we're hiding out in the place he told us to go?"

"Exactly."

"Any particular logic to that?"

"Yes."

"Care to enlighten a colleague?"

"If such a person existed, I would."

"Har de har har har. How about telling me?"

"Wisdom bestowed upon a monkey is wisdom squandered. But Cheeta Ching will soon be on, so I will tell you in return for silence."

"Deal."

Chiun hit the volume control, silencing the set. The local news was on.

He turned on his mat. Remo brought up his mat. He assumed a lotus position identical to Chiun's own. Their eyes-unalike except for a similar deep confidence-reflected one another. Otherwise they were as different as two people could be. Chiun was tiny, and looked frail in his garish kimono. Remo was tall, lean, and wore a white T-shirt and brown chinos. His hair and eyes were almost the same shade as his pants.

"I am the Master of Sinanju," said Chiun in a low voice.

"True," said Remo agreeably.

"You are a Master of Sinanju."

"Also true."

"Together we are the only true living Masters of Sinanju, the greatest house of assassins in the history of this planet."

"No argument there," agreed Remo.

"We are the best. I am the very best. You are somewhat less than the best, but good nonetheless."

Remo brightened at the rare compliment. Chiun, seeing that he had overpraised his pupil, instantly amended his rash judgment.

"At least adequate," he said. "Better than most monkeys."

"Cut to the chase," grumbled Remo.

"Smith has hired us because he wished the best. Without us his silly organization, which he continually harps does not exist-"

"Officially exist," Remo corrected.

"Without us, his organization would be toothless. For over twenty winters we have served him. In harsh times and glad times. Yet now he argues over tiny matters. Insignificant details in our new contract."

"Like what insignificant details?" Remo wanted to know.

"Such as gold."

"Since when is that insignificant?"

"Since he refuses to acknowledge its importance."

Remo suddenly looked doubtful. "Come again?"

"Gold is not important in and of itself," said Chiun.

"Am I hearing right? Is this you talking?"

"What matters," Chiun went on, as if not hearing the rude outburst, "is loyalty, understanding, and proper respect. Gold is merely the symbol of these things."

"Horse crap."

Chiun slapped the hardwood floor with a yellow palm.

"Silence! I am speaking."

And because he respected the Master of Sinanju above all others, Remo Williams fell respectfully silent.

"You asked for logic and I give you wisdom," Chiun snapped. "Wisdom takes time. You will listen."

Remo listened. He did not look happy about it.

"Smith has done the house disrespect," Chiun continued. "He claims he cannot shower us with the tribute of before, meager as it was. He claims it is because of this Procession."

"Recession," Remo corrected.

"I countered that more tribute is not at issue," Chiun said, ignoring the trivial outburst. "I will forgo additional gold and take instead certain considerations, I told Smith."

"Such as?" Remo prompted.

"A new home."

"We've been trying to get him to fix that for over a year now," Remo pointed out.

"And I have asked him for a place he once before declined," Chiun countered.

"Yeah? What place?"

Chiun waved a dismissive hand. "It is of no moment. We are not speaking of such trifles now. We are speaking of respect and understanding between a head of state and his royal assassin. There is decorum to such a delicate arrangement. Smith has seen fit to defile this arrangement, so I have spirited us to a place of concealment."

"Which just happens to be the place we're supposed to be."

At that, the Master of Sinanju's sere face softened. He smiled thinly, his wrinkled face becoming a happy cobweb in which his hazel eyes, like playful spiders, danced.

"When Emperor Smith realizes we are not to be found, he will be beside himself," Chiun confided. "He will mourn our absence, and be forced to reflect upon the ruinous state of his empire without us. Then he will redouble the efforts to locate us, sparing no expense, leaving no stone unturned."

"Running up one humungous phone bill."

"And when he at last succeeds," Chiun went on, "we will feign ignorance, and swear to vanquish his enemies with all the awesome skill at our command."

"Once the fine print is settled," Remo added pointedly.

"No time will be lost in travel. Only negotiations."

"Okay," Remo admitted. "It's smart. Maybe it'll work. But what if the world is about to come crashing down around our heads? What if it's a big one?"

The Master of Sinanju shrugged. "Then it will all be the stubborn Smith's fault, and so it will be recorded in the histories of the House of Sinanju."

"What if it's a really, really big one?" Remo pressed.

"There is nothing big enough to compel the Master of Sinanju to retreat from principle," Chiun said firmly.

"Listen," Remo began, but the Master of Sinanju lifted a frail arm for silence. He had been looking neither at the television nor the clock radio dial, but as if a chime had rung he announced, "It is now time for Cheeta."

Remo looked to the screen. As the Master of Sinanju repositioned himself so that he was facing the screen, the sound came up.

"Good evening," said a female voice like steel nails caught in a trash compactor. "This is the BCN Evening News with Don Cooder. Don is off tonight."

"Don is off every night," Remo growled.

"Hush!" Chiun admonished. Remo folded his arms at the sight of the Korean network anchorwoman called Cheeta Ching.

Her face was a flat mask of some jaundiced ivory, expressionless except for a perpetual frown on her viper-slim eyebrows. Her mouth-the only part of her that seemed to move-made shapes that reminded Remo of some bloodsucking flower.

"She is more beautiful than ever," Chiun said happily.

"Looks fatter," Remo pointed out.

"Philistine! That is the bloom of motherhood you see."

Which only reminded Remo of the unpleasant series of events that had brought him and Chiun into contact with the anchorwoman who had become a heroine to career women everywhere, but who was known-and feared-as "the Korean Shark" to her network colleagues.

For years, the Master of Sinanju had nurtured a secret crush on Cheeta Ching. Recent events had brought the three of them into contact, first during the bloody special governor's election in California, and more recently in Manhattan, where they had been called in to deal with a bizarre, seemingly haunted Fifth Avenue skyscraper.

During the first contact, Cheeta had been rescued by Remo and Chiun-after which, she and the Master of Sinanju had disappeared together. Only days later, Cheeta had announced that her heroic struggle to become a forty-something mother had resulted in an ovulatory breakthrough. Chiun had declined any comment, but was looking forward to the birth. It had been his stated goal to ensure a male child by Cheeta for the express purpose of creating the next heir to the Sinanju line.

No matter how much Remo had tried, he could not get Chiun to either confirm or deny paternity. As the due day approached, Remo grew more and more worried.

"Tonight," a puffy-faced Cheeta was saying, "tensions between the United States and Cuba are increasing, in the aftermath of what some are calling 'Bay of Pigs Two.' "

The graphic behind Cheeta's head expanded to fill the screen. It showed a battle-torn beach, where the Maximum Leader of Cuba was storming about like some hulking, olive-drab Moses.

"Pah!" Chiun said, as the face of Cheeta Ching vanished from sight.

"Relax, Little Father. You know Cheeta's got her face time written into her contract. She'll be back in thirty seconds."

The footage rolled on as Cheeta screeched on.

"What Havana is calling 'a cowardly imperialist attack on the heroic Cuban Revolution' began in the early-evening hours when a team of unidentified mercenaries infiltrated the Bay of Pigs area, site of the cowardly botched 1961 invasion launched by the quasilegal CIA."

"Since when is tyranny heroic?" Remo grumbled.

"Remo! Be still."

The footage showed a line of shackled prisoners being herded into a Soviet-made BMP armored vehicle.

"U.S. officials deny culpability," Cheeta screeched on. "But reliable sources abroad, as well as the historical significance of the landing site, clearly suggest U.S.A. fingerprints."

"How about giving the American side for once?" Remo complained.

Chiun glowered. Remo subsided. When Chiun merely shouted, he was blowing off steam. When he glowered, it meant a volcano was rumbling in warning. Remo decided he could do without a lava-and-pumice shower.

Cheeta's flat face returned to the screen. "In a furious, three-hour-long speech given this afternoon, Cuban President Fidel Castro promised swift and-"

Snow filled the screen with a swiftness and violence that caught them off-guard. It hissed and crackled. Cheeta Ching's mouth continued to make flexible shapes, but her words were drowned out. Then her face was gone, replaced by busy white pixels.

Chiun leaped to his feet. "What outrage is this!" he demanded.

"Easy," Remo said. "It's probably just a reception problem."

A moment later, it was clear that reception was not the problem.

A new face appeared on the screen. It was mostly beard-gray and curly. From a mouth hidden in all that unruly hair, a cigar about half the length of a Louisville Slugger jutted.

A meaty hand reached up to take the cigar from the mouth. And the mouth began speaking.

"Ceetizens of Miami!" it proclaimed in a distinctly Latin accent. "Ceetizens of the world! The Imperialists have declared war on Cuba and its magnificent Revolution. So be it! The Socialist Revolution now declares war on Imperialist interests everywhere! For every blow struck against our peaceful shores, a greater, mightier blow will be struck against the aggressor!"

"Crap," Remo said.

"Who is this man, Remo?"

"Don't you recognize him? It's Castro."

"He is ugly."

"I thought so when I was a kid, and I still think so now. "

The President of Cuba resumed speaking. He gesticulated with his free hand, with his cigar, and as often as not with his bearded head. The man looked spastic. His voice rose and fell feverishly, his accent at times so thick his words ran together and were indistinguishable from one another.

Worst of all, he went on and on for what promised to be hours, warning, threatening, blustering, and making Remo, less than twenty minutes into the performance, mentally wish for the return of Cheeta Ching, owl-screech voice and all.

"Why don't you change the channel?" Remo suggested.

Chiun tossed the channel-changer in Remo's direction and stormed out of the living room. His bedroom door slammed shut.

Remo ran up and down the channels. The same picture was on every channel. The same bombastic voice continued to pour out of the speaker.

"I wonder if this is what Smith wanted us down here for . . . ." Remo muttered.

Chapter 3

USAF Captain William "Trusty" Ayres III despised Cuba.

His hatred had nothing to do with the Cuban political system, its climate, exports, or people, whom he was reliably informed were both friendly and hardworking.

William Ayres III hated Cuba because the threat it presented to Florida meant that Ayres had had to sit out the Gulf War, flying coast-wise patrols in his F-16 Fighting Falcon out of Homestead Air Force Base on the tip of Florida, a mere ninety miles from the island of Cuba.

He could have been an ace by now. Would have been, he was sure-except that some Pentagon war-simulation computer had spat out a scenario in which Havana decided to side with Iraq and fly sorties against Florida pressure points, one of which was the Turkey Point nuclear power plant, conveniently adjacent to Homestead. Cuban defectors had sworn their on-board MIG flight computers were programmed for strikes against Turkey Point.

It had never happened. Oh, sure, Fidel had made a lot of speeches. But they were just the same old hot air.

So when the scruffy face of the leader of the Cuban Revolution appeared on the Homestead AFB rec room TV during a rerun of Hot Shots, William Ayres III impulsively threw a can of diet Dr. Pepper at the screen.

"Banana-republic jerk!" he jeered.

His fellow pilots hooted and shouted abuse at the screen. Some of them had flown combat in the Gulf. They lorded it over Captain Ayres. Called him "Rusty" Ayres, until he wanted to drain the oil from their engines.

"What's he sayin'?" someone asked over the raucous din.

"Who cares? The guy's a big windbag."

"Yeah. Just a dinosaur looking for a cushy museum."

Eventually, they settled down. Castro was going on and on as if he were spring-wound.

They listened attentively as the Maximum Leader of Cuba proclaimed, "We are surrounded by a sea of capitalism! But we shall prevail! History will vindicate us! Our cause is true! Our slogan will always be: 'Socialismo o Muerte!' "

"What's that mean?" Ayres asked Janio Perez.

"Socialism or death," grunted Perez. "I say death," someone else growled.

"Let's put it to a vote."

They never put it to a vote.

Instead the scramble Klaxon started yowling, and they were pelting for their waiting F-16s.

Ayres was first into the air. He received his vectors from the tower and realized he was being sent over the Gulf. Not the Gulf he had missed out on, but the Gulf of Mexico.

"This is it!" he said. "We're at war with Cuba. Damn!"

All thought of the glories of air combat drained from his brain. He was a professional now, doing the job his country had trained him for.

His radar picked up a single bogie, flying low on the deck. The Identify Friend or Foe transponder read it as unfriendly.

"Bogie sighted," he said. "IFF says Foe. Instructions."

"Splash bogie," crackled his helmet earphone. "Repeat: Splash bogie."

Captain Ayres initiated target acquisition. The headsup display IDed it as a MIG-23 Flogger. Cuban. Definitely. No one else flew MIGs over the Caribbean. And nobody flew down on the deck unless they were bent on attack.

Captain Ayres got a radar tone, locked on, and with a businesslike "Fox-1," launched his sidewinder missile. It erupted from his wingtip and flew true.

It was that simple. Lock, launch, and get the hell out of the airspace, as the MIG jumped apart in a nasty popcorn of flash and ash.

"Bogie splashed," Ayres said, his voice thin.

"Roger. Stay out there."

"Any others?"

"Negative on other bogies."

"Roger," said Captain William "Trusty" Ayres, who had now tasted combat and wondered why the taste was so metallic.

Chapter 4

Dr. Harold W. Smith controlled the most powerful computer network on the face of the earth.

Not the most advanced. There were supercomputers far more advanced than Smith's. Nor the largest. Smith had only a quartet of mainframes at his disposal. Oddly enough, they were secreted behind a concrete wall in the basement of his place of work.

Nor were Harold Smith's computers the fastest. Nor the newest. Modern technology had long outstripped their microprocessors and old-style integrated circuits.

But they were powerful. In this case, knowledge was power. Thirty years of maintaining the system-which had been upgraded often in the early years, but seldom these days for security reasons-had filled its vast memory banks with highly specialized data of specific value to Smith and his work. Long years of toiling behind his shabby oak desk under the shaky fluorescent lights in his Spartan office that overlooked Long Island Sound had enabled Harold Smith to crack virtually every computer net he might have to access in the performance of his duties.

The combined computers of the FBI, CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, NASA, the Social Security Administration, and the IRS, on down to the lowliest police department terminal in the most rural corner of the nation, were like open books, waiting to have their electronic pages turned by the unseen fingers of the anonymous Harold W. Smith.

Corporate computers, among the most rigidly controlled and protected, had surrendered their passwords to him long ago.

Government systems, despite continual upgrading and password updating, inevitably fell under the brute-force assaults of his keen analytical mind.

If it could be accessed by telephone line, Harold Smith could enter it.

None of it was, strictly speaking, legal. Smith could, in theory, be sent to prison for penetrating government files and siphoning off their secrets.

But all of it was sanctioned.

For Harold W. Smith was a unique man with a unique responsibility.

Back in the grimmest days of the Cold War, when America was beset with foreign enemies and being systematically corroded from within by domestic troubles, a soon-to-be-martyred President had summoned Smith-then a middle-aged CIA bureaucrat-to the White House to offer him a post that Smith had never heard of.

Officially the post did not exist. It was Director of CURE, a supersecret agency that didn't exist either. In any official sense.

Smith had been chosen because of the unique combination of qualities that had made him uniquely Harold Smith. His unswerving loyalty to his country. His inflexible sense of responsibility. Perhaps most of all, his lack of imagination. For what a worried President was contemplating was giving a faceless bureaucrat the power to unseat him-if he had the imagination and ruthless ambition to pursue that goal.

Smith had no such ambition. His imagination was virtually nonexistent.

And so it was that he sat behind his shabby desk thirty years later, his patrician nose almost touching the computer terminal that fed off his hidden mainframes, trying to imagine where his enforcement arm and his trainer could be.

He could not. It baffled him. He had clearly instructed Chiun to go to Miami with Remo. To await orders in the Biltmore Hotel.

They were not registered at the Biltmore. Not under any of their usual aliases.

"Are you certain you do not have anyone registered with the first name Remo?" an exasperated Smith had asked the Biltmore desk clerk.

The desk clerk, after patiently deflecting Smith's question, snapped, "We are not a telephone directory." And hung up.

Smith had hung up too. Then he had dialed into the hotel's own computer records. It was part of a chain and its system was connected to the other hotels in the chain, and thus accessible by modem.

Smith paged through the registration file.

There were no Remos. There was no guest whose name suggested an Asian flavor. Remo always retained his first name, owing to his general difficulty with technical details. And Chiun invariably chose a Korean-sounding cover name-when he bothered with a cover name at all.

This odd development had baffled Smith. He wondered if there had been a plane crash. He logged over to the wire services. There had been none. Neither were any of the flights from New York-Remo and Chiun's most recent address-to Miami hung up by delays, according to the airport traffic-control computers he checked.

Smith next accessed Remo's credit card files. Remo had thirty of them under thirty different cover names, all first-named Remo.

None of those nonexistent Remos had used his card to book a flight that morning, Smith determined.

Smith logged off the last of the credit card companies, absently adjusting his rimless glasses.

He was a gray man. Gray was the hue of his dry skin, and gray was the color of his eyes. His hair was more white than gray, but it was still grayish. He wore a gray three-piece suit enlivened only by a green Dartmouth tie.

Even his worn old wedding ring looked somehow colorless.

As he leaned back, his face pale, Harold W. Smith found himself facing a complete dead end. He could not account for the whereabouts of his enforcement arm.

And all hell was breaking loose.

The first call had come from the President of the United States that morning. Smith had picked up the red handset of the dial-less red telephone sitting on his desk in the middle of the first strident ring.

"Smith. We have a problem."

The President was respectful. He was the seventh president Smith had been privileged to serve. They had all been respectful. Not because they feared Smith and his organization, but because they understood how it functioned.

CURE was set up to operate outside of constitutional restrictions. It was answerable to no one. Not even the Executive Branch. The President was the only person outside the organization who knew it existed. To admit there was a CURE would have been tantamount to admitting the Constitution didn't work and the great modern experiment in democracy was a broken, flailing mechanism.

The President was prohibited from ordering Smith to undertake operations. Chief Executives could only suggest missions. That way, there could be no opportunity for a ruthless officeholder to abuse CURE.

Presidential control was limited to one simple instruction: Shut down.

Smith's instructions were clear in that event. The computer files would be erased, the enforcement arm disposed of, and when those details had been attended to Smith was to ingest the poison pill he kept in the watch pocket of his gray vest. It would leave no trace-other than a gray corpse.

And he would execute this order without hesitation. Because he was Harold Smith. Every President for the last thirty years had known this, and so none had given the order to shut down.

And so this latest President was saying in a reserved tone of respect, "I have something you might want to look into."

"Go ahead, Mr. President," said Smith with equal respect.

"Someone has just tried to invade Cuba."

"Yes?"

"They landed a small force on the Bay of Pigs. It was wiped out. The survivors have been captured. They are currently being interrogated."

"Havana will blame us," Smith said without skipping a beat.

"Havana be damned. We gotta find out who these guys are!"

"Cuban exiles. There has been stepped-up harassment of Cuba for the last year or so. After Castro executed that last group of freedom fighters, they have been bent on revenge."

"I have no intelligence on the who, Smith," said the President. "But tensions between Washington and that grubby flyspeck of an island are growing worse. The Cold War is supposed to be over! And we're still having to look over our sovereign shoulders at this guy!"

"What would you like me to do?" asked Harold Smith.

"Find out who these guys are, and muzzle them."

"Are you certain this is what you want? Cuba is ripe for revolution. The people are starving. Basic necessities are rationed where they are not nonexistent. Defectors are risking their lives to come to Florida in droves. A new leadership-almost any leadership-would be infinitely preferable to the people in power now."

"Agreed;" said the President, as if speaking to an equal. "But we're trying to keep the lid on in Russia-I mean, the Commonwealth. We have a secret agreement with Moscow, Smith. Hands off Cuba. That way we don't embarrass the former Soviet military-and they stay out of Commonwealth-and therefore world-politics."

"I see," said Harold W. Smith.

"And we don't need to give Castro any more of a seige mentality than he already has. The man is poised to land on the ash heap of the twentieth century. And he's railing about the future of Socialism in the Americas. He's cornered. And there's no telling what a cornered dictator will do."

"Understood, Mr. President. I will send our people to Miami."

That had been morning.

By afternoon, things had gotten worse. Smith was monitoring message traffic. There were signs of increased activity, according to Department of Defense intercepts of coded Cuban radio traffic.

The President had called again.

"Smith, the DoD reports that Havana is telling their people the prisoners have been interrogated and they implicate Washington."

"Which is not the case, I assume."

"Absolutely. We have-want-nothing to do with this. Get your people moving. We gotta root out the real culprits and flush them into the open. This cannot be allowed to stand."

That was the point when Harold Smith had reached out to his enforcement arm without success.

Now he was frantic, trying. The red phone shrilled again. Smith hesitated. He lifted the handset on the second ring.

"Is something wrong?" asked the President, tone worried.

"Sir?"

"It took you two rings. You usually grab it on the first."

"I was preoccupied," Smith said carefully.

"The situation is going critical."

"Sir?"

"Somehow, that lunatic has overpowered TV transmissions in South Florida. We always suspected Havana had the capability, being that he's only ninety miles off our shores, but we didn't dream he'd dare provoke us that much."

"What is Castro saying?" asked Smith. He had already brought out a portable TV set and turned it on. It had been purchased at a yard sale, and usually took its time warming up.

"I think he's giving Speech Number 33," the Chief Executive said tiredly. "They all sound alike to me. They start with 'We are the defenders of the Revolution' and end with ' "Socialism or Death" is our battlecry.' You'd think he'd make a master tape and just play it every once in a while."

"God," Smith croaked, as his set blinked into life.

"What is it?"

"I'm watching him now. I hadn't realized he'd gotten so fat."

"Smith, any progress?"

Smith hesitated. "No," he said truthfully.

"Very well. Stay in touch."

"Yes, Mr. President," said Smith. He returned to his humming computer.

Harold Smith knew only one thing. That the Master of Sinanju was upset over the stalled state of their current contract negotiations. Usually they were contentious. This time, they had become interminable as well. Never before had they gone on so long. Technically, the old contract had expired. Such a situation had never been allowed to go unresolved for this long.

But Smith had been unable to break down the impasse. The Master of Sinanju had demanded the impossible.

Had Smith been blessed with imagination, he might have been able to imagine where Chiun had gone. But he could not. So he doggedly returned to his computer, his fingers on the keyboard making hollow, manic clicks.

Somewhere, in the vast databanks of the nation, he knew, there must be a lead.

The bulletin came while Smith was staring at a blank screen. The computer beeped musically, and an AP bulletin digest began scrolling before his bleary eyes.

It was brief.

An Air Force jet out of Homestead AFB had shot down a MIG Flogger over the Gulf. The fighterbomber was presumed of Cuban origin.

"My God!" croaked Smith again.

This time the President did not call. Smith knew why. He was too busy conferring with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in an attempt to deal with the escalating situation.

This was no longer a CURE covert operation. It was lurching toward war.

While updates poured in, Smith redoubled his efforts.

The engagement had been brief. The press was speculating on the lone MIG's mission.

"Suicide mission," Smith muttered. "But what was his target?"

Smith logged off and brought up a schematic of the Florida coast. He input the MIG's intercept position, using signals intelligence siphoned off Pentagon mainframes. Then, he projected the jet's probable course.

His gray face blanched as the line plotted through the Turkey Point nuclear power station on the tip of Florida.

"My God!" said Smith. "He's long threatened that plant. This time he actually went for it."

Smith returned to his search, his eyes stark.

It might be too late for Remo and Chiun to enter the crisis, but he would have to try.

If only he had some inkling of their location . . .

Chapter 5

Remo Williams was torn between duty to his country and his responsibility to the House of Sinanju.

It was not the first time. Almost since the day he had been framed for a crime he didn't commit and subjected to a chillingly convincing mock execution, only to wake up in Folcroft Sanitarium with a new face, all traces of his past erased, and then placed in the hands of the Master of Sinanju to be trained in Sinanju-the first and last word in the martial artsRemo had experienced divided loyalties.

In the early years, the choices had been clearer. Remo was an American. A former Newark cop. A Vietnam veteran. America was his home. America his choice, hands-down. No contest.

Over the long years of training, Remo had begun to change. He had become Sinanju, which made him kin to the long line that had stood beside the thrones of history. Although the blood of the past masters did not flow through his veins, their responsibilities had fallen onto his shoulders.

In North Korea, on the West Korea Bay, lay the village of Sinanju, a cold, stark place of mud huts and ignorance. It was from this village that the art of Sinanju had emerged. In the harsh village there was no arable land, and the fishing was unreliable.

In the good years, the simple folk of Sinanju eked out a meager existence.

In the bad years, the children were drowned. First the females. Then, if the times demanded it, the irreplaceable males. It was called "sending the babies home to the sea."

Centuries of this heartbreaking cycle had forced the leaders of the village to seek another way. And so the men of Sinanju had hired themselves out as mercenaries to other provinces. This practice grew, and before long the name of the Master of Sinanju and his cunning mercenaries-the night tigers of Sinanju-had become feared throughout the kingdom of Korea.

With their increasing reknown, the Masters of Sinanju had taken to foreign lands to ply their cold trade. The courts of China, India, Japan, Persia, and Egypt came to know them. Not as mercenaries, but as assassins.

They were a dynasty unrecorded by history. An invisible power that had changed the course of empires. The art they plied was at first simply the seminal martial art. But in a time harsher than any other, a Master, Wang the Greater, had discovered a secret deeper than the hidden historical role of the House of Sinanju. He had unleashed the sun source-the power of the unlocked human mind.

This secret had been handed down from Wang to Ung to Chen to each succeeding master, until, in the latter part of the twentieth century, the last true Master of Sinanju, Chiun the Younger, bereft of an heir and without clients, had been summoned to serve the newest and greatest empire in history: The United States of America.

Chiun had trained Remo. Remo had learned well. He also unlearned bad breathing, unmasked his senses, foresworn the use of weapons, and waxed in skill. And became the secret enforcement arm of CURE. America's unknown assassin.

As he grew in Sinanju, Remo became one with Sinanju. The village of the ancestors-who-were-not-his became as important to him as America.

Now, in the hotel that was more palatial and wonderfilled than the royal halls through which the old Masters of Sinanju had moved with uncanny stealth, Remo Williams fretted about his choices.

His responsibility to the organization and to his country demanded that he call Harold W. Smith.

But he had a responsibility to the House of Sinanju, too.

Above all, it was to feed the babies of the village, lest they be sent home to the sea once again. It had not happened in over a generation. But the gold that emperors paid was the sole coin of value in Sinanju.

To shirk this responsibility would be the same as betraying the country of his birth.

Worse. The worst Harold W. Smith would do to him was to hunt Remo down and kill him-if he could. Remo was under no illusions. He was an expendable component of a supersecret "black budget" operation.

On the other hand, if he pissed off Chiun badly enough, he would suffer horribly. Chiun would see to it.

And to Remo Williams, raised in the orphanage called St. Theresa's, never married, and cut off from his past, the Master of Sinanju was the closest thing to family he had ever known.

A clear choice. In the early days, he would have called Smith. Now, his gut told him to obey his Master.

Still, Remo was torn. Maybe there was a way to finagle things so Smith could locate them.

The arrival of room service brought Remo out of his worried state. Whatever he ended up doing, it could wait until after dinner.

He let the waiter in. The man wheeled in a gleaming stainless-steel cart that was busy with silver and linen napkins.

"Looks great," Remo said, handing the man a twenty. It was Smith's money, so he felt free to squander it.

"Complimentary bottle of champagne from the room service manager," the waiter said. "Shall I open it for you?"

"No. Why don't you take it?"

"I couldn't, sir."

"Okay," said Remo, pulling the six-hundred-dollar bottle from its ice bucket and tossing it over his shoulder.

The waiter watched as the bottle, as if in slow motion, tumbled like a sweaty candlepin across the room, caromed off a wall, and mimicking a billiard ball, landed in the kitchenette sink with a resounding crash and splash.

"That was the best champagne we have!" the waiter gulped.

"Next time, consider taking it," Remo said, gesturing toward the open door.

"Next time I will."

After the front door had closed, Remo knocked on Chiun's.

"Soup's on!" he called.

The door flew open and there stood the Master of Sinanju, his eyes steely.

"Uh-oh," said Remo, noticing the color of the old Korean's kimono. It was black. Black silk. And cut high at the sleeve and hem. The better for combat.

It was the traditional night-fighting garment of the Master of Sinanju. Designed for optimum stealth. Remo had a Western-style version, which consisted of a black silk blouse and flowing beltless pants.

"Your Duck in Orange Sauce is here," he said, hiding his surprise.

"I have no time for duck," said the Master of Sinanju, sweeping past Remo like a black patch of darkness. "I must avenge this insult to my viewing pleasure."

Remo followed him anxiously. "Are you going somewhere?"

Chiun shook a tiny fist in the air. "I am going to pluck every hair from the ruffian's ugly beard."

"Not Castro?"

"That is who he will be by the rising of the morning sun," Chiun spat.

"Huh?"

"Not Castro. Not anyone."

Remo snapped his fingers. "I got an idea."

"What?" asked Chiun, hesitating by the wheeled cart, where the heavy smell of Duck in Orange Sauce fought with the more 'delicate aroma of trout Almondine for command of the suite.

"Let's call Smith."

"I do not call emperors," Chiun sniffed. "Emperors call me. To do otherwise would be unseemly."

"I have a hunch Smith sent us here to deal with the Castro thing," Remo added hopefully.

"Then he sent us too late. The damage has been done. I have been deprived of the sight of my beloved Cheeta."

"And so you're going to sally off and box his ears."

Chiun paused, his expression intrigued. "I had not thought of the ears. Perhaps I will save them in a box. Should Smith come to his senses, they will make a suitable present."

"That's not what I meant by 'box,' but never mind. What I'm saying is that you're about to perform a service for Smith."

"I am doing nothing of the sort!"

"But if you do it, and wasting Castro is what Smith wanted done," Remo pointed out, "you'll be doing it for nothing. Thereby violating Sinanju Rule Number Two. No free lunches."

"But I cannot contact him. It would be wrong."

"But you can't go after Castro, either. You'd be giving away the store. The job done, Smith wouldn't have to come to the table on the negotiation."

The Master of Sinanju listened to the words of his pupil. His eyes narrowed. And narrowed some more. The conflicting thoughts racing through his brain were mirrored on his wrinkled parchment face. He stroked his trembling beard thoughtfully, then with agitation.

"I must do this," he said harshly.

"No, you mustn't," countered Remo, sensing victory.

Now the puffs of hair over each delicate yellow ear were trembling too. The Master of Sinanju was at an impasse.

He exploded. "Why are you doing this! Why are you telling me these things? You are up to some mischief!"

"I pulled a you. Okay? Smith sent us here for a reason, and you're playing games. Something big is brewing. We gotta deal with it directly."

Chiun stamped a sandaled foot. "I cannot call Smith!"

"Fine. Just let me do it."

"And bring shame down upon the house?"

"Well, there's gotta be a way. And the duck is getting cold."

Angrily, the Master of Sinanju went to the covered tray. He lifted the cover and sniffed dubiously, his tiny button nose wrinkling like a dried apricot.

"It smells greasy."

"Then go to Cuba and squander the negotiational high ground, if that's what you want," Remo said hotly.

The Master of Sinanju frowned.

Thinking I've got him now, Remo closed in for the kill.

"Tell you what," he said. "I'll go down to the lobby and call someone on my phone card."

"What good will that do?" Chiun wanted to know.

"The card number will appear on the AT net and Smith will see it," Remo explained. "He'll reach out to touch us. And bingo: problem solved."

"I will accept that." He raised a cautionary finger and added, "But be certain not to call Smith."

"Trust me," said Remo, going to the door. "And don't let my trout get cold."

Remo took the elevator to the cavernous lobby and used his phone card to call the local Dial-a-Joke.

The joke was: How do you get a one-armed man out of a tree? Remo hung up before the punchline.

By the time he got back to his room, the bedroom phone was ringing.

He scooped it up and said, "Wave to him."

Smith's voice was high and anxious. "Remo! I've been trying to reach you all day!"

"Well, we've been here," Remo said innocently, "Chiun and I, patiently waiting."

"I told Master Chiun to register at the Biltmore."

"He brought me here, Smitty."

"According to the front desk, you are registered under the names Frodo Jones and Mr. C. Lee."

Remo rolled his eyes. "I think I'm Frodo," he growled. "Chiun checked us in. You'll be happy to know he's been very security-conscious lately."

"I am pleased to hear this, but I think he's gone too far. I have no record of any of your credit cards being used to check in."

"Chiun must have picked up the tab. Amazing as it seems."

Smith's voice sank to a lower register. "Has this anything to do with the current contract dispute?" he asked.

Before Remo could answer, the Master of Sinanju's voice came loudly: "Remo, your meal is becoming cold. Please inform the illustrious Emperor Smith that you will be happy to converse once we have dined."

"No, Remo, don't hang up! We have a crisis. An unknown military force has landed at the Bay of Pigs, and in retaliation Castro has attempted to take out the nuclear power plant at Turkey Point."

"He did!"

"Yes. Fortunately, the MIG was shot down before it could inflict any damage. But we expect another attempt."

"So what do you want Chiun and me to do?" Remo asked sourly. "Patrol all of southern Florida with our slingshots poised?"

"No. I have conferred with the President. Castro is convinced this is a CIA-U.S. operation, but it is no such thing. It is critical that we locate the true provocateurs and expose them."

"Wait a minute! Hold the phone! Are you saying we're supposed to go after the guys who are attacking Castro?"

"Yes. And it is imperative."

Remo lowered his voice. "Uh, Smitty, I hate to break this to you, but Old Bushyface has been jamming the TV channels down here."

"I am aware of that."

"Are you aware that he cut in on Cheeta Ching's evening screed?" Remo added.

"Why is that important?" Smith asked, testy-voiced.

"Oh, I don't know," Remo said airily. "Maybe because Chiun was watching and got pissed."

"I will have a tape made," Smith said quickly. "He will have missed nothing."

"And just as you called," Remo added, "he was on his way out the door to assassinate Castro."

"I was not!" Chiun called from the other room.

"Remo," Smith hissed. "Do not let Chiun provoke that lunatic. Our highest priority is to keep the lid on an explosive situation."

"I can't make any guarantees," Remo said slowly.

"Those who are without gainful employment are unpredictable," Chiun called out. "The homeless are without hope, and where there is no hope, passions run high."

"What is he saying?" Smith asked harshly.

"Tell you what, Smitty," Remo said. "Maybe you should talk to Chiun. Get this contract knot unraveled."

"There is no time," Smith said, his voice rippling with concern.

"I will perform no service without certain considerations being met," Chiun announced.

"Tell him I'll meet them," Smith said quickly.

"I thought you were too broke," Remo asked.

"Remo, I will meet them. Now tell him!"

"No need," said Remo, handing the phone to the Master of Sinanju, who had suddenly appeared in the doorway. Chiun took it and listened quietly, the receiver pressed so tightly to his ear that Remo heard nothing of Smith's end of the conversation other than an intermittent lemony buzz.

At length the Master of Sinanju said, "Remo and I will do what we can." Then he handed the phone to Remo, saying, "You will receive the instructions. I must finish my meal."

Remo clapped the receiver to his ear. "Okay, Smitty. Nice move. Shoot."

"We are in the dark," Smith said urgently. "There is no time for stealth or finesse. You must start in the Cuban community of Little Havana. Go there immediately. Turn the place upside down if you must. Find out who sponsored this Bay of Pigs incursion and put a stop to any further activity."

"Sounds simple enough," said Remo. "Any name in particular I should start with?"

"Yes. Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta, reputed leader of Ultima Hora."

"Ultima what?"

"Ultima Hora. It is Spanish for 'Eleventh Hour.' Revuelta is a wealthy Cuban expatriate who is suspected of financing Ultima Hora, a group of Cuban mercenaries bent upon retaking the island. It is believed that Revuelta's ultimate goal is to establish himself as the first democratic President of Cuba."

"Sounds like he's on our side," Remo said.

"Not if his activities put the U.S. and Cuba on a collision course," Smith said, flat-voiced.

"What's the big deal? We can take those Caribbean losers in an afternoon. Remember Grenada? The Cuban troops ran for their lives."

"Remo, you know the situation in Russia. It is extremely delicate. There is a mood to return to the Soviet model. Our government and theirs have a tacit understanding: Hands off Havana. If we embarrass the former Red Army, they may agitate to intervene. War fuels depressed economies, as you know."

"I still don't like it," Remo said, face and voice bitter.

"Nor do I. But we live in a changing world, and we must adapt. Castro can't stay in power forever. But he can cause great harm if he seizes upon this incident as a way to rally his people behind his crumbling regime."

"Okay, Chiun and I are on the way."

"Report as necessary."

Remo hung up and sauntered back into the kitchen. There, the Master of Sinanju was patting his tiny mouth with a linen napkin. On the plate under his bearded chin lay the bodily remains-largely spine-of a trout.

"You ate my trout!" Remo shouted.

"The duck was greasy," Chiun said.

"But you knew that!"

"I did not know how greasy. Besides, the trout would have been cold by the time you returned to it, and both of our dinners would have been ruined. Why should two suffer when the wisdom of one can prevent this?"

Remo picked up a bamboo chopstick and poked at the duck. The crackling brown skin broke. No steam leaked out. He could see by the gelatinous state of the orange sauce that the meal was stone-cold.

"I wasn't in the mood for duck," he complained. "And I'm sure not in the mood for cold duck in congealed orange sauce."

The Master of Sinanju stood up and shook back into place his black silk kimono sleeves, which had been folded high over his bony elbows.

"Fasting is good for a Master of Sinanju-especially one who is about to embark on an important assignment," he said sagely.

"Oh, yeah? Then why didn't you fast?"

"Because," cackled the Master of Sinanju, "I was faster than you. Heh heh. I was faster, therefore I had no need to fast. Heh heh heh."

Chapter 6

Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta considered himself a soldier of the Americas.

He was proud. He was brave. He was a Cuban through and through. There was nothing he would not do to restore his beleaguered nation to its former glory.

When the ragtag guerilleros of the Sierra Maestra began their campaign, he had laid down the shining tools of his lucrative La Plata gynecological practice, absolved himself of his Hippocratic Oath, and taken up arms against them.

It was a terrible day when Fidel rode through the streets of Havana. Dr. Revuelta had gotten on the first Cubana plane to Miami. He had seen how the crowds were with Fidel.

He had thought it would be a temporary thing. But the years had rolled on, slow and terrible. And when he'd realized there would be no soon return to Havana, Dr. Revuelta decided to fight the Fidelistas from a distance.

His first act was to shoot at a Bulgarian tanker. He used a bazooka purchased on the black market. The bazooka rocket punched a neat hole through the bow of the Bulgar ship, which sailed stubbornly on. The government of Bulgaria had protested to the United States.

The FBI came knocking at his door, since Dr. Revuelta had taken to boasting about his act of retaliation to his compatriots in the watering holes of Little Havana.

"Yes, I did shoot the Bulgar bastardos with my bazooka," he admitted forthrightly. "What of it? They are the allies of our great enemy, Fidel." And he spat at the feet of the two unblinking FBI men.

"You'll have to come with us," one said with a toneless politeness.

"Jou have use for me, perhaps?" Revuelta said eagerly. "I will gladly lead the charge up San Juan Hill, eh?"

"I'm sorry, Dr. Revuelta. You are under arrest."

"Por que? Why? I have done nothing illegal."

"You fired a bazooka at a ship of foreign registry while standing on U.S. soil. A clear violation of the Neutrality Act."

"Hah! Jou are wrong! I was in my cabin cruiser. She is a speedy yob, that ship. I call her What a Country! Is true, no?"

The FBI men did not laugh. They barely moved. And they continued to insist that Revuelta was under arrest.

Dr. Revuelta went with them. He answered their tiresome questions truthfully, and when he saw that-amazement of amazements-they were taking this matter very seriously, he pretended to break down.

"I am anguished with shame," he said mournfully. "Jou are correct. I have done a terrible thing, and now my friends are about to commit a worse act of heinousness."

The chief FBI interrogator became very interested indeed. "What act?" he had asked.

"My compatriots. Fellow exiles. They are placing bombs in ships down at the docks."

"Which ships?"

"I will take jou there." He dabbed at his dark eyes. "I am so remorseful."

A drab sedan whisked them to the docks. As they got out, Dr. Revuelta lifted his manacled hands and brought them down on the chief interrogator's crewcut head. The man had crumpled like a trenchcoat crammed with potatoes. The driver was harder to conquer. Dr. Revuelta had to punch and kick him many times, and still he did not lose consciousness.

As the man lay stunned, Dr. Revuelta rushed along the docks, trying to unlock the handcuffs with the tiny key he had rummaged from the first man's pockets.

He was looking for Spanish names on the ships. When he came to the Santander, he smiled broadly and started up the gangplank.

Halfway up, the handcuffs finally came loose and he flung them with all his might into the filthy water by the bow.

The sound brought all hands to the bow rail in search of stowaways. This was distraction enough for Dr. Revuelta to slip aboard and find a place to hide.

When the Santander docked in Pernambuco, Brazil, Dr. Revuelta walked off the boat as he did everything: boldly. No one questioned him.

In Pernambuco he continued his work, certain that he would not be criticized for his continued counterrevolutionary activities by the United States government, which was altogether too sensitive about these matters.

He learned different when the Cubana Airlines jet exploded over the Gulf of Mexico and seventy-three Cubans died. The United States denounced it as a terrorist action.

"Terrorista!" Dr. Revuelta had screamed from his palatial seaside hacienda. "It is counterrevolution! How can they call me terrorista?"

Dr. Revuelta happened to ask this question in a Pernambuco bistro, and soon the Brazilian security police were knocking on his door.

Fortunately, he spotted them from his bedroom window. Dr. Revuelta slipped out the back and hurried down to the docks. This time he stowed away on the freighter Garaucan. It took him back to Miami where, now white-haired and thin, he picked up where he had left off.

This was in 1984, and Miami had changed. Little Havana was no longer strung along Southwest 8th Street, but spread out over virtually all of Miami. This was after the Mariel boat lift. The Marielitos had swollen the Cuban population until Miami was virtually Cuban.

And in that rich environment, Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta began to recruit for Ultima Hora-the antiFidel guerilleros who would be his instrument of terror.

They trained in the swamps. They set out for Cuba in boats. Sometimes they landed and blew up power lines and telephone poles. Other times they simply released propaganda messages in bottles.

Sometimes they did not return.

Dr. Revuelta never went with them. He was a soldier of the Americas, but more, he was a leader of soldiers of the Americas. Leaders who did not come back from battle did not live to lead.

Emboldened by the new spirit of Miami, where the minorities had become the majority and Spanish was the lingua franca-despite the nervous referendum that had established English as the official language of Dade County-Dr. Revuelta began to boast once more.

It was another mistake. He loudly claimed credit for the Cubana bombing, believing that sympathies had shifted, and overlooked but one minor detail: that the passengers of the flight had had relatives and the relatives-or some of these-had come to Miami to escape oppression. He was reported to the FBI. This time by fellow Cubans.

On this occasion, the government tried Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta in the courts and sentenced him to jail. The Justice Department had wanted to deport him as an undesirable alien, but no country would take Dr. Revuelta.

Except Cuba. Havana let it be known that Dr. Revuelta was very much desired in Havana.

This time, Dr. Revuelta did not attempt escape. He knew Cuban justice. Besides, the judge had given him but five years. As it turned out, he served only two. Political pressures forced his early release.

But it had been a humiliating early release. The U.S. government had demanded he sign a letter renouncing terrorism.

"What foolishness is this?" he demanded of his Cuban lawyer. "A man who was determined enough to blow up a civilian airliner would not hesitate to renege on a written pledge such as this."

"Perhaps they wish only to cover their asses," the lawyer had suggested.

"Que?"

"Their colitos. "

"Ah, yes," said Dr. Revuelta, promptly signing the renunciation in his cell. He laid down his pen and rubbed his hands together gleefully. "Okay, make them let me go. I have much to catch up on."

"There is more," the lawyer informed him.

Dr. Revuelta's face fell.

"What more?" he inquired suspiciously.

"You will be placed under house arrest, and made to wear an electronic monitor."

"I cannot leave my home?"

"Only between the hours of eleven A.m. and two P.m., to do necessary things."

Dr. Revuelta's sun-browned brow gathered into deep wrinkles. "Ah, a loophole," he said, thinking he understood now. "They are giving me a loophole, these canny norteamericanos. "

"You must keep a daily log of visitors, and submit to polygraph tests and random searches," the lawyer went on doggedly. "Your phone will be tapped."

"Let them tap," Dr. Revuelta said haughtily. "During my three hours, I will accomplish all that I wish to do."

"They are very serious about this, Revuelta."

"If they were serious, they would not release me," Dr. Revuelta countered. "This is a farce and I will play along. Now, hurry. I have two years of catching up to do."

Immediately upon returning to his palatial Biscayne Bay home, Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta fired his Nicaraguan caretaker staff and replaced them with guerrilleros of his Ultima Hora.

"This is loco, Revuelta," complained his lawyer. "You are not to consort with terrorists."

Dr. Revuelta drew himself up indignantly. "Are jou mad? These are not terrorists. These are freedom fighters. Besides, I will tell the snoopers that they are Nicaraguans. These Anglo FBI, they know only that a man looks Hispanic or he does not. They will never know the difference."

"What about their guns?"

"The weapons of my soldados will never enter this house. They will patrol outside only, to protect me from the agents provocateurs of Fidel."

"I think," said the lawyer of Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta, "that you will be returning to jail very soon now."

But Dr. Revuelta did not return to jail. Oh, he was closely watched, polygraphed every few months, and subject to searches that turned up nothing worse than his growing collection of pornographic magazines. But during his three-hour period each day, he drilled his Ultima Hora for their forays into Cuba.

Every time men did not return, it was easy enough to recruit more. Ultima Hora grew, gained adherents and patrons of great resources.

While supposedly languishing through two years of house arrest, Osvaldo Revuelta was in fact running a paramilitary organization large enough to establish a major beachhead on the island of his birth. And he was convinced that his success was due entirely to U.S. financial assistance, regardless of what the Justice Department might say in public.

So it came as a total surprise when the two mysterious U.S. agents came to visit Osvaldo Revuelta late one night, as he was studying topographical maps of Cuba.

They were not announced. They were simply there. In his den.

"Que?" he said, turning. "Que pasa?"

"Got a minute, pal?" said the tall one. He was an Anglo. Lean. With thick wrists, and a casual insolence that reminded Revuelta of the DGI-the Cuba security police.

Dr. Revuelta would have shot the man right then and there, but he had no weapons on the premises.

"Quien?" he asked.

"He asked 'Who?' " said the other one, the short one. This second person was as fantastic in appearance as the other was ordinary. He was Asian, and wore a black silken garment that made Revuelta think of the Viet Cong. That was a bad sign. But the fact that the little Asian had to translate for the Anglo meant that he at least was not DGI. And he appeared very, very old.

"You speak English?" asked the Anglo, in a voice definitely gringo.

"Si. I mean, yes. Of course. Who are jou, that jou enter my humble home unannounced?"

The man flashed a card in a plastic holder. "Remo Ricardo, CIA."

"And jour friend, he is not CIA?" asked Dr. Revuelta, gesturing to the tiny old Asian.

"He's the backup interrogator," offered the Anglo.

"This mean jou are the foremost interrogator, no?"

"Something like that," said the tall Anglo, walking forward with absolutely no sound. He walked on the outsides of his feet. Clearly he was trained. Well trained. In something.

"Have jou signed in?" Dr. Revuelta asked nervously.

"Signed in?"

"Yes, it is the requirement of jour government. Jou must sign in."

The man looked blank.

"Here," Dr. Revuelta said, moving toward his desk, "allow me to summon a servant to bring the sign-in book."

A hand reached out before Dr. Revuelta could touch the bell button set on the side of his desk. The hand had moved with a direct, casual grace, but suddenly the bell button had become a blob of metal clinging forlornly to the desk rim.

There was no sound of a bell. There should have been. The man had struck it so ferociously that the button should have triggered the current.

Revuelta looked closer. The button stuck out like a gangrenous nipple from a flat metallic breastlet. It would never ring the downstairs bell again.

"Since this is a requirement of jour government, and jou represent the U.S.," Dr. Revuelta said sincerely, "I will assume the sign-in requirement has been waived. How may I assist jou fine yentlemen?"

"Somebody tried to invade Cuba this morning," said the Anglo.

"So?"

The other man, the Asian, had slipped up and around to stand near him. Revuelta began to sweat. He did not like this. This was not how U. S. agents ordinarily acted. Of course this was the CIA, not the FBI. So who could say?

"So everybody knows you run a training program for anti-Castro guerrillas," the Anglo said simply.

"I do not know this."

"Don't screw with us," said the Anglo. "Some of us missed supper because of you."

"Since when is it a crime to be anti-Castro?" Revuelta asked in an injured tone.

"Since Fidel started flying MIGs over Florida nuclear plants and jamming TV transmissions," said the Anglo.

"These are terrible things, but I think if jou have complaints jou should take them to Havana."

"Count on it," said the Anglo.

Revuelta smiled broadly then. "So we are on the same side?"

"Depends."

"I have always suspected the CIA of steering certain-how jou say?-assets my way."

"What assets?"

"Ah, but I am a good soldado. I do not reveal these things. If names are known to jou, there is no need to repeat them. If not, jou have no-what is the phrase?-no need to know."

"Remo, what is this idiot babbling about?" asked the Asian suddenly, his wizened face puckering.

"May I inquire jour name, senor?" Dr. Revuelta asked.

"You may not."

"Jou are not Vietnamese?"

"I am never Vietnamese! I am Korean!"

"Ah. South Korean, yes?"

"North."

At that, Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta took an involuntary step backward. The North Koreans were among the last of Castro's close allies. What was transpiring here, that an Anglo CIA operative and a North Korean agent would come together to see him?

"I do not understand," he said carefully, backing away.

The others moved with him.

"You launch the Bay of Pigs operation?" demanded the Anglo.

"No."

"Liar!" snapped the North Korean. And suddenly the little old man was between Osvaldo Revuelta and the window he'd been planning to break, in a desperate effort to summon help in the form of his Cuban guards who patrolled outside, somehow unaware of this invasion.

"Speak the truth," the Korean demanded, and took hold of Osvaldo Revuelta's wrist.

There was strength in the little man's wrist. Great strength. It was like being seized by a tiny steam shovel powered by a dynamo of great size. Birdlike yellow fingers constricted, and things began popping out all over Osvaldo's body. Veins. Tendons. Sweat.

"The pain!" screamed Osvaldo Revuelta.

"The faster you come clean," the Anglo said coolly, "the sooner it goes away."

"I send no one!"

"We don't believe you."

"I only loan soldados!"

"What's a soldado?"

"A soldier," the tiny Korean said before Osvaldo could. But he said it anyway. Anything to lessen the fierce agony.

"Soldiers! I loaned my Ultima Hora soldiers to a man. A brave man."

"His name?" demanded the Korean, inflicting crushing force. Revuelta lowered himself to his knees, unaware that he was doing so. In his scarlet agony, he thought the tiny man was growing in strength and stature before his very eyes.

"He is Leopoldo Zorilla!" Revuelta shrieked.

"Who's Leopoldo Zorilla?" asked the Anglo, in a voice that seemed far, far from Osvaldo Revuelta's inflamed nervous system.

"How could jou not know?" he gasped.

"We're new in town. Haven't hit the night spots yet. Who's Leopoldo Zorilla?"

"A Cuban defector! He was former defense minister! He have been in Miami many months now! To him, I loan my best!"

"For what purpose?" asked the old Korean.

"I do not ask these questions! I am given money, and told to be prepared to return to Havana in triumph!"

The Anglo turned to the other and asked, "What do you think, Little Father?"

"He is telling the truth," the old one said disappointedly. The pain began to lessen, and the tears stopped flowing from Dr. Revuelta's eyes. He was able to see semi-clearly again.

"Why am I on my knees?" he asked wonderingly, noticing the nearness of the rug.

"Because we're here for information."

Dr. Revuelta looked up. "I do not understand. What difference would that make?"

"If we weren't, you'd be in the ground."

"Yo comprendo. "

"Where do we find Zorilla?"

The pain was still there. It was tolerable. Dr. Revuelta took a chance. He spoke two words very fast.

"Little Havana."

"Where in Little Havana?"

"I do not know. He moves around." This was the truth, and it seemed to work.

The tall Anglo noticed the clock on the wall and casually said, "It's about bedtime, isn't it?"

"Que?"

And so swift was the night that overcame his senses that Dr. Osvaldo Revuelta did not notice he had lost conciousness, until he opened his eyes many hours later to find himself drooling into the fine rug that had once graced his Havana office.

Upon regaining his senses, he called the contact number of Leopoldo Zorilla. The phone rang and rang and rang, and a feeling of dread came over him.

There was another number he had been given. He had not been told to whom this number belonged. Only that it should be resorted to in only the direst circumstances.

He dialed and waited ....

Chapter 7

Remo Williams used a pay phone to contact Harold W. Smith.

"Smitty? Remo. We got something."

"What is it?"

"His name is Leopoldo Zorilla. Name ring a Cuban bell?"

"Vaguely," said Smith, and the hollow clicking of fingers on a keyboard came through the phone wire.

"Yes, Remo. Leopoldo Zorilla is a Cuban defector, according to Immigration and Naturalization Service computer records. He was picked up in a raft floating in the Windward Passage."

"Where is he now?"

"Unclear. He was briefly detained by INS and then released."

"If he was that big, why wasn't he debriefed?"

"I do not know. I imagine because there has been such a flood of defectors that Washington saw no intelligence value in interrogating him."

"Well, according to Revuelta, he loaned some of his Ultima soldiers to Zorilla."

"For what purpose?" Smith asked.

"Claims he doesn't know. But he was told to stand by to go back to Havana in style."

"Interesting. You have your lead. Pursue it. Find Zorilla and learn all you can."

"What's the latest?"

"Castro is still speaking."

"This could go on for days," Remo remarked.

"Let us hope not."

"You and me both. If Chiun doesn't get his daily Cheeta fix, I wouldn't give odds on Castro's survivability"

Remo hung up and turned to the Master of Sinanju, who was patiently waiting some distance away, saying, "Smith says to chase down Zorilla."

"Then let us begin."

They returned to their rented car and drove off.

Remo hadn't been to Miami in a number of years. It had changed. The palmettos still shook in the offshore breezes, the heat still soaked cloth to the skin, but the people were different. There were more Latin faces than Remo remembered.

Off in the night, he heard a sporadic pop-pop-pop-pop of a sound. Machine pistols. His mouth went grim.

Remo had been raised in a time when street gangs were considered unsalvageable if they carried zip guns. Now it seemed that the cheapest hood was better armed than the average Korean War-era soldier.

"This town looks and sounds like it washed ashore from the Third World," he said bitterly.

"I do not remember it this way," Chiun remarked, his narrow eyes reading the faces in the night.

"Another present from Fidel. About ten years ago, he launched a little thing called the Mariel boat-lift. Dumped the contents of his prisons and mental institutions on Miami. As well as honest refugees. I guess both flavors stuck around. I hardly see any white faces."

"This is acceptable," sniffed Chiun, arranging his kimono skirts absently.

"Listen to you, Mr. Multicultural."

"Pah! Do not speak that word."

Remo smiled. He had scored a direct hit. A few months ago, the Master of Sinanju had joined the campaign of a darkhorse candidate for governor of California. The man-an Hispanic-had offered Chiun the post of treasurer. Chiun had tentatively accepted. Only after Chiun had nearly burned his bridges with Harold Smith did he learn that the candidate was actually a fugitive banana-republic dictator, with a face made media-friendly by plastic surgery.

They had been forced to terminate the guy, and Chiun found himself in a ditch with Harold Smith. He was still digging out.

The bewildering maze of Miami byways took Remo to what was supposed to be Little Havana. He slowed down and unrolled his window.

"Hey, pal. This Little Havana?"

The man turned, shrugged, and continued walking.

"I just need a yes or no. Is it?"

The man kept walking.

"People are real friendly down here," he grumbled, driving on.

Remo took the next right and cruised by a row of bars whose neon names were flowery and Spanish.

This time he pulled over and asked a knot of people, "I'm looking for Little Havana."

Swarthy faces turned. Eyes grew tight. No one spoke.

"Anybody speak English here?"

Apparently no one did.

"Little Havana," Remo repeated in a loud voice, pointing around him. "This?"

"No," a voice returned. "Little Haiti."

"Where Little Havana?" Remo asked, thinking he was making progress.

He got a chorus of "Quien sabes. " He didn't know what it meant, but he had seen enough Cisco Kid reruns to get the message.

"This is ridiculous," he grumbled, sending the car screeching along.

He found a well-lit gas station called Jose's and pulled in.

"Fill her up," he said, by way of breaking the ice.

"Que?" asked the attendant, a brown-faced teenager with a mustache like a used paint brush.

"I said fill her up. Comprende?"

"No, senor."

"No, you don't speak English, or no, you won't fill her up?" Remo wanted to know.

"No, senor."

There were others working on an exposed engine and Remo called over to them. "Anybody here speak English?"

The men looked blank.

"Habla ingles?" Remo asked.

"No ingles!" one called back, returning to his engine.

"What is this?" Remo demanded of no one in particular. "How can you run a gas station if no one speaks English?"

The teenager shrugged. He didn't offer to fill Remo's tank, so Remo pulled out, tires caterwauling.

"I'm here in Miami less than a day, and already I'm tired of it," Remo said bitterly.

"It would be easier if you had learned the language," Chiun sniffed.

"Language! This is America! The language of America is English!"

"The language of North America is English," Chiun corrected. "The language of South America is Spanish."

"So? We're in North America."

"No, we are in South Florida."

"Which, the last time I was in this town, was still part of the U.S.A."

"None of this would be happening if you had learned Spanish."

"Why should I learn Spanish?" Remo said hotly.

"In case we ever have to work for Spain," Chiun said reasonably.

"When was the last time that happened? Really."

"The sun will not shine on this mongrel land forever. I will not be at your side forever. You must learn other tongues, so that the tradition can continue and you will not have to stoop to working for inferior nations, as have I in my declining years."

"My ass," said Remo. He tapped the brake. The car stopped short.

Remo and Chiun went forward and back, as if they were anchored to their seats by spring cables. It was a tribute to the total control they exercised over their bodies.

"Wait a minute!" Remo said. "You speak Spanish."

"Therefore, so should you."

"That's not what I mean. Why am I wasting my time trying to communicate when you can interpret for me?"

Chiun raised a wise finger. "Because you will never learn if I keep doing this for you."

"Bulldookey," said Remo, sending the car shooting ahead. "There's gotta be at least one white guy in Miami. Somewhere."

They found one after another ten minutes of circling what seemed to be a very large Spanish area.

The white man was definitely white. He was also definitely scared. He was outrunning the pack pursuing him, even though he was carrying a middle-aged paunch and his pursuers all wore Reebok Pumps and the tight flesh of teenagers.

Remo cut in front of the pursuers and got out.

"Habla espanol?" he demanded.

"Tu madre!" someone snarled, drawing a switchblade. It snicked into the extended position and the wielder brought it down to the level of his belt, driving in for Remo's stomach.

Remo smiled. He grabbed the attacker's wrist and made a sudden complicated motion with his other hand. His wrist drove the knife into the stomach of the one attacking him.

The attacker felt the dull pain that he knew was associated with being stabbed. It was not the first time. His bare brown arms were scarred and scatched from previous encounters with assorted blades and straight razors.

But this time was different. This time, he was holding the hilt of the blade that had been pushed into his vitals. Pushed deep, he saw with widening eyes.

"Dios mio!" he moaned. "Compadres! Come to my aid!"

His compadres backed off and withdrew assorted ordnance. Safeties clicked off. It was about to get serious.

Seeing this, Remo released the man's wrist.

The erstwhile attacker did not release the knife stuck in his own stomach. He was streetwise, and knew that to extract the blade would be to bleed profusely. So he held on to the knife for dear life-even when he found himself suddenly airborne in the direction of his amigos.

A few upward-pointing gun muzzles went pop-pop-pop! before they fell from surprised hands and Remo stepped into their midst.

He didn't waste time. He used the heel of his shoe to crush the weapons flat, driving his handmade sole home so fast and so hard the metal barrels went flat. His shoe leather didn't pick up so much as a nick.

Technique.

Remo tapped the toe of his right shoe against jaws, and the squirming pile of Hispanics became a slumbering pile of Hispanics. When the last one had gone quiet, the man who had stabbed himself lost his grip. The switchblade fell loose from his stomach-showing that it was in the folded position after all.

When the man woke up he would think it was a miracle, and that God had spared him for reasons unclear.

It would never occur to him, nor would he have believed it if it had, that his mysterious attacker had simultaneously folded the blade shut while driving the blunt hilt into his stomach. The pain had been identical to being stabbed.

Whistling, Remo returned to the car.

The Master of Sinanju was comforting the panting middle-aged man.

"What happened, pal?" Remo asked, as he slid behind the wheel.

"I . . . I had a flat. I got out to fix it. Those hoods tried to jump me."

"Next time, try not to get a flat in Little Havana."

"Little Havana? What are you talking about? This is Little Managua."

"Little Managua? I never heard of Little Managua."

"It's new," the man said.

"Okay. It's new. So where's Little Havana?"

"Give me a ride to a safe part of town and I'll tell you."

"Sounds fair enough," said Remo. "Hop in."

The man got in back. Remo drove off, asking, "Any place in particular you want to go?"

"The airport. I've had enough of this town."

"I know that feeling."

They drove to the airport, and as Remo dropped the man off at the terminal he asked, "So where's Little Havana?"

"It used to be all around Southwest 8th Street."

"So where is it now?"

"Now," the man said, as he turned into the terminal, "it's practically all of Miami."

"He was very helpful," Chiun said smugly after the man had gone.

"Don't rub it in," growled Remo, putting the airport behind them.

They took the Palmetto Expressway back to town and turned off on the Tamiami Trail. Soon, they were cruising along Southwest 8th Street. It looked amazingly like Little Managua. Remo couldn't tell the difference.

He tried asking passersby the question that he had been asking half the night.

"Is this Little Havana?"

People shrugged and said "Que?" or sometimes "Quien?" And Remo fumed.

"You could lend a hand, you know," Remo said pointedly to the passive Master of Sinanju.

"Of course. Que means 'what' and quien means 'who.' "

"Har de bar har har," muttered Remo.

His dark eyes alighted on a neon bar sign: PEPE'S. "When in doubt, ask a barman," he said jauntily.

Remo parked, got out, and went into the bar. Chiun followed silently.

It was a brightly lit saloon. Jukebox salsa music filled the air. Remo sauntered up to the bar, ignoring the hard stares at his white skin.

"I'm looking for Little Havana," he said.

"Por que?"

"He means 'why,' not 'what,' " Chiun whispered.

"Because," Remo answered, "I'm looking for Leopoldo Zorilla."

"I have not heard of this man," said the bartender, elaborately polishing his countertop. Too elaborately, Remo thought.

"I hear he lives around here," Remo said, laying down a twenty.

Disdainfully, the bartender swiped it away with his rag. "Senor, you perhaps hear wrong."

Remo looked around. Dark, liquid eyes glowered at him. He felt like Chuck Connors in a Rifleman rerun.

"Why do I get the feeling that we're being snowed?" he undertoned to the Master of Sinanju.

"Because we are," said Chiun.

"It would be good advice if you were to leave, senor," the bartender said pointedly.

"That is good advice," Remo returned lightly. "Guess I'll just keep asking around until I find my man," he added in a loud voice.

As they walked from the smoky bar, Remo and Chiun felt eyes on their backs. No one followed them out.

"Where do we ask next?" asked Chiun, looking around suspiciously.

"Nowhere," Remo said. "We just walk around." He started walking. Chiun followed.

"What will that accomplish?"

"Right now, that bartender is probably calling Zorilla or someone connected with Zorilla. We won't have to find him. His people will find us."

It took less than fifteen minutes.

They were about to cross a busy intersection when a large white Cadillac pulled in front of them. A black Buick slid in behind them.

"Jackpot," Remo whispered.

Doors popped open and bulky-shouldered men emerged, wielding short-barreled Uzis and other easily concealable automatic weapons.

"Jou seek Zorilla?" one demanded. He wore a plain gold hoop in one ear, making him resemble a well-tanned buccaneer.

"Word gets around," Remo said casually.

"Why jou seek Zorilla?"

"Only Zorilla gets to ask me that question."

Hard eyes looked them over carefully. Remo folded his arms. In his T-shirt and tight chinos, it was obvious that he carried no weapon larger than a concealed blade or flat .22 pistol.

The Master of Sinanju had been walking with his hands tucked out of sight in the joined sleeves of his ebony kimono. He was invited to bring his hands into plain view.

Chiun replied with a single pungent Spanish word that stung the faces of the men aiming at him.

Harsh Spanish spilled out. Chiun lashed back with short, declarative sentences.

Uneasily, the men looked to one another. Finally, in English, one said, "Jou will come with us."

"Suits us," Remo said easily.

They were herded into the back of the Cadillac. A man took the wheel and another, the front passenger seat. The latter turned in his seat and pointed his Uzi so that Remo and Chiun were covered.

"No fonny business," he warned. "Or pop-pop-pop-pop. "

Remo smiled back at him. "Sounds pretty brave, coming from a guy who took the death seat."

The Cadillac peeled off. The black Buick followed. Remo settled down for the ride.

"What did you tell them, Little Father?" Remo asked the Master of Sinanju as the ride lengthened. "I called them motherless sons of worthless fathers." "I've heard wore." "But they have not," Chiun said smugly.

Chapter 8

When Leopoldo Zorilla received the warning telephone call, he was drilling his soldiers in a remote corner of the Big Cypress Swamp. They were excellent soldiers-young, strong and fiercely willed. Destined to be liberators. They would form the nucleus of the New Cuban Army, and he was proud of them.

Yet they also reminded Zorilla that, sadly, he was no longer the young man he once was.

Not that Leopoldo Zorilla was old. He was, in truth, barely forty. But forty years of living on Castro-held Cuba had taken their toll on his erect body. There was not enough flesh on his bones, from improper diet, and his eyes were sunken. Even his mustache appeared sunken-the result of too much sugar and not enough meat and vegetables. The teeth he had retained were black with metal.

He let the soldiers exhaust their weapons against the targets-staked dummies, each dressed in olivedrab that bulged at the belt line and each with a Castro beard adorning its blank, chubby face.

"Fire above the beard!" he commanded. "Between the beard and the hat. That is your target. The flabby flesh between."

The men reloaded their Belgian-made FAL rifles and fired again. Instantly, the blank white areas collected sprinklings of holes that, had any of the dummies been the true Maximum Leader, would have splashed his brains back out of his head and into the eternal night.

An orderly came huffing up.

"A telephone call, Comandante."

Leopoldo Zorilla turned smartly, ever the military man. He had been a deputy air commander in the Cuban Air Force, and now he was a full commander in the army-in-training that would replace the Cuban Revolutionary Army.

"Who is it?" he demanded.

"It is Pepe. He says that two men seek you in Miami."

"What men?"

"I do not know, Comandante."

"Carry on," he told the orderly, and stormed into the barracks building, a converted tobacco-drying shack in the sprawling tangle of swamp called Big Cypress.

The cellular phone lay off the hook in his makeshift office.

"Pepe," he said gruffly. "What is this about two men?"

"They just left, Comandante. They ask for jou by name, but I tell them nothin'."

"Who were they?"

"An Anglo. The other was Asian. They were not dressed like FBI or any other government person I could name."

Zorilla frowned. "Hmmm. Who might they be?"

"They said they would comb Miami for jou, Comandante."

"There is no need for them to go to that trouble," said Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla. "Have them brought here."

"Is that wise?"

"We are too close to B-Day to allow the authorities to interfere with us."

"They did not look like authorities," Pepe pointed out.

"All the better. Have them brought here. Now."

"Si, Comandante."

After Leopoldo Zorilla hung up, he unbuttoned the back pocket of his camouflage pants. He took out a sealed pack of chewing gum. It was decorated with the cartoon head of a mouse. The mouse reminded Zorilla of home. Even though it was an American mouse, TeleRebelde regularly showed his famous cartoons to all of Cuba. First by means of old preRevolution films, and later, as the technology changed, by downlinking transmissions from U.S. TV satellites. Fidel had boasted of his ability to pirate U.S. TV without subjecting Cubans to annoying commercials, but never mentioned that the people were forced to watch Soviet TV sets that often exploded without warning.

He could remember how unhappy the copyright owners of the cartoon mouse had been. They explored every avenue of legal recourse open to them. But American lawyers were not welcome in the Cuban Revolutionary courts and they were reduced to sending impatient letters demanding payment, and warning of the accumulating charges that would be presented to the Cuban government if it ever rejoined the free world.

Zorilla smiled at the memory. Now that the time approached, the copyright owners would finally collect. With interest.

For now, he placed the pack of chicle in his blouse pocket where it would be handy. It promised to be a long night, and filled with uncertainties. With unknown snoopers coming, he might well need it.

Leopoldo checked his watch. It was near eleven. Time for his injection.

He cursed the business of the needle and what it contained, but there was no help for it. Years of living in Cuba had brought his once invincible body to this sad state of affairs.

He opened a drawer and charged the needle from a stoppered bottle. He used a rubber band to block his arm veins. They bulged up blue and thick, and he discharged the contents of the needle into the most wormlike of them. He swabbed the pinprick wound with a bit of cotton dipped in alcohol.

It stung. With the stinging, he lavishly cursed the Leader of the Revolution, who had made him so dependent on the needle.

The prisoners arrived after midnight.

Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla went out to greet them. He clasped his hands behind his back and addressed the pair.

"You have sought me, and I stand before you now," he said simply.

Then he got a close look at them. The Anglo appeared quite ordinary, except for the exceptional thickness of his wrists. He had a lean, hard look about him. His nationality was difficult to ascertain. The Mediterranean was stamped on his moderately handsome features and lurked in his dark eyes. But his skin was pale.

There was, as he had been told, an Asian. He had not been told the Asian's age. He looked .. . advanced. Surely, Zorilla thought, these were not agents of any government who disagreed with what had been planned.

"Who are you two men?" he demanded, as they stood before him.

Weapons were trained on them. The pair seemed oblivious to their dark-mawed threat.

The Anglo looked around. He saw the dummies on the posts, with their blank white faces spilling cotton stuffing like bleached brain matter.

"Looks like we've found our Cuban invasion force," he remarked to his Asian companion.

"For once," the other murmured, "you have hatched a plan that has worked." Then, looking at the uniform Zorilla wore, he asked, "What are you supposed to be?"

Zorilla drew himself erect. "I am a soldier of the Americas!"

The Anglo asked the Asian a foolish question. "What's that supposed to mean?"

The Asian said, "He is a Spaniard. They are very proud. In the days of the Spanish kings, the soldiers boasted that they were soldiers of Spain. This one has fallen from that lofty perch, like a haughty eagle that has grown too fat for the branch, so now he is a mere soldier of this mongrel continent."

"You insult me?" Zorilla demanded.

"The uniform does that," the Asian sniffed.

"Who sent you to seek me?" Zorilla asked tightly.

"Uncle Sam," replied the Anglo with cool insolence.

Leopoldo Zorilla blinked. "Truly?" he asked.

"Definitely," the Anglo said.

"Por que?"

"That means, 'Why?' " interjected the Asian.

"Because he's not happy with the way things are going down Havana way, that's why," said the Anglo.

Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla then lost command of himself.

"It was unforeseen, what happened!" he said quickly. "Our scouts landed with the dawn, when the sentries are less alert. Nevertheless, they were captured. It was regrettable. We did not know that Fidel would respond so harshly. But that is the nature of the man. Please tell Uncle Sam for me that Ultima Hora remains firmly on the agreed-upon timetable."

The Anglo took this with less grace than Comandante Zorilla expected.

He and the Asian exchanged blank looks, and then the Anglo said, "You telling me that Uncle Sam put you up to this?"

"You know this. For he sent you."

"Yeah, but the Uncle Sam who sent me didn't know anything about any Cuban operation," the Anglo insisted.

"He did not?"

"In fact, he specifically asked me to find out who was behind the operation."

"Uncle Sam asked this of you?" asked Zorilla.

"Maybe it was a different Uncle Sam," the Anglo offered.

"What other Uncle Sam is there?" Zorilla shot back.

"Good point," said the Anglo, frowning. "I know of just the one."

Comandante Zorilla grew concerned.

"What is your name?" he demanded.

"Call me Remo."

"Ah, Remo. A good Spanish name."

"It is?" the one called Remo said, surprised.

"It means 'oar,' " the Asian whispered.

"It does?" Remo said, astonished.

The Asian nodded sagely. "In Italian, as well."

"Who would name his son 'Oar'?" Remo wanted to know.

"A parent who would then leave his son on a doorstep," Chiun countered.

"You leave my parents out of this!"

"Why not? They left you out of their lives."

Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla looked to his men, who held their FAL rifles on the bickering pair. They shrugged, as if to say, "We do not understand these strange ones, either."

Zorilla shrugged in reply. He listened as the argument grew loud. Loud and harsh on the Anglo's side, and loud and squeaky on the Asian's. Zorilla studied them carefully. These men had said they had been sent by Uncle Sam, but they were not dressed in the business suits of the agents of Uncle Sam. They were cool, nearly oblivious to the threat of the weapons arrayed around them. Perhaps they were stupid, Zorilla thought.

Then, as the argument lapsed into a tongue Zorilla neither recognized nor understood, he began to wonder if it was possible they were not who they claimed to be.

"You will cease this noise!" he thundered.

The argument went on.

"Hombres! Quiet them!"

The rifle barrels were poked between the men, as if to separate them. The pair argued on, unconcerned.

Then the rifles were used to prod the two arguing ones.

Hands so fast they left no blurs in the night air rendered the weapons useless.

This was how Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla saw it:

The rifle muzzles were poked forward.

They never touched the bodies they were intended to prod. Instead his soldiers jumped back, as if startled by the unexpected sound that came from their muzzles.

It was not an explosive sound. Not even the click of chambers being charged.

The sound was more of a runk! Like a steel goose honking in the night.

The sound was what made his soldiers recoil, weapons coming up in their hands. The right-angle bend in their barrels was what made their eyes go round in their heads.

Leopoldo Zorilla changed his mind again. These men, for all their odd appearance and odder behavior, were highly trained professionals. He had never seen the likes of them before.

Wordlessly, he signaled his soldados to break up the argument.

The men, who were left clutching maimed weapons, startled expressions making their faces clownlike, retreated as the replacements came in.

Runk!

These too, stepped back, as if they had poked their barrels into the whirling blades of the most powerful fan ever constructed. But there was no fan. The pair seemed not to touch the weapons at any time. They merely used their hands to gesticulate angrily at one another. At no time did they appear to reach out and actually touch the rifle barrels. But this was the only explanation, that they were using their hands to create this wonder.

It is either that, Zorilla concluded, or they are protected by personal force-fields.

The thought, wild as it was, intrigued Leopoldo Zorilla. He lifted his open and weaponless fingers and inched them toward the Anglo named Remo, as if he were an electrician approaching a possibly live wire.

He received a shock that was no different.

It was not electrical in nature, but his fingers stung very suddenly. Zorilla withdrew them and looked at his fingertips.

The nails were already turning black, the way they had once when he had tried to fix a broken window in his Santiago de Cuba comandancia.

The upper casement had slammed down, catching the tips of his fingers. Within days the nails had blackened, eventually to fall off, leaving a black, gritty substance resembling crushed coal that was probably dried, trapped blood.

The pain this time was not nearly as intense, but the fingernails were already blackening and Zorilla felt them go numb.

"Are you injured, Comandante?" a corporal asked worriedly.

"Silence these two!" Zorilla ordered, a slow-traveling pain moving from the area of numbness up his arm and to his central nervous system. It was like a delayed pain. It shot through his muscles suddenly, and his teeth clamped down so hard he distinctly heard a bicuspid break.

This time, his soldados went to work in earnest. They brought the butts of their rifles around and prepared to club the still arguing pair apart.

This, apparently, was enough to make the pair notice that they were under attack.

This time, Zorilla could see their hands at work. Their feet as well. Kneecaps cracked like seashells. Fingers were bent backward, against the natural flex of the knuckle. Men were flying. Rifles cartwheeled from nerveless hands.

In seconds, the cream of his New Cuban Army was standing about as he: clutching injured members, or squirming in the dirt, weaponless and conquered.

The Anglo said, "Our information is that Uncle Sam has nothing to do with this little boot camp here."

"Your information is wrong," Zorilla muttered through pain-tightened teeth. A bloody chunk of tooth enamel dribbled from his mouth.

"What do you think, Chiun?" the Anglo asked the Asian.

"You have asked the question wrongly," said the Asian named Chiun.

And the Asian proceeded to ask the question in a unique manner.

He said not a word. He used the long, spidery nails of his right hand, which gleamed like curled ivory. He took Zorilla by the point of his chin and, neither exerting obvious pressure nor inflicting additional pain-not that any was needed-used that chin as a handle to bring Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla to his knees in the dirt like an effeminate maricon.

"You command this ragtag army?" he demanded.

"I do," Zorilla admitted through his teeth.

"And who commands you?"

"Uncle Sam."

"Liar!"

"I swear it is the truth! I serve Uncle Sam!"

"Satisfied?" the one called Remo asked.

"Pah!" said the one called Chiun. "We have been sent on a wild weasel quest."

"Wild goose chase, and right about now I think discretion would be the better part of valor."

"Meaning?"

"We'd better check with Smith."

"Who is Smith?" asked Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla, at the exact moment before the lights went out and he knew no more.

Chapter 9

Harold Smith was very close to falling asleep.

National security depended upon Harold Smith's remaining awake, alert, and in contact with the developing situation. Yet he found himself nodding off.

It was night over Long Island Sound. The moon was high and full, and its silver effulgence washed the dark pimpled water like a luminous bleach.

The light poured through the one-way picture window behind his Folcroft desk. It was made of one-way glass so that no one could look in on the office, over Smith's shoulder, and read the computer screen that often displayed the deepest secrets of America.

The overhead lights were fluorescent, and shook the air.

Except for the medical staff and security guards, Folcroft slept. Only Smith, in the administrative wing, was working.

He was at his desk. The CURE terminal was up and running. On a corner of the pathologically neat desk sat a tiny black-and-white television set. It was turned to a network channel.

The bearded face of El Lider animated the screen. Smith had the sound turned up. Still, even with the sound of that raging voice, he could barely keep his eyes open.

"Does that man ever stop?" he complained, catching himself nod off for the fifteenth time.

The situation in Washington remained tense. After the MIG interception over the Gulf of Mexico, there had been nothing from the President. Smith continued to watch the seemingly endless Castro speech. The networks, having been overwhelmed in South Florida by the more powerful signal from Havana, had made matters worse by repeating the signal to affiliates all over the nation, with a running translation at the bottom. It was certain to heighten tensions, but nothing could be done about it.

No doubt, Harold Smith reflected as he put eye drops into his bleary gray eyes in an attempt to keep them open, the President was working the phones in an effort to convince the networks to downplay the interruption of regular programming.

In the meantime, it was all Smith could do to stay awake. For all his bluster, Castro and his tirade were having a soporific effect on him. But he dared not shut off the set while there was a possibility the networks would break in with an important bulletin.

So, while the Maximum Leader of Cuba ranted on about the Cuban people being willing to eat their shoes and pick their teeth with the nails rather than turn away from Socialism, Harold Smith continued to monitor his computer, waiting for word from Remo and Chiun.

It came when the blue contact telephone began ringing.

"Yes, Remo," Smith said, replacing his rimless glasses.

"We got a problem, Smitty."

A surge of adrenaline perked Harold Smith up in his cracked leather executive's chair.

"What is it?" Smith asked, his voice lemon-bitter.

"We found Zorilla. All tricked out in his soldier suit, ramrodding a paramilitary outfit in the Big Cypress Swamp."

"Good. You have interrogated him?"

"Yep. "

"And?"

"That's the problem, Smitty. You'd better check back with the President."

"Why?"

"According to Zorilla, Uncle Sam's behind the whole thing."

"He said that?"

"He did. With Chiun squeezing every syllable from him. So he has to be telling the truth."

"I understand," said Smith, his gray-hued face going ashen.

Remo asked, "So what do we do? Back off until you clear this up?"

"One moment, Remo," said Smith. Cradling the blue receiver between jaw and shoulder, he attacked his keyboard. As he worked, he continued speaking.

"If there is a covert U.S. Cuban invasion in the works, it has to be a CIA operation," he muttered.

"Sounds about right to me."

"I am entering their central computer net right now."

"Don't startle any sleeping spooks," Remo said dryly.

"They have no idea I am in their system. I have super-user status."

"Goody for you," Remo said in an impatient voice.

Smith entered the deepest recesses of the CIA system. He executed a global search of keywords. "CUBA" brought up only intelligence intercepts and contingency plans.

"ULTIMA HORA" produced nothing more than raw intelligence.

"CASTRO" summoned up such an endless file of assassination senarios that Smith was forced to log off out of sheer impatience.

He broke contact and turned in his squeaking chair.

"Remo," he said, thin-lipped. "This is not a CIA operation. There is no active scenario fitting the description on file."

"Who said it has to be on computer?" Remo asked reasonably.

"Everything is on computer these days."

"Then it's somebody else. Isn't the President heavily involved in the Cuban exile community? Through his son?"

"Remo," Smith pointed out, "the President suggested this assignment."

"Maybe to cover his butt," suggested Remo.

"Remo," Smith countered, "the President would not put you and Chiun on the trail of these people if he had a stake in their eventual success. I have explained the situation to you. Cuba is hands-off. We do not wish to ruffle the Russian bear's fur."

"Are they still a bear?" Remo wondered. "I thought they were just cubs now."

"Never mind," Smith said. "Give me five minutes." And he hung up.

Smith cleared his throat and lifted the red receiver. The dedicated direct line opened automatically, causing a matching red telephone in the Lincoln Bedroom to begin ringing.

As he waited, Smith turned down the sound of Fidel Castro haranguing a world that no longer had a place for him.

The President's voice was hushed when it came on the line. "Smith. Progress?" he hissed.

"Slight progress. We have located the comandante of the operation. He is a Cuban defector."

"Good."

"He insists that Washington is behind his efforts."

"That is insane! Unless . . . unless there's a rogue CIA effort under way."

"Not possible, Mr. President," Smith said crisply. "I have just gone through the CIA computer net. It is devoid of any such operation. Furthermore, the agency itself shows no activity or message traffic that would be consistent with the management of an ongoing operation of this magnitude."

"You have access to CIA files?" the President said, blank wonder in his tone.

"Part of the mission, Mr. President."

The President's voice grew disturbed. "Did you have it when I was in charge over there?"

"You may conclude that if you wish," Smith said flatly. "But the matter at hand is what should concern us now."

"Of course. Obviously this Cuban defector is lying through his teeth."

"Impossible. He has been subjected to an interrogation technique that is one-hundred-percent irresistible."

"But he implicated Washington," the President of the United States pointed out.

"Specifically, Uncle Sam."

"That could be anyone from a renegade senator to-"

"-to a person with high connections claiming to be operating with presidential sanction," Smith finished.

"Good point. But who?"

"Mr. President, I must ask you this question in the name of national security. You have a son who is active in the Cuban community in Miami. Can you vouch for his recent activities?"

Indignation rose in the President's tone. "I certainly can."

"If you are certain, that is enough for me," Smith said.

"Good," the President said tightly.

"Still," Smith went on, "it might be advisable to get him out of Florida if he happens to be there now."

"Why?"

"Because I am about to order my enforcement arm to terminate everyone connected with this operation."

"I didn't hear that."

"Contact your son, Mr. President. I am about to pull the plug on Ultima Hora forever."

Smith hung up and checked on the progress of the Castro speech. He was in the "History Will Absolve Me" phase. That meant the speech was coming to a climax. No more than an hour remained.

The blue contact phone rang and Smith brought the handset to his grim gray face.

"Remo," he said. "I want you and Chiun to render Ultima Hora completely and totally immobile."

"That mean what I think it means?" Remo asked.

"It does."

"And Zorilla?"

"Make sure he wakes up among the fallen."

"Yeah?"

"Then follow him to whoever he reports to."

"And lead us to his control, right?"

Smith sighed. "Let us hope. Otherwise, knowing the U.S. news media, Fidel Castro will become the next Bart Simpson."

"Huh?"

"His speech is into its fifth hour, with every network and CNN carrying it live with subtitles."

"For crying out loud, why?"

"I believe it is sweeps month," Smith said sourly. "Report when you have penetrated the next echelon."

Smith hung up. He turned up the sound. As he watched the bearded man rant on, his mind went back over the years.

The President of Cuba had been a thorn in the side of the United States for as long as Harold Smith had been sitting at this anonymous desk. Longer. Smith had once been a CIA bureaucrat, and Castro had been a CIA obsession even in those early days. Smith had been privvy to the Bay of Pigs plan, and his advice that the operation was ill conceived and would prove counterproductive if not carried out correctly was pointedly ignored.

The ultimate failure of the operation had made Smith a man with an uncertain future at the CIA. Then had come the summons to the White House and the offer to head the agency that did not exist.

Within a year, the young President had been assassinated. To this day, there were those who pointed the finger of blame for that heinous act at Havana.

But Smith wasn't thinking of that. He was thinking of the global turmoil this one driven individual had caused. The Cuban Missile Crisis had simply been the earliest and most dangerous incident.

Smith knew, because recent revelations had brought it to light, that Havana had attempted to egg the Soviet Union's Khrushchev into nuking the U.S. to protect a tiny island that had never contributed anything more important to the world than sugar and tobacco, one that had been built on the slave trade and was the last in the Western hemisphere to renounce it.

The memory made Harold Smith shudder. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. nuking themselves, and human civilization, into hot smoking ash-over a useless green speck in the Caribbean. All because of one man's rabid antiAmericanism.

Smith thought of the events of his life since 1961, of the people who had been born, the scientific and cultural achievements of mankind. None of them Cuban. And none of them would have happened had Havana gotten its way.

While the first man was walking on the moon, Havana was overturning elected governments in Latin America and Africa. While human hearts were first being successfully transplanted, Castro was ordering Cuban cows to mate with zebu in defiance of elementary genetic logic, in an insane gambit designed to produce an animal that produced both meat and milk.

On the television screen, Fidel Castro shook his fist and dripped spittle onto his iron-gray beard. One man. One madman. From Attila the Hun to Adolf Hitler, it was usually one power-crazed lunatic who piled up the most bodies.

Perhaps he had made a mistake in not ordering the man terminated years ago, after CURE had gotten its enforcement arm.

Now it was too late. By presidential decree, CURE could not undertake that task. It shouldn't even have been necessary. The Cold War was over.

Yet there he was: the last Cold Warrior, trying to push the world to the brink once more ....

Chapter 10

Remo left the out-of-the-way gas station pay phone off the loop road, with a slow look of uncertainty settling over his lean features.

The Master of Sinanju saw this as his pupil approached their rented car.

"You are troubled," he said.

Remo eased behind the wheel. "Smith just ordered Ultima Hora hit."

"What is so troubling about this? They are enemies of the Emperor. They live to die."

"No," said Remo, starting the car. "They are Cuban patriots. All they want is to take back their homeland. Nothing wrong with that." He sent the car running down the long tunnel of a Spanish moss-overhung road. "We're supposed to be on the same side."

"They are pawns," Chiun said coldly. "As are you."

"Maybe. But I thought this kind of crap went out with the Cold War."

"If you wish, I will dispatch them."

"You will?"

Chiun raised a wise finger. "But you must tell Smith you accounted for some of the vanquished."

"Why?"

"Because while I wish the credit, I am negotiating a contract for your services as well. You must demonstrate your worth."

"I haven't done so badly this far," Remo growled, swerving to avoid a road-crossing armadillo.

"For a white. A parentless white."

"Get off that kick. And while you're dismounting, how about clueing me in on the bone that's caught in Smith's throat?"

"What is this you ask?"

"The sticking point in the contract. It's gotta be pretty big."

"If you must know, I am seeking a new residence. One worthy of our station in this ugly land."

"Yeah?"

"One with battlements and great stonework and other accoutrements befitting our worth."

Remo's bright expression darkened. "Sounds like Dracula's castle. Where is this place?"

"It is a surprise."

"Uh-huh."

They drove along in tight silence. At length, the Master of Sinanju broke it.

"What do you think of this province?" he asked.

"Florida?"

"Whatever it is called," Chiun said with a vague wave.

"Well, it's hot and steamy where it's not dank and swampy, heat rash is a big problem, the cockroaches are almost indestructible but not as bad as the snakes and gators, and there are the hurricanes."

Chiun looked over. "You prefer a northern clime?"

"Just so long as we're talking south of the North Pole," Remo said.

"My native Korea is not hot like this place. But one could get used to the heat. If one had a suitable cool place in which to dwell."

"Castles aren't cool. They're dank."

"The castle I would dwell in will be cool," Chiun sniffed. They followed their headlights back into the swamp. When the road petered out, they got out and started across the swampy terrain. The air was moist yet unseasonably cool. Katydids chirred amid the bullfrog croakings. Red eyes low in the water told of lurking gators.

The Master of Sinanju's black silk kimono became a flitting thing in the darkness, like an ebony bat on wing. Remo, also in black, moved easily between the cypress trees, avoiding when he could the watery sloughs and, at all costs, the black, sucking muck. Even in the water, their feet made no sound warning of their approach.

A bull alligator, like a floating log, turned up in their path.

The Master of Sinanju simply stepped onto his ridged reptilian back and, pausing only to drive a heel into his skull, moved on.

Remo leaped onto the gator's back and off again before it could sink in death.

The moon ghosted out of a thin boil of fast-moving cloud cover, and just as swiftly fell behind a patch of haze to shine, mistily and eerily quiet, through a dome of Spanish moss-draped cypress.

Remo and Chiun paused when the moonlight found them. They waited. In the silence, an egret took wing.

When the moon had faded behind fatter clouds, and the deep of the night returned, they resumed their silent progress.

The base camp of Ultima Hora was a dry highland surrounded by mangrove-festooned sentries, standing ankle-deep in stagnant water.

The Master of Sinanju drifted up to one of these men and broke his neck with a short chop to the base of his skull.

Remo caught the body and held the head underwater until the last air bubbles had ceased tailing upward.

They moved on, unchallenged.

The first time they were escorted to the camp, the guards had been clustered together, waiting to escort them in.

This time they were spread out in a circle surrounding the base camp. A common defensive posture, and one Sinanju had long since learned to defeat.

"Walk the circle," Chiun intoned.

With a silent nod passing between them, Remo went north, and Chiun south.

Each time they encountered a guard, they took him down. Not a shot was gotten off. Then they met at the opposite point of the circle. It took all of three minutes.

"The circle is closed," Chiun intoned.

Remo bowed.

They moved into the base camp.

There was no rattle of gunfire. The Castro dummies lay slumped on their stakes, faces torn, mossy beards askew.

Remo and Chiun moved in utter silence, their every sense alert.

All human signs of life seemed to be clustered in the tobacco-drying shed.

"I will go ahead," Chiun said. "You will guard."

Remo hesitated. His face stone, he said, "No."

Chiun turned.

"This must be done," he said coldly.

"It will be," Remo agreed. "By both of us."

The Master of Sinanju nodded quietly. Together they advanced.

Then, without warning, came the rip and pop of automatic weapons fire.

Splintery holes pocked the rude sides of the shack. The incessant chirr of katydids fell still.

The two Masters of Sinanju dropped flat on the dry ground.

Rounds whistled through the Spanish moss, making clip clip clip sounds punctuated by the creak and snap of fractured cypress branches.

"Sounds like we have a firefight on our hands," Remo growled.

Without warning, a door banged open. Remo and Chiun froze, two black shadows against the dark mossy earth.

Out of the powder smoke came a man, his body awash in the metallic scent familiar to assassin and soldier alike.

Blood.

The man paused on the open veranda, yanking an empty clip from his FAL rifle and slapping home a fresh one. He set the butt plate against his hip, moving the barrel this way and that with casual confidence.

They watched his face. It resembled sculpted brown rock inset with two black eyes that held no more expression than the buttons on an old coat. Shadows made his identity impossible to ascertain.

Nothing happened.

"Is he such a fool, that he thinks we will show ourselves?" Chiun undertoned.

"I don't think he's waiting for us," Remo said.

The wrinkled face of the Master of Sinanju grew more wrinkled still. His hazel eyes narrowed, like those of a thoughtful cat.

The salt scent of blood hung in the moist, humid air like a portent.

Chiun nodded. Remo knew then that he understood.

They waited.

The man in the camouflage uniform stepped off the shack step reluctantly and strode out into the night. A stray shaft of moonlight caught his face and they could see him clearly.

Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla. His eyes were hard, but a sad moistness hung far back in their liquid depths.

He strode out into the swamp and, like two fugitive rags, Remo and Chiun followed.

Zorilla moved with the stealth of a trained soldier.

But to the two Masters of Sinanju, he might have been an elephant dancing on its hind legs. His boots made rude splashes and crinkled undergrowth. Insects and frogs darted from his path, to come to resting places that were not abandoned even as Remo and Chiun moved stealthily by them.

Zorilla came upon the first fallen sentry. He muttered something under his breath. Then he moved on, searching.

When every body had been found, his manner grew strained. He walked more slowly now, with less care, but with long strides that turned his body a complete revolution every few feet so that the FAL muzzle, like a radar antenna, could sweep the night all around him.

They followed him to a point behind the dry hump of land, a stretch of seemingly open water. Yet Zorilla strode into it seemingly without fear of the cottonmouth moccasins that glided along, leaving V-shaped wakes.

His soldier's boots barely sank into the water.

They followed, staying low.

At the mangrove clump where Zorilla had stepped into the water, they paused.

Remo slipped a hand into the stagnant water. It was warm, pungent with life. Barely an inch beneath the surface, he felt the sliminess of submerged wood.

"Walkway," he said softly.

The Master of Sinanju nodded. Without a word of communication, they slipped beneath the water and moved through it with the soundlessness of swimming manatees.

Eyes adjusting to the lack of light, they used their ears to follow their quarry. His boots made the walkway creak, and the sound carried perfectly.

A cottonmouth, gliding along the surface, suddenly dropped toward Remo like a coil of discarded rope, its jaws distending.

Remo reached up and grasped its head, forcing the jaws together and the brittle skull apart. He released the limp reptile, shedding a cloud of blackish blood, and swam on.

When the ground began to slope upward they hung back, releasing air bubbles one at a time, three per minute, so as not to betray their position.

The creaking ceased, so they let their natural buoyancy carry them surfaceward.

Two heads broke the calm swamp surface as one. Two pairs of eyes scanned the night.

They saw a lone figure vanish between tangles of cypress, and not long after heard the sound of a car engine disturb the night. Headlight glare flared and then swept around, casting elongated shadows that made the world seem to be turning on a plate before their eyes.

"Let's go," Remo said.

They left the water erect, not seeming to hurry but moving with urgent speed nonetheless.

They found the road and spied the retreating headlights.

They were other vehicles parked there. Cars. Trucks. They picked one of the former. Remo popped the ignition with a skill picked up in the Newark streets of long ago, and soon they were following the car at a careful distance, lights doused.

They drove with a wide silence between them.

Remo broke it after a while.

"My money says Zorilla wiped out Ultima Hora."

"You may keep your money," Chiun said.

"He must have woken up and called someone."

"Obviously he woke up."

"That someone heard we were sniffing around, and ordered the operation terminated," Remo went on.

"A wise someone."

"This still smells of the CIA to me."

"I only smell blood and the lack of proper credit," said Chiun.

"Those guys back there were patriots," Remo said bitingly. "I don't care what anyone says."

His dark eyes, fixed on the moss-draped road ahead, were like pools of death.

"We may be on the same side, but I want the guy who gave that order."

"Beware of what you hope for."

"Why?"

"Because you may receive it," said Chiun, his yellowed visage tight with the wise webs of his years.

Chapter 11

Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla drove north through the Florida chill without expression. His face was stoic. He was a man. A Cuban man. As such, he was machismo personified.

Machismo left no room for regrets, never mind tears.

Still, the tears came. He could not help them. He was a soldier true. And a soldier followed orders.

But to slaughter his own men? The hope of Cuba's future? He let the tears flow. For Guillermo the brave. For Fulgencio the sly. Young men who knew Cuba only from TV travelogues and tales told by fathers and uncles. Young men who would liberate Cuba and return it to the welcoming arms of the world.

Caught unprepared, they had died shamefully. They never dreamed their own commander would turn on them and slaughter them so cruelly.

It had happened after they had aroused him from his state of unconsciousness.

"Que? What happened?" he asked.

"It was the two. The Anglo and the other," had said Jose. He of the quick smile and killer eyes. "They did this. We could not stop them, comandante mio."

"Why not?"

Ruefully, they displayed their injured hands.

"We can no longer hold our rifles, comandante," Roberto said miserably.

Zorilla was helped to his feet. He examined their fingers. Some were broken. The trigger fingers. It was as if these intruders who claimed to have been sent by Uncle Sam had set out to maim them.

"Give me a rifle," said Comandante Zorilla.

They scrounged up a single FAL whose barrel had not been bent.

He took them out to the target range and tested each of them. They could not squeeze triggers, except with their thumbs. Not that they did not try. They nearly shot one another trying, for they were very determined, this new generation of Cuban youth. At that moment, Zorilla felt a sad wave of pride in them.

When the last had failed even to strike a target, they stood about like castrated bulls, droopy of shoulder and morose of eye. Men. But not warriors. Some furtively brushed tears of shame from their eyes.

"What will we do?" asked one.

Zorilla had to clear his throat twice before he could answer. "I must contact Uncle Sam."

They all agreed this was for the best. Comandante Zorilla left them to deal, hot-eyed, with the pain in their Cuban hearts while he made the telephone call.

In the privacy of the tobacco shack he dialed the number that existed, unextractable, in his trained memory and no place else.

"Zorilla reporting," he said stiffly.

"Go ahead," a gringo voice said. There were orange blossoms in that voice. It was mellow, and laced with the mild southern accents of Florida.

"Ultima Hora must stand down."

"Repeat report."

"Ultima Hora has been rendered ineffective by two agents."

"Agents of whom?"

"They say Uncle Sam send them."

"Describe these agents."

Zorilla rattled off the descriptions with spare clarity.

"One moment," said the mellow phone voice.

The line hummed. Bullfrogs croaked in the swamp, and the tireless katydids made reedy music.

The clicking signaled the return of his immediate contact.

"Uncle Sam sent no agents. Repeat, the two you describe are unknown unfriendlies."

"The timetable must be abandoned until my men can heal."

"Negative. Timetable cannot be shelved. The MIG incident is driving events now."

"But what do I do?"

"Ultima Hora was first wave."

"I know. I am heartsick."

"Redundancy has been built into the plan. A new first wave must be set in place, and trained by you."

"But what will I tell my men? They live for this."

"We have to assume training camp compromised irrevocably. Return to headquarters for debriefing and new orders."

"But my men . . ."

"Must be decruited."

Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla's eyes went stark.

The code word had been agreed upon. Zorilla had agreed to the "decruitment" option. But never had he believed he would be forced to implement it.

"But-"

"You are a soldier. Execute instructions and report for further duty. Word comes directly from Uncle Sam."

"Si, si," muttered Comandante Zorilla into the suddenly dead telephone. Through the rush of blood to his ringing ears he never heard the receiver click.

Woodenly, he hung up, adjusted his insignia-less uniform, and picked up the sole working rifle within the sentry perimeter.

He called in his men, stood them at attention, and with the suddenly too-heavy rifle held loose in the crook of his arm like a duck hunter's, began a speech.

It was a long speech. About duty, about honor, about Zorilla's deep feelings for his men. There was sadness in his voice as he spoke, sadness in the faces of his soldiers. They knew they were to be taken off active duty. A few flinched. They steeled themselves for the actual words when their comandante, circling them on dull feet, lifted his rifle and let the shameful bullets erupt one at a time.

They fell in the time it took for a string of firecrackers to become torn red paper.

It was necessary. It was also shameful. Because he could not bear to see the looks in their wounded eyes, Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla had shot them all in the back.

Then he had gone out into the night to silence the sentries. Finding them already dead, he had fled.

And now he drove through the frosty Florida night, the firefly-like love bugs bouncing off his windshield, making noises like castoff peanut shells caught in a windstorm.

The sound reminded him of the sand against the windows of his comandancia office back in Santiago de Cuba.

There, Comandante Zorilla had been Deputy Comandante Zorilla of the Cuban Air Force. He had been a boy the day Fidel had taken the capital.

It had been a jubilant day, and when Fidel had put the nation under arms, Zorilla, a teenager, had been glad to shoulder them. On each May Day he had taken up an actual rifle and shot at rocks along Jibacoa Beach, pretending they were the helmets of crawling Yanqui Marines.

It was an exciting time to be Cuban.

He enlisted in the Air Force when he came of age. Flew patrols and escorts for Soviet ships. Then-Capitain Zorilla had been so valuable a pilot that they would not send him to Angola to support Socialism there.

It had been the bitterest of disappointments. Until his comrades began to filter back, telling tales of African ingratitude and the wasted lives spent defending a nation that did not care about itself, never mind Cuban sacrifice.

Capitain Zorilla had dismissed these grumblings, for he believed.

He believed even as Cuba peaked in the mid-1970s, all the while suffering horrendous losses in its fight for ungrateful peoples all over Africa.

He believed through the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, because Fidel had told him this was no superpower adventure, but a necessary defense of Socialism. Even as the Hind gunships massacred simple goatherds, Fidel had vowed this.

He believed when younger Cubans were sent to Grenada and were hurled back like toothpicks, heartless and cowardly, by U.S. Rangers.

He continued to believe as, one by one, the Warsaw Bloc fell, not to aggression or war, but to internal discontent and ineptitude.

Slowly, Leopoldo Zorilla had been forced to surrender his ideals. He visited Havana every year. Every year Havana remained static, the streets choked with inferior Soviet cars and proud pre-revolutionary American cars. The buildings decayed and declined. And no new buildings were built. It was as if Havana-and all of Cuba-were frozen in the late 1950s, not progressing, only deteriorating.

The rations grew steadily worse. Meats became scarce. The Berlin Wall fell. Germany was reunited. The world was at last emerging from a long political Dark Age.

Yet the regime only grew more strident, more uncompromising.

When three Miami-based exiles were captured attempting to make contact with Cuban dissidents, a Popular Provincial Court sentenced them to death. But it commuted to thirty years the sentences of the two who had been born in Miami to exiles. The third, a defector, had been summarily executed by firing squad. Even in the worst days of the Cold War, this had not been done.

The Council of State had given as the reason the doomed man had deserved his fate that he had "enjoyed the fruits of the Revolution, then betrayed it."

In the meantime, under Option Zero-the Presidential decree that required all members of the armed forces to forage the countryside for their own food-Comandante Zorilla had taken to eating banana rats, which he caught in traps because the state's meat-mostly Bulgarian chicken-was so bad. So much for the "fruits of the Revolution." Still, he had reasoned, it was better than eating alligator, as some did.

The night the Soviet Union came apart, Comandante Zorilla was walking the beach of his childhood, dazed and restless. He walked all night. Buzzards flew overhead, as if over a cooling corpse. There had been buzzards overhead in the days before the Revolution, he knew, but now they seemed a portent of the exhausted carcass that his isolated homeland had become.

Zorilla was sucking on a length of sugarcane, the rich brown sucrose juice fueling his nervous state.

He did not remember collapsing. Not even to this very day.

The doctor was leaning over him when he came around.

"You are all right," said the kindly old doctor-one of the last of the good ones because he, like all that was left in Cuba that was good, was pre-Revolution.

"No more sugarcane for you," the doctor said.

"Why not?"

"You have diabetes," said the doctor, handing Comandante Zorilla a plastic packet containing a vial of insulin and two disposable needles.

"Do not throw away your needles," the doctor directed. "Clean them in alcohol."

"There is no alcohol to be had," Zorilla had protested.

The doctor shrugged forlornly. "Do not concern yourself, because soon there will be no more insulin, as well."

"Will I die?"

The kindly old doctor smiled. "Son, we will all die. Some sooner than others.

That night, Comandante Zorilla lay on his bunk, listening to a transistor radio whose sole battery he had hoarded for years. He was listening to Radio Marti.

"It was announced tonight by MININT that meat rations have been cut to one a month. President Fidel Castro Ruz has decreed that Cubans will subsist on sugarcane rather than sell them to the Russian Commonwealth at ruinous prices. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture projections, the sugarcane harvest for the previous year was poor, and expectations for a good one this year are minimal."

That night, Comandante Zorilla packed all that mattered to him: some U.S. dollars he had acquired, and his dwindling insulin supply.

As a military man, he was privy to much intelligence. He knew, for instance, the schedule of U.S. Caribbean cruise ships, although everyone knew these to some degree. For ordinary Cubans took to makeshift rafts and pushed out into shark-infested waters, knowing that if the winds were right they would be sighted by the passing ships, which always picked them up.

And if they were not, they would die.

Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla knew he was going to die anyway. So he stole a Soviet rubber raft from supply and inflated it on the beach. The inflating canister sputtered out with the raft only half-filled. Zorilla was forced to use a bicycle pump to finish the job. The handle cracked at the penultimate pump.

"Nothing in Cuba works anymore," he complained, and shoved off into the night.

It was a moonless night in April. The air was moist and free. And Leopoldo Zorilla-no longer comandante, except of his own soul-lay there dreaming of what it would be like when he reached Miami and defected.

His mind held many military secrets. Enough to expose all of Cuba's weak spots. Choke points. Ill-guarded landing spots. He was but one man, but he could lay Castro's Cuba naked and exposed to liberators.

It would be sweet, this revenge he contemplated.

When the Caribbean sun heaved out of the too-blue waters, Leopoldo Zorilla was astonished to see that he was not alone on the open sea here in the Windward Passage.

All about him, other rafts floated. He looked around wonderingly. It was like a Sargasso Sea of rafts. Mostly, inflated inner tubes floored with mangrove branches. Or rubber tires too bald to serve any other useful purpose.

The balselaros, as they were called, greeted the sun with reverential silence, for all knew that when the sun set, they would either be free or they would be lost forever.

The cruise ship Beasley Adventure hove into view at high noon, when the rays burned hottest.

It was magnificently white and multistoried, like a palace afloat.

Those who could, stood up and waved at the ship with their straw hats. Zorilla waved with his sunburned hands.

The great ship hove to, and landing stages were lowered.

They were taken aboard as if it were an ordinary thing.

Leopoldo Zorilla presented himself to the white-uniformed captain.

"I am former Comandate Leopoldo Zorilla of the Cuban Air Force," he said, his voice choking, for this was contrary to his upbringing.

"Fine, fine," said the captain rather carelessly. "Welcome to our ship. We dock in an hour. Immigration will be there to process you."

"But I am a defector. I have many military secrets in my head."

"Tell it to the INS."

"But I am a military man, like you."

The Yanqui captain almost laughed in his face.

"I'm just a plain old commercial captain. Now if you'll excuse me . . ."

Zorilla had been left stunned. What an ignorant dandy this man is, he had thought. Did he not realize how important a defector Zorilla was?

He did not. Zorilla found himself herded into a hold with the others, like two-legged cattle. The food was good though, and he ate greedily.

At the dock, Immigration authorities came to take charge of them. They did not look pleased with this harvest of defectors.

When one of them came to him with forms to be filled out, Leopoldo Zorilla snapped to attention and saluted, saying, "I am former Deputy Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla of the Cuban Air Force, requesting asylum."

"Fine. Here's your entry form."

"I know many military secrets of value."

"Fill it out in triplicate, please."

"I have knowledge that would bring down the Havana government, if properly applied."

"Turn it in to the man in white."

"But-"

The bored immigration man moved on. Then, as if understanding for the first time, he stepped back. He looked Zorilla in the eye for the first time, and Zorilla thought, He is slow-witted. He understands now.

"Almost forgot. Here's your pencil."

Stunned into wordlessness, Zorilla accepted the yellow stub of a pencil. His tongue thick in his gaping mouth, he filled out the form. In triplicate.

With the others, he was taken to the Immigration Service's Krome Avenue Detention Center to be processed. There he was given blue coveralls and more forms to fill out.

For two months Leopoldo Zorilla told his story to any who would listen, and waited for a higher U.S. official to come and take charge of him. He had heard whispers of Cuban pilots who received handsome stipends in return for defecting. He had spit on the memory of those traitors in days gone by. Now, all he cared about was getting his very own stipend.

But there were no stipends for Leopoldo Zorilla. Nor did any high-ranking U.S. official show up to take charge of his case.

Instead, after the obligatory two-month cooling-off period had passed, he and those with whom he had shared a Spartan barracks existence were summoned to a room and given green cards.

"What is this 'green card'?" he asked. "Residency permit. You can get work."

"I do not wish to work. I wish to reveal the secrets of Cuba military machine," Zorilla protested.

"Not interested."

"But I have been told of the vast sums my junior officers have received for flying their MIGs into this country."

"You got a MIG on you?" the processor asked.

"No . . ." Zorilla admitted.

He pointed. "Get your clothes and wait in one of those vans."

Dejectedly, Zorilla did as he was told. These men were dolts! As bad as the functionaries in Havana, who would refuse to change a light-bulb if it were not their assigned task to do so.

Leopoldo Zorilla hitched a ride to Washington and attempted to interest the CIA, the FBI, and the Pentagon in what he knew.

He was rebuffed at each institution. With the exception of the Pentagon, which offered him a janitorial job at $5.40 an hour.

Depressed and defeated, Zorilla had returned to Florida and an unknowable future.

It was not so bad. The Cuban community had virtually taken over Miami. The mayor was Cuban. A senator was Hispanic. It was, Zorilla thought, like Havana would have been if that bearded monster had not thrown a monkey wrench into the clock of time itself.

He got a job in a restaurant, and although the work was menial and hurt his pride, Zorilla was told that he was in the land of opportunity and good fortune was sure to come his way.

It did. One day a man named Drake walked into the restaurant and offered him more than just a job.

"I understand you know some things about current Cuban defenses," he said in a smooth, low voice.

"This is true. Why do you ask?"

"The Director would like to speak with you."

And it had been just as his fellow Cuban-Americans had promised. Leopoldo Zorilla laid down his busboy's plastic tray and became a leader of men once more. A soldier of the Americas.

That had been a year ago. A good time. A new beginning.

But now, it had all been dashed to pieces.

As the last bitter tear slid down a track on his face to leave a dried, tight, saline line, Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla vowed to make the person responsible pay: The despised Fidel Castro.

The mission would go on.

He pressed his heavy booted foot to the accelerator and, like a robot, held the snaketrack road.

Behind, the shame of his life lay in slow-drying pools of blood.

Ahead, lay his manly destiny.

As he rushed through the Florida night, Leopoldo Zorilla vowed to himself that he would build a monument to the fallen of this terrible night, of the purest granite he could find.

He could do no less. For he knew personally the mothers of many of the glorious dead.

Captain Ernest Maus slipped his magnetic passcard into the slot and entered the quietly humming control room after the door had slid upward.

The humming came from the banks of computers and control consoles. It made the room sound cool. In fact, the temperature hovered around ninety-five degrees. He began to sweat profusely as he walked past the guards in their immaculate white jumpsuits.

He stopped where an old man sat hunched over a computer terminal. The old man was using a mouse to draw a fox in glowing red lines. His hair, visible over the chair back, was the color of snow.

"Director?"

"What is it, Maus?" the Director asked in a chilly voice.

"Dr. Revuelta called the emergency contact number, and left a cryptic message on the machine. Do you authorize contacting him directly?"

The Director used the mouse to make the fox stand up. He gave the fox a Marilyn Monroe face, large breasts, and a wealth of bushy pubic hair.

"Director?"

"Why is it so cold in here?" the Director asked peevishly. clicking the mouse. The fox-girl began to revolve, swaying its generous hips like a hula dancer.

"The heat is on high," Maus reported. "Damn doctors. Said there'd be no aftereffects. If that's so, why am I freezing all the damn time?"

"I'll have the heat increased, Director."

"And go to Threatcon Squeaky. No telling what the cat might drag in."

"And Revuelta?"

"Find out what his problem is. That idiot is probably just jumping at shadows."

The Director made the fox girl's naked rump a size larger. Then two. He chuckled appreciatively.

"I love this thing," he said as Captain Maus left the room, his uniform blouse sticking to his skin.

Chapter 12

Remo Williams drove through the cool Florida night in tight silence.

Beside him, the Master of Sinanju said nothing.

The road ahead ran in straight lines that became cutbacks at unexpected moments. Remo was completely focused on it and his car. He was at one with the car, feeling the tires hug the road through vibrations coming up through the steering column.

The modern automobile was as far removed from the purity that was Sinanju as was Donkey Kong. Still, the reflexes Remo had acquired made him a superb driver.

He had been running without lights for hours, his vision fixed on the distant taillights of Zorilla's car.

They were on Interstate 75, heading north, toward Tampa. Cool, salty breezes were blowing in off the Gulf of Mexico.

Remo turned on the radio and punched up the stations until he got a newscast.

". . . in Florida, military bases and law enforcement agencies are reportedly on a high state of alert in the wake of the Cuban interference of broadcast channels. The Pentagon is being uncharacteristically tight-lipped, but sources here confirm contingency plans are being reviewed for a possible retaliatory action against microwave TV-transmitters on the Cuban mainland."

"Good," Remo muttered. "No, it is not good."

"Why not?" Remo asked Chiun.

"Because the oppressor cannot oppress unless he has external enemies."

The newscaster continued, "According to a Cuban television broadcast monitored in Mexico, Fidel Castro told his people today, 'We will fight them without quarter, with the force of the masses and the law, in the political field and in the ideological field with every means. If the Yanquis come, it will be another Vietnam, only worse.'"

"Guess he never heard of Desert Storm," Remo said.

"If there is one person who wishes for invasion, it is the oppressor," Chiun said.

"Say that again," Remo said, turning off the radio.

"It is very simple, Remo. I know what is happening on that island of sugar. The tyrant cannot feed his people. They clamor for food and grow restive. It is the beginning of the end. Only a miracle can save him now." Chiun turned, his voice pointed. "Or an enemy to be invoked, the better to draw the people around him to protect the man, under the pretense of protecting his throne."

"Makes sense. But Castro isn't doing this."

"What has he to lose?"

"I still think it's the CIA. They've had a bug up their ass over this guy since day one."

"They should pass gas then, and be done with it," Chiun said blandly.

"Chiun?"

"Yes?"

"When we get to the head guy, I get Zorilla, too."

"Why?"

"He slaughtered his own men. He deserves to die."

"If all your wishes come true, my son," Chiun said in a low voice, "we will have a very busy night before us."

As they neared Tampa, the taillight angled east. Remo followed onto Interstate 4, as if riding a wheeled lodestone being pulled by another lodestone. The driver never suspected he was being followed.

The countryside changed character. They began to see cattle farms, surprisingly enough. Lakes were common sights.

The signs began to say: LAKELAND. WINTER HAVEN. KISSIMMEE. FURIOSO.

The Master of Sinanju, seeing the last of these, perked up in his seat and said, his voice squeaky with pleasure, "Look, Remo, we are going to Furioso."

"Big hairy deal," Remo growled.

The Master of Sinanju frowned. "It is a big hairy deal to some," he said.

"Not to me."

"We have no time to stop?"

"Chiun, we are not going to you-know-where while we're on a freaking mission."

"Now I know," Chiun said forlornly.

"Know what?"

"That I am unappreciated by ingrates on all sides."

Remo sighed. "Maybe on the way back."

" 'Maybe' is not 'definitely.' "

Silence fell over the darkened car interior.

Somewhere in the night, fires raged. They were passing through fields of orange groves now. The air was filled with a strange mixture of orange blossoms and burning kerosene, and dense with dragons of rolling black smoke.

"What are these fires?" Chiun asked in a doubtful voice.

"Looks like the orange growers got hit by a frost."

"Frost does not burn."

"No," Remo said patiently. "But the growers have millions of dollars tied up in their orchards. They can't afford to lose them to frost. So they burn smudge pots and use electric heaters to save the crop."

"This works? Smoking the fruit?"

"Usually. If the frost doesn't go on too long."

The Master of Sinanju grunted. "Did I ever tell you of the Master who was so foolish that he performed a service for a solitary orange?"

"No. And I think you're making it up."

"I do not make up legends. It was in the time of Cathay. Oranges were unknown to Sinanju, and an emperor of . . ."

Remo tuned out Chiun, and the singsong tone in which he was relating a possibly true story of the early days of the House of Sinanju. He was in no mood for it. All he wanted was for the trail to end and the bodies to start piling up.

Miles short of the outskirts of Furioso, Florida, the fugitive taillights dimmed, flared, and winked out.

"Damn," Remo said.

Chiun pointed into the night. "I see him. Follow."

Remo pulled off the road-he had no idea what road, or where he was exactly-and onto a sandy access road that was nothing more than a knot of switchbacks rank with kudzu weed.

Either side was lined with old billboards. Mostly ads for local theme parks. The kudzu was working its way up those, too.

"This isn't a posted road," Remo said.

"It is a road," Chiun countered. "That is enough."

For nearly a mile they negotiated the road. Ahead, the night horizon was a jagged line of strange shapes.

Chiun examined this critically. "What vista is this?"

"Search me," Remo said.

Chiun pouted his lower lip, his hazel eyes thoughtful.

The road came to a dead halt at the end of a pond bordered with wilting pink camilla blossoms.

Remo eased to a stop in time to keep the front tires from slipping into the water.

"What the hell?" he muttered. "Where'd he go?"

They got out, shades of black in a deeper blackness.

"See anything, Little Father?"

"No," Chiun said thinly.

Remo looked for tracks. There were none. In fact, his own car had made no impression in the sand. Remo knelt. The sand, he found, was actually glued in place. Glued over asphalt.

"Well," Remo said, standing up. "we know Zorilla wasn't driving a submarine car." He looked up. "I don't see anything in the sky, either."

"Come," said Chiun, moving back the way they had come.

Remo followed.

"What are we looking for?" he asked, curious.

"We are looking for nothing. We are smelling the air."

Remo focused on his nostrils and drew in a sip of air. The air passing over his sensitive olfactory receptors was reasonably clean, for all its proximity to the sprawling city of Furioso.

"I don't smell anything," Remo complained.

"But you will."

Remo did. He picked up the tailpipe emission from Zorilla's car a quarter-mile back. It went off to the left.

Remo spotted the crushed-down kudzu on one side of the artificial road.

"Must have missed it in the darkness," he said.

They moved into the kudzu. The carbon monoxide vapor, odorless to most noses, was heavy in theirs, so they switched to breathing through their mouths. It made their thoughts heavy.

Against a low hillock, they found it. A concrete bunker, nearly buried in the dirt and obscured by kudzu. The door was a big slab of steel, painted brown and green to blend in with the surroundings.

There were no signs. No guards, no anything.

"Looks military," Remo said quietly.

Chiun nodded. "We have found the lair of the plotters."

"All we have to do is get in."

"All we have to do is get in," came the voice over the overhead loudspeaker.

"Director, we have a security breach."

The Director looked up from his console, where he had been wireframing three touching circles. He was in the act of commanding this remarkable newfangled computer to "draw" a pair of eyes in the large bottom circle when the word came.

He turned in his swivel chair to the overhead monitor, cursing the eye patch that restricted his vision and adding another for the stupid doctor who could have saved the eye-if only he had had the gumption to stick to his guns.

He saw two men moving through the stark highcontrast image transmitted from the infrared scanner.

"Who the hell are they?" he demanded in a gravelly voice.

"Unknown, Director."

"The little guy looks like he strayed out of a bad Saturday morning cartoon."

The Director picked up the telephone handset at his elbow, inadvertently hitting the dial buttons embedded in it.

"Damn these things! What was wrong with the rotary dial?"

He hit the switch hook and tapped the pound key.

"Yes?"

"Get me that weasel Drake," he snapped.

"At once, sir."

A cautious voice came on the line.

"You wanted me, Director?"

"There are two of them, and they're sniffing at the back door like a couple of hound dogs at a fireplug."

"I'm patching into the visual feed now."

"Good for you," the Director said acidly. The man was a toady.

"Director, they fit the description of the pair Zorilla encountered earlier this evening."

"That idiot must have let them follow him. Where is he?"

"On his way to my office for debriefing and reassignment."

"Decruit him."

"Yes, Director. What about the intruders?"

"I'm going to have them let in."

"Director?"

"Well, we can't very well let them go running back to the CIA or the Cuban DGI, now can we?"

"No, Director. We can't."

"You deal with Zorilla. He's your speed. I'll handle these two."

The Director hung up abruptly. He turned to a blank-faced uniformed figure, standing guard at the door.

"You, flunky. Open the door for our curious guests."

"Yes, Director."

"And have them interrogated and processed out with the rest of the trash."

"Yes, Director."

The Director went back to his computer screen. He tapped a key and the eyes drew themselves. He added a smiling mouth and a button nose.

"Not bad," he murmured contentedly. "Not bad, if I do say so myself."

He added his famous signature with the tap of another key.

"We are being observed," intoned the Master of Sinanju.

"Infrared?" Remo asked.

"I feel warm rays."

"Infrared," Remo said.

They were crouched in the rank kudzu, studying the massive portal.

Remo's dark eyes raked the structure. The ground under his feet thrummed and throbbed, as if from mighty machinery.

"Think they can hear us, too?"

"It does not matter," said Chiun.

"I don't see any way in except through that huge bulkhead, but there's gotta be a vent shaft or something."

Just then whining servo-motors cut the air, and with a metallic uncoiling the great door began to rise.

"Looks like we've been invited in," Remo said doubtfully.

The Master of Sinanju stood up. His hands going to his wrists and both disappearing under closing sleeves, he said, "Then let us be gracious and accept this kindness."

Face calm, he started forward. Remo followed, not looking happy at all.

Chapter 13

Comandante Leopoldo Zorilla walked the cavernous walkways, which were scrubbed clean with military spotlessness.

Two soldiers in insignia-less uniforms came along driving a rubber-tired utility vehicle, like a golf cart on steroids. It was an unmilitary turquoise.

The driver said, "Hop on, sir. Drake will see you immediately."

"Gracias," said Comandante Zorilla, getting in back. He sat facing away from the driver. The rubber-tired utility vehicle turned smartly and zipped back the way it had come.

The tunnels were a bewildering maze of alabaster conduits and ivory corridors. Overhead pipes and aluminum ductwork of all descriptions clustered against the high ceilings. It is a wondrous place, Zorilla thought to himself, marvelous for all the things that are controlled down here.

Along one long stretch the air reverberated with a rushing like a vast vacuum, and the ceiling appeared to be one huge pipe.

"What is this roaring pipe?" Zorilla wondered.

"Waste-disposal," the driver said. "Takes all the trash and debris from topside and dumps it into trash-compactors for removal."

"Ah, brilliant," said Zorilla admiringly.

The utility vehicle came to a dead end and stopped, with but an inch between its rubber bumpers and a steel sliding door.

Zorilla was taken to the door and the driver inserted a magnetic card into a chrome-mouthed slot. The door rolled back, revealing a common elevator interior.

"The lift will take you where you need to go," said the driver.

"Gracias, " said Zorilla again, stepping aboard. The door rolled shut. The lift rose.

The ride was short. The doors slipped open, and he was looking into a conference room rich in woods and indirectly lit.

When he had stepped off, a cherry-wood panel rolled back into place, concealing all traces of the lift.

"Please be seated, Comandante," said a voice. It was coming from a lonely-looking speakerphone atop the long conference table.

Zorilla took the seat at the end.

"Comandante, I have been in touch with the Director. He sends his sincere regrets. The loss of Ultima Hora was an avoidable tragedy. They are the worst kind."

"Gracias, Senor Drake," said Zorilla in a thick voice.

"The organization commends your bravery under fire and your willingness to execute distasteful duties."

"I am a soldier of the Americas," Zorilla said simply.

"We know you are. And we know that you would never willingly betray the operation, as Dr. Revuelta has."

"Revuelta?"

"He was in touch by phone. The two who followed you here approached him. Revuelta gave you up under torture."

"Followed me here? What do you mean, followed me here?"

"Dr. Revuelta has offered his sincere apologies."

"I accept," Zorilla said quickly. "But by what do you mean, 'followed me here'? No one followed me here."

"The two unknown unfriendlies did," Drake's voice said flatly. The tonality of the speakerphone was perfect. There was no distortion. It was as if the man were in the room, but invisible.

"I do not believe it," Zorilla said bitingly.

A frosted wall panel glowed into life. On the oversized screen appeared corridors similar to the ones Comandante Zorilla had just traveled. The lean Anglo and the ancient Korean were visible, examining a line of trucks.

"Impossible," he hissed.

"But as you can see, true."

"What would you have me do?"

"The Director asks that you accept decruitment."

Zorilla recoiled, as if from the lash of a whip.

"But I am prepared to go on," he protested. "I have trained to lead the landing party."