Dark Horse

It was a good face, he saw. A country face. Solid and of the earth. At least some traditions were honored, in this degenerate colony of his countrymen.

Perhaps, Chiun thought, when the election was done with, he would take up residence here. It would be fitting. His former home had been confiscated by his emperor, due to yet another transgression on Remo's part. He would need a new home. Perhaps here. Once the people were reeducated, they would make good subjects. Of course, the Japanese and Chinese would have to be moved. It would not be seemly for a Master of Sinanju to dwell in too close proximity to such as they.

He was certain there would be a cultimulcheral way to accomplish this.

As the Master of Sinanju considered these weighty matters, he heard a tearing sound. He spurt.

A man--a white, beefy of face-was removing one of the posters the Master of Sinanju had carefully affixed to a wall.

Chiun flew to this man, demanding, "Why do you do this, white?"

"They gotta come down," the white grunted, ripping down the poster in stubborn strips.

"Explain!"

"No union bug."

"Bug?"

He pointed to a black spot on the poster, where the Master of Sinanju had obscured some white graffiti.

"Orders from my union chief. Posters without the bug come down."

With a flourish, the white stripped the wall bare of all remnants of the poster.

"There are many similar posters," Chiun pointed out, his voice steely. "You cannot remove them all."

"Wanna bet?"

"They will be restored."

"All my shop will be out tomorrow to tear 'em down all over again," the white said, in the stubborn fashion of his kind.

"Not if they are dissuaded from this."

"What's gonna dissuade them? We're union. You can't buck a union."

"I understand that the Master of Sinanju himself has endorsed this man Esperanza," Chiun said hoping to appeal to the white's innate sense of respect for his betters.

"Fuck the Master of Sinanju," said the beefy white, spitting on the artfully calligraphed poster that lay on the sidewalk.

Fred Huntoon weighed nearly two hundred and fifteen pounds. He was a pressman. Rotary presses. The muscles he had developed in the course of pursuing his trade had not grown soft in the years since he had become a union steward. If anything, he had become more formidable. Rosary presses do clot punch back.

As he turned to deal with the offending campaign posters plastered all over Koreatown, Fred Huntoon felt every muscle in his thick body spasm and twitch.

"It will stop when the poster is restored to the wall," a squeaky voice said through the ringing in his ears.

"I want it to stop now!" Fred Huntoon howled, feeling his out-of-control feet dance in pain. Even his earlobes hurt. How could that be?

"It will stop," the squeaky voice repeated, "when the poster is restored."

"It . . . it's torn!"

"So too will you be," promised the squeaky voice.

The voice was no more threatening than Pee-Wee Herman's, but what was happening to Fred Huntoon's big body was real. And he wanted it to stop. Lord, how he wanted it to stop.

Through eyes that were blurred by hot tears of pain, Fred Huntoon knelt to the sidewalk and gathered up the poster fragments.

He arranged them in order, and using his tongue, licked the blank sides like a gargantuan stamp.

They would not stick. The poster pieces peeled back, as if treated with wall-repellent.

"It don't stick!" he bleated.

"Lick the wall, too."

It was an excellent suggestion. Fred Huntoon had a tongue as big as his desire to please the owner of the squeaky voice. He lathered saliva onto the gritty brick wall and freshened the application on the back side of the poster. He tried again.

"It sticks! It's sticking! It's stuck!" he said gratefully.

"For now. It might fall."

"I'll stand here and hold it up if I have to," he offered.

"You have to," said the squeaky voice.

Then, and only then, the pain went away. Just like that. Fred Huntoon, when he had blinked the last bitter tear from his face, turned around to look.

He saw the little Asian guy strolling off, casually as can be. He disappeared around a corner. The danger seemed to have passed.

Still, Fred Huntoon decided that he should keep his hands on the poster, at least until sundown.

As people passed him by, Fred Huntoon, to cover his embarrassment, offered a piece of friendly advice.

"Vote for Esperanza! The union guy's friend!"

Gregory Sagadelli was President and treasurer of the California Pressman's Union. It was a strong union. It was strong because the men who comprised the membership roll were strong. Weak men did not run presses. And weak men did not lead pressmen.

So when the first reports of campaign posters appearing in the Asian part of town without the union bug-his union bug-reached his ears, Gregory Sagadelli ordered the membership out into the streets to take corrective action.

"No wonder someone's trying to whack out that Esperanza guy. He's nuts!" he joked, as he ordered his men to tear down every offending poster in Koreatown.

They started coming back in ones and twos. Some limped. A few had broken fingers. Some did not return at all. They were discovered in the hospital, invoking their union insurance benefits.

"This is fuckin' war!" Gregory Sagadelli screamed, when he had heard the same story for the fifth time. A little gook had done this. A little gook working for the Esperanza campaign.

He was on his way out of the union meeting hall when the little gook came in, escorted by two of his stewards.

"This him?" Gregory Sagadelli demanded.

"This is him," one of the pair said, in a dispirited voice.

Gregory Sagadelli gave his trousers a belligerent hitch. "You did right to bring him here," he grunted, jabbing a thick finger into the little gook's stern face. "You, chum, are going to pay for this."

"I am called Chiun, not Chum."

"After today, your name will be mud."

"After today," said the little gook named Chiun, "you will be proud to say that you stand with Esperanza the Cultimulcheral."

"I what?"

"After you have atoned for your transgressions against him; of course."

"Say . . . that . . . again," Gregory Sagadelli said through clenched teeth.

The little gook snapped his long-nailed fingers. Instantly, the flanking union men produced stacks of Esperanza campaign posters.

"You will have your minions and lackeys place these where they will do the most good," said the little gook named Chiun.

Gregory Sagadelli grunted. "You got balls."

"He's also got hands like you've never seen," said one of the flanking men.

"Huh?"

"Mr. Sagadelli," said the other, "if you don't do exactly like he says, we're all headed for traction."

That was enough for Gregory Sagadelli. He was a street fighter, with a street fighter's instincts. Old or not, he took a poke at the frail little gook.

The fist traveled less than a foot. The little gook brought his open hands up to intercept the fist, like a catcher without a mitt.

Gregory Sagadelli felt the impact. He was sure he felt the impact. Swore to it, for many years after.

When they had finished pouring cold water on his face, and after he had batted the smelling salts away with his sprained fist, the membership put it another way.

"You hit yourself in the jaw."

"I hit the gook," Gregory Sagadelli insisted.

"There's a bruise on your jaw, and those knuckles are sprained," a delegate pointed out.

"I felt a fuckin' impact."

"In your jaw. The membership wants to know if we can start putting up the Esperanza posters now."

"The hell with the posters."

"We'd like you to reconsider."

"Why?"

"Because if you don't, we gotta run your dumb ass through a rotary press to protect our own dumb asses. Sorry."

It was then that Gregory Sagadelli noticed the little gook standing off to one side, looking stern and confident. It was as if he were looking at the tiny fellow for the first time. There was something cold and deadly in those eyes. They were like steel ball bearings.

Gregory Sagadelli allowed himself to be helped to his feet. "Put up the damn posters," he snarled.

He strode over to the tiny Oriental. He looked down. The Oriental looked up.

"Anything else you want?" Gregory Sagadelli asked.

"Yes. Your endorsement of my candidate."

"Bull! We can't endorse someone who doesn't buy union. What'll we tell the press?"

A low voice whispered in his ear. "Maybe this is the exception that proves the rule."

That afternoon, with the entire ambulatory membership of the California Pressmen's Union Local 334 out affixing Esperanza posters to walls all over L.A. County, Gregory Sagadelli called a press conference and announced that the entire union was coming out for Enrique Espiritu Esperanza.

There were only three reporters present. Such was the state of union activity in the nineties. One said, "We understand they don't use union printed placards."

"This is the exception that proves the rule," said Gregory Sagadelli with a straight face. Or as straight as it could be, with his jaw permanently skewed to the left.

"We just picked up our first union endorsement!" Harmon Cashman screamed. "I'm hyped! I'm really, really hyped!"

"Calm yourself," said Enrique Esperanza, hitting the TV remote control. "It is a small victory. We will need much, much more in the weeks that remain."

"But this is the first union endorsement of the campaign! Sometimes that's all you need to get the ball rolling!"

"The ball, as you say, is already rolling."

"What I don't figure is, how did it happen?"

"It is simple. Chiun."

Harmon Cashman dug into his pockets and pulled out a minipack of Oreo cookies. "The little guy? How'd he pull it off?"

"Because there is nothing he cannot do. You must understand, Harmon. He is Sinanju."

"What's that?"

"Sinanju is a house of assassins."

At the sound of the word assassin, Harmon Cashman spit out the half-chewed sticky pulp of an Oreo sandwich cookie. He stared at the dark blob on the rug, as if he were contemplating gobbling it back up. His eyes, sick with fear, went to the bland face of Enrique Esperanza. "Ricky . . ."

"Yes. I did say 'assassin,' " Enrique Esperanza said calmly. "For many, many years the assassins of Sinanju worked for governments all over the Old World, protecting thrones and preventing wars."

"You're joking!"

"Have you ever known me to joke?"

"Never. But I had to check. Okay, let's say this is true. What's this Chiun doing here?"

"Obviously he was sent here."

"To kill you?"

"Hardly. To protect me."

"I don't get it."

Enrique Esperanza fixed Harmon Cashman with his soft, dark eyes. "It is very clear, Harmon. The Master of Sinanju has been sent here by his employer to protect my life and see that the election turns out a certain way."

"Who would that be?"

"I am not sure, but everything in my being tells me it is the President of the United States."

"Oh, him," said Harmon Cashman. "The thank-you-note king."

"Do not hold grudges. Because if what I believe is true, then our campaign has the blessing of the President, which virtually assures us of success."

"Okay," Harmon said, digging out another chocolate cookie. "I'll buy it. But an assassin?"

"Think of him as a protector."

"And the Italian guy?" Harmon snapped his fingers. "What's his name . . . ? Remo?"

"No doubt CIA. Probably a control agent. He is of no importance. What is of significance is the fact that the President of the United States employs an assassin."

"I guess," Harmon Cashman said vaguely.

"In spite of the congressional prohibition against assassination as a tool of Executive Branch policy."

Harmon Cashman stopped in mid-bite. He looked up.

"Are you saying we have some political dirt on the President?"

"Such an unsavory way of putting it. Let us say that the President inadvertently has betrayed to us probably his greatest secret."

"How's that gonna help the campaign?"

"Harmon, my friend. Sometimes it is enough to know a secret, without turning it to one's advantage," said Enrique Espiritu Esperanza quietly.

Chapter 14

The next day a gleaming, white-chocolate Mercedes tooled through Chinatown.

It drew up before an ornate temple, and Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, resplendent in white, emerged. Harmon Cashman followed.

The Master of Sinanju was there to greet him. He bowed once. Enrique Esperanza bowed in return.

Esperanza looked around. His own image stared back from every wall and lamp post, and although he could not read the calligraphy under the multitude of identical faces, the sight of his repeated image gave him a warm feeling of hope.

"You have done well," he said.

"I have only begun," Chiun replied. And, raising his voice, the Master of Sinanju began to chant in a singsong voice.

The words were unintelligible. But the reaction was immediate.

From out of shops and tenements came curious Chinese.

They gathered around as Chiun lifted his arms and began to speak. He gestured broadly, as if scolding the crowd.

"Sounds like a harangue," whispered Harmon Cashman, in a worried voice. "Maybe I'd better break out some Oreos."

"They will not be necessary."

The harangue-or whatever it was-continued.

At the end of it, a sea of blank, bland faces stared back.

"They don't look very impressed," Cashman muttered uneasily.

"How can one tell?" answered Enrique Esperanza, not a care evident in his voice or on his face.

Then, while they were considering edging back to the car, the Chinese began to lift their voices.

"Syiwang! Syiwang! Syiwang!"

"What the heck are they saying?" muttered Harmon Cashman.

"They are saying," said Enrique Esperanza proudly, " 'Hope.' "

In Little Tokyo, it was the same.

Only the word was Kibo.

In Koreatown, it was Somang. To the Vietnamese of Little Saigon, it was Hyvong. Whatever the tongue, it was music to the ears of Harmon Cashman.

"This is incredible!" he breathed. "You can hardly get the Chinese and Japanese to pay attention to local politics. And look at this! If that little guy can do this all over the state," he said enthusiastically, "we got the Asian vote sewed up slicker than a sackful of stray kittens."

"He can."

And once again, Enrique Espiritu Esperanza stepped forward to address the crowd. He spoke in English. The Master of Sinanju translated. The crowd applauded whenever the old Korean lifted his thin hands, as if responding to an applause sign.

Harmon Cashman could only marvel at the sight.

"If we could only move the white people this way," he said wistfully, as they walked back to the waiting Mercedes.

"We will," promised Enrique Esperanza.

"How? There aren't enough Oreos on the planet to hand out to everybody. If there were, our campaign war chest could go broke trying."

"Harmon," said Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, "I wish you to alert the press that I will give an important speech at four o'clock this afternoon."

"Done. Where?"

"In South Central."

"The barrio!"

"South Central, yes."

"But that's the Hispanic and black district!" Harmon protested. "You got the Hispanic vote in your hip pocket."

"I am not going to South Central to sway the Hispanic vote," said Enrique Espiritu Esperanza smoothly. "I am going there to court the white vote."

"Ricky," Harmon Cashman said in a firm voice, "I think you've been out in the sun too long. Not only are there practically no whites to speak of down there, but it's downright dangerous. It's gang heaven. They have to send in the National Guard just to collect the garbage." "I have no fear."

"I know you don't. But in everything you've done so far, you've showed good sense. People have already taken shots at you. Brown people. Your people. Why don't we move on to San Francisco? I know they'll love you up there."

"Because I have not yet taken L.A. County," said Enrique Esperanza, gesturing to the Master of Sinanju, who was regaling the scattering crowd in their own tongue.

Out of the corner of his eye, the Master of Sinanju caught the beckoning gesture of his candidate. He finished his remarks to the gathering crowd.

"Remember. If you all vote intelligently, a person of correct color and properly shaped eyes will soon occupy a position of great importance in this province. This is all to your benefit. This is cultimulcherism at work. Vote early and often," he added, parroting a phrase he had heard spoken between whites in the campaign organization of Enrique Espiritu Esperanza.

Then, with a flourish of skirts, he returned to his candidate's side.

"They are with you, gracious one," said Chiun.

"That is good. This afternoon, I go to speak before the brown-skinned peoples."

Chiun nodded. "As the prophet of cultimulcherism, it is proper that you do so."

"But it is very dangerous down there," Enrique Esperanza continued. "There are young men with no futures, who carry guns and kill one another."

"Their fates are sealed," Chiun promised.

"No, no. I do not wish to vanquish them. That is not my way. It is my hope that they will join my cause. I know that they will be receptive to the message of Esperanza, if only they can be made to listen."

"Their ears shall be your playthings," vowed the Master of Sinanju.

"These young men go by certain names-the Crips and the Blood. The Crips wear blue bandannas. The Bloods wear red. Both groups carry weapons."

"They will carry their fingers loosely at their sides when you enter their domain in triumph," vowed the Master of Sinanju.

"A driver will take you to this place," said Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, bowing.

Jambo Jambone X-formerly Melvin Dicer-was all of fifteen, and had killed three men. The term "men" was open to debate, because none of the three members of the blue-jacketed Crips had lived long enough to graduate from high school before he had capped them.

Jambo Jambone X-someone had told him it was a name with true African roots, and so he adopted it as a gesture of black pride and further insurance against paternity suits-considered himself a man. A man killed. Therefore he was a man. Anybody who said different had better watch where he trooped.

Today, Jambo Jambone X was out to prove his manhood. He was going to pull out on someone. It didn't matter who. A cop was as good as a Crip. He might shoot a cop. It was good for a man's reputation to do that sometimes. As he aged, he noticed that younger members eyed him with increasing envy. They called him an "Original Gangster." Jambo Jambone X liked that.

As he trooped along Century Boulevard, Jambo Jambone X noticed the white dude. Not many white dudes rolled through Century Boulevard. Not in broad daylight.

There was something about this white guy, Jambo Jambone X thought. The way the dude walked, cool and casual like he owned Watts. He also, had the thickest wrists Jambo had ever seen. They looked like transplants from a different guy entirely.

Jambo stopped on a corner to light up a cigarette. Really a frio-a menthol cigarette dipped in PCP. It helped to steady his gun hand.

The white guy was looking around as he was walking along. He had deep eyes. Deep and cold. Cop eyes. Jambo Jambone X knew cop eyes on sight. This guy had cop eyes, no doubt about it.

He wore tan chinos, and a white T-shirt that still had that crisp look that meant it had never seen the inside of washer. Brand-new. His arms were bare. No tattoos. No nothing. His clothes were too tight for him to be packing heavy. Maybe a .38 in an ankle holster, at most.

Jambo Jambone X packed a Glock 9. Fifteen-round clip. A man's tool. You just point and pull. Didn't hardly have to aim.

Because he was dead-certain that the skinny guy with the wrists like two-by-fours was an undercover Gang Unit detective, Jambo Jambone X decided that he would put the muzzle of his Glock to the guy's white face and pull the trigger way down.

And because he made that fateful decision, Jambo Jambone X was destined to undergo a unique life-affirming experience.

The white guy walked over to a pay phone. He dropped a quarter in the slot and leaned on the one button with his thumb. Jambo noticed that especially. It was not something people normally did.

He decided it was further confirmation that the guy was a cop. Probably it was some secret cop number he was dialing.

Jambo reached into the inner pocket of his camo varsity jacket and felt the warm plastic handle of his Glock. He slipped up behind the guy on his quiet pump sneakers while he was speaking into the phone.

"That's right, Smitty. No sign of Chiun. If Esperanza is going to make an appearance down here, I'd better get to work. Otherwise we'll have a bloodbath. This place is practically a war zone."

"You got that right, jack," said Jambo Jambone X, whipping out his high-impact plastic pistol and putting it to the back of the white cop's head. "And you be the next statistic." His brown finger caressed the trigger. Caressing the trigger was a trick an older Blood had taught him. He had bubbled out the secret as he lay dying, saying it was his wish to pass on the one great truth he had learned in life before he died, the sum total of eighteen rich years on the street.

"You don't jerk the trigger. You kinda squeeze it. Keeps the sight on the guy you wanna do."

"Squeeze?" Jambo had asked.

"Yeah. Uhhhh." A fountain of blood erupted from the Blood's mouth. Jambo thanked the man as he stripped the corpse of valuables, including the Glock 9 he first used to practice the secret art of squeezing the trigger. He quickly discovered that it worked. After that, he hardly ever popped preschoolers when he was aiming at their older relatives.

So, with the white dude's head before his muzzle, Jambo Jambone X began to squeeze the trigger, not yank it back hard.

He was eternally grateful he remembered to do this. He even said a prayer for the repose of the soul of his dead brother, whose name he no longer remembered.

"Jesus Lord, you watch out for his black ass," murmured Jambo Jambone X, as the cold sweat oozed down his forehead and washed his dark face.

The prayer made him feel much, much better-although it did nothing to clarify the situation confronting him. This was new. He would have to think this through. What does a Blood do when he finds himself with his finger on his own trigger and his Glock tucked up under his chin?

This was definitely new. It would take extra thought. The first thing Jambo Jambone X thought to do was figure out what had happened.

He had been about to smoke the white cop when the dude, casual as can be, had turned around and taken hold of Jambo's steady wrists with the fingers of one cool hand.

The Glock was under his own chin directly after that. Couldn't have taken the blink of a rat's eye.

In this unique circumstance, Jambo Jambone X felt moved to compliment the white dude. "You cool, jack. You the downest."

"Keep it down," said the cool cop in an equally cool voice. "I'll finish with you when I'm through with my conversation."

"Take your time," said Jambo Jambone X respectfully.

The cool cop continued doing his thing.

"Yeah. Right. I'll be in touch, Smitty."

The cool cop hung up the phone. Jambo Jambone X heard the phone mechanism click the quarter into the change-return slot. The dude was so cool he didn't even check the slot. That was way cool.

Still holding on to Jambo's wrist with a grip that felt like a redwood tree had grown up and around it, the cool cop started talking.

"I'm looking for a friend," he said.

"You got one. I am your friend for life, which I hope extends beyond the millennium what is comin'."

"Glad to hear it. But I already got a friend. He's about five feet tall, old as your mother's reputation, and he wears a Korean kimono."

"I know what a Korean is, but the kimono part's got me stumped."

"It's like a robe."

"Ain't seen no robe Korean," Jambo said.

"Tell you what, you help me look for him and I'll give you a quarter."

"A whole quarter?" asked Jambo Jambone X, who just last week had cleared three grand selling crack back of the high school. He wouldn't pick a quarter off the soles of his pumps, ordinarily. But the quarter the dude now offered meant his Glock wouldn't go off with his chin under it.

"No teeth marks, either. How about it?"

"Deal. Do I get my wrist back?"

"Sure."

The cool dude's fingers came away, leaving white marks and a spreading numbness. The numbness made Jambo drop his Glock.

The cool dude caught it up in one hand. His hand was like a blur. The other hand joined it, and they started squeezing the Glock like it was dirty tinfoil.

"Only it didn't make a tinfoil kinda sound," said Jambo Jambone X, a few minutes later at a crack house on Manchester Street.

"Yeah?" said Jambo's right arm, Dexter Dogget. "What did it sound like?"

"Like . . . like . . . like the guy was mushing up Silly Putty."

"What's Silly Putty?" asked a thirteen-year-old, wiping oil off the breech of his Mac-11.

"They used to have it when I was a kid, back before kids had guns," Jambo explained. "They played with this stuff. It's kinda like chewing gum, only you don't chew it."

"How high it get you?"

Jambo had to think about that one.

"Pretty damn buzzed, but not the way you know," he said truthfully.

"You been doing PCP again, Jambo?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fact."

"Better take a hit of this stuff. Clear your head."

Jambo swiped the tinfoil crack pipe away.

"Don't need that!" he snapped. "This is serious. We gotta help the cool dude find his friend."

"Why?"

"Because I got a feelin' bad things gonna happen to us if we don't," Jambo said truthfully.

"What makes you say that?"

"This white guy, he could rule the 'hood if he had a mind. I seen it in the way he carried himself. No lie."

The other Bloods conferred among themselves. The discussion was brief. There were only two options raised. Smoke Jambo to shut up his stupid face, or go along.

"I say we go along," said Dexter. "Man who smokes the white guy and shows up Jambo rules the Blood. Any dissent?"

There was none. Smiling faces came out of the huddle.

"Lead the way and we'll take the day," said Dexter.

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Jambo, as they strolled out.

"Who cares?" he was told. "It rhyme, don't it?"

Jambo frowned. Things are deteriorating. In the old days, about three-four months ago, everybody could lay down a cool rap. Now they'd become a bunch of mushmouths. What the hell was going on? They were doing only premium blow.

They found the old Korean on Compton Street, putting a poster on a peeling stucco wall that was covered with competing gangs' graffiti, until it was like a dead computer screen covered with the fading ghosts of its memory banks.

"Hey, you-old guy!" Jambo called.

The old Korean declined to turn around. Deep in thought, he positioned and repositioned the poster several times.

"We lookin' for you."

"Yeah," added Dexter. "Wanna word with you. You coverin' up our spray."

"I'll take this," said Jambo Jambone X, striding up to the guy.

"You deaf, coot?"

The old Korean looked up, as if noticing Jambo Jambone X for the first time.

Jambo Jambone X received two simultaneous impressions of the old Korean.

One, that his face was a network of wrinkles.

Two, that his eyes somehow reminded him of the cool white dude's eyes. There was the same scary confidence in them.

This second impression made more of an impression.

Jambo Jambone X had just started to backpedal to safety when a bony yellow claw took hold of his throat and squeezed. Jambo started choking. His tongue came out of his mouth.

And without any seeming effort, the old Korean used his head like a brush, washing the back of the poster and the face of the stucco wall with Jambo's long tongue.

Jambo was released only when he had no more moisture to give. He fell on his rump. The poster was smacked on the wall.

Jambo Jambone X pulled himself to his feet, trembling. He swallowed unidentifiable grit, which scraped his throat raw.

"Dude wants to see you," he croaked.

Behind him, the Blood were all laughing. He heard the click of safety latches.

"What's the matter, Jambo?" Dexter taunted. "You lost yourself?"

More laughter. They didn't know. What did they know? They were kids. Kids with just a few Glocks between them facing . . . Jambo Jambone X didn't know what they were facing, but he instinctually understood that it was better than a Glock. Better than any weapon.

"You jerks don't know!" he shouted. "This guy's a friend of the cool white guy! You better not disrespect him none!"

The laughter rang out in raucous peals.

"I am the Master of Sinanju," said the old Korean.

"You tell 'em, Master."

"I am with Esperanza, who would be governor."

"You hear that?" Jambo said. "This man with the governor! He be important. You listen up, you punks."

"When the one called Esperanza comes to this place of despair," the old Korean went on, "he will be treated with proper respect."

"Say it again!" Jambo exclaimed.

"There will be no shooting. No violence. You will listen quietly, and you will vote as I say you will vote."

"Hey! You can't say that!" Dexter protested.

"I am saying it."

"It's un-American. Besides, we can't vote. We're too young."

"I say we shoot the un-American gook," a youth announced, waving his pistol.

"I second that."

"Yeah," Dexter growled. "This we can vote on. All those in favor of smoking the uppity gook, vote with your pieces."

A fan of pistol muzzles arrayed themselves in the precise direction of the old Korean, whose eyes narrowed before the menace. Cold fingers touched colder triggers.

Jambo Jambone X realized that when those triggers were jerked back-jerked, not squeezed-the old guy who was a friend of the cool white guy was probably going to get dead. If he got dead, then Jambo Jambone X was going to have to tell the cool white guy with the thick wrists and very fast hands that his own brothers had done this.

Jambo Jambone X then made one of the most intelligent decisions in his short life. He stepped between the fan of pistols and the old Korean.

It was not bravery. It was not self-sacrifice. It was a simple subtraction. Take away the old Korean, and the white guy was going to take away Jambo Jambone X. One from one equals zero. Even a Blood could do that kind of subtraction.

"You sayin' don't shoot?" asked Dexter Dogget of Jambo Jambone X.

"I ain't sayin'."

"You sayin' shoot, then?"

"I ain't sayin' that, either."

"Then what are you sayin', man?"

"I'm sayin' you shoot him, you might as well shoot me."

"Okay," said Dexter Dogget, the second oldest and next in line to lead the Blood. The trigger fingers began turning white at the knuckle joints.

Jambo Jambone X closed his eyes. He said another prayer. It rhymed perfectly. "Lord, save my ass, or my ass is grass."

Then a frantic voice rang out. "Nobody better shoot that gook!"

"Anyone who shoots the gook gets capped!" a second voice warned.

Jambo Jambone X opened his eyes. They kept opening until they were very wide.

Coming up Compton was a wedge of blue varsity jackets. It was the Crips. And they were rolling.

One of the Blood called out, "What's this gook to you?"

"Cool guy made me promise to find him."

Jambo Jambone X blinked.

"Cool guy with thick wrists and fast hands?" he asked.

"No. Cool guy with thick wrists and fast feet. Our man Rollo jump him from behind. Rollo too slow. White guy gave out a Kung Fu kinda kick. Rollo, he roll one way and Rollo's head roll another."

Jambo Jambone X made the sign of the Cross, even though technically he considered himself a Black Muslim. But for the whispered words of a dying Blood, it might have been his own head rolling every which way.

"You listen to that dude," Jambo cautioned his fellow gang members. "He know what he be talkin' about."

Dexter scoffed. "You shermed, Jambo. Them's Crips. Big and blue as life."

"Don't say I didn't warn you," Jambo warned.

The old Korean, who up to this point had remained silent but unconcerned, stepped around Jambo Jambone X. He shook his wide emerald sleeves back from his skinny little arms. Jambo could tell he meant business.

Jambo whispered, "The one with the gold earring, he be my brother. Don't hurt him too much."

"That is up to him," the old Korean said in a cold tone.

"If you gotta kill him, I try to understand," said Jambo.

"You will lay down your weapons," said the old Korean.

"Crips'll smoke us," Dexter pointed out.

"They will not."

"Good," said Dexter, grinning thinly. "Because we gonna smoke them."

The fan of muzzles turned, as if mounted on the rail of a circling battleship.

The Crips froze. They were not carrying their weapons in their hands.

And a moment later, neither were the Blood.

They went, "Ouch! Ow! Yeow! Yikes!" as a flurry of campaign posters zipped by their gun hands, inflicting wicked and painful paper cuts and forcing them to drop their weapons to the dirty pavement.

The blizzard of posters fell at their feet. Some fell faceup. Some facedown. The upward-facing posters caught the attention of the Blood, now well named because of the conditions off their gun hands. Looking up at them were the liquid eyes of Enrique Espiritu Esperanza.

"He the guy you want us to vote for?" Dexter gulped.

"He is," intoned the wise old Korean-the wisest, kindest Korean ever to roll through the South Central District.

"He got my vote," Dexter promised.

"Mine, too."

"First, he must know that you are loyal," Chiun suggested.

"What we gotta do?"

"These posters must be placed in appropriate places in this neighborhood," said the wise old Korean.

"You got it!"

"And we get the old guy," said the approaching Crips.

"Who you calling 'old'?" protested Jambo Jambone X. "This here's my man. Yo, Master. Tell these cheeseeaters."

"Begone, eaters of cheese," intoned the Master of Sinanju sternly. "I will have nothing to do with you."

"White guy wants you," said the spokesman for the Crips, pulling out a .357 Magnum. "So you come."

Other Crip armaments came into view then. The Blood, their weapons on the ground and their hands dripping red, gave a collective, "Oh, shit."

The Blood dived for their guns. The Crips picked their targets. Jambo Jambone X threw himself in front of the old Korean. A bloodbath impended.

Remo Williams picked that moment to saunter around the corner.

"Nobody do anything stupider than being born," he said.

Nobody did. The sound of his easy, no-nonsense voice caused faces on both sides of the imminent bloodbath to freeze. Eyes went round. A few crotches darkened from the contents of fear-struck bladders.

"In fact, everybody better lay down their guns," he added.

This instruction was obeyed with military precision. Pistols of all types clicked as they were carefully laid on the sidewalk.

"Look what I found for you," Jambo Jambone X said, pointing to the Master of Sinanju.

"He lie," said the Crip spokesman. "We found him. You owe us quarters."

"No. I get the quarter."

"I'll give you all a quarter, if you shut up," said Remo.

"I want the quarter," Jambo insisted. "It gonna be my lucky piece."

"Or I can juggle a few heads for the entertainment of the survivors," Remo added.

"You the man," Jambo said instantly. "Whatever you say."

Remo strode up to Chiun, whose hands found themselves in the sleeves of his kimono.

"I have nothing to say to you, white."

"Yeee!" said Jambo. "Don't call him no names!"

The old Korean sniffed disdainfully. "He is white. He will always be white. I will call him what I choose."

The eyes of the assembled Crips and Bloods went from the face of the old Oriental to that of the white dude, their pupils reflecting various degrees of fear, horror, and consternation.

"What you sayin'?" Jambo hissed. "You can't talk to the dude that way. He take your head off."

"He is a pale piece of pig's ear," intoned the old Oriental.

"Yiii!" hissed the assembled Crips and Bloods. They backed away. They had no desire to see their jackets soiled when the old Oriental's neck stump began to pump blood all over the place, because his head wasn't there to receive it.

"You gonna take that?" asked a Crip.

"Little Father," the white dude said simply. "I have just one thing to tell you."

"I am not interested, stealer of sweethearts."

The Crips and Bloods shrank further. They were fighting over a chick. Somebody was bound to die.

"Cheeta Ching is going to cover Esperanza's speech."

"Quick!" Chiun shrieked, pointing to the paper snowfall of campaign posters at their feet. "The posters! They must be in their proper places! The streets must be cleaned! I do not want to see a speck of dust when the beauteous Cheeta comes!"

The Crips and Bloods frowned, like a bas-relief of basalt idols.

"He crazy?" Dexter demanded of the white dude.

"Better do what he says," Remo put in. "When he gets excited like that, even I get nervous."

The faces of the assembled Crips and Bloods went from the cold mask of the white dude they all feared to the frowning face of the wispy Oriental, with stupefaction growing in their eyes.

"You, afraid? Of him?" asked one.

Remo nodded. "He taught me everything I know. Everything."

That was all the Crips and the Bloods needed to hear. Madly, they scooped up Esperanza campaign posters. They stole push brooms and barrels from hardware store displays. They got to work on Compton Street, determined to make it presentable for the old Korean who had taught the downest white men in the world everything he knew.

Chapter 15

Cheeta Ching had not slept in two days. There were hollows under her sharp, predatory eyes. Her brain felt like it had been dipped in Alka-Seltzer fizz.

A face haunted her. A strong, white face with prominent, almost Korean cheekbones and deep-set hollow eyes. Those eyes had pierced her ambitious soul. His name was burned into her soul.

"Nero." She spoke the name aloud, tasting its unKorean vowels. "Nero."

She had never met anyone like him. Well, maybe once before. Years ago.

She had almost forgotten the experience. A strange man had broke into her apartment and tied her to a chair. After he had perversely dressed her in a flowing Korean native dress.

Cheeta had thought she was going to be raped. So she had resorted to the formidable weapon that had brought her to national prominence: her razor-sharp tongue. Cheeta heaped abuse on the man. Threatened him. Taunted him. Nothing seemed to work. It was a first. No man-from network presidents to her husband-had ever failed to wither under a Cheeta Ching tonguelashing.

She had steeled herself for the worst.

Instead of raping or kidnapping her, the attacker simply shot a roll of thirty-five-millimeter film of Cheeta, tied to the chair, dressed in Lyi dynasty ham-bok dress, and sputtering scorn.

Then he had left, much to Cheeta's relief.

After she had struggled free of her bonds, Cheeta Ching had contacted Don Cooder, her arch-rival, and accused him of staging the attack. Cooder had denied it.

"You're not even in my class," Cooder had snarled.

Cheeta then hung up and hired thugs to beat him up, shouting "What's the frequency, Kenneth?"

Satisfied, Cheeta then waited for the photos to appear in some tabloid. They never had. Nor had they been used to blackmail her.

It was a mystery, and eventually Cheeta Ching had put it out of her mind. But she had never been able to put her strange assailant out of her mind. There was something about his cruel forcefulness that lingered, and sometimes made her fantasize about his return-even though the memory of that ugly incident still made her shiver.

The man who had attacked her reminded her of Nero. A little. The face was different. The eyes were alike. But it was not the same man, she was sure of that. The other had been a pig.

But Nero was different from other men. He was . . .

Words failed Cheeta Ching. No surprise. Most of her on-air material was written for her. Still, there was something about him, something that had made her shiver at the first glimpse of his lean, strong body. Shiver in the same way she had just shivered at the memory of the strange, picture-taking intruder. He was . . .

"A dreamboat," she decided finally, dipping into her half-forgotten teenage vocabulary. "That's what he is. A dreamboat."

Cheeta was hunched in a cubbyhole of the local network affiliate, eating spicy jungol casserole soup. It was in her contract that she be catered in Korean ethnic foods, and God help the idiot who served her Moo Goo Gai Pan. She was trying to figure out what had happened to the tape of her self-interview.

Nero couldn't have stolen it, she told herself. Never.

Yet the tape he had given her proved to be blank. And the network had refused to run her interview with Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, calling it "Soft and unprofessional."

Cheeta had instantly blamed this on her cameraman. But the missing tape still bothered her.

There is only one way to solve this mystery, she decided, as she stirred her jungol and let the scrumptious turnip-and-cabbage odor soothe her flaring nostrils.

She picked up the phone and called personnel.

"Did anyone named Nero drop off a resume today?" she asked the personnel manager.

"No. Nor Demo. Nor Nemo, or any of the other names you keep mentioning."

"Well, if anyone with any of those names drops off a resume, I am to be notified instantly or it's your job."

"You don't hire and fire at this station," the personnel manager had said.

"Fine," Cheeta Ching replied tartly. "I won't fire you. What I'll do is rip your Adam's apple out of your gullet with my naked teeth."

There was a pregnant pause while the threat sank in.

"The very minute anyone with those vowels in his name drops off a resume, you'll be the first to know, Miss Ching," the personnel manager said, helpfully.

"Thank you," Cheeta said sweetly. "I'm glad we understand each other."

Cheeta hung up the phone. It rang a second later. It was the station news director.

"We just received word that Esperanza is giving a speech down in the South Central district. I can get you a cameraman, if you want to cover it."

"I want to cover it," Cheeta said quickly, bolting from her chair. Here was her chance to redeem herself. And maybe run into Nero the Divine, too.

The thought of coming into contact with the dark-eyed Nero made more delicious shivers course up and down her spine. She wondered if it would stimulate ovulation. She had tried just about everything else.

The station microwave van came off the freeway and into the worst section of South Central Los Angeles.

The driver looked startled. He pulled over to the side of the road, his face wearing a confused expression.

From the back of the van, Cheeta poked her stickyhaired head forward.

"What's wrong?" she demanded, shrill-voiced.

"I think I took a wrong turn," he said, pulling a folding map from the glove compartment.

"Don't you know your own city, you nitwit?"

"I thought I did. But this can't be South Central."

Cheeta peered through the windshield. She saw a neat downtown area. No litter clogged its gutters. The sides of buildings were wet from recent scrubbing. Even the sidewalks looked freshly washed.

More incredibly, there were no loitering gang members, no back-alley drug dealing, no hookers in tight clothes leaning against building facades.

"Why not?" she asked, her too-smooth face puckering in perplexity.

"Look at this place," said the driver. "It's neat as a pin. South Central is a dump."

"Maybe the city cleaned it in preparation for Esperanza's speech," Cheeta suggested.

"Lady, you don't know this city. Or South Central. The cops are petrified to come here after dark."

The driver returned to the map.

"Says here we should be on Compton Street," he said doubtfully.

"The sign says Compton," Cheeta pointed out.

"I know," the driver said bleakly. "I feel like I'm in The Twilight Zone."

"If we miss this speech," Cheeta warned, "I promise to cable you to a fire plug and leave you there after sundown."

The driver pulled out into traffic. "We're on the right street. We gotta be."

As he tooled his van further down the street, the driver began feeling light-headed. Gone were the graffiti. The gutters were immaculate. Even the air smelled good. He noticed air-wick dispensers located at strategic points, on window sills and storm drains.

And surreally, he saw two black teenagers scrubbing spray-painted profanity off the side of a church. One wore a blue Crips bandanna on his head, and the other had a bloodred Bloods bandanna stuffed into the back pocket of his jeans.

"I am in The Twilight Zone," he muttered.

The media had already set up cameras and microwave stations in front of the Ebeneezer Tabernacle Church, where Enrique Espiritu Esperanza was scheduled to make a speech. Rival anchors milled about. They were merely local anchors, but to Cheeta Ching all anchors were potential rivals. They were either clawing their way up to her slot, or they were sniping at her as their careers crashed and burned.

Cheeta saw that two of the female reporters were of Asian descent, and her eyes became catlike slits.

"Look at that," she hissed to her trembling cameraman. "Those sluts. Trying to steal my thunder. Why can't they be teachers, or work in restaurants, like the rest of their kind?"

The cameraman said a discreet nothing. He lugged his minicam out of the back of the van, saying, "Looks like we got here too late for a choice position."

"I'll fix that," Cheeta hissed, storming ahead.

Her red nails flashing in the California sun, Cheeta Ching waded into the crowd. She yanked cords from belt battery packs and hit fast-forward buttons where she could.

Instantly, cameramen began to curse and check their equipment for malfunctions.

Cheeta turned and waved to her cameraman to follow. The man dashed through the path Cheeta's sabotage had opened up. He made excellent time. He had been told his predecessor had been demoted to the mail room for being too slow.

By the time they reached the front of the pack, Cheeta had staked out a prominent position. From her handbag, she pulled out a tiny can of hair varnish and began applying it liberally to her crowning glory, turning so that stray bursts got into the eyes of selected rivals. That cleared even more space.

Her timing was perfect. The white Mercedes came around a corner while rival newscasters were still dabbing water into their smarting eyes.

It came slowly. Ahead, behind, and on either side of it was a mass of strutting teenagers. They wore the blue bandannas of the Crips and the red of the Blood, plus the caps of the Chicano gang known as Los Aranas Espana.

Gasps came from the reporters.

"What? What is it?" Cheeta demanded, craning her long neck to see over their heads.

The cameraman was just tall enough to manage this feat.

"It's Esperanza's car," he reported. "And it's surrounded by gang-bangers."

"They've captured him!"

"Looks like they're escorting him, if you want my opinion."

"I don't. Turn that camera on me."

The cameraman obeyed.

Picking up a mike, Cheeta screamed, "I'm broadcasting live from South Central L.A., one of the most crime-ridden areas of the city, where vicious teenage gangsters have surrounded the Hispanic candidate for governor, Enrique Espiritu Esperanza!"

Just then, voices rose: "Esperanza! Esperanza! Esperanza!"

"They're calling for his death!" Cheeta cried.

"I don't think so," the cameraman put in.

"Stay out of this!" Cheeta flared. "Cameramen shouldn't be seen or heard!"

"Esperanza! Esperanza!"

"What are they doing now?"

The cameraman said, "Looks to me like they're sticking their hands into the car windows."

"They're trying to drag him out!" she said, licking her lips. "A political assassination, and we're covering it live!"

"No," the cameraman corrected, "they're accepting cookies."

Cheeta Ching's pencil-thin eyebrows went for each other like vicious vipers. "Cookies?"

"They look like Oreos."

"Let me see," Cheeta said, jumping up and down.

"How?"

"On your knees, buster."

The cameraman obliged. He got down on all fours and grunted manfully as Cheeta Ching impaled his broad back with stiletto heels, designed to make her stand taller than any interviewee under six feet.

Over the bobbing heads of the crowd, Cheeta beheld a remarkable sight.

The white Mercedes coasted up to the church steps. Gang members were walking along either side. Out of a rear window, a brown hand was passing out dark Oreo cookies.

The smiling gang members accepted these eagerly and passed them around. A few shot clenched fists into the air.

"Esperanza's our main man! Esperanza's our main man!"

Presently, the Mercedes rolled to a halt. The gang members lined up in two protective rows between the rear door and the podium that had been erected for the speech.

Enrique Espiritu Esperanza emerged, smiling. He walked down the path made for him, as the media surged toward the spectacle.

Cheeta leaped off the cameraman's back, crying, "Get off your knees, you idiot! We're missing the shot of our careers!"

By the time they reached the car, Enrique Esperanza had made it to the podium. He wore white.

He began speaking.

"I have come here to make a speech," Enrique Esperanza began.

A hush fell over the crowd.

"But I will not make a speech," Esperanza said.

A murmur went through the crowd.

"Instead, I will have the fine young men of South Central speak for me."

Enrique Esperanza waved to his honor guard. A black youth in Blood colors took the podium.

"My name is Jambo Jambone X, and until this morning I never heard of Mr. Esperanza. But now that I have met the dude, I see that I got hope. No more gangbanging for me. No more crack. From now on I eat Oreo cookies and go to school. Oreos taste better than crack, anyway."

Nervous applause rippled through the crowd.

The next to take the microphone was the leader of the Crips. He took credit for cleaning up South Central. And quickly added that his brothers from the Blood and Los Aranas had pitched in.

"Mr. Esperanza showed me my pride. I say down with crimes. Anybody doing crimes in my neighborhood had better watch out. I see any more crimes going down, and I drop a dime on his crown."

The leader of Los Aranas Espana came next. His speech was shorter and more to the point.

"I say, 'Esperanza mucho hombre.' "

Wild applause greeted this. The Aranas leader rejoined the honor guard behind the podium.

Then a smiling Enrique Espiritu Esperanza returned to the mike.

"I thank my black and brown friends for their kind words in my behalf," he said magnanimously. "They have seen their future. The multicultural future that is uniquely Californian. When I am elected, all Californians, regardless of skin color or ethnic background, will be able to coexist as friends. No more fear. No more hate. No more trouble. This, Enrique Espiritu Esperanza promises you."

From a dozen places in the crowd, placards rose. They read ESPERANZA MEANS HOPE In three languages.

The cameraman, his minicam capturing the most sensational sight in South Central since the last monthly riot, said, "Isn't this something?"

As the crowd roared its approval, Cheeta Ching looked around distractedly.

"See anything of a dreamboat named Ramiro?" she asked hopefully.

Remo Williams was in hiding.

He lay on his stomach, peering over the crumbling edge of an apartment house roof, his eyes guarded.

"Is she still there?" he asked.

"She is looking about with her magnificent feline eyes," replied the Master of Sinanju in a chill voice.

Remo scuttled away. "Get back. We don't want her to spot us."

"Speak for yourself, white," sniffed Chiun. "I only stand on this dirty roof because I know it would anger Emperor Smith were I to appear on the television."

"I'm glad you're being sensible."

"I am willing to wait until I am Exalted Treasurer of California before stepping into the lemonlight," he said.

"That's limelight, and if you get the urge to step into it, remember what happened to me the last time I got my face on TV."

Chiun retreated with alacrity, saying, "Emperor Smith would not dare to require that a Master of Sinanju submit to surgeons of plastic, as you have."

"My face still hurts from that last facelift."

Chiun stepped back even further. His nose wrinkled.

"All glory comes to him who is patient," he said quietly.

"What do you see in that witch, anyway?" asked Remo, climbing to his feet.

The Master of Sinanju turned his face toward the snowy peaks of the San Gabriel Mountains to the east. His long nails touched one another, his bony fingers splayed.

"Once," he intoned, "I was a young man."

"You and about half the human race," Remo returned.

A hand lifted. "Hush!" Chiun said sharply. "You have asked a question, and now you will hear the answer."

"I guess I asked for it . . . ."

"I was young, and the world was wide," Chiun murmured. "It was in the days when I was still a Master-in-training. Now a Master-in-training must perform many feats. Endure many hardships. Suffer much pain. One day, my father, the Master who began my training, called me into his presence and said unto me, 'My son, you must now face your severest test.'"

"I trembled, for before this I had endured much. I could not imagine what my father had in store for me. And he said, 'You must go to the city of which you have heard, many leagues from this fishing village of ours, and dwell there for one month.'"

Remo grunted. "Horrors."

"My father said that many young men before me had gone to the city and never come back," Chiun continued in an arid voice. "I asked him what dangers awaited me, and he said, 'You will not know their face until they have inflicted grievous wounds upon your soul.' And hearing these portentous words I trembled anew, for I did not comprehend this riddle.

"And so I walked to the city of Pyongyang, which is now in North Korea, but in those days was merely a city in the north of an undivided land. I went on foot, with a few coins in my pocket and only the kimono on my back."

The Master of Sinanju lifted his tiny chin, his hazel eyes going opaque with memories.

"The way was long, and my heart was tight with many emotions," he said. "Would I return alive? Would I be swallowed by the harlot guile of the city-dwellers, tales of which I had heard since childhood?

"After two days, I came to the outskirts of Pyongyang. It was much bigger than I had ever dreamed. Its towers rose to the very sky. Its people were more numerous than I had imagined. There were sights undreamed of. Foods whose names I did not know. There were also people of foreign birth: Japanese, Chinese, and even bignosed whites. But the astounding thing was the Koreans I encountered. At first, I did not understand that they were Koreans. For their faces were quite different from those of the village of Sinanju. And they had taken Japanese names."

"Really?" Remo asked.

"Yes. It is unbelievable, but true. For these were the days when Korea was a vassal of Japan." Chiun frowned at the memory. "As I walked among these Koreans-who-were-not, I marveled at the women I encountered along the way. They, too, looked unlike Sinanju women. For they wore fine clothes and painted their faces and lips in most unusual and artful ways. I had not gone very far when it came to me that this Pyongyang would be a pleasant place to spend my days." Chiun bowed his bald head sadly.

"No!" Remo said, voice mock-serious.

"Yes," Chiun admitted.

Remo grinned. "Well, you know what they say: 'Can't keep 'em down on the farm once they've seen gay Pyongyang.' "

Chiun's stern face wrinkled. "I do not understand."

"Never mind. What happened next?"

"I came upon a painted-faced maiden who caught my fancy."

"This isn't going to be one of those unrequited love things, is it?" Remo asked. "Because if it is, I'd just as soon throw myself into the arms of Cheeta Ching and end the misery right now."

"It is nothing of the kind," Chiun sniffed. "Of course, it was love at first sight."

Remo suppressed a smile. "Of course." "The maiden, beholding my manly splendor, was instantly smitten with Chiun the Younger, which is what I was called in those long-ago days."

"Chiun the Younger?"

"Not that I am now old," Chiun said hastily.

"Course not."

"As I was saying, this maiden, whose name was Ch'amnari, was smitten with the young man that I was. She employed all manner of enticements and other blandishments to lure me into her womanly snares, but I kept the warning of my father, Chiun the Elder, in mind, and passed her by."

"Junks in the night," Remo said with a sober face.

"That night, this maiden haunted my sleep. Her painted face swam before my dream-eye, and troubled my slumber deeply. Remo, it was true love."

"Sounds like hormones to me."

"Philistine!"

"Okay, okay, it was love. Let's cut to the chase. Did you bed her, or what?"

The Master of Sinanju's tiny face stiffened. His hands, nails touching, separated and found concealment in the closing sleeves of his elaborate kimono.

"I refuse to say." "You didn't."

"I did!" Chiun snapped.

"Okay, you did. You obviously practiced safe sex, too. So what happened then?"

Chiun looked off toward the mountains. "When I awoke, Remo, she was gone."

"So much for true love."

"And with her had gone my meager allotment of gold coins, which I had carried in a purse at my waist."

"Ah-ha, I'll bet you jingled when you walked, and it was your jingle, not your jangle, that gave her the hots for you."

"It was my splendid strong body!" Chiun flared. "Keep it down," Remo cautioned, looking over his shoulder. "We don't want Cheeta climbing the building with a mike clenched in her teeth."

"Speak for yourself," Chiun sniffed. Then, his voice going low, he added, "For you see, Cheeta is the image of the maiden I have told you about, Remo."

"You fell for her? Ch'amnari, I mean."

Chiun nodded. "Even though she was a thief. For you see, she had what was called in the village a 'city face' fine-featured and delicate. The women of Sinanju are country-faced. The woman I later married was country-faced. Yet I never forgot the city-faced Ch'amnari, and our rapturous night together."

"That good, huh?"

"She was lavish in her compliments," Chiun added crisply.

"Ever get your money back?"

"Yes. With interest."

"Interest?"

"I searched Pyongyang for this Ch'amnari, eventually finding her in the company of a Japanese colonel. Ito. An oppressor."

"Uh-oh . . ."

"He sneered at me. Called me a barbarian. And when I demanded justice, he told me to be gone."

"So you wasted him?" Remo said.

"I laid his yapping head at the feet of Ch'amnari, who with trembling hands surrendered my purse of gold coins, and others beside. Then I gave her the coldness of my retreating back and never saw her again. Although I have carried her beauteous image within me down to this very day. I returned to my village a sadder man, Remo. When my father saw the expression on my face, he said nothing. But I could see in his eyes that he knew I had learned the hard lesson he had hoped I would come to understand."

"You're serious about this? You really want that barracu- Cheeta?"

Chiun shrugged carelessly. "Her beauty pleases me. She is worthy to bear the child my country-faced wife never bestowed upon me-and the male heir you have yet to produce."

"Ah-ha!" Remo said, holding his arms stubbornly. "Now the real stuff comes out. Correct me if I'm wrong, Little Father, but quite a few years ago you got zapped by microwaves. You said you'd been sterilized."

"That was, as you say, years ago," Chiun said, with a dismissive flap of a kimono sleeve. "It may be that my inner essence has come to life again."

"You saying you're horny?" Remo demanded.

Chiun whirled, his eyes cold fire. "Pale piece of pig's ear! I am speaking of possibilities. Cheeta and Chiun. Chiun and Cheeta. And the offspring that may blossom from our perfect union."

Remo shook his head slowly. "I don't know, Little Father. I just can't see it."

Chiun snorted. "You have the imagination of a flea."

"Okay, never mind that. What do you propose doing about this Cheeta problem?"

"She likes you."

"That depends. If she figured out I palmed her tape, she may want to strangle me with piano wire."

"I wish you to arrange a tryst for Cheeta. A romantic encounter. She will heed your request. But I will go in your stead."

"Sorry, John Alden."

"Why not?"

"One, you'll be made a fool of. Her name may be Cheeta, but it might as well be Ch'amnari."

"Please."

Remo frowned. Behind him, the crowd roared the name "Esperanza." The speech was ending.

"I'll think about it," he said. "First, I want you to drop this 'treasurer' crap."

Chiun stiffened. "Is this the boon you wish to invoke?"

Remo thought about that. "No. At least not yet. Smitty wants you to watch over Esperanza. But that's as far as it goes."

"Then you will not speak to Cheeta on my behalf?" Chiun inquired.

"Little Father," Remo said wearily, "I sincerely hope to avoid Cheeta Ching for the rest of my natural life."

"That is your final word?"

"No. Let me think about it. Okay?"

"I will accept that. But not for long."

"We friends again?"

"For now."

Remo smiled. Chiun's face remained set. "I must return to the side of my patron, Esperanza," he said.

"You know, he might be another Ch'amnari, too."

"What makes you say that?" Chiun said thinly.

"He offered you the treasurer's post. Just like that. Sounds too good to be true."

"I have delivered to him Koreatown, and all the votes that come with it," Chiun said loftily. "This is how empires are built."

"Just watch your step."

"That lesson," Chiun said loftily, "I learned long ago in old Pyongyang." The Master of Sinanju turned and padded toward the roof trap, disappearing down and out of sight.

Remo Williams watched his Master go.

"Great," he muttered. "I'm stuck in the middle of a love triangle between the Wicked Witch of the East and the only person I care about."

And down below the roaring crowd cried, "Esperanza!"

Chapter 16

By the next morning, the name Enrique Espiritu Esperanza was on the lips of every man, woman, and child in California. And beyond.

"We're hot! Oh, we're so hot!" Harmon Cashman said enthusiastically. He had arrayed three rows of Oreo cookies on the breakfast nook table, and was separating them with a butter knife so that the creme centers were exposed, like cataracted whale eyes. "The numbers are starting to move our way! I am so amped!"

"It is time to widen our campaign," Enrique Esperanza decided.

Harmon Cashman began scraping the dry creme filling onto a bread dish, making a gooey little pile.

"We got L.A. County practically sewed up," he agreed. "The white-I mean blanco-campaign offices are reporting a flood of new volunteers and contributions. You got the white people thinking you're California's savior."

"I think we should next take the battle to San Francisco."

"Yeah. Barry Black's home turf. That ought to spook that Frisco flake good."

When he had every Oreo scraped clean, and a nice sweet pile of white creme filling, Harmon Cashman lifted the plate to his mouth and began licking.

He paused only once. To spoon a dab into his black coffee.

When he had licked the plate clean, he drank the coffee in one gulp.

"I hear the stores are having a run on these cookies wherever we've passed them out," Harman said, smacking his lips with relish. "Maybe we can get an endorsement out of the company. We must be buying them by the freight-train load, and I've never seen an invoice."

"They are donations," Esperanza said flatly.

"No kidding? That's better than an endorsement."

"I think so," said Enrique Esperanza, looking out at the San Gabriel Mountains, his voice as far away as their hazy peaks.

Barry Black, Junior had grown up in the California governor's mansion. He had first sat in the corner office, not behind the desk but bouncing on his father's knee.

Barry Black, Senior had been the first Democratic governor of California since the Great Depression. That had been in the 1950s.

It had taken until the 1970s for another California Democrat to occupy the corner office. That had been Barry Black, Junior.

The two terms Barry Black, Junior had served had almost ensured that California would not elect another Democrat to the governorship until the next Great Depression. If even then.

After a string of debacles, ranging from his attempts to protect the Medfly from an eradication program designed to save the state citrus crop to his proposal to put a Californian on Mars by the year 2,000 the man the press had dubbed "Governor Glowworm" had been turned out of office quicker than a shoplifter from a Wal-Mart.

On his last day in office, Barry Black announced that he was going to the mysterious East to study in India and help Mother Teresa.

"You won't have Barry Black to ridicule anymore," he announced, plagiarizing the words of a famous predecessor.

In fact, he hoped to acquire the power to cloud men's minds in India. He knew his only ticket back to the governor's office would be to hypnotize the electorate into forgetting his disastrous terms.

Barry Black, Junior never did pick up that unique skill. Instead, he meditated. A decade of meditating on his future brought only flashbacks on his past.

Deciding that his future lay in his past, and after shaving his thick ascetic beard-his only accomplishment during his decade spent seeking wisdom-Barry Black, Junior returned to sunny California.

The return of Barry Black delighted California Republicans. It petrified the Democrats, who made Barry Black an irresistible offer almost before he had stepped off the jumbo jet.

"We want you to head up the party," a nervous delegation told him. "Please."

"I want to serve my party," Barry Black said, "but I also want to serve the people. Mother Teresa taught me that. "

"The party needs you. We need you."

"I don't know . . . ."

"Mother Teresa said it would be okay," a scared delegate said in desperation.

"She did?"

"Her exact words were, 'Barry should go where he'll do the most good.' "

And so Barry Black, Junior became the Democratic Party Chairman of the state of California and hustled a small fortune in campaign contributions. Inside of six months, he was on his way to becoming the most successful fundraiser the party had ever seen.

"I'm really good at this," he said when the coffers had topped three million dollars. "Mother Teresa was right."

Barry Black, Junior raised so much money he succumbed to a distinctly Democratic impulse. He squandered every cent. On an excessive and unnecessary staff.

His grassroots political efforts collapsed for lack of funds and he was canned, forcing Barry Black to run for senator. He garnered an unimpressive three percent of the popular vote, and narrowly escaped being hanged from a eucalyptus tree. By his own party machinery.

The experience created in Barry Black, Junior a sense of moral outrage, a new sense of moral outrage unlike any sense of moral outrage that had ever possessed him.

"I raised millions for those bastards," he howled from the safety of Oregon.

"And you blew it in two years flat," his most trusted advisor pointed out bitterly. "While you were building a useless political machine, the Republicans were outregistering us four-to-one."

"You know, the problem with this country is incumbency," said Barry Black, stumbling on a new campaign theme.

"You were an incumbent once."

"And if I were back in office, you can be damn sure this country wouldn't be in the mess it's in."

"Barry," said the advisor, his voice cracking like that of a bullfrog. "You're not thinking of doing it again. Are you?"

"What's wrong with . . . it?"

The other began ticking off reasons on fingers. "You washed out in 1980. You washed in 1984. California doesn't want you. What makes you think the rest of the country wants you?"

Barry Black squared his well-tailored shoulders. "They don't want me. That's the message. They need me. Washington is full of fat cats wasting the tax dollars. I only waste campaign contributions. It's an entirely different thing."

"Please, please, don't run for President again. I'm begging you."

But Barry Black was not to be swayed. His chipmunk eyes were already aglow with pure populist ambition.

"It's the White House or nothing," he vowed.

"It's nothing," the other man sobbed. "It's nothing."

Barry Black, Junior didn't even bother with an exploratory committee. He just got out in front of the cameras one day, his thinning hair now graying at the temples, and announced that he was a candidate for President of the United States.

"Again?" asked a reporter.

"This is what-the third time?" another wanted to know.

Barry Black became indignant.

"No, not again. That was a different Barry Black. I'm the new Barry Black, out to unseat the incumbents. I'm determined to reclaim the country, and reinvent the system. And the first thing I'm doing is to absolutely refuse any campaign contribution larger than a hundred dollars."

Coming from a man who had raised millions as California's Democratic Party Chairman, this was akin to Donald Trump offering to spend a night in a holding cell rather than squander a cent bailing himself out of jail.

The Barry Black for President campaign was mercifully short. After six months of stumping and speech-giving, and railing against everything from incumbency to what he called the "medical-industrial complex," he had raised a grand total of three thousand, two hundred and twelve dollars and six cents. One of which was Canadian.

"Not even enough to cover our phone bills," sobbed his most trusted advisor, now campaign manager.

"The trouble with you is you have no vision," Barry Black accused.

"The trouble with you is you have no brains. I quit!" said the campaign manager, slamming the door behind him.

That slamming door also closed out his ill-fated campaign. Without a campaign manager, Barry Black, Junior was reduced to doing his own laundry. The burden proved too much.

He was forced to pull out of the Presidential campaign early in the primaries. Back in his Pacific Park home overlooking San Francisco Bay, he once again took stock of his political future.

"Ommmmm. Ommmmm," he moaned, attempting to meditate.

It was in the middle of his mantra that the bulletin broke over the New Age mandolin music wafting from a table radio:

"The Governor's office has just announced that the governor and his lieutenant governor have both perished in an airliner crash. Further details when they become available."

Barry Black, Junior snapped his beady eyes open.

"It was a dream. I dreamed that, didn't I?" he asked the emptiness.

Flinging himself to the radio, he roved all over the dial until he had heard three variations of the same bulletin.

Barry Black, Junior took the next shuttle to Sacramento, to put in a surprise appearance at the double state funeral.

At the grave site, as the first clods of dirt clumped onto the side-by-side coffins, Barry Black, Junior worked the bereaved with an appropriately solemn expression on his chipmunk face.

"I share your loss," he told the first weeping widow quietly. "I hope you'll vote for me in the special election. I share your loss," he told the second weeping widow. "I hope you'll consider me worthy of your vote in your time of grief."

The funeral had been a model of decorum until then. After Barry Black, Junior had finished offering his condolences to the immediate families, sobbing broke out.

Word rippled through the crowd. The press, catching word, descended upon Barry Black, Junior, quickly surrounding him.

"This is unseemly!" Barry Black said indignantly. "This is a state funeral, a morose occasion!"

"What's this we hear about you declaring your intention to run in the special election?" he was asked.

"Special election? You mean they're planning a special election?" Barry Black said blankly. It's true I have been considering a reentry into local affairs, but I have made no determinations at this time."

"Do you think California is ready for Barry Black in the corner office again?"

"The old Barry Black, no."

"Which old Barry Black is that? The old Barry Black who was party chairman, or the old, old Barry Black who was governor?"

"I am neither of those Barry Blacks," Barry Black said firmly. "I am a whole new Barry Black. Think of it as a political reincarnation."

A cynical voice spoke up.

"How do you define the new improved Barry Black?"

"I define him," Barry Black, Junior said, to the jawdropping astonishment of the assembled press, "as a dyed-in-the-wool Republican."

Upon hearing the announcement, the California Republican Party chairman said, "We disown the flake."

The President's spokesman in Washington was moved to declare, "He can call himself whatever he wants, that doesn't make it so."

The Sacramento Bee, reviving the old political nickname, headlined it, GOVERNOR GLOWWORM TURNS.

Unfortunately for the California Republican party, they felt obliged to run the secretary of state and interim governor. He had two strikes against him: He had zero name recognition, and he was seen as the political creation of the hated but now lamented governor. Not a dark horse, but a dead one.

In protest, campaign contributions poured into Barry Black, Junior's war chest. No one believed he would win, anyway. He represented the protest-vote candidate. Everybody knew that.

Everybody except Barry Black, Junior.

"I love being a Republican!" he crowed, "It's so darn easy!"

"Don't get your hopes up," cautioned his new campaign manager.

"Why not? My only competition is Rambette the Ripper. Ever since she quite smoking, she's been hot to outlaw cigarettes."

"Barry, there's an old political saying, 'Dance with the one what brung ya.' "

Barry blinked beady, uncomprehending eyes.

"I don't know that one. It doesn't sound charitable."

"It means you came into politics a Democrat, and people won't respect you for switching horses in midstream. Just because you call yourself a Republican, doesn't mean the voters will buy it come election day."

"Tell that to David Duke," returned Barry Black, Junior.

"You wanna be the next David Duke, pull a sheet over your head and move to Louisiana."

With virtually no competition, Barry Black, Junior became an unstoppable juggernaut. In the polls.

Then came the first reports of the attempt on the life of dark-horse candidate Enrique Espiritu Esperanza.

"Who is Enrique Espiritu Esperanza?" Barry Black had asked when word reached him.

He had to have it explained to him twice.

When Enrique Esperanza began climbing up the polls, the question became, "Who the heck is Enrique Espiritu Esperanza?"

It was explained to him again. This time with newspaper clippings.

"No problem," he said. "He's nobody."

When the first footage of the South Central district of Los Angeles rally showed Enrique Esperanza lording it over the gangs like a modern-day Caesar, Barry Black was moved to shout, "Who the fucking hell is this Esperanza?"

"I don't know, but according to the political calendar, he's coming to town today."

"Let's get our troops mustered," said Barry Black.

Barry Black fumed as he was driven to his campaign headquarters on Nob Hill in a stretch limousine, a legacy from his party chairman days. He had purchased it from petty cash.

"I gotta do something about this guy," he muttered.

"Like what?"

"I'm a Republican now. I should do something appropriately Republican. Establish my new credentials."

"Good idea."

Barry Black's brow furrowed. "What would a Republican do in a situation like this?"

"I thought you were a Republican."

"I mean hypothetically."

"Maybe you should play the race card. Isn't that what they do?"

"Great thinking. I'll make a speech. Call him a lowdown wetback greaser."

"Uh, Barry, I don't think that would be the way to go"

"Why not? It's the Republican way, isn't it?"

"No. It's what the Democrats call the Republican way."

"Darn. You're right. I'm still thinking like a Democrat. I gotta cure these tendencies." Barry Black closed his eyes. "Ommmmm. Ommmmm.''

"You okay, Barry?"

"I'm meditating on Republicanism."

"Let me know if you see Lincoln," sighed his campaign manager.

Barry Black still hadn't arrived at a response to the Esperanza challenge when his limo pulled up before the storefront campaign headquarters.

He got out of the car, adjusting his Republican tie. He straightened his Republican coat and, his Republican shoes clicking on the sidewalk confidently, strode to the door.

Came a screeching of tires around a corner. Barry Black turned instinctively. He saw an unusual sight, even for San Francisco.

A wide red convertible screeched around the corner. There was a brown-skinned man behind the wheel.

Squatting in the open backseat, like a machine-gunner in the rear of a jeep, was another brown-skinned man hanging off a fifty-caliber machine gun, which swayed on a pedestal mount.

The convertible straightened. The man at the machine gun got the perforated barrel pointed where he wanted it to point.

He wanted it to point in the general direction of Barry Black, Junior. Then he wanted it to open fire on Barry Black, Junior, because with a percussive stutter, it did.

Fifty-caliber bullets recognize few obstacles. These chopped through the campaign car, chewed up a fire plug, and reduced the Barry Black for Governor campaign headquarters to a ruin of chipped brick, broken glass, and shattered, bleeding bodies.

The convertible zoomed past, leaving Barry Black, Junior spread-eagled on the sidewalk.

The candidate for governor lay face-up, eyes staring skyward, in a welter of plate glass.

After the sound of the convertible's roar had died away in the distance, Barry Black's lips quirked. His eyes seemed to acquire focus.

Then a low, mournful sound escaped his lips.

"Ommm! Ommm! Ommm!"

Chapter 17

Cheeta Ching was the first news person to arrive on the scene of what the next day's San Francisco Examiner would call "The Nob Hill Massacre."

The police had cordoned off the block. They no sooner had their yellow-plastic guard tape up than the FBI counterterrorist team descended on the scene and tore it all down. They made the police stand off to one side, handling reduced to crowd control.

They were putting up their own guard tape when Cheeta Ching swooped in, like a harpy on wheels.

"I'm Cheeta Ching!" she called, dragging her cameraman by his collar.

She was pointedly ignored.

"I said, I'm Cheeta Ching, you racists!"

"Stay behind the lines, ma'am," an FBI agent cautioned.

"Where's the candidate? I demand to see the candidate."

A hand was raised. It was attached to a long, lean body that lay just outside the guard tape. Cheeta rushed up to the man.

"You have a statement?"

The hand formed a finger. It wobbled unsteadily.

A low moan escaped his lips.

"He's trying to communicate!" Cheeta said breathlessly. "He's trying to point out the candidate for us. Keep trying, you brave person."

"Cheeta . . ." the cameraman said.

"Quiet! I can't hear his moans!"

"Cheeta . . ."

"What!"

"I think that is the candidate."

"Oh my God!" Cheeta said, dropping to her knees.

"Are you hurt? Where are you hurt? America wants to see your wounds!"

"Not . . . hurt . . ." moaned Barry Black, Junior.

Cheeta leaped to her feet. "Then you can wait. I need some wet footage. Somebody find me a bleeding casualty."

They were still carrying out bodies from the demolished campaign headquarters.

Cheeta turned on her cameraman. "You get in there and get some 'If it bleeds, it leads' footage."

"Anyone stepping over the guard tape," a cold voice called, "will be arrested!"

The cameraman looked from the FBI agent to the cold face of Cheeta Ching. Calmly, he stepped over the guard tape, laid down his minicam, and lifted his hands in surrender.

An FBI agent stormed up. "What did I tell you?"

"I work with Cheeta Ching. What's the worst you're going to do to me?"

"I see your point," the agent said. He waved for a cop, saying, "Place this man in protective custody. For his own good."

As he was being led away in handcuffs, the cameraman said sheepishly to Cheeta Ching in passing, "I tried."

"You did not!" Cheeta flared. And while the cameraman, his head hanging low, was hustled into a police van, she recovered the minicam, saying, "Who needs cameramen, anyway?"

Hefting the minicam onto her padded shoulders, Cheeta returned to the prone form of Barry Black.

"Let's do a two-shot, okay?"

"Ommm," moaned Barry Black.

"Do you suspect that the assailants whose attempt on your life here today failed so miserably were the same who attempted to kill me?"

"Ommmm."

"Is that a yes or a no?"

"Ommm."

"Obviously in shock," Cheeta said, dropping the camera from her shoulders.

While she was trying to figure out her next move, a glossy-white Mercedes rolled to a halt a block away.

Out stepped Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, Harmon Cashman, and a tiny old Korean man Cheeta Ching recognized at a glance.

"You!" she shrieked. Lugging the minicam, she jumped for the approaching trio. "I need to talk with you,"

Enrique Esperanza said, "I will be happy to continue our interview."

"Not you," spat Cheeta Ching, pointing to the tiny wisp of a Korean. "I mean him."

The Master of Sinanju beheld the vision that swept toward him. His heart leaped high in his throat. His almond eyes widened, and for a moment he was a young man back in Pyongyang, beholding the beauteous Ch'amnari.

"I've been dying to talk to you!" Cheeta said urgently.

"I understand your desire," said Chiun, bowing, his voice tense, his heart a balloon of joy. Remo had granted his deepest wish.

"Great. Where can I find Rambo?"

Chiun straightened. "Rambo?"

"Yeah. Your dreamy friend. The one with the wrists."

"You mean Remo?"

"Is that what he's calling himself now? Where can I locate him? It's urgent!"

"No doubt he is sleeping under a rock, overcome with slothfulness and ingratitude," Chiun huffed. He turned and stalked off.

Cheeta Ching watched him go, her face blank. "What's got into him?"

"We do not know," said Enrique Esperanza. "We have come here to offer condolences to the Black campaign. This is a tragic thing."

"Great quote," said Cheeta Ching. "Mind repeating it for the camera?"

"Why don't you follow us?" Esperanza suggested. "We wish to speak with candidate Black personally."

"Okay, but talk slowly. I'm not used to being my own cameraman."

Barry Black, Junior was still lying on the sidewalk when they reached him.

"I am Esperanza," said Enrique Esperanza in a formal voice.

"Ohhmmm," said Barry Black.

"He keeps saying that," Cheeta pointed out. "I think he's in shock."

"I have just the thing," Esperanza said, kneeling beside the stricken candidate. He took a minipack of Oreo cookies from inside his white coat, undid the top. and placed one in Barry Black's open mouth.

"Chew slowly. Chocolate is a stimulant. The Aztecs knew this."

Somewhere deep in Barry Black's shattered mind, a synapse fired. He began chewing.

A moment later he sat up, saying, "My karma must have gotten mixed up with Yassar Arafat's."

"Do you have any idea who would do this thing?"

"Hey!" inserted Cheeta. "Asking questions is my job. You don't see me running for governor! Not that I couldn't do a better job than any of you men."

"Have you any enemies who would do this?" Esperanza asked in a soothing voice.

"The Democrats. The Republicans. Any Californian who remembers my last term in office. Maybe it's a conspiracy."

"I do not think so," said Enrique Esperanza, helping the man to his feet. "I am Enrique Esperanza," he added, shaking the man's hand.

"Got any more of those nifty cookies?" Barry Black asked.

Enrique Esperanza smiled. He offered the rest of the minipack.

As Barry Black munched away, he said, "Great! What are these things, anyway?"

"Oreos," Harmon Cashman explained. "You don't know Oreo cookies when you taste them? Where have you been?"

"India. Tibet. Nifty places like that. I accomplished a lot. I even grew a beard, but I shaved it. Beards are seventies."

While the minicam recorded every syllable, Enrique Esperanza said, "We must not allow terror and violence to determine the outcome of this important election."

"You got my vote," Barry Black said enthusiastically, saluting his rival with a half-chewed sandwich cookie.

"I do?"

"If you vote for me, too. Sort of a karmic exchange."

Enrique Esperanza laughed heartily. He agreed to vote for the former governor of California in return for his vote.

"This way we cancel each other out," said Barry Black Junior.

Harmon Cashman shoved an Oreo into his own mouth to suppress a grin of pleasure. He knew how this would play on the evening newscast. Gubernatorial candidate Enrique Espiritu Esperanza comforts rival and receives endorsement in return. It couldn't have played any better if he had set the whole thing up himself.

The attack on Black campaign headquarters led the evening local broadcast throughout California, and topped the national news on all three networks and CNN.

It was deplored from the White House on down to the San Francisco mayor's office. The President, en route to oversee renovations to his Maine home, paused under the whirling blades of Marine One to denounce the situation in the Golden State.

"We're not gonna let the California governor's race degenerate into the kind of thing we're seeing here," he promised. "I've asked the FBI and Secret Service to look into this. Mark my words, we're gonna nail the dastards behind this outrage. Our best people are on top of it."

Watching the news break from his Folcroft office, Harold W. Smith understood that the last remark referred to his organization. He had had a brittle conversation with the President only minutes before he'd left the White House.

"What's going on out there?" the President had asked testily.

"I do not know," Smith had admitted. "The last report from our special person was that two assassins had been terminated."

"I never heard that."

"We like to handle these matters quietly," Smith said. "At the moment I am awaiting a positive identification on one of the deceased terrorists."

"Are you sure it's terrorists?"

"My information is sketchy," Smith admitted. "We have reason to believe the men behind this wave of political arson are Hispanic. Possibly foreign nationals."

"What nation?"

"Unknown. I am merely speculating in the absence of hard information."

"Well, dammit, get some facts. We need to know if this is connected with the double assassination of the two governors out there."

"I hope to have some concrete intelligence within a day or two," Smith assured the President. "In the meantime, I will move our special person into the Black campaign as a precaution."

"Won't that leave that Esperanza guy unprotected?"

"Our other special person has that aspect well in hand."

"I hope so, Smith. We can't tolerate this kind of stuff within our borders. This is America. Not some banana republic."

"Yes, Mr. President," said Harold W. Smith, replacing the red telephone receiver.

He looked at his watch. He hoped Remo would check in soon. His last report was that he was on his way to San Francisco, because that was where the Esperanza entourage-and therefore, Chiun-was relocating.

Smith returned to his computer. He accessed crime-statistics computers throughout the Golden State. They told him nothing. The only anomaly was an uptick of activity in the area of the Border Patrol. They were being stretched to the limit. Not from the surge of illegals coming across the U.S.-Mexican border, but illegals coming from other states to take advantage of the amnesty program. A number of them were being picked up before they could apply for citizenship.

The intercom buzzed while Smith was digesting this phenomenon.

"Yes, Mrs. Milkulka?"

"The lobby guard says there's a package for you, Dr. Smith."

"Have him bring it up," Smith said absently.

"I'm afraid it's too large for the elevator."

Smith's prim mouth puckered. "Tell him I'll be right down. And not to open that package."

Harold Smith reached the lobby in fifteen seconds flat.

The lobby, guard said, "There it is."

His pointing finger indicated a long wooden crate, whose dimensions roughly matched those of a standardsized coffin.

"Have it taken to the basement," Smith directed.

"Yes, sir."

In the dank basement, Harold Smith dismissed the pair of burly orderlies who had lugged the coffin-shaped box down there. They had placed it in a dim corner, beside the false wall that concealed the Folcroft mainframes that fed Smith's desktop terminal.

Taking a pry bar, Smith attacked the wooden slat cover. He cracked one of the slats free.

The smell made him recoil.

"Damn!" he choked, gasping for breath. He continued breaking slats until he had the upper torso of the dead man uncovered.

Smith reached in and felt about, distaste on his prim face. He finally found the videotape tucked into the corpse's shirt. It smelled of decay, as he brought it into the light of a naked twenty-five-watt bulb.

It was a struggle to get fingerprint samples. Rigor mortis had set in. But he managed the chore of inking the greenish fingers and impressing the prints onto a sheet of paper.

The face meant nothing to Smith. He committed it to memory, then hammered the slats back into place.

He returned to his office feeling very much in need of a shower.

Smith faxed the prints to the FBI, who thought they were receiving a routine CIA inter-agency information request.

While he was waiting for a reply, the blue contact phone rang. Smith picked it up.

"Remo?"

"Just checked into my hotel. What's up?"

"There has been an attempt on the life of Barry Black, Junior."

"No kidding."

"I never kid. And I do not appreciate the manner in which you responded to my request for the dead man's fingerprints."

"Find the tape?" Remo asked lightly.

"Yes."

"Anything on it?"

"I have not yet looked. I am awaiting the fingerprint report."

The computer beeped, and Smith said, "One moment, please." He adjusted his rimless eyeglasses and peered at the terminal screen. His eyes went wide. He returned to the phone.

"Remo. We have a break."

"Yeah?"

"According to the FBI, the dead man you-er-shipped to me is Queque Baez, an enforcer for the Medellin Cartel."

"Why would they want to hit Esperanza-or Black, for that matter?"

"Unknown. But we cannot take chances. I want you to join the Black campaign."

"Do I have to?" Remo asked glumly.

"You have to."

"Could be worse," Remo said resignedly. "You could be sending me into the Rona Ripper organization."

"Let us hope it does not come to that."

"Maybe she's behind this."

"Unlikely."

"Don't forget she helped General Nogeira get sprung for the baptism."

"I had not thought of that," Smith said slowly.

"I'll be in touch, Smitty."

Harold Smith replaced the blue receiver. A worried frown caused his lemony face to twitch. He looked to his closed medicine drawer. Despite the escalating situation, he felt no desire to reach for any of the remedies that in the past had gotten him through situations more dire than this one.

Although none of those situations, he recalled, had included having to dispose of a body in the basement of Folcroft.

Chapter 18

Barry Black, Junior felt safe. In fact, he felt almost as safe in the attic of his Pacific Park home as he had been in India, doing the good work of Mother Teresa. Mainly her laundry.

After all, they didn't have personal pyramids in India. Pyramids were Egyptian. Pyramids, Barry Black, Junior knew, were also the ultimate in personal protection. They were impervious to uncool vibrations, bad karma, and cosmic rays. They also filtered out the more harmful effects of direct sunlight, which is why Barry had had his installed in the attic. The roof was skylight city.

Unfortunately, his imported-from-Ceylon formstone pyramid didn't repel sound waves.

"Barry, you gotta come out," pleaded the voice of his campaign manager.

Barry Black put aside a half-eaten Oreo cookie. "Where is it engraved in granite that Barry Black, Junior, Mr. Outsider, persecuted by the system, has to come out of his personal pyramid and be a target for every anti-reform whacko in the state?" he demanded.

"Because you can't campaign for governor inside a formstone pyramid in an attic."

"Where is that written? I'm a declared candidate. I can campaign any way I want. This is America."

"No, this is California. Not the same thing. And you've got to press the flesh if you wanna win."

"Let the voters come to me," Barry retorted firmly, "One at a time. After being frisked. Have those magnetometers and X-ray screens I ordered arrived yet?"

"Barry, this is going to get out. The press has been clamoring for a statement all afternoon."

"Write this down. I, Barry Black, Junior, the next governor of the fantabulous state of California, solemnly vow to cast his sacred vote on election day, and urge all citizens to do the same. Type that up and distribute copies to all interested parties."

"That's all you're gonna do?" "What do you want? The ozone layer is breaking down. Melanomia is practically epidemic. I can't govern with black, hairy, precancerous moles on my face."

"Barry, please. Make a public appearance. Show the electorate you're not afraid."

"I'm not. I'm perfectly safe as long as I'm in my pyramid."

"If word gets out you're holed up in an obelisk," the campaign manager said sternly, "the campaign is over."

"If I come out and get my head shot off, the campaign is really over," Barry Black, Junior countered.

"You know, a true Republican wouldn't be caught dead in a pyramid."

The pyramid was silent. Except for a single dry crunch.

"I am a Republican," Barry Black said huffily. "Color me business-friendly."

"Prove it. Get out of that thing."

"No. I can prove it another way."

"I'm listening, Barry."

"I have a secret plan. Just like the great Republican, Richard M. Nixon."

"Richard M. Nixon's so-called 'secret plan' was to end the Vietnam War, and it turned out to be just smoke and mirrors--a scam to get him elected."

"Exactly. I have a secret scam-plan which will get me elected governor, and then and only then will I announce it."

"You're going to announce this scam after you're elected?" the campaign manager blurted out.

"Well, I can't very well announce it beforehand. It wouldn't work."

"If you announce it afterward, you might get lynched."

"Never happen. My secret scam-plan is so brilliant, people will applaud my genius."

"Er, is this scam-I mean plan-a secret from your campaign manager?"

"Yes. Wild horses couldn't drag it out of me."

"What," the campaign manager wondered, "would be big enough to drag you out of that thing?"

"I'll come out once I'm elected," Barry Black, Junior answered. "On inauguration day. We'll airlift me to the capitol and I'll emerge in triumph and fanfare, like a born Republican."

"Somehow I have trouble envisioning that."

"Try meditation. After I've meditated two-three hours, I see the most unbelievable colors."

"I'll bet you do. But you gotta do more than sit on your behind if you're going to beat Esperanza. He's moving major numbers in the polls."

In the New Age security of his pyramid, Barry Black, Junior put his agile mind to the task of winning over the voters of California. He closed his eyes and watched the colors his retina picked up. He got purple. Just purple. One color. No matter how much he squinched his eyes tight, no patterns or symbols emerged. Barry Black knew it had to mean something. But what?

"Enrique Esperanza is a one-note candidate," he said at last. "He's Mr. Multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is good, but it won't solve the problems of this great state. The recession. Taxes. The drought. The poinsettia whitefly. These are the issues that must be addressed with Republican forthrightness."

"You should be saying these things before the camera," his campaign manager pointed out, "not inside a formstone teepee."

"Teepee!" Barry Black cried. "That's it! We'll break the drought!"

"We will?"

"Not we, directly. I want you to scour the Indian Reservations. Find me a medicine man. A photogenic one, with lots of seams in his face and sad but wise-looking eyes."

"Sad but wise?"

"One who knows how to perform the sacred rain dance."

"Rain dance . . . ?"

"Go for a Chippewa. They have the best karma. Have him perform the dance in my name. Pick someplace splashy, like the La Brea Tar Pits. When the rain pours down, hand out umbrellas that say 'Vote For Black.' "

"We can't afford preprinted umbrellas, Barry."

"Use the tiny paper ones you get in Mai Tais."

"Barry," the campaign manager protested in exasperation, "if it works, the voters will be drenched. If it doesn't, we'll look like fools. We can't win."

"We can't fail. And voters will be soaked by election day. And a soaked voter is a Black voter. I want bumper stickers that say that."

"If you go through with this, they'll go back to calling you Governor Glowworm."

"As long as I'm governor again, who cares what they call me?" Barry Black retorted firmly.

The Black for Governor campaign manager let out a leaky sigh.

"Barry," he said wearily, "I'm going downstairs and renew my acquaintance with Valium. When I feel up to it, I'll come back and we'll have this conversation again. Okay?"

"Remember. Chippewas are best. A Hopi might do in a pinch. But no Sioux. They were scalpers. The bad karma will rebound on us. And bad karma doesn't wash off. I learned that in India."

In the dark confines of his personal pyramid, Barry Black, Junior listened as his campaign manager descended the attic stairs. It was going to work out. It would all work out, if everyone found their centers and held on for dear life.

And as long as Barry Black, Junior remained in his pyramid, safe from assassins.

Chapter 19

Remo Williams had tried every Barry Black for Governor campaign office in San Francisco.

All were under police guard, and all were deserted.

At the third deserted storefront, Remo presented a UPI press pass in the name of "Remo Cannon" to an SFPD sergeant and asked, "Did Black pull out of the race?"

"Not that I heard," the sergeant said.

"So where are his campaign people?"

"Hunkered down in bomb shelters, from what I hear."

"I thought the attempt was on Black's life?"

"That's what everyone says, but the only ones who died were campaign staff. Now the bomb threats are pouring in."

"Bomb threats?"

"Every campaign office received one. When the staffers heard that, they went home. A lot of them quit outright. Guess they decided it was too much trouble to give the Glowworm a third shot at Sacramento."

"Thanks," Remo said, returning to his rented car.

At a phone booth, Remo called Folcroft.

"Smitty, I can't join the Black campaign."

"Why not?" "Because there is no campaign."

"He pulled out?"

"No, his organization did. They all got bomb threats and decided to call it a day."

"Peculiar," said Smith.

Ignoring an intermittent whistling in the background, Remo said, "I think it's interesting that Black's people got hurt, but he wasn't."

"You do not think Barry Black has engineered this entire charade?" Smith said, his voice rising.

"Why not? He was taking a beating in the polls. Esperanza was pulling ahead of him. This was his way of recapturing sympathy."

"A little while ago," Smith pointed out, "you suggested that Rona Ripper might have engineered the attempts on Esperanza's life."

The whistle came again. It sounded different. But when Remo turned around, he saw only passersby minding their own business.

"I haven't ruled her out yet," he said. "For all we know, she was on Nogeira's payroll."

"Speaking of Nogeira, I am receiving ongoing reports of undocumented aliens pouring into California from other states, with the purpose of applying for amnesty and citizenship."

The whistling continued. Remo changed ears. "So?"

"They are registering to vote in record numbers."

"What's that got to do with Nogeira?"

"Before he was deposed, Remo, General Nogeira was heavily involved in smuggling illegals into this country, primarily from El Salvador and other Central American republics."

"You saying this could be part of Nogeira's master plan, if there was one?"

"Esperanza's call for undocumented aliens to come forward and take advantage of these programs has been picked up only by the California media. I cannot imagine how the word is spreading, unless the ball had been started even before the campaign began."

"By Nogeira?"

"By Nogeira."

"Well," Remo said, switching ears again, "I'm going to take Barry Black by the scruff of the neck and shake him a little."

Smith's voice became chilly. "Remo, that man is a registered gubernatorial candidate. You are not to molest or intimidate him in any way."

"What if he's guilty of subverting the process?"

The line hummed. Remo stuck his finger in his free ear to keep out the annoying whistles. It was a moment before Harold W. Smith spoke again.

"We are in the business of upholding the Constitution whenever we can," he said firmly. "Political assassination is a line CURE has yet to cross in any meaningful way."

"There's always a first time," Remo said flatly.

"My instructions stand."

"How about I just talk to Black?"

"I will accept that."

"Good, because I hope you have his home address. He's not in the book."

"According to the latest reports, Black has gone into seclusion. But he is believed to be in his Pacific Park home. At least, the local media believe that. They are virtually laying siege to the house."

Remo groaned. "Oh, no."

"What is it?" Smith asked.

"That means Cheeta Ching is sure to be there, yapping at the head of the pack," Remo said unhappily.

"I am sure you will find a way to avoid her," Smith said dryly.

"Count on it," Remo said, hanging up.

On his way to the car, Remo was accosted by a thinvoiced young man, with a kerchief hanging out his back pocket and another one loose about his throat.

"Hello, sailor," he said, smiling. "Going my way?"

"If your way is what I think it is, not in your lifetime."

"How about a detour?"

"How about you suck your thumb?"

"Not what I had in mind."

Remo tapped the man's right elbow, forcing him to grab his funny bone, but the words sputtering out of his mouth weren't funny.

Remo quieted the man by inserting one of his own thumbs into his mouth and freezing his jaw muscles closed with a paralyzing tap.

"You don't know 'til you try it," he said.

Remo left him sucking on his thumb while walking in circles, trying to shake the pins and needles from his arm.

He still wondered what that whistling was.

The Pacific Park home of Barry Black, Junior could be seen clearly from the foot of the hill where Remo had parked his car.

It was a sprawling Victorian that was equal parts Bohemia and Addams Family. The house was painted a pumpkin-orange, with jet-black shutters. There was a Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign over the front door. The weathervane sticking up from the chimney pot was in the shape of a yin-yang sign, and seemed to have rusted one day when there was a brisk east wind blowing.

The house must have been a hundred years old, but the peaked roof was a modern mosaic of solar panels, spaceage satellite dishes, and ordinary Plexiglas skylights.

The steep street leading up to the house was lined with microwave satellite vans. Most were empty. Remo could see the front walk of the orange-and-black monstrosity. That was where the local press had camped out. A few were skulking through the hedges, which had been sculpted, apparently, in the shapes of endangered species. At least Remo thought he recognized a dodo.

Remo also recognized Cheeta Ching. The Korean anchor was at the cellar door, trying to detach the padlock with her teeth.

Spying the van belonging to the local affiliate of the network that employed her, Remo slipped up to it. He was in luck. There was a driver sitting behind the wheel, looking bored.

Remo tapped on the glass. It was rolled down.

"Yeah?" asked the driver.

Remo smiled. "I'm with the medical lab," he said brightly.

"What medical lab?"

"The one Cheeta Ching uses. I got good news for her. The rabbit died."

The driver's bored eyes got unbored. "That is good news! In fact, it's great news! She'll probably be on the first jet back to New York after she hears this."

"You wanna deliver the message?" Remo asked.

"A pleasure," the driver said, bolting from the van.

Grinning, Remo retreated to the backyard of an adjacent house to await developments.

"This ought to be great," he said to himself.

To his surprise, the driver didn't even try to look for Cheeta. Instead, he jumped into the milling mass of media representatives and began spreading the joyous news.

"Cheeta's gonna drop one!" he howled.

The pack broke in all directions.

"Everyone loves good news," Remo chortled.

And as he watched, Cheeta Ching was pounced upon.

The questions flew fast and furious.

"Miss Ching, is it true?"

"Is what true?"

"That you're with child."

"Who said that? My husband?"

"The lab said the rabbit died."

Cheeta turned predatory. "It did? What's your source for that? Did the rabbit have a name? Did he suffer?"

"Your driver told us. He just heard the word."

"I'm preggers!" Cheeta shrieked, throwing up her hands.

Then a strange look came over her flat face. Like an Asian Gorgon, Cheeta Ching lowered her sticky-haired head until she was looking up from under her perfect viper eyebrows into a ring of minicam lenses.

"Everybody better not be filming this," she hissed.

"Why not? It's news."

"It's my news. It's my body. It's my story, and I intend to be the first to break it!"

"Too late," a chipper voice called out. "You gave us the quote. Remember the First Amendment."

"Remember that if any of you have careers after today, you'll have to deal with me. Somewhere. In some city. In some station."

"Are you planning on taking maternity leave, Miss Ching? " a reporter asked pleasantly.

"Cut it out!" Cheeta howled.

"Do you have any ovulation tips for aging baby-boomers who want to be mothers?" another wanted to know.

"Do you have a favorite position for procreating, Miss Ching?" demanded a third.

"The first person to break this story," Cheeta Ching said in a venomous voice, "I will publicly name as the father."

"Then I guess the story's mine," said a bright female voice.

"Who said that?" Cheeta shrieked.

Out from the pack of reporters bolted Jade Ling a local San Francisco anchorwoman of Asian descent. She made for her van.

Cheeta gave chase, crying, "You Jap tart! Come back with that footage!"

The cameras followed them down the steep street on Pacific Park, filming every shriek and threat Cheeta Ching vomited from her leathery lungs.

While they were sorting out broadcast rights, Remo circled around to the blind side of the house and mounted the gingerbread and nameless wooden decorations to the roof. Amid a forest of satellite dishes, he found an unobstructed skylight and peered down.

He saw a bare attic, with Navajo blankets hanging from the rafters. In one corner there was a squat, featureless pyramid, which looked like it had been formed of concrete.

Remo looked around for a catch or fastener and, finding none, simply popped the Plexiglas from the skylight mounting. He simply pressed down on the bulbous top, until the caulking surrendered and the Plexiglas jumped up into his hands.

Remo set it in a handy satellite dish and dropped down.

As soon as his feet hit the bare flooring, he froze.

His Sinanju-trained senses instantly detected a heartbeat, and the slow, shallow inhale-exhale of human lungs.

There was no one in the attic. In fact, there was no thing in the attic. Except the pyramid.

Remo slipped up to this. The sound of respiration grew louder. There was someone inside the thing.

Remo looked for an opening. There was none. He decided to knock anyway.

"Anyone home in there?" he called.

"Who are you?" a suspicious voice demanded.

"Secret Service. You Barry Black, by any wild chance?"

"Chance," said Barry Black, "has nothing to do with how I got to be Barry Black."

"I'll buy that," Remo said quickly. "I have a few questions for you."

"I am not answering questions today," said Barry Black.

"You have to."

"As long as I'm in my personal pyramid, I don't have to do anything I don't want to."

"Okay," Remo said lightly, reaching down and grasping the base of the formstone. He straightened.

The pyramid was lifted off the squatting form of Barry Black, like a witch's hat coming off her head. Remo kept it high.

Barry Black, Junior sat in a lotus position on a tatami mat, his hands loose on his knees and his eyes closed. His brow was furrowed in concentration.

"Come out, come out," Remo called.

Barry Black opened his eyes. He seemed surprised to see Remo.

"You don't look like a Secret Service agent," he said meekly.

"I'm in disguise," Remo told him.

"Show me some ID."

"My hands are full right now," Remo pointed out, indicating with a tilt of his chin the pyramid suspended over Barry Black's graying head by Remo's bare, ramrod-straight arms.

Barry Black looked up. His chipmunk face grew worried. "Don't drop that. It's imported from Ceylon."

"Says 'Made in Mexico' on the base here," Remo said.

"Oh my God!" Barry Black squealed in horror. "I've been hiding in a counterfeit pyramid! I could have been killed!"

Remo set the pyramid down. It cracked in three places, and the apex fell in like the crown of a broken tooth.

"Now that we know the awful truth," Remo said lightly, "it's time to come clean."

"It is?"

"I know all about it."

"What 'it'?"

"Every it," Remo said. "You don't think you can hide this kinda stuff from the Secret Service, do you?"

"Just because I'm bucking the establishment doesn't give you Washington insiders the right to harass me," Barry Black said in an indignant tone.

"Who's harassing? I'm just saying that the jig is up."

Barry Black, Junior folded his arms. "Then its up. So what? You can't prove anything."

"Wanna bet?"

"Until I announce, you can't prove anything."

"Announce what?"

Barry Black, Junior compressed his lips and said, "For all I know you're wired for sound. I will not incriminate myself."

"Okay," Remo told him. "Then by the powers vested in me by the President of the United States, your Secret Service protection is hereby revoked."

Barry Black looked stricken. "It is?"

Remo nodded firmly. "I quit."

And to make sure the point was driven home, Remo gave the formstone pyramid a careless kick. It collapsed in a clatter of rubble.

Barry Black, Junior, seeing this, lost his composure.

"I'll do anything!" he said. "I don't care anymore! The voter anger out there is more than I can stand!"

"The truth," Remo prompted.

"It's true. Just as you suspected. I have a secret scam-I mean, plan. Once I'm elected, I'm switching back."

Remo blinked. "Switching what back?"

"Is that a trick question?" asked Barry Black, Junior.

"Yes, and you'd better answer it truthfully."

"Switching back to the Democrats. I knew I couldn't get elected as a Democrat, so I switched to the Republican party, even though they wouldn't have me on a popsicle stick. Once I'm elected, I'll just switch back."

"That's crazy," Remo said.

"It worked for Buddy Roemer in Louisiana."

"Buddy Roemer had his head handed to him," Remo pointed out. "He got trounced in the primaries."

"That was Louisiana. This is California. People understand creative politics out here."

"And that's it? You're running as a Republican, but you're not?"

"Brilliant, isn't it?"

"In a goofball kind of way, I suppose. What about the attempts on your life? Who's behind that?"

"I have no idea. Probably the Republicans."

"I doubt it," Remo said dryly.

"Then the Democrats. They probably see me as a traitor. "

"I think they're probably happy to be rid of you."

"Then I don't know who's trying to get me," Barry Black snapped.

"Then neither do I," Remo said glumly.

At that moment, feet came pounding up the stairs.

"They're coming for me!" Barry Black said, jumping to his slippered feet. He got behind Remo, who wondered aloud, "What's this?"

"You're Secret Service, right?"

"Right."

"It's your job to take the bullet meant for the candidates, right?"

"Normally, yeah," Remo admitted.

"They're yours. Every bullet. With my best wishes for a happy next incarnation."

Frowning, Remo made for the door and threw it open, one second before the man on the other side could take hold of the cut-glass knob. Losing his balance, the other man fell forward. Remo caught him and pulled him into the room.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"Who the hell are you?" the other shot back.

"Remo Drake. Secret Service."

"Where's your ID?'

"I answered that one already," Remo said.

"It's true," Barry Black said helpfully. "He answered that question. Remo's okay. Except that he knows about my secret plan to get elected."

"Well, then he's one up on me, and I'm in charge of this campaign," said the campaign manager.

"Trust me. You're better off not knowing," Remo said.

The Black campaign manager turned to his candidate and said, "Barry, they're reporting that Rona Ripper was just shot."

"Is that good or bad?" Barry Black asked, face warping as the brain behind it attempted to assimilate this bizarre turn of the Karmic wheel.

"She's alive."

"Where is she?" Remo demanded.

"They rushed her to St. John's in Santa Monica."

Remo started for the door.

Barry Black, Junior started after him, his voice anguished. "Wait, where are you going? You promised to protect me."

"Consider yourself protected," Remo growled, slipping down the stairs. "Reality won't ever touch you."

Chapter 20

When he reached him by phone, Remo Williams was surprised at the lack of concern in Harold W. Smith's lemony voice.

"Yes, I know about the Ripper shooting," he said crisply. "Regrettable."

"The third candidate shot in almost as many days, and that's all you can say?"

"You obviously did not catch the follow-up reports," Smith said dryly.

"I didn't catch any reports," Remo retorted. "I was in The Twilight Zone with Barry Black when his campaign manager came charging in with the news."

"Remo, Rona Ripper suffered a bullet wound at the hands of one of her personal security guards."

"Huh?"

"When the Black campaign was hit," Smith explained, "Miss Ripper ordered members of her entourage to arm themselves. One was cleaning his weapon in her presence, and it discharged. Rona Ripper suffered a flesh wound."

"So it wasn't an assassination attempt?"

"The weapon was a .22-caliber, and the projectile lodged in Miss Ripper's . . . ah . . . posterior."

"Rona Ripper was shot in the butt?" Remo said in disbelief.

"The security guard has apologized. Miss Ripper is suing him in return."

"Why doesn't that surprise me?" Remo growled, clapping a hand over his free ear to keep out that damn whistling. He couldn't understand it. He was at a phone booth in a completely different part of San Francisco, yet he was hearing it again.

"I do not know. What did you learn from Barry Black?"

"He's got a secret plan to win the election."

"Is it legal?"

"Oh, I don't know," Remo said. "Is impersonating a Republican against any law that you know of?"

"Impersonating . . . ?"

"Barry Black is a donkey in elephant's clothing," Remo said flatly. "He figures he can get elected as a Republican and then revert to being what he is-a horse's ass."

"This is unsettling," Smith said glumly.

"No argument there. It's so screwy that it means Black's not behind these political hits."

"Are you certain of that, Remo?"

"Barry Black is so flaky he belongs in dandruff commercials," Remo said flatly.

"I wonder . . ." Smith mused.

"Wonder what?"

"This Ripper shooting. Perhaps it is a charade."

"Could be. I've seen Rona Ripper in the flesh. You could shoot her in the butt all day long and not hit bone."

"Remo, why don't you look into the Ripper campaign?"

"Not me. I draw the line there. She's almost as bad as Cheeta Ching."

"Speaking of Miss Ching, your problems with her may be over."

Remo brightened. "How so?"

"It was just announced that she is expecting a child."

Remo's unhappy expression returned. "I guess that Japanese newscaster outran her."

"What did you say?"

"Never mind, Smitty. I wouldn't believe anything Cheeta Ching says, okay? As for Rona the Ripper, count me out."

"Could you persuade Chiun to handle that end?" Smith asked.

"I doubt it."

"Then you have no choice," Smith said crisply. "Join the Ripper campaign, and learn all you can."

"With my luck," Remo growled, "I'll end up with Cheeta on one side and Rona on the other."

"In the meantime, we will just have to hope that Barry Black's personal security is enough."

"No sweat. He's in his attic and refuses to come down. You know, Esperanza is starting to look better every day."

"We are not taking sides in this," Smith said sternly.

"Maybe not. But that doesn't mean we can't back the horse we want."

"Let me know if anything breaks," Smith said, hanging up.

Remo left the phone booth and almost made it to his rented car unaccosted.

He ignored a wolf whistle, thinking it was directed at a busty blonde on the other side of the street.

A second wolf whistle was followed by the comment, "Where'd you get those wrists, tall, dark, and limber?"

Remo had never heard the word "limber" used to describe a member of the opposite sex, and looked up. There was a construction worker in a hard hat and with a beer belly, three stories up in an under-construction high-rise.

When he caught Remo's eye, he blew him a kiss.

Remo gave him half the peace sign in return, and continued on to his car, muttering, "It'll be great to get out of this city. Santa Monica has to be a thousand times better than this."

Santa Monica, when Remo reached it after a six-hour drive, looked as though a neutron bomb had detonated in the middle of Main Street.

Main Street was the main drag, just up from the beach. The ocean tang, flavored by salt-water taffy, refreshed the air, and the store windows on either side displayed surfboards and bathing suits.

So did the undulating bodies strolling up and down the walks.

But it was the bodies lying in the streets and brightpainted alleys that caught Remo's attention.

They were everywhere. As Remo drove past Palisades Park, he saw that almost every square inch of greenery was occupied by disheveled, unwashed, and unshaven people of both sexes. There were Hispanics drinking out of paper bag-covered bottles. Asians lying in sleeping bags like caterpillars, and others playing cards. Most of them were asleep under the summer sunshine, however. The snoring was enough to keep the trees free of birds.

Under a eucalyptus tree, a man was roasting a squirrel.

A neat hand-carved sign at the park entrance read:

HOMELESS SHELTER. TAXPAYERS KEEP OFF THE GRASS.

Remo spotted a cop guarding the entrance and pulled over. He leaned out the window.

"Where can I find St. John's?"

The cop gave precise directions, then Remo asked, "How long has it been like this?"

"Since the city council voted to make Santa Monica a nuclear-free town."

"That doesn't explain all these homeless people," Remo pointed out.

"They added a rider that hung a Welcome to the Homeless sign at the town limits, and a statute against arresting them for anything less than a capital crime," explained the cop. "Word got out, and now we're the homeless capital of California."

"What about the taxpapers?" Remo asked.

"If they don't like it, they can move. It's a free country."

"Unless you pay taxes," Remo muttered, sliding back into traffic.

At the next light, Remo's car was surrounded by three beggars who refused to let him pass unless he paid the toll.

"What's the toll?" Remo asked.

"Five bucks. For each of us."

"I think I'll take the detour, thanks," Remo said.

"You go down that street and the toll's twenty. Get a better deal from us."

Remo gunned the motor, saying, "I bet I'd be doing the squirrel population a big favor if I just floored the pedal."

"You do that and the man will arrest you."

"I hear bail's pretty cheap out here," Remo countered. The man shrugged. "Don't know. Never been in no jail. You gonna pay, or what?"

"Or what," Remo said instantly, spinning his rear wheels until they sent up clouds of lung-stinging rubber smoke. He reached for the parking brake.

The intersection suddenly cleared. The light changed and Remo zoomed through.

There were homeless sleeping on the grounds of St. John's Hospital and Health Center. They had taken every free patch of lawn and were making inroads into the parking lot.

Remo found a space in the handicapped zone. No sooner had he slid in than a disreputable man called up from a sterno fire in another space.

"Hey, you! You can't park in no handicapped zone!"

"Why not?"

"That's for Charlie One-leg. He sleep there."

"Tell Charlie I'm only here for an hour."

"Squatter!" the man yelled. "I'm gonna call a cop on you! "

"Scare me some more," Remo growled. He collected abuse all the way to the hospital entrance, where he stepped over a snoring Mexican and entered.

He walked up to the admissions desk, noticing that every waiting room chair was filled.

"I'm looking for-"

"Hush," the admissions nurse hissed. "Do you want to get us closed down?"

"Huh?"

The admissions nurse pointed to the patients slumped in chairs. Remo noticed that most were asleep, their mouths hanging open. One slid off his seat and slipped to the floor, where he continued to snore enthusiastically.

"It's against the law to wake them during the Nap Hour."

"Nap Hour?"

"Sir," the admissions nurse said sternly, "I will be forced to have you ejected if you persist in flaunting Santa Monica Public Ordinance 55-Z. '

Remo sighed and attempted to communicate his needs. First, he showed his Secret Service ID card. The admissions nurse nodded her understanding. Then he took her over to a California map and pointed to the town of Ramona.

The admissions nurse nodded.

Finally, Remo tore a sheet of paper in two while pointing at the map.

"Ramona Tear?" she mouthed.

"Rip," Remo mouthed back.

"Rip Ramona?" the admissions nurse mouthed, her face blank.

"Rona Ripper," Remo snapped in exasperation.

In a corner a sleeping man made a snuffling sound, and the admissions nurse's eyes went wide in horror.

"Tell me which room she's in, or I'll wake them all," Remo threatened.

"Four seventy-eight! Third floor!" the admissions nurse bleated.

Remo wasted a minute waiting for an elevator. When it arrived, it was occupied by a trio of Chileans playing threecard monte.

"Do you mind?" one asked.

"I'm, beginning to," Remo grumbled. He took the stairs.

On the third floor, he passed the same game in progress in the same elevator.

"Cause of you I'm losing!" one of the players shouted at him. "Broke my concentration!"

"Sue me," Remo shot back, working his way to Room 478. He was beginning to look forward to meeting Rona Ripperif only because she probably bathed more than once a month.

Rona Ripper lay on her stomach like a beached whale, her chin on a fluffy pillow, her intensely black eyes on the TV screen set on a high wall shelf opposite her hospital bed. She looked like the Goodyear version of Elvira.

The room smelled hospital-clean. But it was not clean enough for Rona Ripper. The window fan was busy sucking out the offending odor of disinfectants. She had ordered the keyhole of the door sealed with wax, so that no disagreeable smell of sickness or blood or pus could find its way into the pristine environment of her room.

After the physician had changed the dressing on her wound, she had ordered him banished.

"You can't banish me," the doctor had complained.

"You're a smoker. I can tell."

"That's none of your business. Besides, I'm not smoking now."

"Your clothing reeks of tobacco. You get out, or I'll sue you for every penny."

"On what grounds?" the doctor asked.

"Spreading second-hand smoke."

"Miss Ripper, at best there are trace elements on my smock."

"Carcinogens are insidious. The smaller they are, the more damage they do. Out!"

The doctor had withdrawn in a huff. Another sign of a chronic tobacco fiend. They were ill tempered. When Rona Ripper became governor of California, she vowed, no one would smoke. All billboards would be replaced with giant No Smoking signs. Tobacco products would be outlawed. Smoking fines would run to five figures. Per violation.

"It will be," Rona Ripper had said, when she'd announced her candidacy before a packed meeting of the Southern California branch of the American Civil Rights Collective, "a paradise on earth."

The ACRC had applauded wildly. They already thought California was a paradise on earth. But they knew it was not a perfect paradise. For one thing, there were too many Republicans.

"I intend," Rona had shouted, "to run on a strict no-smoking platform. Smoking is at the root of all our troubles in this wonderful progressive state of ours."

More applause. The fact that Rona Ripper was Executive Director of the Southern California branch of the ACRC had nothing to do with their enthusiasm. They always applauded sentences containing the word "progressive," whether spoken or not. If Rona Ripper had announced that she had contracted progressive throat cancer, they would have begun applauding before she got out the word, "throat."

"If we stamp out cigarettes, cigars, and pipes, our studies show," Rona added, "the smog levels will drop accordingly."

That had brought them to their feet. No one thought to ask what "accordingly" meant in terms of cubic volume. Had they learned that tobacco smoke was a negligible contributor to the California pollution problem, they would have denounced the results as a cover-up perpetrated by big business and the tobacco lobby.

When Rona Ripper added her personal belief that smoking had contributed in not-yet-understood ways to the six-year drought, they carried her through the streets on their shoulders.

That night, the Southern California ACRC came out in total support of Rona Ripper for Governor. The fact that she had no economic recovery plan, no strategy to deal with the drought, and no interest in the illegal alien crunch other than to note that California had belonged to Mexico before it belonged to the fascist United States, meant nothing. She was against smokers' rights. In a state where local laws already had sent tobacco users slinking and skulking, to exercise their right to smoke freely in woods and back alleys and under freeways, that was enough to mobilize a political organization and get Rona Ripper on the ballot.

The early weeks of the campaign had been promising. She had been polling even with the traitor, Barry Black, Junior.

Then Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, having narrowly escaped assassination, had begun moving up.

It had presented Rona Ripper with an incredible dilemma.

Esperanza was a Hispanic, and therefore above criticism. There was no way the Executive Director of the ACRC could publicly criticize an Hispanic candidate. They belonged to the underprivileged underclass. To criticize one of them would have been tantamount to heresy.

"We have to get something on this guy," Rona had complained to her inner circle. "Something that will knock him out of the race, and keep our hands clean."

"He's a straight arrow. Son of an immigrant. Built a vineyard in the Napa Valley and, made good. He's clean."

Rona Ripper's black eyes narrowed. She frowned like a thundercloud.

"Has he ever . . . smoked?"

"Not that we can prove."

"But it's possible," Rona pressed.

"Doubtful."

"Maybe we can doctor up a photo showing him with a Camel in his mouth. I hear they can do that with computer-enhancement now."

The campaign director of the Ripper for Governor organization shook his head. "Too risky. Could backfire."

Rona's frown deepened. "You're right. We can't take the chance. If I lose, this state is doomed."

Around the conference table, heads nodded in solemn agreement. There was no question: Without Rona Ripper of the ACRC to guide the Golden State, it might as well fall into the Pacific.

"Then we have no choice," Rona had decided. "We'll have to run on the issue."

"Issues, you mean."

"There is only one issue," Rona Ripper said tartly. "Making California's air breathable again. And the only obstacle is the evil weed called tobacco."

When it was reported that Barry Black, Junior had escaped an assassination attempt, Rona Ripper had greeted the news with wide eyes and a shift in strategy.

"It's a two-issue race now," she decreed. "Tobacco, and the right to campaign in safety. I want round-the-clock protection."

"I'll put in a request with the authorities."

"Are you insane? The way we've been suing them for years? Those Neanderthals are probably behind this campaign violence. I want everybody armed and ready to lay down their lives in the name of Governor Ripper."

This presented the Ripper for Governor campaign with a new crisis. They were against private ownership of firearms.

"If we arm now," Rona was told, "the National Rifle Association will throw it back in our faces into the next century."

Rona stood firm. "My election is more important than mere principle. I want one sacrificial lamb to buy a gun and stand by my side, ready to kill or be killed."

In the end, they drew straws. One of the press liaisons drew the short straw. He bought a .22 Ruger and showed it to Rona Ripper the same day.

"Is it loaded?" Rona asked, curious.

"Good question," said the press liaison. He lifted the shiny weapon to his face and looked down the barrel. He squinted.

"Well?" Rona demanded.

"I don't see any bullets."

Someone suggested that he pull the trigger. The press liaison did just that, neglecting to remove his face from the line of fire.

Fortunately, the campaign manager for the Ripper campaign understood that pistols sometimes go off even when pointed at unintended targets. He lunged for the press liaison's gun hand and attempted to wrestle it free.

He was both just in time and too late, simultaneously.

He was just in time to keep the press liaison from blowing his head off, and too late to prevent the bullet from snarling out of the barrel.

It burned past the liaison's head, ricocheted off an overhead pipe, and imbedded itself in the most generous target in the room.

Rona Ripper suddenly found herself seated in the middle of the floor, with a surprised look on her face and a dull pain in her ample behind.

"What happened?" she gasped. "Is it an earthquake?"

No one wanted to tell the probable future governor of California that she had been shot in the ass. They weren't sure, but somehow her rights probably had been violated. And there was an excellent chance she would sue them all into bankruptcy. She had done it to major corporations all over the state after a lot less provocation.

Rona Ripper had solved the problem for them. She tried to stand up. Her body refused to work. She looked around her and saw the blood.

Then, with a soft but vicious "I'll sue" issuing from her lips, she fainted.

Rona Ripper had awoken on her stomach, with her backside swathed in bandages, repeating that same mantra over and over.

The doctor on staff immediately put her under with an injection, then transferred to another hospital. He knew Rona Ripper had single-handedly raised malpractice insurance rates all over California.

So it was that, when Rona Ripper finally regained consciousness, she was reduced to describing her symptoms to an anonymous doctor on the other side of the closed hospital room door.

"How do you think I feel? I have a bullet in my butt!"

"Is there anything else we can do for you?" the doctor said, smiling inanely, as if at a homicidal maniac.

Rona Ripper dictated a thirty-seven-item list of demands, and the anonymous doctor went away.

She knew she was going to get what she wanted when demand number twelve, the sealing of the keyhole against intrusive odors, was carried out. Total obedience. That's the way it always should be, she thought smugly.

"When I'm in charge of this state," she muttered to herself, "people are going to jump when I bark."

"Woof-woof," a voice said, as the door opened.

"Hold it right there," Rona commanded.

Remo Williams paused on the threshold.

"Before you enter, do you, or have you ever, smoked in your life?" demanded Rona Ripper.

"Not in years," Remo said.

"Then you can't come in."

"Too late. I'm in," Remo said, flashing his Secret Service ID. He looked around the room and noticed it was empty.

"No press?" he asked.

"They know I'd sue them if they so much as pointed a camera in my face," sniffed Rona Ripper.

"I don't think your face is where they'd be pointing their cameras," Remo said dryly. "No offense," he added quickly, as he saw Rona Ripper's bloated face turn purple.

"You get out of here right now!" she screamed.

"Now now, you'll wake the homeless," Remo chided.

"Too late," came a growling voice from under the bed. "I'm already awake, man."

Remo looked under the bed, where he discovered a man in a dirty green nylon sleeping bag. The man said, "City Ordinance 42-D. We get the beds if they're empty, and the space under them if they ain't."

"I would like to have a private conversation with this woman," Remo said wearily.

"He stays," said Rona Ripper. "He's part of my natural constituency."

"No, I ain't. I'm voting for Esperanza. He gives me hope."

"Get that bum out of here!" Rona screamed.

"A pleasure," said Remo, reaching down and pulling the sleeping bag into the light. The man was struggling to get out. Remo zipped the sleeping bag as far as it would zip, entangling the slide in the man's blond beard.

Remo then dragged the sleeping bag out into the corridor and into the elevator, where the card game was still in progress. He set down the wriggling, nylon-sheathed form on the pot.

"Going down!" Remo called, hitting the LOBBY button. The steel doors closed as the players scrambled for the pot.

Back in the hospital room, Rona Ripper was in no better mood.

"I don't talk to pigs from Washington," she snarled.

"Then listen. Someone tried to kill Enrique Esperanza. Someone tried to kill Barry Black. You're the only other candidate in the running. The finger of guilt points to you."

"It does not."

To prove his point, Remo took the steel-hard index finger of his right hand and used it to test the thickness of the bandage over Rona Ripper's generous left cheek.

This produced an ear-splitting howl from Rona's other end.

"Answers. Are you behind this or not?" No.

"Then someone in your organization is?"

"No, I swear!"

"There's no third suspect. Do better than that. The finger of guilt is very, very angry."

Remo pressed harder. Tears streamed from Rona Ripper's pain-squinted eyes. Her long black hair threshed about, like a bloated octopus struggling to free itself from a net. She bit her lips to fight back the waves of hot pain.

"I can't tell you what I don't know!" Rona Ripper moaned.

"Okay," Remo said, trying not to sound disappointed.

"You're not behind the shootings. But someone is. Maybe someone who's willing to go pretty far to put you in office. I need entry into your organization."

"Any . . . anything!" Rona gasped. "Just . . . just stop!"

Remo scooped up the telephone and handed the receiver to Rona Ripper. "Set it up. The name's Remo Gerrymander."

"The card said Drake."

"The card lied." Remo folded his arms as Rona Ripper called her campaign headquarters.

"Blaise? Rona. I have a new man for you. What? Of course I sound strange. I'm lying on my belly with a slug in one cheek. How do you think I should sound? Bubbly? Now this guy. His name is Remo. When he shows up, put him to work where he'll do the most good."

Rona Ripper hung up, saying, "It's all set. Go to the Main Street office."

"Remember, mum's the word," said Remo, as he left the room.

After Remo had gone, Rona Ripper scooped up the telephone and stabbed the redial button.

"Blaise. Rona again. That Remo I told you about. He's dangerous. Get rid of him before he learns too much."

Chapter 21

In the Santa Monica headquarters for the Rona Ripper campaign, Blaise Perrin hung up the telephone with trembling fingers.

Almost immediately the phone rang again. Thinking it was the candidate herself calling a third time, he scooped up the receiver and fumbled it to his pinched face.

"Hello?"

A sharp voice announced, "This is Cheeta Ching, demanding a statement from your candidate."

"Aren't you on maternity leave?" Blaise asked.

"You leave my womb out of this! Do I get to talk to Rona or not?"

"Not," said Blaise Perrin, hanging up. He left the phone off the hook after that. He had enough on his mind. First, Rona had been shot in a freak accident, freaking out the organization. Now there was a problem with someone named "Remo."

Only the day before, Blaise had been presiding over a busy campaign headquarters. But ever since the first report that Rona had been shot-never mind that it had been an accident-the volunteers had begun deserting in droves.

Now, less than six hours later, Blaise Perrin was responsible for every ringing phone in the office. Under a barrage of reporters' phone calls, he had been forced to disconnect all but the unlisted number that existed for the candidate's personal use.

How Cheeta Ching had gotten it was another matter. When Rona Ripper was governor of California, Cheeta Ching would be taken care of too, just like all the rest of them.

And just like this "Remo"-whoever he was.

Blaise Perrin knew exactly how to handle this guy. He'd never know what happened to him. And it would be a hell of a long time before he saw daylight again. He picked up the receiver, and punched out a phone number Blaise Perrin had committed to memory before the start of the Ripper campaign.

"Get ready, commandant," he whispered. "We have another candidate to be stubbed out."

Remo whatever-his-name-was arrived within the hour. He pulled up in a blue sedan and got out.

Blaise Perrin hadn't known what to expect. Rona hadn't said who the guy was. Blaise had assumed he was a reporter. He wouldn't be the first one.

But this guy was dressed like no reporter Blaise Perrin had ever seen. Unless he was from the gay press.

He wore a tight white T-shirt over tan chinos and walked with a casual, almost arrogant grace. He had parked across the street and stood beside his car, looking both ways before crossing.

It was still light, and Main Street was busy. Blaise hastily locked up and met the man on the street, so there would be no witness that he'd actually entered the storefront.

"You Remo?" he asked, giving him a disarming grin.

"I'm Remo," the guy said in a slightly bored voice. Mentally, Blaise Perrin rubbed his hands together. This would be a piece of cake. The guy looked like a pushover.

"Great. This your car? Great. Great. Let's go for a ride."

"Where?"

"Where you can get a position to help Rona into that corner office," Blaise said, grinning like a Rodeo Drive manikin.

"Suits me."

Blaise got into the passenger's side, thinking, This guy's dead meat. I can't believe how lucky I am.

"Take the Pacific Coast Highway north," he told Remo, as Remo started the ignition.

Nodding toward the empty storefront, Remo said, "You shut down this early?"

"I gave the staff the afternoon off. It's such a great day. Don't you think it's a great day, Remo?"

"I've had better," Remo said.

"Hah! I like a pessimist. They work that much harder."

Remo sent the sedan into traffic and up Main.

Coming down Main was a satellite TV van, and beside the driver was the cameo oval of a face that Blaise Perrin recognized at fifty yards.

"Cheeta!" Blaise croaked.

"Oh no," Remo moaned.

"Omar!" Cheeta Ching cried, as the two vehicles passed like high-speed trains on opposite tracks.

Blaise turned to Remo. "What did she say?"

"Sounded like 'Oman' " Remo said, pressing the accelerator.

"Who's Omar?"

"I don't know, but I'm glad I'm not him."

Craning his head to look back, Blaise Perrin saw the satellite van screaming into an illegal U-turn.

"Damn! She must have recognized me. Floor it, will you?"

"My pleasure," said Remo, sending the car rocketing in the direction of the Pacific Coast Highway.

"Go north," Blaise urged.

"North it is," Remo said grimly.

When they had blended in with the afternoon traffic, Blaise Perrin, his eyes sick, all but turned around in his seat in an effort to locate the pursuing van.

"I think we shook them," he said at last.

"You don't know that Korean barracuda."

"Do you?"

"Only by reputation," Remo said, sending the car weaving in and out of traffic with an easy skill that impressed Blaise Perrin. It was like the guy had personal collision-avoidance radar. The other cars seemed to slide away from him, not vice versa.

Cheeta Ching had one claw on the dashboard, and with the other was digging her bloodred nails into the shoulder of her driver.

"Don't lose them, you Caucasian idiot!"

"I'm trying," the driver snapped. "Just get your nails out of my shoulder. I can't drive with major blood loss."

"Sorry," said Cheeta, noticing that her bloodred nails were still bloodred, but now moist. She licked them experimentally. They tasted salty. Blood. She decided she needed all the iron she could ingest if she was going to give birth in nine months, so she finished the job with relish.

When she was done, the blue sedan had come into view.

"There it is!" she shrieked. "Catch up! Catch up!"

No sooner had the van pulled closer than the blue car pulled away.

"Floor it!" Cheeta howled. "I want this one big story! It'll make up for that Jade creature scooping me!"

"I'll try."

He did. But every time he pulled close, the other driver weaved with incredible skill, dancing in and out of traffic.

As they came to a long stretch of open, undulating coastal road, the speedometer crawled toward ninety, and the van's driver fought to hold the wheels to the road. The rear tires of the other car spat up dust and rocks, and dropped bolts and other car parts that littered the road.

The van's windshield began to collect some of these. Craters and cracks appeared. After five miles, it was impossible to see out the windshield.

Cheeta remedied that by knocking out the safety glass with her forehead. She did it in two tries. The glass cracked loose in brittle cubes, like magnified salt.

"How's my hair?" Cheeta asked, over the howl and rush of wind.

"Not even mussed!" the driver shouted, shielding his eyes against the slipstream.

"I use industrial-strength hair varnish," Cheeta said proudly.

"It shows."

Cheeta Ching took that as a compliment and continued to hector her driver. By sundown, she vowed, she would have a hot story and maybe that dreamy Omar, too.

She wondered what he was doing, involved with the Ripper campaign.

Blaise Perrin was saying, "Can't you shake them?"

"If I could, don't you think I would have by now?" Remo said heatedly.

"Okay, okay. Tell you what. Bring it down to the speed limit, and we'll let them just follow along."

"Nothing doing!" Remo snapped.

"Excuse me, but you work for me, not vice versa. Got that?"

"Got it," Remo said unhappily.

Remo slowed the car. The TV van kept on coming. Remo got out of the way, and the van promptly overshot them.

The razor-sharp voice of Cheeta Ching roared back at them, in a cloud of carbon monoxide fumes, "You idiot! They're behind us now. Slow down!"

The van fell in step, pacing them. Cheeta Ching stuck her predatory face out of the passenger side.

"Yoo-hoo! Omar!"

"My name's not Omar," Remo growled.

"What is this?" Blaise demanded. "She acts like she knows you."

"She acts like a lunatic."

Cheeta tried again. "Nemo? Don't you remember me?"

"I don't know you from Jade Ling!" Remo called out.

Her face stung, Cheeta Ching withdrew her head.

"Whatever you said, looks like it worked," Blaise said admiringly.

"You gotta know how to handle these anchors. Go for the ego."

"All right, Remo. You're doing great so far. Just keep it up. About three miles ahead, take the off-ramp. I'll handle everything from there. Do you understand? It is important that you understand."

"I understand," said Remo.

"And that you trust me," Blaise added.

"I trust you," said Remo.

Blaise Perrin gave Remo a fatherly clap on the back. He brought his hand away, the fingers stinging.

"What do they feed you back home, anyway?"

"Anchors," said Remo, and Blaise Perrin didn't know whether to laugh or not. He just hoped the commandant was ready at his end.

Otherwise the whole master plan was going to blow back in their faces, like second-hand smoke.

Chapter 22

Harold W. Smith got the word directly from the President of the United States.

"Yes, Mr. President?"

"Smith, I have the official National Transportation Safety Board report on the California crash, and the news isn't good."

"I'm listening."

"It was sabotage."

"The board is certain?"

"I'm not up on all the technical details, but from what they tell me, somebody tampered with the pressurization system on that jet."

"That alone would not insure a crash. The plane was off course at the time of the disaster."

"That's where we come to the truly insidious part. The official report lays it all out chronologically. And let me tell you, it's chilling to read. Just chilling."

"Go on," Smith prompted.

"Whoever sabotaged the plane knew that the captain would have to descend to what's called a 'low-altitude airway.' When they do that, they rely on special charts. There are two to a cockpit. A set for the captain and a set for the copilot."

"I follow you so far, Mr. President."

"They had a hell of a time extracting the charts from what was left of the cockpit. It was mashed tighter than Congress in a phone booth. But they found them. Both charts were counterfeit."

"Counterfeit?"

"Doctored to lead them off course," the President said tightly. "Somebody with a lot of money and organization pulled this off. When that plane lost pressure, those poor guys dug out those two false charts and flew themselves right into Mt. Whitney. And that's exactly where somebody wanted them to end up. Exactly."

Smith let out a pent-in breath. "Then there is no escaping it."

"No," said the President grimly. "General Nogeira arranged the assassination of the governor of California and the lieutenant governor."

"And engineered this special election," Smith added.

"Well, whatever he was up to, he's not going to get the benefit of it."

"That does not mean his organization-and I agree with you that he must have had one, in order to accomplish this audacious scheme-is not still operating, pursuing his vicious ends."

"I heard about the Ripper woman. The press aren't buying the inflicted-by-a-staffer story. The public thinks it's another attempt on a gubernatorial candidate. My God, it's like a banana republic out there in California. Is this what the future holds for the rest of this fine country?"

"Not if CURE has anything to say about it," Smith said firmly. "My people are on top of the situation. There will be no more political assassinations."

"I'm going to have this NTSB report suppressed until the election is done with."

"That is probably for the best," said Harold Smith. "I will keep you informed of developments."

Harold Smith replaced the well-worn red receiver. The President had offered no advice on the handling of the California situation. Smith appreciated that. Not that he would have listened to the President, but the way matters were going, this was shaping up to be an unprecedented situation. And Harold W. Smith, for all his experience in unraveling the Gordian knot of national security, wouldn't have known the best outcome to engineer-even if it had been in his power to engineer it.

Chapter 23

The sun was setting as Remo tooled his rented car through the Santa Monica Mountains west of Topanga. The area was quiet. Here and there, the mountainsides were decorated with tar-paper shacks and cardboard condominiums that undocumented aliens had erected on the slopes. The sight reminded Remo of the mountains that ring the Valley of Mexico and Mexico City. Their sheer sides was a beehive of homeless people, too.

"If this keeps up, this state is going to be unlivable," Remo pointed out.

"What did you say?" asked Blaise Perrin, his head snapping around. He had been watching the pursuing van, now following at a decorous thirty miles an hour.

"The homes up there," Remo said. "That's no way to live."

"Change your attitude. Rona Ripper's hard work helped make it possible for the underprivileged to enjoy the bounty of this great state. She sued the county when they tried to displace those people."

"I heard cooking fires they've started have burned people out of their homes."

"And I heard it was spontaneous combustion."

Remo said nothing. He wondered what he'd do when they got to wherever it was they were going, and Cheeta Ching descended upon him. Her face, reflected in the rearview mirror, made him think of a remorseless harpy chasing a field mouse.

Remo got the answer to his question when they came to a barbed-wire perimeter fence. A black-and-yellow striped guard rail was lifted by a sentry in a black Spandex jogging outfit.

They were waved through. So was the TV van, Remo saw in the rearview mirror.

"Now," Blaise Perrin said gleefully, "they're trespassing."

"Looked like they were welcomed with open arms," Remo pointed out.

"Trespassing," repeated Blaise Perrin. "Take this next left. "

Remo went left. Around a low hillock appeared a scattering of quonset huts, surrounded by a hurricane fence. There was no sign to indicate what the complex was supposed to be. It made Remo think of a POW camp.

Two sentries in Spandex pushed open a tall gate topped by razor wire, and Remo drove through.

"What's this?"

"Education center. All Ripper volunteers are processed through this facility. It insures correct political attitudes."

"Uh-huh," Remo said, putting the car into a designated slot. He got out. Blaise Perrin emerged, buttoning his suitcoat and inhaling the mountain air greedily.

"Ahhh! Isn't this great? Fresh air! When we're done, all California will smell like this."

To Remo, whose sensitive nostrils now detected trace elements of airborne zinc and sulphur, that was hardly an enticing thought, even if it was an improvement over city smog.

He watched as Blaise Perrin stepped into the headlights of the approaching van and waved the driver into the adjacent parking slot.

"Just shoot her right there!" he called.

The van coasted to a stop, and the headlights were doused. The doors on either side popped open and out popped Cheeta Ching and her driver.

"Vito!" she called.

As if that were a signal, the ground came alive with men in olive drab, toting Colt automatic rifles.

"What's this crap?" Cheeta demanded.

"You're trespassing," Blaise Perrin said.

"I'm a major network anchorperson!" Cheeta spat. "I don't trespass. I investigate. Look it up in the Constitution."

"In this case, you're trespassing," said Blaise Perrin, snapping his fingers coolly. The Colt rifles were cocked with military precision.

"This isn't a good idea," Remo warned.

Blaise Perrin smiled broadly. "Oh. I forgot to tell you. You're a prisoner, too."

Two rifle muzzles shifted from Cheeta Ching and her driver to Remo's white T-shirt.

Remo looked down the weapon's barrel and suppressed a smile. He was making progress. Already.

"Okay," he said nonchalantly, throwing up his hands. "I'm a prisoner."

"How can you just surrender like that?" Cheeta Ching said hotly.

"Because he doesn't want to be shot," Blaise explained.

"Because I don't want to be shot," Remo echoed, knowing it would put Blaise Perrin at ease and annoy Cheeta Ching.

"I hate you," Cheeta hissed. "What did I ever see in you?"

"A cute guy with an unforgettable name," Remo said.

Blaise snapped, "Let's go. Inside. All of you."

Remo allowed himself to be marched into the main building, a long, low, barracks-like structure in the center of the quonset huts.

The sign on the entrance door said POSITIVELY NO SMOKING.

So did the sign on the first inside wall they came to.

They were marched down a rough, unpainted corridor. On either side there were other signs:

SMOKING IS PUNISHABLE BY FLOGGING NO IFS, ANDS, OR BUTTS SAY NO TO NICOTINE REMEMBER YOUR PATCHES.

"Patches?" Remo asked. He was ignored.

A man with a blondish mustache, and a powder-blue paramilitary uniform that looked like it had been pilfered from the Universal Studios prop department, greeted them with a salute.

"I remand these antisocials into your custody, commandant," said Blaise, returning the salute.

"Commandant?" asked Remo.

"Antisocials?" said Cheeta.

"Shut up," said Blaise.

They were escorted past rows of cells. The cells were heavily barred, and all were empty except for piles of straw on the floor. Remo noticed white electronic devices attached to the ceiling of each cell. So did Cheeta Ching.

She demanded, "What are those? Burglar alarms?"

Blaise Perrin laughed.

At the end of the narrow corridor was a blank wall. On either side were facing cells. The commandant opened one cell, and Cheeta Ching and her driver were frisked at rifle-point.

"Are you crazy?" he snapped. "We aren't carrying weapons."

"We know," Blaise said smugly.

"Ah-hah!" said the commandant. "Contraband!"

A pack of menthol cigarettes was brought to light.

"Take a good look," Blaise told the unhappy driver. "Those are the last coffin nails you're going to see."

"You're going to kill us?" Cheeta blurted.

Blaise Perrin laughed without answering. Remo thought it was a crazy laugh.

Cheeta and her driver were pushed into a single cell, and the bars clapped shut.

The second door was opened and Blaise said to Remo, "In you go, sport."

"How am I supposed to get out the vote from behind bars?" Remo wanted to know.

"You don't," said Blaise Perrin.

Shrugging, Remo entered the cell. The door banged shut.

"Welcome to the wave of the future," said the powder-blue commandant in a hearty voice.

"A prison?" Remo asked.

"A reeducation camp."

Cheeta Ching exploded, "But I'm a summa cum laude journalism major!"

"It's not that kind of reeducation," said Blaise, smiling.

"What kind is it?" Remo asked in a cool, unconcerned voice.

"You'll find out in the morning."

"What if I don't want to wait?"

"In Rona Ripper's California, you wait if the Ripper organization tells you to wait."

"So I wait," Remo said.

Blaise Perrin stepped up to the bars and looked at Remo's high-cheekboned face.

"You're an awfully cool customer. Mind telling me why Rona wants you kept under wraps?"

"She thinks I'm a pain in the ass," Remo said.

Blaise frowned. "Is that a joke?"

"Not if nobody laughs."

Nobody did, so Blaise Perrin backed away from the bars and stormed off. His guards followed.

In the silence that followed, Cheeta Ching said, "I don't believe this."

"Believe it," Remo said.

"I've always admired Rona," Cheeta said unhappily. "She's a role model for aggressive women everywhere."

"Maybe if we ask nicely, they'll give us absentee ballots," Remo said.

Cheeta began pacing her cell. "We can't just sit here and let our First Amendment rights be trampled on. Even by a progressive woman."

"Not if we sleep instead," Remo said, throwing himself onto the straw in one corner of the hardwood floor.

Cheeta surged to her bars and glared at Remo. "What kind of man are you?"

"A sleepy one."

Remo willed himself to sleep. It was not easy. Cheeta Ching continued to carp and complain for the better part of an hour. That came to an abrupt halt when a guard came in with a pail of cold water and dashed it through the bars of her cell.

After that, Cheeta Ching got very quiet and eventually fell asleep. She used her driver for a pillow. He didn't complain in the least, but he didn't close his eyes either.

Remo woke up precisely at midnight. He had told his body to come awake at exactly midnight. He didn't know how he knew it was midnight when his eyes snapped open, any more than he understood the biological mechanism that brought him to full consciousness without any logy transition. It was Sinanju. It was a natural ability all members of homo sapiens possess, if only they could access it.

Remo rose to his feet, like an apparition from a fresh grave.

He took hold of the bars, testing them for strength. They were sunk into holes drilled into the floor and ceiling. He found they could be rotated. That meant they weren't sunk into anything more solid than the natural earth under the wood flooring.

Remo grinned. This was going to be easy. He grasped the two center bars and began twisting them. As he twisted, he applied downward pressure.

He took his time. Silence was more important than speed. And he didn't want to wake Cheeta Ching and her leather lungs.

It took a few minutes, but the tops of the bars dropped out of the ceiling holes. As he kept turning the bars, they sank further and further into the soft earth below, making soft grumbles of complaint.

When they were knee-high, Remo stepped out of his cell.

He moved down the narrow corridor, passed through an unguarded door, and paused at the juncture of two intersecting corridors.

Approaching footsteps warned him of a patrolling guard. Remo slipped into a storeroom and waited until the guard had passed. The storeroom was cramped for space. In the dark, Remo allowed his visual purple to adjust to the pitch-darkness until he could see shades of gray.

He picked through a box of what seemed to be medical supplies. Inside the box were smaller boxes and in them, flesh-colored circular patches resembling Band-Aids sealed in cellophane packets. They didn't smell like ordinary bandages, so Remo pocketed a bunch of them.

The guard's footsteps had moved to another part of the building, and Remo slipped out.

Remo stopped and let his senses open fully. His entire skin became a giant sensory organ. He counted heartbeats. There were eight people in the building, not counting himself. That meant four potential enemies, since Cheeta and her driver were locked down tight.

Remo resumed his search. He wasn't sure what he was searching for, but he knew he would recognize it when he found it.

What he found, when he turned the next corner, was a light framing the edges of a door, and Blaise Perrin's anxious voice coming through the veneer panel.

Perrin was saying, "They'll be secure here. And guess what? One of them's a smoker. We'll run him through the pilot program and see if he can cut it."

Remo went through the door. On the other side Blaise Perrin sat with his back to the door, his feet propped up on a desk.

"One second. I'm talking to Rona," he said impatiently.

"Give her my very best," Remo said pleasantly.

"Oh my God!" said Blaise Perrin. "Rona! He got loose!"

Through the receiver diaphragm, Rona Ripper's twisted voice could be heard barking, "Do your duty and cover my ass!"

Blaise Perrin came out of his seat without remembering to let go of the phone. He pulled it out of its base, lunging for a red lever mounted on the outside wall.

The lever was behind glass, and white letters said IN CASE OF FIRE, BREAK GLASS, PULL LEVER. There was a red metal hammer hanging from a silver chain.

Blaise Perrin got his hand on the hammer. But Remo's steely fingers got him by the wrist.

"I don't smell any smoke," Remo said, grinning fiercely.

Sweating, Blaise attempted to move his hand. It wouldn't budge. Effortlessly, Remo pried his fingers loose and guided the director of the Ripper campaign back to his seat. He then pried the phone receiver from his other hand and sat him down. Hard.

"Talk," Remo said.

"I have nothing to say."

"Rona Ripper is behind the attacks on the other campaigns. Am I right?"

Blaise Perrin actually looked startled. "Are you kidding? Why would she do that?"

"Because she wants to get elected."

"Rona is a pacifist."

Remo gestured around him. "Then explain all this."

Blaise Perrin hesitated. He swallowed. Finally, he said, "I'll tell you."

"Go."

"I could use a cigarette first," he said, gesturing to the pack of menthols that had been taken from Cheeta Ching's driver.

Remo laughed. "You political hacks are all alike. Say one thing in public, and practice another behind closed doors." He extracted a single cigarette and stuck it between Blaise Perrin's sweaty lips.

"No lighter," Blaise said, throwing out his hands.

Remo sighed, took a sheet of paper from the desk's out basket, and rubbed it between his palms briskly. First it became a ball, and then under the friction pressure, it became a ball of fire.

Blaise Perrin's eyes went wide. He got control of himself and pushed the tip into the blaze until it caught.

Remo blew out the burning paper and dropped blackened scraps into the wastebasket.

Blaise blinked. "How'd you do that?"

"Home magic course," Remo said. "And I haven't all night."

Blaise Perrin leaned back in his swivel chair and took a deep drag. He threw his head back and let out a long stream of bluish tobacco smoke.

"You're an idiot, you know that?" Blaise said with a smile.

There was something in the confident tone of the man's voice that made Remo look up. He saw the tobacco smoke billowing toward a white device bolted to the ceiling. It was identical to the ones that were mounted in the cells.

When it started to beep, he knew it was a smoke detector.

"I don't smoke," Blaise sneered.

All over the building other smoke detectors started beeping, sounding like arguing computers.

"The guards will be here any second now," Blaise said smugly. "Why don't you put up your hands now, and maybe they won't shoot you?"

Remo took the cigarette from Blaise Perrin's loose lips and returned it, lit end first.

While Blaise was dealing with a mouthful of hot ash and a burnt tongue, Remo went to the door.

"I'm in here," he called.

Running footsteps converged on the office.

Remo went to meet the first arrival. The man came around the corner with his rifle held at hip level. Remo took the muzzle and used it as a lever, slamming the man against a wall and stunning him.

"That's one," Remo said.

The commandant came from the opposite direction.

Remo flattened against the wall at the point at the corner. The man came in fast. Too fast to see Remo's foot trip him. He turned a somersault, and Remo caught him in mid-flip and used his head to make a hole in the wall.

The commandant ended up on his knees, his entire body loose, his neck joined to the wall.

"Two," Remo said.

The two remaining guards happened along then. They skidded to a stop, took one look at Remo, saw their commandant on his knees as if about to be guillotined by a wall, and changed their minds. They doubled back.

Remo decided there was time to interrogate Blaise Perrin before they got reinforcements. He went back to the office.

He heard the sharp breaking of glass, and remembered the fire alarm. A lot of good that's going to do, he thought.

Remo entered the room just as Blaise grabbed the lever.

"Don't waste your time," Remo said.

To Remo's right, the head of the commandant poking through the wall screamed, "Don't! Blaise! Don't!"

Remo started forward. Blaise pulled the lever.

Then a wave of concussive force blew out every wall in the office, and there was a hot yellow sheet of fire directly in front of Remo's astonished eyes.

Through the darkness that came next, he could hear echoing detonations. He counted seven. One for each of the buildings in the reeducation camp.

Chapter 24

There was nothing to hang on to. And even if there had been, the shock wave would have been too strong to resist.

Remo let it carry him. His body, reacting to free-fall, went limp. He could feel the heat on his bare arms, smelled the hair singeing off, and prayed he wouldn't be scarred for life.

Most of all, he thought of how stupid he had been. He had taken the fire alarm at face value. It had been wired to a detonator. The entire complex had been rigged to self-destruct when that lever was pulled.

A tree branch slashed at Remo's face. Blindly, he grabbed out, snared another. It groaned, snapped, and Remo slammed into a nest of branches that lacerated his face and arms.

After that, he dropped straight down. He rolled upon impact and kept rolling, in case he was on fire.

Remo only stopped rolling when his back slammed into a boulder and blew the air out of his lungs.

He lay there a moment, taking inventory. His eyes came open, and he found his feet. The hair had been burned off his exposed skin and he'd lost a little off his head, but there were no broken bones, no internal injuries. He looked around.

The fires were everywhere. They crackled and snarled like trapped animals. The heart of the conflagration was like looking into a fallen sun.

"Cheeta," Remo croaked, climbing to his feet. "Chiun will kill me if she buys it."

Remo moved toward the flames. A man came running out, his mouth open in a silent scream, his flaming arms beating like mad phoenix wings.

He ran and ran and then just flopped on the ground and kept burning. He stopped flapping his burning arms, though.

The heat made it impossible to enter the flames. Remo circled the blaze, which was so hot the perimeter fence had begun to wilt.

There were screams coming from the different burning structures. They sounded like they were being ripped out of the throats of their authors. They didn't last long at all.

Remo was forced to retreat.

He found Blaise Perrin draped across a boulder, his spine broken in three places. Remo grabbed up a fistful of hair and pulled his head back.

Perrin groaned. "You . . . can't . . . prove a . . . thing."

"What was that place?" Remo asked harshly.

"Reeducation . . . ."

"For political enemies?"

"No . . . for . . ." Blaise closed his eyes slowly.

Remo shook him back to consciousness.

"For . . . smoke . . ."

"For smoke?"

"Smokers," Perrin hissed.

"This is a concentration camp for people who smoke?" Remo said incredulously.

"It was . . . completely . . . humane. We had . whole program. Nictone . . . transdermal patches. Aerobics. Shots."

Remo pulled out one of the Band-Aids he had found in the storeroom. "Is this one of the patches?"

"You . . . put it on . . . person's skin and . . . it makes them allergic to . . . tobacco. By the year two thousand California would be smoker-free."

"Smoker-free? What about people's rights?"

"Smokers . . . have . . . no . . . rights," coughed Blaise Perrin. His head went limp. This time, no matter how much Remo shook him, he didn't come around. He would never come around again.

Remo used a heavy boulder to scoop out a fire trench, so the blaze wouldn't spread, then reclaimed his car, which was intact. The TV van had protected it. Its tires were smoking and melting slowly.

As Remo drove away the gas tank caught, and the van shot ten feet in the air and came down with a rattling thud.

Remo found a phone booth at a gas station in the Santa Monica foothills. He called the local fire department and reported the fire. Then he called Folcroft.

"Smith. Bad news."

"What?"

"Rona Ripper has a secret plan, too."

"Is it legal?" Smith asked.

"Definitely not. Her secret plan insures a smoker-free California."

"You mean smoke-free."

"That too. I just came from a concentration camp for smokers her people had built in the Santa Monica Mountains. Once she was elected, if you smoked, you'd go through the program."

"That's insane," Smith said sharply.

"This is California."

Smith's ragged breathing came across three thousand miles of telephone line.

"Remo, as you know we do not interfere with elections."

"Right."

"It is against everything CURE stands for. We are above politics. Above the process. Outside the Constitution, yes. But only because the Constitution has been subverted by elements which wish to repeal it."

"Right."

"I myself do not vote."

"Right."

"I personally do not care who governs California so long as they are legally elected."

"Right. Right," Remo said impatiently. "Cut to the chase, will you?"

"Remo, we are forced to take sides. Barry Black, Junior is committing voter fraud. Rona Ripper intends to force her personal beliefs on the citizens of that state, without recourse to lawful legislation. Neither candidate can be allowed to assume the governorship under these circumstances."

"So we help Esperanza get elected?"

Smith's tone was flat. "I see no choice in the matter."

"I'm not looking forward to facing Chiun."

"I would think he would be pleased."

"Not when I tell him Cheeta Ching just went up in a ball of fire," Remo said wearily.

"What is this?"

Remo explained the circumstances leading to Cheeta Ching's apparent demise.

Smith was thoughtful. At last he said, "Is there any trace she was in the camp when it exploded?"

"Not unless they dig up her blackened shark's teeth."

"Say nothing of this to Chiun. Or anyone. The election is less than a week away. After that, the chips can fall where they may. Our task will be done."

"Gotcha. I'm on my way. Where is Esperanza now?"

"San Diego." Smith's tight voice softened slightly. He sounded tired. "Good luck, Remo," he said.

Chapter 25

FBI Forensics specialist Dick Webb hated the Everglades. Even with his legs encased in crotch-high fisherman's boots, he hated the Everglades. It was too hot. It was too humid. It was too muddy. And then there were the alligators.

It was because of an alligator that the central lab in Washington had sent him down to this hellhole.

An alligator had eaten no less than General Emmanuel Alejandro Nogeira, while in FBI custody. It was a major embarrassment. And it landed right on the Bureau's lap.

Which is why agent Webb was stuck with body-recovery duty.

The Bureau had managed to find most of Nogeira's bloated carcass. Even the head, which had to be cut out of the stomach of the offending alligator. It was pretty well digested. They found a number of finger bones, too.

The problem with this was that the fingerprints had been digested away. They had the guy's toes, but nobody, not even the FBI, kept toe prints on file. Agent Webb planned to write up a memo on that subject as soon as he got back to Washington.

Anything, to make sure they never sent him to the Everglades again to search for a missing hand.

The other Nogeira hand had been bitten off. It was not in the alligator's stomach. The Bureau, to cover its bureaucratic ass, needed that hand to positively establish the identity of General Nogeira. Not that anybody doubted the corpse's identity. It was just that including a paragraph affirming a positive fingerprint ID was essential to perserving the Bureau's tattered reputation.

"Why can't we just go with dental records?" Webb had asked, when the problem was dropped in his lap.

"Nobody has them," he was told. "They can't find them down in Bananama, and Nogeira never saw the prison dentist. We need those prints, Dick."

Which left Dick Webb to wade through the malodorous Everglades in search of a hand that was probably alligator shit by now.

"I just hope I don't end up the same way," he grumbled to his alligator-spotter.

"Not as long as I'm here," said the firearms instructor on loan from Quantico, who was hunkered down on a spongy isle. "Uh-oh," he added suddenly.

Webb froze. "Gator?"

"No," said the marksman, bringing his sniper scope to his eyes. "I think it's a jellyfish."

"Jelly- Wait!"

Dick Webb's frantic shout came to late. The first shot got off.

"Miss!" The marksman said in disgust.

"Hold your damn fire!" said Dick Webb, wading like mad, no longer caring if gators lurked under the surface or not. He didn't know much about the glades, but he did know they didn't exactly swarm with jellyfish. Webb spotted the translucent white thing as it turned in the lazy current.

With a stick, he lifted it clear of the water. Delicately, he opened the flimsy thing. It dripped. Dripped from every limp appendage. Webb counted five-four long and one short.

"This is it! This is it!" he crowed.

"What?"

Webb turned. "It's a skin glove!" he cried, wading back. "It's a perfect skin glove!"

"What the hell is a 'skin glove'?" the marksman wondered.

"We find them in waters where floaters turn up," Webb explained. "A body in the water a long time will shed its outer skin layer, like a snake. This is Nogeira's hand skin. We call it a glove."

The marksman scratched his head. "Can you get prints off it?"

"Abso-fucking-lutely!" chortled Dick Webb, relieved now that his chances of becoming alligator excrement seemed to have dropped into negative numbers. "It's all over. This will close out the case."

Agent Dick Webb waded back to dry land, with no idea how wrong he was.

Chapter 26

Harmon Cashman was panic-stricken.

He had opened every drawer, and found none. He had checked the hotel room minibar. He had looked under the bed and between the rumpled sheets.

It was three A.M., and he had been up poring over polls and focus-group studies all night. The night had started on an up note. His candidate, the candidate of hope, Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, was riding high in the polls. He was not a shoo-in yet, but he looked good. It was great to be honchoing a major campaign once again-even if it was just a statewide run.

But once it was over, Harmon told himself, the sky was the limit. Where was it written that an Hispanic couldn't be President?

But that would be later. First he had to satisfy his bodily craving, before it drove him mad.

Hurrying down the hall to Esperanza's hotel room, he banged on the door, yelling, "Ricky! Ricky! Wake up!"

Hastily gathering a terry-cloth robe about his generous frame, Enrique Esperanza appeared in the door, his smooth brown face disturbed, like a cherub with hemorrhoids.

"Harmon! Amigo! What is it?"

Harmon Cashman grabbed the terry cloth with both fists. "We're out of cookies! Completely, totally, unforgivably out!"

"Come in, come in."

Harmon paced the room, saying, "This has never happened before! I must be losing my touch. You know how I manage everything to the last decimal. And now this!"

"Calm yourself, my friend. Sit. Please."

Harmon sat. His eyes skated around the room. His hands shook.

"You are nervous," came the soothing alto voice of Esperanza. "It is understandable. The election nears. All of your hopes are riding on the outcome."

"How can you be so calm at a time like this!" Harmon shrieked.

"I have been thinking. It is time to adopt new tactics."

Harmon Cashman's eyes cleared. "You nuts? We're doing great! Black is hiding in his attic, and Ripper's flat on her can. She's a laughingstock. They're both laughingstocks."

"A lot can change in a week, my friend. Listen, we have been conducting a retail campaign to date."

"Yeah. Personal appearances. A lot of glad-handing. Pure grassroots politicking. Word of mouth is our best friend."

"I now wish to go wholesale," said Enrique Esperanza.

"TV ads? I don't know. I mean people respond to you in personal appearances. And the radio spots are doing well . . . ."

"I wish to appear in my TV ads."

Harmon Cashman gulped. "Ricky, no. It's not the same. You've got charisma. It's pheromones, or something. But I guarantee you, it won't work over the air. Radio interviews, sure. But not TV. Let's face it, it'll still be a trick get a Hispanic into the governorship."

"It is a trick I am convinced we can accomplish," Enrique Esperanza said forcefully.

Harmon Cashman shook his head stubbornly. "No chance. I'm campaign manager, and I say no. That's final. "

"I have something for you."

"What?"

From a writing-desk drawer, Enrique Espiritu Esperanza brought out a colorful printed box, sealed in clear plastic. He brought it over and laid it before Harmon Cashman.

Harmon Cashman's eyes fell upon the clear plastic top. Staring back at him were the blank, black orbs of a row of fist-sized Oreo cookies.

"For you," said Enrique Esperanza warmly.

"What the hell . . ."

"They are new. They are called Big Stuf. Triple the size, and many times the creme filling you love so much."

Harmon Cashman ripped at the plastic top. He discovered that the giant Oreo sandwich cookies contained inside were encased in individual packets. Tears came to his eyes as he fought one open. He fumbled the sweetsmelling cookie into his hands.

Before he could pry the filligreed chocolate wafers apart, Enrique Esperanza grasped his wrist.

"You must first agree to the TV spots," he said firmly. "It is important."

"No chance."

"I will not allow you to indulge yourself with this matter unsettled. It would not be seemly. I am sorry."

The box was removed, and with it the giant cookie in Harmon's hands.

Harmon Cashman looked from the kind face of his candidate to the inviting, oh-so-near and yet-so-far Oreo cookie. Esperanza smiled. The Oreo seemed to smile, too. Both smiles promised the same thing. Hope.

"Please don't make me choose," Harmon said, tears coming to his eyes. A little dab of saliva appeared at the corner of his anguished mouth.

"There is a time for indulgence and a time for choosing," Enrique said sternly. "You must choose. Now."

"I gotta have that cookie," blubbered Harmon Cashman, the tears now streaming, his head nodding in spite of his better judgment. "I just gotta."

"Excellent;" murmured Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, returning the cookie and releasing his wrist.

And Harmon Cashman fell to gnawing the sweet creme filling like a voracious animal, thinking, "The hell with the TV spots. The future can take care of itself."

Chapter 27

The Master of Sinanju knew sadness. He tasted despair. The word had come from no less than his patron, that very day.

"Cheeta Ching is with child," had said Enrique Espiritu Esperanza. "It has been announced. I am sorry to give you this sad news."

The Master of Sinanju withstood the blow without flinching. He excused himself and put on his white mourning kimono.

It was not to be. The Gods had willed it. There would be no second chance to bring forth a perfect son, a possible successor to Remo, one who would continue the proud line of Sinanju and continue the bloodline of Chiun. Now, in his declining years, his magnificent heart would carry two tragedies. The long-lost Cha'mnari, and now the beauteous Cheeta.

The sun had set while Chiun sat looking out at the many-towered city called San Diego, and with it had gone all hope.

The Master of Sinanju did not sleep that night. There was no comfort to be found in sleep. He took up parchment and quill and began composing an Ung poem to describe his innermost feelings. It would be a short one. He had no stomach for more.

It lacked but two hours before dawn when there came a knock at the hotel room door. Chiun ignored it. The knock was repeated.

"Chiun? You in there? It's me."

It was Remo.

"I am not in here," said Chiun, scratching out a careful ideograph that completed stanza three hundred and twelve.

"Don't be like this. I came a long way to talk to you."

"Be gone. I am disconsolate."

"Can you be consolate long enough to open the door?" Remo called.

Chiun sighed. There would be no peace with the white forever at the door. Laying aside his quill, he drew himself up on his feet and padded to the door, throwing it open with a curt gesture.

Remo came in, his face strange of cast.

"What is wrong?" Chiun demanded of his pupil.

"That's what I was going to ask you," Remo said. "You said you were disconsolate."

"And I am. For I have heard the terrible news about Cheeta Ching the beautiful."

At that, the face of the pupil of Chiun paled. "Look, it wasn't my fault," he said quickly.

"I did not say that it was," Chiun said suspiciously.

Remo's shoulders relaxed. "Good," he said, "because I had nothing to do with what happened."

"So you say," Chiun said in an arid voice. His almond eyes squeezed into slits of suspicion.

"It was an accident," Remo added.

Chiun's eyes became flowers of steel. "You have been with Cheeta!"

"Yes," Remo admitted, shame-faced.

"Knowing what she meant to me, you allowed this to happen?"

"I said it was an accident," Remo hurled back.

Chiun lifted tiny fists to the sky. "She carries your child, and you call it an accident!"

"Child? What are you talking about?"

Chiun shook his fists in his pupil's ignorant face. "I speak of the horrid news that Cheeta the Incomparable is fat with child."

Remo hesitated. His eyes went around the room. Chiun's eyes narrowed at his pupil once more.

"Well?"

"Yes," Remo admitted glumly. "I'm responsible for the child thing." He looked away with proper shame.

" 'Thing'! You call it a 'thing'! I call it a tragedy!"

"I said it was an accident," Remo said evasively.

Chiun composed himself. His face set, he folded his hands in the tunnels of his kimono sleeves. "It is done," he said, averting his injured face. "There is no way it can be undone."

"That's for sure," Remo said.

"We must make plans."

"For what?" Remo wanted to know.

"The upbringing of the child, of course."

Remo looked blank. "Upbringing?"

"He will be my pupil. You are hardly prepared to sire a male child, much less train one." Chiun hesitated. A sudden gleam came into his hazel eyes. "It is a male, isn't it?"

"How would I know?" Remo said in a miserable voice.

"It was your seed!" Chiun exploded. "Do not tell me you did not bestow upon Cheeta your best male seed."

"I said it was an accident. Now lay off."

Chiun took the puffs of hair over his ears in hand and cried, "Unbelievable! If you have sired another worthless female child, I do not know what I shall do!"

"Look, we've got nine months to sort this out. In the meantime, I've dug up a lot of dirt on Barry Black and Rona Ripper."

"Yes?"

"Black's pretending to be a Republican," Remo said.

"All republicans are pretenders," Chiun sniffed. "There have been no true republicans since Rome fell."

"And Rona Ripper's out to snuff every cigarette smoker in the state," Remo added.

"What is wrong with that? It is a worthy goal."

"Smith says it's against his edicts."

"Then it is bad, and this woman must be punished," Chiun sniffed.

"Smith says we throw our weight behind Esperanza and get him elected," Remo added.

The Master of Sinanju lifted a lecturing finger, saying, "My awesome weight is already pledged to that cause. It is your weight that has been absent."

"Well, I'm in the camp now. Where do we start?"

"We must eliminate the false candidates who pose a threat to our patron."

Remo shook his head. "Uh-uh. That's not the American way. First thing is we protect Esperanza. The rest can take care of itself."

"Nothing takes care of itself," Chiun snapped. "Especially children. You must remember that, now that you are to be a father."

Remo winced. He was only getting himself in deeper, but he had no choice. If Chiun knew the truth about Cheeta Ching, he'd go ballistic.

"Black won't be a problem," he said flatly. "He's unelectable."

"Why do you say that?"

"He has two strikes against him. He's a former liberal, and he has a record."

"And the other?"

"There's a good chance she's behind these political attacks."

"Then we must repay her in the coin of her own choosing," Chiun said firmly.