Death Sentence

His last word was to scream the name "Chiun" in an anguished voice. And then a grinning orderly threw an antiquated knife-switch.

"What's wrong?" Smith asked over Remo's howl of fear.

"The damned jacks," the orderly barked. "We connected them wrong. Have to try again."

"Do it!"

Remo snapped awake. He was breathing like a drowning man. He couldn't see past the cold sweat that dripped down his forehead and into his eyes. His T-shirt was soaked. And cold. It stuck to his skin.

Remo rolled out of bed. None of it made sense, but it was adding up in a weird way. Dreams and reality. They were mixed up in his mind. What was real? What was it Popcorn had said? Dead Men dream deepest.

After Remo got a grip on himself, he walked over to the cell door. He placed his fingers against the electronic lock. It had worked in the dream. He started tapping. He felt foolish as he varied the rhythm of his fingers. He closed his eyes, trying to remember exactly how it worked in the dream.

Almost at once, he felt something. A current, a vibration. He keyed into it like a concert pianist playing a half-forgotten chord.

Miraculously, the door rolled aside. Remo stepped out into the corridor. He walked low, keeping to the far wall. The lights were out, which made it easier. He came to the first section-control door, found the lock with his fingers, and started tapping. He crouched under the glass window of the door.

The door rolled aside. There were no guards visible beyond.

A gasp came from a cell. Another man snored. A third crept to his cell bars for a better look. Remo met his eyes in the darkness.

The man shot Remo a thumbs-up sign and said, "Good luck, Dead Man."

Remo nodded and moved to the next door. Beyond the third door was a control booth. Remo peered up and saw that the guard on duty was sitting behind the Plexiglas reading a newspaper. His face was turned toward the corridor. But Remo had gotten this far. He had to go on.

The door rolled open after a brief manipulation. Remo froze, exposed. In a dream, he remembered Chiun's exortation to stay still whenever he was within range of a man's peripheral vision. Remo waited till the guard finished the paper and looked up. The door had rolled shut automatically, and only when the guard was staring directly at him through almost impenetrable darkness did Remo advance on him.

For some reason, Remo could see through the darkness like a gray haze. He moved on the booth like a jungle cat stalking, feeling the freedom in his muscles, feeling something else he hadn't felt since the day he woke up on Florida's death row: confidence.

Remo saw that the only door to the booth was on the other side of the wall. There was no way in from this corridor.

He decided on the bold approach and walked right up to the glass. Remo knocked on the Plexiglas. The guard jumped nearly a foot.

Remo smiled at him disarmingly, as if nothing was wrong. He opened his mouth and made shapes with it, but no words. The guard's "What?" was dim but audible through the Plexiglas.

Remo repeated his pantomime, pointing back toward the row.

The guard gave him a terse, "Wait a minute," and stepped through the exit door. Remo waited tensely.

A corridor door rolled back and the guard hurried in, demanding, "What is it?"

Remo decked him with a sharp fist to the jaw. Swiftly he stripped the guard and exchanged pants with him. He donned his jacket over his apricot T-shirt. Then he ducked back, not bothering to hide the body. He knew that the quickest way out was through Grand Central, and beyond that, the yard. It was also the most dangerous way out of the facility.

Walking with an easy grace, Remo moved from door to door, until he was in the cathedrallike Grand Central. The tiers of C Block towered above him like medieval dungeons designed by a condo-mentality architect.

He kept to the shadows until he got to the door leading to the yard. It gave under his tapping fingers and Remo found himself on the threshold of the yard, and freedom.

Out there, the lights were too bright for shadows to exist. He took a deep breath.

Confidently Remo stepped out, knowing that his guard uniform would buy him a minute. Maybe more than a minute.

He got only four paces when a searchlight swiveled in his direction. Remo shielded his face with an upraised forearm, a natural eye-protecting gesture that also concealed his identity.

"Who goes there!" a voice called down.

"It's me!" Remo said in a gargling voice. "Pepone."

"What's the problem, Pepone?"

"Dead Man on the loose. We got him cornered in the shower room. Warden says to watch the outside walls for a car or accomplice."

"Right," the guard returned. The searchlight obligingly swiveled out of Remo's eyes and began to rake the grass beyond the fence.

Remo stepped back into the exit door, and then, after a pause, he sprinted out for the wall.

He ran stiffly at first, and then something in him clicked over. He hit the inner fence like a monkey going up, vaulting over the razor wire to drop to the narrow dirt corridor between it and the outer fence. He raced to the outer fence. A bullet spanked a rock beside his shoes.

"Halt!" an emotion-charged voice ordered.

Remo knew that the guards had standing shoot-to-kill orders-his uniform notwithstanding-for anyone caught where he was now. Going up the fence was suicide, so he went through the fence. He didn't think about what he was doing. It was as if his body was on autopilot. His hands took hold of fistfuls of chain link until he had a group that felt soft. He twisted violently. To his astonishment, the fence unraveled vertically, like a poorly knit sweater.

Remo dashed through the opening. Shots cracked behind him. No one came close. He ran zigzag fashion, the way he had been taught in the Marines. Distantly a shotgun boomed once. Twice.

Remo grinned wolfishly. He knew shotguns. At this range, the guard could shove the close-range weapon up his own ass for all the good it would do him.

Remo could hear the cars starting up. The gate was ordered opened. Electric motors hummed as the gates rolled aside. The escapee warning siren started yowling.

In the darkness, Remo doubled back. They would never expect that. He eased into the shelter of the gatehouse as one of the two guards on duty ran out, rifle in hand, and hopped into the first patrol car tearing out of the gate.

While a procession of cars roared out and the siren wailed from the control tower, Remo slipped into the guard box and up behind the unsuspecting guard. He took the man's throat in both hands and squeezed until the blood to the brain was choked off long enough to cause unconsciousness. He couldn't remember where he'd learned that trick, but as he lowered the man's limp body to the floor, it was obvious he'd learned it well.

Remo waved to the cars as they continued spitting out of the prison gates. Hours later, after they still had not returned and dawn was a smoky red crack on the eastern horizon, Remo casually picked up a workman's lunchbox and walked up the prison road as if going home after a long night of work.

None of the tower guards bothered him. In his black and gray guard's uniform he was virtually invisible.

It was the morning before his execution, but Remo felt, for the first time in a long time, like a free man. His first order of business, he decided, was to find out how long that had really been....

Chapter 14

The Master of Sinanju sat in the House of the Masters, surrounded by the yellowing scrolls of his ancestors.

Somewhere in these histories, inscribed by hand by one of his ancestors-the guardians of the House of Sinanju-there must be a hint or clue as to how to deal with the problem of Remo.

Chiun sighed. After many days of careful study, he had not found the answer he had returned to Sinanju to seek. It would have been so much easier to blame this on Remo's whiteness. He was the first white ever to be trained in the art of Sinanju. His foreign birth, his mongrel heritage, excused much of what was wrong with Remo Williams, his pupil and the only heir to the Sinanju tradition other than Chiun himself.

No, this problem with Remo was that he fulfilled the prophecy of Shiva. His weaknesses were his strengths. The very thing that made him worthy of Sinanju was the thing that now threatened not only to tear him from Chiun but also to smash irrevocably the proud line that was the House of Sinanju, which stretched back into the mists of antiquity.

Tiredly Chiun gathered up the parchment scrolls. He would study them later, for soon he must go down the shore road and treat with the waiting vessel of the Americans.

As Chiun floated to his sandaled feet, there came a timid knocking at the door to his chambers. Girding his skirts, he spoke up in a tone befitting a Master of Sinanju.

"Who dares disturb my study?" he demanded.

"It is I, Pullyang," a quavering old voice replied. "Your faithful servant."

"It had better be important," Chiun warned.

"Two round-eyed whites stand on our sand, O Master. They come from the iron fish. They bear an important message for you."

Chiun leapt to the door, but measured his strides so that it would not seem to his faithful caretaker that he was in an unseemly hurry to meet with the Americans.

"Fortunately, you have come at a time when I could do with a walk," Chiun said importantly as he stepped out of the room.

Pullyang, bent with age, a cold reed pipe in one hand, executed a full bow at Chiun's approach, getting down on all fours and touching the floor with his forehead.

"I will carry word of your approach to them." Pullyang said.

"No. There is no need to expose yourself to their ugly big-nosed, round-eyed faces again. I will deal with them. No doubt they seek a boon, which I will of course deny them. Whites. They are forever seeking my wisdom. Sometimes even autographs."

"What are autographs?" Pullyang stumbled over the unfamiliar foreign word as they emerged from the House of the Masters.

"White Americans value them very highly," Chiun replied as he stepped down the hill to the water. "Yet they are merely the names of unimportant personages written on scraps of paper."

"The ways of the outside world are those of the mad. "

"Agreed," said Chiun, outpacing old Pullyang without seeming to hurry. It was several hours before the agreed-upon contact time. Chiun wondered if word had come from his emperor.

They reached the beach, where two men stood shivering in silence.

"Greetings, emissaries of Harold the Generous," Chiun told the two seamen. They stood beside a beached rubber craft. They exchanged uncomprehending glances at Chiun's salutation. Obviously they were mental defectives, like most who earned their livelihood by crossing the ocean's face instead of fishing from it.

"Our skipper asked that we deliver this to you," one said, offering a square of paper.

Chiun accepted the envelope. It was sealed. Inside was a thin sheet of yellow paper. The machine-typed message was short:

Chiun:

Vacation Extended Indefinitely. Do Not Return Until Contacted. R. W.'s Undercover Assignment Taking Longer Than Anticipated. Await Further Contact.

The Director

Chiun's wizened face puckered so that his wrinkles appeared to radiate even more wrinkles. He looked up at the seaman with clear, guileless eyes.

"This urgent message commands me to return to America at once," he said brusquely.

"We're ready to ferry you back to the boat, sir."

"One moment," Chiun said, turning to the shore road, where Pullyang hung back, watching with unabashed curiosity.

"Faithful Pullyang," Chiun called up in Korean. "Have the strongest men of the village bring me my green trunk. And then seal the House of the Masters. I am returning to America this very hour."

"But what of the villagers?" Pullyang said unhappily. "Will there be no farewell feast?"

"Inform my people," Chiun said, eyeing the Americans for any hint that they understood his tongue, "that if they wish the Master of Sinanju to provide them with a feast, they had better show him more appreciation in the future."

Pullyang departed in haste.

Chiun turned to the American seamen and he smiled placidly. "My luggage is being brought to this very spot," he explained in their sparse, unlovely language. "Then we must depart as quickly as possible. If my faithful villagers learn that I am leaving them so soon, they will shriek and rend their garments and put up all manner of commotion to persuade me to remain, for they love me greatly-I, who am the center of the universe to them."

"Maybe we should take you now and come back for your things," one of the seamen suggested earnestly, while the other cast uneasy glances out over the West Korea Bay.

"No, it will only be a moment," said Chiun, cocking a delicate shell ear for the sound of shrieking and garment-rending. Hearing nothing of the sort, he lapsed into a sullen silence. Had the people of Sinanju sunk into such ingratitude that they were going to embarrass him in front of the Americans by allowing him to take his leave without begging and pleading?

Chapter 15

Harold Haines drove through the predawn darkness from his Starke, Florida, home with the bleary eyes of a man who had not slept. He had not. He popped caffeine pills to keep himself awake as the twin funnels of his headlights burrowed through the thick hot air.

In less than seventeen hours he would press a button and monitor the three meters, one marked "Head," the others marked "Right Leg" and "Left Leg," that monitored the amperes going through each electrode to the condemned man, repeating the process as many times as it took for the attending physician to pronounce him dead.

Harold Haines intended to spend all day making certain that only one press of the button would be necessary.

This would be the last one, Haines decided. No more. He had electrocuted more than his share of men. And for what? Florida only paid one hundred and fifty dollars per subject. It wasn't worth this. He felt ... burnt out. That was the only word for it.

Burnt out. Just like the men who had sat on the hot seat. Only Harold Haines still lived.

A few more hours. And he would retire for good. The only reason he didn't quit immediately, he told himself, was that Remo Williams represented unfinished business. As much as he felt no stomach to cook him again, he was more afraid not to. He didn't understand why. He was a professional execution technician. People in his line of work couldn't afford to be superstitious. And he had never had a superstitious thought in his life.

Tonight, Harold Haines felt haunted.

The road twisted ahead. It was like driving through hot, sodden cotton. He put another bitter caffeine pill in his mouth and swallowed it dry. His eyes held the road with difficulty.

And then, so suddenly that it was like a materialization, a lean man emerged from the side of the road, waving a C.O.'s jacket. A man wearing graystriped guard pants and the apricot T-shirt of the row.

"Oh, Jesus!" Harold Haines cried. He hit the accelerator. The man leapt into his headlights and vanished.

"It's him!" Haines moaned. "Williams. My God, I ran over him."

Haines hit the brakes and his car fishtailed wildly, scattering the roadside palmetto bugs, swapped ends, and came to a stop, its grille pointing away from the prison, not far distant in the suffocating night.

Harold Haines stumbled from his car. His headlights impaled the dirt road with insect-busy illumination. He couldn't see a body. Maybe he hadn't hit him after all. There hadn't been any impact sound. Unless the guy went under the chassis and between the wheels. Haines's mind flashed back to an incident many years ago when he had run over a cat.

The cat had unexpectedly leapt from a roadside hedge, directly in the path of Haines's car. There had been no place to swerve on the narrow one-way road. The cat it was a common tabby-disappeared under his bumper. No crush of bones. No thud of impact.

In his rearview mirror Harold Haines had seen the cat rolling in the wake of his car, apparently unharmed. He pulled over and ran back to the poor creature. It was on its back, its paws shaking violently, as if it were warding off an unseen predator.

Carefully, because it looked so helpless, Harold Haines used his shoe to nudge the agitated feline to the curb and out of the way of oncoming traffic. It stopped squirming when it nudged the curb. But its paws continued that spasmodic frantic twitching. And then the blood began to seep from its open, silent mouth. Only then did Harold Haines realize it was dying-or dead, its brain neurons causing that furious electric spasming.

Many years ago, but as fresh as the palmetto bugs that scurried from his path.

As Harold Haines loped down the road, he half-expected to see the condemned man lying in the dirt, on his back, his eyes wide and unseeing, his arms and legs twisting violently like ... like an electrocution victim's.

Instead, an apricot-hued flash came upon him in the darkness to chop him down with the hard edge of a hand to the side of Harold Haines's thick neck. He went down hard. He didn't know he twitched until he woke up-he had no inkling how much later-to find himself alone in the dark, his car gone, his hands and feet working jerkily, as if fighting off an aerial predator.

Harold Haines dragged himself to the side of the road and sobbed quietly. When he found his courage, he began a stubborn lope to the gates of Florida State Prison.

Haines was allowed through the gate by a tightlipped C.O.

"I was ambushed," he told the guard. "Williams. He must have escaped."

"We know. See the warden. Right now."

Warden McSorley was on the phone when Harold Haines was brought into his office. McSorley waved him to a seat impatiently and turned his attention back to his call.

"Yes, Governor. I do understand, Governor. But we can't hush something like this up. He was scheduled for execution"-McSorley looked at his watch-"excuse me, is scheduled to walk down the line exactly two hours from now."

McSorley listened in silence for so long Harold Haines was forced to pop another caffeine pill. He was starting to feel light-headed. He tried to follow the conversation from the warden's side, and although the words were clear, Haines was still not receiving. His fingertips vibrated like harp strings.

When McSorley finally put down the telephone, he hit an intercom button and spoke to his secretary. "Tell the watch commander to call off the search. No, no explanation. But I want the entire facility to remain on lockdown until we find out how the prisoner escaped."

Then McSorley looked up with tired eyes.

"Looks like you don't work today, Harold," he said.

"I quit," Harold Haines returned dully.

"I may join you. I had the most peculiar conversation with the governor. He told me in no uncertain terms not to pursue Williams. He escaped. I guess you know."

"He ambushed my car. Stole it."

"I wish you hadn't told me that. Look, Harold, I don't know what this is about. I may end up being hung out to dry, politically, but the governor said to abandon the search and make sure no word of this leaks. He wouldn't say why. Can I count on you?"

"I'm afraid," Haines said sincerely. His fingers twined like mating worms.

"Of what?"

"He's gonna come back to get me," Harold Haines said, burying his head in his hands. "I just know he is. You should have seen his eyes in the headlights. They were like tiger eyes. They glowed. His eyes were dead, but they glowed."

"Put it out of your mind," McSorley said, rising. "Whoever or whatever that boy is-or was-he's well on his way out of Florida and I doubt that he's ever coming back. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go down to Central Files, personally burn the Remo Williams file, and spit on the ashes."

Chapter 16

Outside Charleston, South Carolina, Remo Williams' stolen car ran out of gas. He coasted it to a stop in the breakdown lane of Route 95 North.

There was no point in putting up the hood as a distress signal. Remo had no I.D., no driver's license, no registration, and no money. And for all he knew, the state police had been alerted to his description. Although he was starting to wonder about that. He had encountered no roadblocks leaving Florida, no cruising state police in Georgia. It seemed too easy.

Remo left the car and started walking backward, his thumb hooked hitchhiker-style. He didn't expect to be offered a ride and was not disappointed. He was waiting for the first long-haul truck to come his way.

An eighteen-wheeler eventually rumbled up, and Remo, not thinking that what he was about to attempt was dangerous, if not impossible, leapt into the wake of its exhaust. He caught the tailgate in his hands and levered himself into sitting on it with a twisting spring of his feet. It was that easy.

Remo sat perched on the tailgate, watching the following cars. He was still too conspicuous. He tried the locking lever of the truck gate. It creaked open. Remo let the folding gate rise enough to admit him, and rolled inside.

The truck interior smelled of oranges. They reminded Remo that he was hungry. After pulling down the gate, he broke open a wooden crate and began peeling a dozen oranges with his hard fingers. He ate intently. Then Remo found a clear space and fell asleep, grateful for his full stomach and his life. He was living on borrowed time now, but all he cared about was sleep.

The truck stopped several times along the way, but the cargo door wasn't opened. The stink of diesel exhaust began to be a problem. Remo was having trouble breathing.

Although the darkness of the truck interior didn't seem to change, Remo could sense, somehow, that night had fallen. The truck was rumbling along, speeding up and slowing down as the driver managed the fast flow of superhighway traffic. Remo hoped the truck was continuing north.

He knew that there was more to the chain of events that had buffeted him since he woke up at Florida State than he understood. The answers, he felt, were somehow connected with a place called Folcroft Sanitarium.

The trouble was, he had no idea where Folcroft Sanitarium was-or if it actually existed.

But finding the University of Massachusetts and an anthropology professor named Naomi Vanderkloot should be no great challenge....

The drone of the eighteen wheels put Remo to sleep again.

Chapter 17

In his office overlooking Long Island Sound, the director of Folcroft Sanitarium watched as the cursor raced back and forth on the desktop computer screen, making phosphorescent green letters like a highspeed snail laying a trail of slime.

There were no reports of a man answering the description of the escaped death-row inmate Remo Williams coming in from any of the usual sources. A man like Williams was unpredictable. But without money or identification, he shouldn't get very far.

The director leaned back in the chair, which was so old it felt like the springs would break under the pressure of his weight. He steepled his tented fingers under his chin and half-closed his eyes in thought.

"Now, where would I go were I he?" he said aloud. "The man has no home, no relatives, no friends. He cannot come here, therefore Folcroft is safe."

His eyes darted to a new line appearing on the computer screen. It was some errant nonsense about a security threat emanating from the Chinese embassy in Washington. Time enough for such matters later.

"Perhaps he will flee the country," the director of Folcroft mused. "Perhaps that would not be a problem. He disappears. He was meant to disappear. Europe is not as final as the grave, but it is sufficient for my immediate needs."

His small lips pursed unhappily, shrinking to an obscene wet sphincter.

"No. Too untidy," he said after a time. "Where would he go? Where could he go?" Possibly not ordering an all-points bulletin was a mistake, after all. But Remo Williams officially did not exist. Putting out a nationwide alert for his apprehension would raise more questions than it would answer. It was fortunate that among the networks of informers he controlled, one was a guard at Florida State Prison who believed he was actually feeding criminal intelligence to the FBI branch office in Miami. His monthly bonus check ensured that he would continue to do so. It had been the guard who had tipped off the FBI-or so he believed-of the escape of the prisoner named Remo Williams in the predawn hours.

The director of Folcroft had moved swiftly. He had phoned the Florida governor and applied the requisite pressure to have the state simply ignore the jailbreak. It was an extraordinary demand, but this was an extraordinary circumstance. Fortunately the governor had a skeleton in his closet, according to the Folcroft database. A very exploitable skeleton. It would have ruined his aspirations to higher office. He had been most compliant in the matter of Remo Williams, a seemingly unimportant death-row inmate who should have been put down decades ago.

But containing this situation was not the same as managing it to a successful conclusion. He must locate Williams.

"Where would he go?" he repeated softly. His watery eyes stared at the shininess of his well-manicured fingernails. "Where?"

Another line of text appeared on the computer screen. It lengthened. He waited until the readout was complete before reading it.

It was a follow-up to the prison-guard informant's report. Contraband reading material had been discovered under the escaped convict's mattress. An investigation was under way. The contraband was the current edition of the National Enquirer.

The director of Folcroft Sanitarium's thick hand raced to the top desk drawer. There, folded neatly, were two copies of the Enquirer. He examined the most recent of the two.

"I wonder," he ruminated slowly. "Would he seek out the Vanderkloot woman? It might be worth monitoring. "

He reached for one of the blue telephones on the desk and made a quick call, issuing low, careful orders.

After he hung up, the intercom buzzed. "Yes, Mrs. Mikulka?" he purred.

"It's Dr. Dooley. I'm afraid there's been a relapse. He said you'd want to know immediately."

"Ah, thank you. I will be down directly, Mrs. Mikulka."

"Yes, Mr. Ransome."

Chapter 18

Waking up was the hardest part of Naomi Vanderkloot's day.

It was a life that had, since she'd joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts, fallen into a rhythmic monotony of teaching two semesters with a break in January and the summer months off. She was a shoo-in for tenure, which would guarantee her frequent sabbaticals. Her salary was good, her Cambridge apartment was rent-controlled, yet in spite of her best efforts, she spent more time out of relationships than in them.

Hence the tragedy of waking up to an undemanding life and an always empty pillow beside her own. Namoi Vanderkloot roused out of sleep reluctantly. She buried her face in the Crate and Barrel pillow to keep out the sunlight coming through the fern-choked window. One long-toed foot peeped out from under the cover to touch the polished hardwood floor beside her imported Japanese futon.

She didn't hear the footsteps in the long hallway outside her bedroom, nor the faint grinding of metal against paint as her bedroom door hinges swung. A crocheted throw rug wrinkled under silent footsteps and the hand that reached for her throat was careful to avoid the stray tendrils of her long hair until she felt them dig into her windpipe ... and by then it was too late.

"Don't move," a hard male voice hissed.

"Mumpph."

"Not a word. I won't hurt you." The voice was as splintery as bamboo. Naomi felt her heart beating. She opened her eyes, but saw only pillow.

The hand was joined by another hand. This one pulled her head back by her straight hair to expose her face. Then it shifted to her mouth before she could scream.

When Naomi Vanderkloot's eyes flew open and she saw the upside-down face hovering over her, she no longer wanted to scream. She wanted to ask his name.

"Mumph!" she repeated.

"You know me?" the man asked. Naomi nodded briskly. He had those same drill-bit eyes, the high cheekbones and cruel mouth. His shoulders were not as broad as she would have liked, but shoulders weren't everything.

"Are you Professor Naomi Vanderkloot?" he demanded.

Naomi's nod was eager this time. She batted her eyes.

"Listen up, then. I'm going to let go of your mouth, but I'll still have my other hand on your throat. Understand?"

Naomi almost dislodged both hands with the enthusiasm of her nodding. The hand withdrew.

"It really is you!" she breathed, sitting up. "I can't believe it. I've dreamed of this moment. This is incredible. You have no idea what this means to-Mummph." The hand returned. This time it pinched her lips shut. Her tongue, caught between them, touched his fingertips. They tasted like oranges. smelled like them too.

"Stop drooling," he was saying. "I'm not here for your benefit. But for mine. Short answers, okay? And spare me the girlish enthusiasm. I'm having a bad week."

Naomi nodded demurely, her eyes drinking in her captor's strong white teeth. He possessed ordinary human canines, which surprised her. She had expected the next evolution to produce herbivores with small blunted teeth adapted for grinding salads, not tearing meat.

The hand withdrew tentatively, hovering over her face. The fingers were long, but blunt at the tips. Usually a sign of a slow sugar burner. She frowned.

"Now, do you know who I am?" he asked intently.

"Yes," she said, hoping that was short enough for him-not that she would mind his strong masculine hands back on her body.

"My name is Remo Williams. Does that name mean anything to you?"

"No. I mean, yes! The letters-some of them-said your first name was Remo."

"Letters?"

"From the Enquirer readers. I thought they were ridiculously unscientific, until so many of them came in saying your name was Remo. Most of them described the old Mongoloid to a T."

"Mongol? How do you know he's Mongol?"

"A Mongoloid, not a Mongolian," Naomi lectured. "A Mongoloid is simply an Asian. From certain genotypical clues-primarily the bone structure of the face and the Mongoloid eye fold-I've tentatively classified him as a member of the Altaic family, which includes the Turkish, Mongolian, and Tungusic peoples. I'm leaning toward Tungusic, which would make him Korean. Although he could be Japanese. Historically, there's been a lot of racial intermingling between those groups. The Japanese aren't part of the Tungusic family, of course, but-"

The hand started to move in again, and Naomi shut up like a constipated clam.

"I want to see these letters," Remo said.

"They're in the den. I can show you. If you'll let me up."

Both hands then withdrew, and Naomi composed her nightgown before getting up. She pulled on her owlish glasses.

"Hi!" she said, batting her eyes at his unresponsive face. He was nearly six feet tall. Probably of Mediterranean stock. His eyes were deeper than the descriptions. Like shark's eyes. They were merciless. They made Naomi shiver deliciously.

"Lead the way," he ordered.

Naomi started for the door, but her bare feet encountered the throw rug. It slid on the slick floor, upsetting her. She experienced an instant of flung-limbed imbalance. Her knees clicked together, her feet bending sideways at the ankles. She blinked, wondering why she wasn't falling.

Then Naomi noticed the steel-hard pressure at the back of her neck, which raised her to her feet.

"Oh, you caught me," she gasped as Remo released her from his one-handed grasp. "Great reflexes. You must burn your sugar really, really fast."

"What are you talking about?" Remo demanded peevishly.

"I'll explain later. Come on. I'll show you my files. They're much more interesting than those semiliterate letters."

"If you say so."

"Can I ask you some questions?" Naomi asked as they walked down the hall.

"No."

"Who were your parents?"

"No idea. I'm an orphan."

"Really?"

"I don't remember it being all that special," he growled.

"But you could come from anywhere. I don't detect an accent."

"I was raised in Newark, New Jersey. By nuns." Naomi made a sympathetic face.

"How terrible for you."

Remo shrugged. "It wasn't so bad."

They came to the den, where concrete-block-and-plywood bookshelves held scores of volumes. A copper filing cabinet stood beside a small desk.

"Top drawer. Under H," Naomi said helpfully.

"H for what?"

"Homo crassi carpi. That's the species name for you. I devised it myself. It's Latin for 'man the thick-wristed.' Do you like it?"

"Not really. But it beats 'Dead Man.' "

"That was that horrid Enquirer person's idea. He was hopelessly ethnocentric."

"Sit and be quiet."

Naomi sat. "Where are you from?" she asked. "I mean, after Newark. My files show no clear subsistence patterns. No territorial locus,"

Remo pulled out a thick file and began leafing through closely typed pages. There were many typos. "While you're just standing here doing nothing, can I measure your cephalic index?" Naomi asked hopefully.

"What?" Remo asked without looking up.

"It will take only a second. I have a tape measure on my desk." Naomi plucked a cloth measure in her fingers and stood up. She started to loop it around Remo's forehead, but one hand came up absently and snapped it without conscious effort.

"Wow! You really do burn your sugar," she said, blinking at the two dangling lengths of calibrated cloth. "I didn't even see your hand move."

"Sit down."

Naomi sat. "Mind if I take notes?" she asked meekly.

"Just do it quietly."

Naomi began writing on a notepad. Obviously a hominid, she noted. Good posture and bipedal locomotion. Cranial development normal for a twentieth-century male. It was odd. Except for the overdeveloped wrists, there were no outwardly distinctive divergences from genus Homo sapiens. Maybe if she could get him to take off his clothes ...

Leaning closer, she got her first close look at those wrists. They were tremendously thick. A strange quality to possess. There were no muscles in the wrists to develop like that. Maybe it was a mutation. Yet the rest of him was so lean. Little body fat. He must eat very intelligently. Lots of salads.

"Tell me about your diet," Naomi prompted.

"Huh?"

"What was the last thing you ate?"

"Oranges. I stole them off a truck."

"A forager! I expected a hunter-gatherer because of your obviously nomadic migratory patterns. Do you eat meat?"

"I've been losing my taste for it."

"Just as I thought," Naomi said, scribbling on a notepad. "Excellent. Moving away from your bestial carnivore forebears. Isn't evolution grand?"

Remo looked up suddenly. "What are you babbling about?"

"I'm an anthropologist. I'm just trying to understand you."

"And I'm trying to understand these dippy reports. They have me-or someone who looks like me-running from hell and gone like a maniac. Destroying this. Breaking that."

"I've been trying to fathom your behavioral patterns. I came to the conclusion that you're trying to dismantle our stupid twentieth-century technolopolis. To pave the way for the reign of your own kind, am I right?"

"My kind?"

"Homo crassi carpi."

"Lady, I don't swing that way. Not even after twenty years on the row."

"I said 'thick-wristed,' not 'limp-wristed.' And what do you mean by 'the row'? Is that the name of your kinship group? Do you belong to some kind of ceremonial clan?"

"That's what I can't figure," Remo muttered grimly. "If this is me in these reports, how could I have been in two places at once?"

Naomi blinked. "Now I don't understand you." Remo shook the files under Naomi's narrow nose.

"I've been on death row for the last twenty years," he snapped. "I haven't been outside prison walls since I broke jail last night."

"Jail? Those fascists!"

"What fascists?" Remo said, dumbfounded.

"The government. This is obviously a government plot. They learned of your existence-you, the next stage in human evolution-and they imprisoned you unjustly. Oh, you poor Homo crassi carpi."

"Government plot?"

"Yes, this fascist regime is committed to destroying anything it doesn't understand."

"Lady, I've been doing time for killing a pusher. I didn't do it, but that's why I was doing time."

"You were framed. It all fits."

"Read my lips. I said twenty years. I've been on death row for twenty years, not running around the country with a crazy old Mongol."

"Mongoloid. And who is he? I couldn't figure him out either."

"Damned if I know. But he's dead."

"Dead?"

"At least I think so. I saw him die in a dream. It seemed as real as those other dreams, the ones where I was doing stuff like you have in these files. But I don't remember being in any of these places or doing these things. Hell, before I was sent away, I'd barely ever been out of New Jersey. Unless you count a tour in Vietnam."

Naomi Vanderkloot touched Remo's arm tenderly. "Don't try to sort it all out at once," she said. "You've been through a tremendous ordeal."

Remo slapped the files in her solicitous hands. "There's nothing in these to help me. Thanks for your time."

Naomi shot to her feet. Her eyes were pleading. "Wait! I can help you."

"Yeah, how? I'm in pretty deep."

"By offering you a place to stay for a start. Here. Then we'll help you find yourself. That's what this is all about, isn't it? Finding yourself."

"I know who I am. Remo Williams."

"And Remo Durock. And Remo DeFalco. And Remo Weeks. Don't you see? These reports can't all be coincidence. You may think you've been in jail, but someone with your face and first name has been doing all these bizarre destructive things."

"Maybe I have a twin brother," Remo suggested.

"Maybe. If so, then you and he are the same species. I want to study you. Please allow me." Naomi Vanderkloot watched the changing expressions flicker across Remo Williams' troubled face. The doubt, the confusion, oh, he was everything she'd ever wanted in a man. Or a study specimen. He was perfect.

Seeing him waver, she reached up and removed her glasses. In movies, this was always the moment when the handsome hero fell for the brainy woman who, under the glasses and schoolmarm bun, was secretly gorgeous. And passionate. She wet her lips to communicate the passionate part. And waited for his reaction.

"Can you cook?" Remo asked at last.

Naomi's face fell. She struggled to get it aloft again.

"Yes," she said bravely.

"Good. I'm starving. Got any rice?"

"As much as you want. Plain white or wild?"

"Either of 'em."

"Let's continue this in the kitchen," Naomi suggested, smiling.

In the kitchen, Naomi asked, "Care for a Dove Bar while you wait?"

"I'll shower after we eat," Remo said seriously, watching in horrified fascination as Naomi Vanderkloot took a package from the freezer marked "Dove Bar" and began nibbling.

Later, over two heaping bowls of rice, she listened to Remo Williams' life story. It was not exactly a biography. More of a hard-luck story.

"And you say you simply woke up in Florida State Prison?" she asked when he was through. "And they said you'd killed a guard?"

"I did kill a guard," Remo said. "It took a while for it to come back to me, but I remember it distinctly. He pushed me to the breaking point. I guess I was treated like a criminal for so long, I became one."

Naomi placed a reassuring hand on Remo's massive wrist.

"Prison turns men into killers, even evolved men like you," she said simply. She squeezed and felt hard wrist bones.

"Why do you keep saying that? Men like me?"

"Because you're different. I've analyzed these reports. You're not like other men. You're a step ahead. I theorize that you're the leap ahead in human evolution. A mutant."

"Bulldookey. I was a beat cop who got jammed up in the justice system. End of story." He yanked free from her hands. He didn't like the creepy way she was feeling up his wrist.

"That doesn't explain how you escaped death row. How you manipulated electronic locks with your fingers. "

Remo had no response to that. He chewed his food slowly, carefully, before swallowing. Naomi wrote that down on the pad beside her plate and began to chew her food slowly for just as long as Remo. She waited until he swallowed before she did. By then, her rice had the consistency of liquid.

She wrote that down too.

"The way I figure it," she said at last, "we simply backtrack all the things you remember until we find a link."

"The name Folcroft Sanitarium seems to mean something. And a guy named Harry Smith. I thought he was the judge who sentenced me, but he seems connected to Folcroft somehow. If it exists."

"I think your dreams are tapping on the door of your subconscious. They're trying to tell you something. Yes, Folcroft would be an excellent place to start."

"But how would we find it? It could be anywhere."

"Just a moment," Naomi said, going to her telephone stand. She pulled out the white pages and brought the book to the table.

"What we'll do is call information for every area code in the country and ask if they have a listing for Folcroft. If it's out there, eventually we'll hit it."

Remo's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Smart," he said.

"Thank you," Naomi said, pleased. "We'll start with New Jersey, because that's where you think you lived."

"That's where I did live," Remo said firmly.

"You think."

Remo frowned as Naomi went to the telephone. There was no Folcroft Sanitarium in New Jersey, according to the information operator. Naomi then dialed New York State.

"I got it!" she cried, clapping her hand over the receiver. "It's in Rye, New York. Write this number down. "

Remo wrote the numbers Naomi called out, wondering what this stuff on the pad about chewing food to a liquid was all about.

Naomi accepted the pad from Remo and dialed Folcroft Sanitarium. "Yes, hello. Could you connect me with Harry Smith?" Pause. "Oh, I see. No, I'm not a relative. The new director? What is his name, please? ... I see.... No, that won't be necessary. Thank you."

Naomi hung up and turned to Remo with a triumphant smile, making her face resemble a hungry clown mask.

"What'd you learn?" Remo asked anxiously.

"We're onto something. There is a Harold Smith there. But he's a patient. They asked if I was a relative."

Remo's hopeful expression deflated. "Coincidence."

"Could be," Naomi said thoughtfully. "But you know, after I told them I wasn't a relative, they asked if I wanted to talk to the new director. That might mean Smith is the old director."

"Strange. Harold Smith was the judge who put me away. I remember it as plain as day."

"Maybe he switched careers?" Naomi suggested.

"Maybe. What was the new director's name?"

"Norvell Ransome. Does it ring a bell?"

"No. Never heard of the guy. I guess we're at a dead end."

"Let's leave that line of investigation for the moment. It'll keep." Naomi began dialing again.

"Who're you calling now?" Remo wanted to know. "New Jersey information. Hello? ... Yes, could I have the number of Trenton State Prison?" Naomi looked over at Remo. What could it hurt? her expression said.

Chapter 19

Dr. Alan Dooley was nervously hovering around his patient when Norvell Ransome waddled into the green hospital room on the third floor of Folcroft Sanitarium. He did not look up as Ransome's prodigious shadow fell over the patient's corpse-gray face. Smith lay under an oxygen tent, intravenous tubes taped to one dead-looking arm.

"He's taken a turn for the worse, but I have him stabilized," Dooley said flatly.

"That is most unfortunate," Ransome said unctuously.

"What?" Dooley asked querulously. "That Smith's condition has worsened or that he's stabilized?"

"I resent that uncalled-for remark, sir," Ransome said, bending over the death mask of a face that belonged to Dr. Harold W. Smith. "You are forgetting your place."

"Sorry," Dr. Dooley said quietly.

"Perhaps your heart is no longer in your work. Hmmm?"

"You have my loyalty, and you know it."

"I have your genitals in my vise grips, Doctor. That is not loyalty. That is servitude, but it suits me and it befits you."

"You cold bastard," Dooley snapped. "I'd love to know where you learned about my ... indiscretion."

"A fondness for prepubescent girls is not an indiscretion, sir. It is a disease. As for my sources, let us say that I have access to a great many secrets. Your slimy little foibles being among the least of them. Now, update me on Dr. Smith's condition."

Dr. Dooley wiped his perspiring forehead. "He's still in a coma. His heart began fibrillating, but it stabilized by itself."

"He appears even more corpselike of visage than before, eh?"

"Illusion. When you haven't been here for a few days, it just seems that way because he's nearly the color of lead. We call the condition cynanosis. In Smith's case, the gray coloration is due to a congenital heart defect. There's a flaw in the wall of his left ventricle. I examined his medical records. Smith was a blue baby. The condition-which was the result of insufficient oxygenation of the blood-cleared up when he was still an infant, although the root cause obviously did not. Over the years, his heart has become enlarged. His wife tells me that his skin color had gradually darkened over the years. The shock that stopped his heart simply made the leadenness that much more pronounced."

"I see. And what, if anything, can you do for him?"

"It's touch and go. I'll continue to monitor him around the clock. If he relapses further, naturally I'll resuscitate."

"Hmmm," Norvell Ransome said softly. "I would prefer that you do not do that."

Dr. Dooley shot the fat man a glaring glance.

"I can't do that," he said heatedly. "You know that. No matter what you threaten me with." Sizing up the fire in the physician's eyes, Norvell Ransome nodded. His pursy lower lip protruded like a hemorrhoid.

"I can see that, Doctor. Very well. Let me relieve you for a few days. You've obviously been under great strain."

"Not until you bring in another doctor," Dr. Dooley said firmly.

"I assure you that the Folcroft medical staff will be equal to the task. No, please. You have my word. Or would you prefer that I report your 'indiscretions' to the AMA?"

"You've made your point," Dr. Dooley said grudgingly.

His shoulders drooping, Dr. Dooley trudged from the hospital room. After he had departed, Norvell Ransome rummaged through a cabinet and found an ordinary box of Band-Aids. He selected a broad one and carefully peeled the backing as he walked over to Dr. Smith's still form. Smith's bluish lips were parted slightly, revealing dull dry teeth. His folded hands showed blued fingernails.

Reaching under the oxygen tent, Ransome affixed the Band-Aid across the patient's slate-gray forehead. The contrast with the flesh-colored Band-Aid was ghoulish. Then, extracting a fountain pen with a solid gold nub, he began to write on the Band-aid in a looping florid script, holding Smith's head still as he did so.

When he was done, he stepped back and read the result: DO NOT RESUSCITATE.

Noticing that he had forgotten to dot the I in "resuscitate," Ransome placed a precise dot in the proper place and, capping the pen, left the room.

To the floor nurse, he said, "Dr. Dooley will be taking a few days off. Please see that Dr. Smith is attended to by our top physician, won't you?"

"Yes, Mr. Ransome." She hurried off to do her duty.

Norvell Ransome allowed himself to admire the play of the nurse's womanly buttocks under the starched white uniform before waddling toward the elevator. He liked the way she had hurried to do his bidding. Like the governor of Florida. And unlike Dr. Dooley.

Soon, many would do his bidding. Not tomorrow, or next month, perhaps. Great plans took time to germinate. Ransome stabbed the down button, and happily, the elevator responded instantly.

He stepped aboard and pressed two. The cage sank and Norvell Ransome felt the thrill of momentary weightlessness in his 334-pound being.

It had been an interesting week. Only seven days ago, Norvell Ransome had been a GG-18 with the National Security Agency, the Department of Defense's critical communications security arm, working in its Fort Meade computer section, when he was summoned to the office of the NSA director, known in the agency's parlance as DIRNSA.

Ransome took the elevator that day too, enjoying the buoyancy of the ride. He loved elevators, and the effect they had on his normally ponderous body.

The blue-uniformed Federal Protective Service guard that day had checked the laminated plastic photo I.D. card dangling under Ransome's three-ply chin and allowed him to waddle unmolested down Mahogany Row, the ninth-floor executive offices, to the bright blue door at the corridor's end, emblazoned with the NSA seal, an eagle clutching a skeleton key.

Ransome entered Room 9A197, checked in with the executive secretary, and was instantly buzzed into the director's comfortable but businesslike office.

The director waved Ransome to a leather armchair, then, catching himself, said, "The couch, if you prefer."

"Thank you sir," Ransome said unself-conciously. The armchair had looked substantial, but Ransome had been known to burst the rear tires on a taxi simply by climbing into the back seat.

"I am holding up a file," the director said crisply. "Do you see the code on front?"

"TOP SECRET CURE," Ransome said, frowning. He was familiar with most NSA codes. Top Secret Umbra, for example. Or the Gamma class-Gyro, Gilt, Gout, etc.-which was reserved for matters pertaining to Soviet intelligence.

"This is so you recognize it when it arrives at your home by Federal Express tomorrow morning." Ransome blinked.

"Why not simply hand it to me?"

"Too risky. I can't have every FPS officer from here to the Cyclone fence trying to trace it back to its source. Officially this file does not exist. Officially we never had this meeting. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir." But of course Norvell Ransome had not understood.

"I doubt that," DIRNSA said. "I don't understand any of this myself. This was messengered over here from the White House. I was told if I opened the file, it would be my neck."

"Who would threaten you, sir?"

"The President of the United States," the director said flatly. "And I may be known as a wheels-up ballsy SOB, but the President is ex-CIA. As much as it galls me to do so, this time I'm just following orders. Tomorrow morning at ten-thirty, Federal Express will deliver this to your door. Sign for it. Study it. Then destroy it. As soon as you have done so, you will go directly to the airport and board a plane for whatever destination is indicated in this file. You will remain on station indefinitely, unless you are relieved. Until such time, consider yourself on leave from all NSA duties."

"On leave? Where?"

"I do not know. And you will not tell me. We will never discuss this matter once you leave my office. The President personally asked me to assign this matter to my most trustworthy computer engineer."

"Thank you, sir."

"Don't thank me. This whole thing reeks of plausible deniability. There's a good reason for the President not to assign this to the CIA, and I don't want to think what that reason might be."

Norvell Ransome swallowed uncomfortably. He realized immediately that he could be an expendable component in a larger operation. He did not enjoy contemplating that notion.

"Do I have the option to decline this assignment?" he asked.

"I frankly do not know. But if this is as critical as it sounds, I'd say you already know too much to turn it down."

"I believe I shall accept, then," Ransome had said quickly.

"Wise career move."

Norvell Ransome pushed himself to his tiny feet. It took three tries before he successfully levered himself up into a bandy-legged standing stance.

He walked away trembling from head to toe. The director hadn't even bothered to say good-bye.

The Federal Express package arrived at exactly 10:28 A. M. the next day. Ransome signed for it and pulled open the envelope flap. Inside was the folder stamped TOP SECRET CURE. Before leaving the office the day before, he had run down every code name in the NSA data base. CURE was not one of them. He wondered what it could mean, but there was no point in pondering the matter. DOD code names never reflected their actual meaning or subject matter.

Inside the file was a description of an electronic listening post set up in a private facility known as Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York. There was a brief description of its computer system and passwords. Nothing about its mission.

A simple note on presidential stationery said: "Continue operations until notified." It was not signed. Norvell Ransome arrived at Folcroft by airport limousine less than five hours later. He was met by a flustered secretary, a Mrs. Mikulka, who handed him a sealed envelope and told him Dr. Smith's condition had not changed.

Ransome had wondered who Dr. Smith was as he was led to the second-floor office marked "Harold W. Smith, Director." He opened the envelope in the privacy of the man's office. The desk chair was sturdy. It would support his weight, he thought as he read through the letter signed by Smith.

The letter left out more than it revealed. It told of a hidden stud under the lip of the desk. Ransome found and depressed it. A computer terminal suddenly rose from a concealed well on his left.

With the skill of a professional programmer, Ransome brought up the system and was met by a scrolling series of news and information digests. He had no idea where they were coming from. They were totally random facts. Word that an illegal hostile takeover was in progress against a defense-critical industry. A CIA burn notice warning of a Soviet mole in the U.S. State Department. Statistics, and what he finally deduced were NSA-style "gists" of telephone intercepts that conclusively showed that a high-level politician was arranging for a cocaine shipment to enter his city. The politician was not identified except by telephone number.

Ransome called the number and got the governor's mansion in Florida. He hung up without speaking. Whatever Folcroft was, Norvell Ransome realized, its apparent mission was similar to the NSA message-traffic intelligence gathering. Here was electronic intelligence gathering at its finest. With a start, Ransome realized that some of this information was familiar. He had passed it through the dozen acres of computers-that was how they measured computer capacity at NSA, in acres-only yesterday.

"My God. This is being siphoned off our systems," he said hoarsely.

Not only NSA computers, it turned out, but CIA, FBI, DIA, IRS, Pentagon, and uncountable business and private sources.

The enormity of that realization was just sinking in when a muffled ringing interrupted. He picked up the blue standard telephone, but there was just a dial tone in his baby-shiny ear. The ringing continued. He looked around. There was no other phone. Ransome had reached out to buzz the secretary when he realized it was coming from the upper-right-hand desk drawer.

Ransome pulled out the drawer, and there, amid a profusion of aspirin and antacid bottles, was a bright red telephone with a flat blank area where the dial should have been. Puzzled, Ransome plucked up the receiver.

"Who am I speaking with, please?" a dry familiar voice asked. The accent was a jumble of clipped New England consonants and Texas twang.

"Norvell Ransome."

"This is your President, Mr. Ransome. Are you up and running?"

"Indeed I am, Mr. President."

"Please enter the password RESTORE. Shall I spell that?"

"No, I have it," Ransome had said, complying instantly. His fingers were shaky on the keys. The scrolling data extracts vanished. A cursor began spinning out blocks of text. He read along in silence, his eyes becoming white-edged eggs in his fleshy pear of a face.

"Are you prepared to execute the orders summarized?" the President had demanded.

"Yes, sir."

"When you have succeeded, simply pick up the receiver you are holding and so inform me. Otherwise, continue operations. Do you understand?"

"Yes. "

"What is the latest on Dr. Smith?"

"The staff is worried about him," Ransome answered truthfully.

"Notify me of any changes in his prognosis. Good luck, Ransome." The click was soft but quite final. Ransome replaced the receiver woodenly. This was a field operation, and not what he had entered the NSA for. True, his qualifications were admirably suited to the task of continuing ELINT monitoring, but this other thing ...

Ransome read the instructions several times, until he had his nerve up, and then he began to input the commands that would set into motion the first phase of his first task as ... He didn't know what he was, other than the new director of Folcroft.

Within twenty-four hours he had begun to get an inkling. He had discovered several levels of coded computer files within the Folcroft system which he could not enter. As a graduate in the NSA's National Cryptological School, he was presented with a challenge he could not resist. He moistened his bud lips and plunged in.

It turned out to be a challenge beyond his abilities, despite his having earned the National Security Medal and the Travis Trophy for cryptanalysis work. Not without help.

The director of the NSA had chosen wisely when he chose Norvell Ransome, graduate of Princeton and expert code breaker. He was perfect for this job. He was also, unfortunately, a man driven to solve problems and dismantle mysteries by virtue of an uncontrollable curiosity. The very impenetrability of the Folcroft complex was simply too great to ignore. He dialed a number that tied the Folcroft system into the NSA mainframes and commanded the agency's batteries of supercomputers to attack the Folcroft code. He chose the so-called "brute-force" method, whereby virtually every unoccupied NSA computer attempted possible solutions at a rate of thousands of cycles per second.

No code, no matter how elegant, could resist such a decrypting assault for very long, he knew. The Folcroft computers resisted for an astounding seventy-two hours, but finally, at 5:33 on a Thursday afternoon, it was all there for Norvell Ransome to digest.

Folcroft was the cover for a supersecret U.S. government agency called CURE. It was brilliant, Ransome thought. The code name was actually the agency name. Had he made the connection independently, he would have dismissed it as simple coincidence.

According to the files, CURE had been set up in the early 1960's by a now-deceased president. The country was tearing itself apart. Social anarchy lay ahead. Declaring permanent martial law and repealing the Constitution seemed the only option. But the young President had found a third alternative. So CURE was created. At first run by an ex-CIA bureaucrat named Harold W. Smith, it was an information clearinghouse for criminal activity. Working off and through ordinary law-enforcement agencies, Smith had orchestrated counterforce assaults against the growing criminal element, thereby keeping America from plunging into the abyss. But it was not enough.

After several years, a new president decided that CURE would need an enforcement arm. One man was selected. An ordinary man who would be trained in an obscure martial art that Ransome had never even heard of. One man. A police officer named Remo Williams, whom the world had long believed dead thanks to a CURE-engineered murder frame-up and a rigged execution. The man whom Ransome had gotten out of the way through Project RESTORE, he realized. It made sense. Still, one man?

That puzzle could be solved later. It was the operational details of CURE that intrigued Ransome. The President did not control CURE, although he could order it disbanded. There was no oversight. Its annual budget was enormous, yet it was so secret, it never appeared in congressional budgets. It was not black-budget, like NSA and certain defense programs. It was totally off-the-books. It simply didn't exist. None of it existed.

Yet somehow, for nearly thirty years, it had functioned in secret, holding the nation together-until the day its director, Dr. Harold W. Smith, had had a heart attack while shopping.

It was this accident, unexpected but foreseen, as were a number of other emergency contingencies, that had forced the President to turn to the NSA, and the DIRNSA to turn to Norvell Ransome.

It all made sense. Ransome would run CURE until Smith recovered. Or, failing that, until the President chose to replace Smith or, more conceivably, shut down CURE altogether.

Seated in Dr. Smith's cracked leather chair, the deepest, ugliest secrets of the nation washing his face in phosphorescent green, Norvell Ransome vowed to himself that he would become the next director of CURE, no matter what it took.

All he had to do was eliminate Smith and the enforcement arm. And fortunately, Smith himself had provided an elegant solution to the latter problem.

Now, a week later, the Remo Williams matter had resurfaced. Dr. Smith would take care of it himself. The man was never going to recover. But Williams' escape was untidy.

Returning to his office, Ransome walked past Mrs. Mikulka and whispered softly, "It does not look good."

Whereupon Mrs. Mikulka reached for a handkerchief and buried her face in it.

Dr. Smith's chair groaned under Ransome's settling weight. He briefly glanced at the ELINT data on the terminal screen. There was an alert light flashing. Frowning, Ransome tapped a key.

Electronic transcripts popped onto the screen. There had been another call made to Trenton State Prison inquiring about a former prisoner named Remo Williams. Ransome had programmed the computer's telephone-traffic intercepts to key-off Williams' name. Warden McSorley's call had been a potential problem, but had settled itself. But who was this new person? Ransome lined up the cursor with the identifying telephone number and hit a key.

He was annoyed, but not surprised, to read that it belonged to Professor Naomi Vanderkloot, the anthropologist who had broken the Remo Williams story to, of all places, the National Enquirer. It was, Ransome had determined through backtracking, the probable incident that had triggered Dr. Smith's heart failure. When he had learned of that, Ransome had elected to allow the matter to run its natural course. Who read the Enquirer? Certainly no one who could possibly be a player on the national stage.

Unfortunately, that had been a mistake, for through a fluke, Remo Williams had seen a copy.

This confirmed Ransome's suspicion that Williams would make contact with the Vanderkloot woman. A cross-reference light blinked. There was an earlier telephone intercept, Ransome found. This one was even more troubling. The same Naomi Vanderkloot had called Folcroft to inquire about Dr. Smith. How could she have known about Folcroft? Not from Williams. Williams knew only what Project RESTORE allowed him to remember. Williams' trainer, the Korean known as Chiun, was in Korea, oblivious of the events of the past week. And Smith was comatose.

Norvell Ransome steepled his blunt fmgets. His eyebrows drew together like furry caterpillars kissing. This was unforeseen. And unfortunate. He must think this through. He had handled Project RESTORE expertly, as if he were born to such tasks. He would handle this with equal aplomb. He must not rush into a rash action. He knew where Remo was. Perhaps there was a way to lure him back to Folcroft, where he could be attended to.

There was no rush. First, it would be necessary to allow Dr. Smith to pass from this world of natural causes. The President of the United States would no doubt recognize the exemplary job Norvell Ransome was doing and ask him to stay on as director of Folcroft Sanitarium and the secret installation it concealed. During that time, he would quietly groom the governor of Florida for the White House. He was excellent presidential timber. Provided his cocaine-trafficking activities remained solely a CURE secret.

Then and only then would America become the vassal of Norvell Ransome.

Remo Williams would be just a bump on that exceedingly smooth road.

Ransome hunched over the CURE computer. It would all fall into place in time. But first there was the ultimate secret of Folcroft to uncover. What did the acronym CURE stand for? It was a nagging piece of intelligence not found in any of the files. Perhaps there were deeper levels to plumb. If so, Norvell Ransome would descend into them. The meaning of CURE might not be germane to its future, but Norvell Ransome was determined to fathom it.

Chapter 20

Remo Williams paced the floor as Naomi Vanderkloot sat at the kitchen table, her back to him, the telephone to her ear.

"Anything?" he snapped.

"I'm still on hold. Why don't you just sit down?"

"This is driving me crazy," Remo said. His hands, hanging idle from his thick wrists, brushed his dungaree pockets. He felt the bulge there, and remembered the pack of Camels.

Remo pulled them out. They were mangled, but smokable. He fished one out and took the dry paper between his lips. Forgetting that matches were no longer precious, he turned on the gas stove and bent down to light the cigarette.

Almost immediately, he felt himself gag. Naomi turned.

"You're smoking!" she cried, aghast.

"I'm nervous. Okay?"

"Smoking. I can't believe it. It's so ... so third-world. Almost no one smokes these days."

"Well, I do," Remo said rackingly, wondering what was wrong with him that he couldn't smoke a simple unfiltered cigarette.

"What's that?" Naomi said into the phone as she batted bluish smoke away from her face. "Yes, I'm still here.... Where? ... Are you certain? ... Yes, thank you." She hung up and turned to Remo.

"I just spoke with the caretaker of a place called Wildwood Cemetery in New Jersey. He sounded a hundred years old. He confirms what the Trenton administration official told me. A convict named Remo Williams was buried there after his execution by electrocution. "

"Then he was right," Remo said, sick-eyed.

"Who?"

"The Florida executioner. He said he already did me. How can I be here if I'm buried in New Jersey?"

"Look. You're not dead. That's obvious. You're the victim of some kind of ... plot, I don't know. This sounds exactly like the kind of thing the CIA would do."

Remo leaned against the kitchen wall, running one hand through his hair. The cigarette smoldered in his other hand unnoticed. Annoyed, Naomi waved the smoke away with swipes of her hand.

"I dream dreams that seem more real than when I'm awake," Remo said in a baffled monotone. "My head feels heavy. I can't think straight. What the hell happened to me?"

Naomi came to her feet and approached him, her face suddenly tender.

"Look, don't try to sort it all out at once. You're here. You're with me. And you're safe. I'll help you sort the pieces. Just, let's take our time. I have more questions. "

"Okay, okay," Remo said irritably, allowing himself to be led into the living room and onto the couch. He frowned when he noticed Naomi lift a pencil to her ever-present notepad.

"Let's start with your sex life," she began eagerly.

"What sex life?" Remo growled. "I've been on death row so long I forgot where to put it."

Naomi wrote "Crude" on her notepad. Reading that, Remo folded his arms angrily.

"Before you went to jail, then," Naomi went on. "How did you do it?"

"What kind of question is that? I just did it."

"I'm only interested in the courship and precopulation rituals you relied upon."

"The what? Look, dingbat, get this through your head: I'm an ordinary guy. I don't do it any differently than anyone else. Better, maybe. Not different."

Naomi inscribed something unreadable on her notepad and asked, "I don't suppose you happen to know how long your penis is?"

"I never thought to measure it," Remo said acidly. "Why?"

"As man developed from the primitive stage, his sex organs have enlarged and become more specialized. As the next stage in human development, it's important to know if there have been any further ... specializations."

"Important to whom?" Remo asked sourly.

"Science," Naomi stuttered. "This is the pursuit of knowledge. If I can codify the traits that make you unique, we would be able to identify others on the vanguard of evolution, and if they can be persuaded to mate, a new, improved race would emerge generations earlier than otherwise."

"So?"

"So then we can study you and your kind."

"Lady, it wouldn't work that way. It would be the Europeans and the Indians all over again. Someone would win and someone would lose. Why push it along any faster? Let it be."

"You don't understand science."

"I don't want to. I'm trying to understand my life."

"Does that mean you won't let me measure your penis?"

"Good guess. I'm an escaped felon, remember?"

Naomi smiled. "I find that extra-exciting."

Remo rolled his eyes. "You would."

She leaned closer. "You interest me," she breathed, her mouth smelling of coffee yogurt.

"I'm a killer," Remo reminded her.

Naomi inched closer on the sofa. She tossed back her hair and lowered her face so that she had to give Remo an up-from-under look. She pushed her glasses up onto her forehead.

"You probably haven't had sex in twenty years," she said.

"I definitely haven't had sex for twenty years," Remo said.

"Well," Naomi Vanderkloot said with what she hoped was a sexy smile, "now's your golden opportunity. "

Remo Williams' glance took in the foolish smile that came over Naomi Vanderkloot's thin face, went down to her flat chest, lingered on her whalebone hips, and decided beggars couldn't be choosers.

"You're on," he said, taking her by the hand. Remo led her to the bedroom, unaware that her other hand still clutched her notepad and pencil.

"What are you doing with that?" Remo asked moments later. Naomi Vanderkloot lay under him, her face flushed, one hand reaching down to his crotch. The hand clutched a pencil.

"Umm. Nothing," she said absently.

"You're holding a pencil against my tool," Remo pointed out in a reasonable voice. "I don't exactly call that nothing."

Naomi withdrew the pencil and used it to scribble a single-digit number onto the notepad by her pillow. "Are you through?" Remo demanded. "Can we get on with this?"

"Absolutely." Naomi closed her eyes. Remo noticed she folded her hands over her stomach as if steeling herself for an ordeal. He entered her slowly, watching the play of expressions on her narrow face. They began with concern, softened to delight, and tightened up again as Remo fell into a slow, building rhythm.

Just when Remo was getting into it, Naomi's right eye peeked open. Remo stopped in mid-stroke. "What are you looking at?" Remo wanted to know.

"I wanted to see if your body was flushed. It's a sexual response found only in the higher primates."

"And?"

"Looks normal."

"Hooray for higher primates," Remo muttered. "Can we resume now, or would you like to take my temperature?"

"I already know your temperature," Naomi said archly. "You're hot. Like me."

"Thank you." Remo started again. He was just getting his concentration back when suddenly Naomi's eyes flew open and her hands clutched his naked chest.

"Oh, my God. You've been in prison!"

Remo stopped. "Is that just dawning on you?"

"You could have AIDS. I forgot all about it."

"What's AIDS?" Remo asked seriously.

Naomi frowned. "Don't tell me you never heard of AIDS."

"Never."

"Get off."

"I was just getting started."

"Get off! We'll finish later," Naomi said in a brisk, businesslike voice. She gathered up her pad and pencil and assumed a seated position on the futon. With a disgusted look on his face, Remo did the same.

"AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease," Naomi said officiously. "It's the biggest news story of the last ten years. And you never heard of it."

"Never," Remo said solemnly. He raised his right hand for effect, hoping to get this over with quickly.

"What if I told you that Ronald Reagan was president?"

"I'd ask of what?"

"The United States of America," Naomi said flatly.

"When did that happen?"

"Ten years ago. He's out of office now."

"Can't be. I know who's president. It's . . ." Remo stopped.

"Never mind. Who is Pee-Wee Herman?"

"A baseball player?"

"What does the phrase 'Made in Japan' mean to you?"

"A joke."

"You are out of touch."

Remo felt his manhood shrink as the questions came on. Finally Naomi looked up from her pad. "You say you've been on death row for twenty years, but you don't know some of the most basic facts of American social life that have occurred over that span of time."

"We don't get to read much on death row," Remo said defensively.

"How much do you remember of your time at Trenton?"

"Stuff. Different people. It all kinda runs together. You live in the same cell most of the time. What's to remember, except the walls?"

"Tell me every concrete memory you can dredge up," Naomi prompted.

Remo sighed. His responses were slow, halting. When he was through, Naomi looked at the fragmentary answers inscribed in her notepad.

"Your memory has been tampered with," she said firmly. "You have some kind of weird amnesia. I'm no psychologist, but you seem to have memories of things that may never have happened, yet at the same time, you don't remember things that you obviously were doing."

"How can that be?"

"I don't know," Naomi Vanderkloot said, looking down at Remo's lap with one eye closed and her thumb and forefinger poised like a pincer.

Remo looked down at himself. "What are you doing?"

"Measuring it. It's called Anthropometry."

"You already did that."

"That was tumescent. This is flaccid."

"This is crap," Remo said, getting to his feet. He drew on his black guard's pants and T-shirt.

"Wait! Where are you going?" Naomi cried.

"To Folcroft. I'm not getting diddly here."

Chapter 21

For the Master of Sinanju, the long journey ended at the closed gates of what was known in the scrolls he maintained as Fortress Folcroft, wrongly believed by some to be a lunatic asylum.

The taxi stopped at the gate under the brooding faces of the stone lion heads that looked down from the wrought-iron gate.

"Why do you stop here?" Chiun, Reigning Master of Sinanju, demanded querulously.

"The freaking guards won't open the gate," the cabby complained.

Chiun lowered his head to see beyond the driver's witless head. He saw that the wrought-iron portcullis was closed. Two guards stood beyond it, their weapons raised.

Chiun's wizened visage pinched up in surprise. These were true guards, not the feeble old men Smith had formerly employed. Had some threat to his emperor reared up in his absence?

"I will speak with them," Chiun told the driver. "Remove my belongings from the trunk."

The Master of Sinanju stepped from the back and strode, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his saffron kimono, to the locked gates.

"I am Chiun," he said sternly to the hard-faced guards. But within his heart he was pleased. Smith had obviously doubled the guards during his absence. It was a tribute to his emperor's regard for the services of the Master of Sinanju.

"Are you a patient?" one of the guards asked.

Chiun drew himself up haughtily. "I serve Harold Smith."

The other guard looked at the one who had asked the impertinent question. They nodded in unison, gazes locked.

Chiun allowed a pleased smile to overtake his wrinkled face. They understood.

The gates opened automatically. It was another new security innovation, another tribute to the esteem in which America held Sinanju.

Chiun turned to the taxi driver, who was heaving his luggage from the taxi trunk with huffing sounds. "Have a care with my property, white," he warned. Then he felt an unmistakable preattack warning. He turned in a swirl of kimono skirts to behold the unbelievable sight of the two guards bearing down on him with hostile intent.

Chiun allowed them to feel the fineness of his kimono for a brief space of time as they attempted-and this was the truly unbelievable part-to take him in their naked, weaponless hands.

"There now-" one of them started to say.

And then he fell silent as he tried to clutch his own offending hand. The other guard's eyes went wide. Pain signals must have become confused in the first guard's tiny brain, for he attempted to grasp his uninjured hand with the other, not realizing-until he lifted to his shocked face the erupting red stump it had become-that he no longer had fingers with which to grasp.

Both guards stumbled off in silent fright. Chiun turned to the driver, who had witnessed none of this.

"Return my luggage to your vehicle," he commanded.

"What? You change your mind?"

"No. The guards did. They have graciously consented to allow your vehicle to enter these walls." Unhappily, the driver restored Chiun's steamer trunks and got behind the wheel. He drove through the gates, unaware that the splintering sounds under his wheel were not branches, but finger bones. Seated in back, Chiun decided that the guards were not a token of esteem after all. The physical presence of the Master of Sinanju was not necessary to deter enemies. Merely the knowledge that Sinanju stood by a kingdom was enough. Chiun would so inform Smith-after he scolded him for the rudeness of his new and unnecessary guards.

The lobby-reception-desk person was also new. He declined to allow the Master of Sinanju to see Dr. Smith.

"Dr. Smith isn't allowed visitors," he said firmly. "Unless you are family, which I can see you are not."

"What! Smith denies me!" Chiun flared. "I, who have been like a father to him." The Master of Sinanju waited for the functionary's reaction. It was a white expression he had heard used to good effect on daytime television dramas in the days when they were worthy of his attention.

"You can't be serious," the functionary said.

The Master of Sinanju had heard that expression on TV as well. It was usually followed by the laughter of unseen people-the same ones who laughed at every bad joke yet sat silent during the truly humorous portions of certain offensive programs called sitcoms.

Chiun decided that this person was unimportant and glided past him to the elevators. The functionary called out the word "Guard!" once and Chiun listened to the yelling of the converging guards as the elevator door closed on his stern visage. Something was amiss at Fortress Folcroft. Smith had much explaining to do.

Emerging on the second floor, Chiun was pleased to see the same woman holding forth at Smith's reception desk. She was known as Smith's secretary, an odd designation, Chiun thought, for she knew none of Smith's secrets.

"Hail, servant of Smith. Please inform him of my arrival."

"I ... that is ... you haven't heard. I mean-"

"Why do you babble so, woman? Do this!"

"One moment." She stabbed at an intercom button and said, "There is a ... person here who is asking about Dr. Smith. I believe he's a former patient. "

"Yes, I have been expecting him. Allow him to enter, Mrs. Mikulka."

Chiun's parchment wrinkles scattered at the sound of the unfamiliar voice. Before the woman could rise from her seat, he hurried to the door and closed it behind him so rapidly it seemed to Mrs. Mikukla he melted through the unopened panel.

"I am Chiun, Master of Sinanju," Chiun announced in a cold voice. "And if you do not present to me a certain document, I will lay your entrails at your very feet."

The fat man sitting behind Dr. Smith's desk lost his composed expression. Tiny globules-that was the only word for them-of sweat erupted from his corrugated brow.

"Yes. Of course. I have it right here," he said quickly.

The Master of Sinanju accepted the proffered document. His hazel eyes glanced over it; then he returned to the fat man.

"What has become of Smith?" he asked, stiff voiced.

"I am Norvell Ransome. I am the new director of Folcroft. "

"And I do not care. Where is Smith?"

"Dr. Smith is ill. I have taken his place by presidential directive, as that letter implies. I was informed by the Harlequin's captain that you had returned to America prematurely. May I inquire why?"

"No, you may not. I will see Smith."

"That is quite impossible right now. As your superior, I must ask you-"

"You are my superior only in body fat, gross one," Chiun snapped.

"I beg your pardon!" Norvell Ransome exploded. Indignation sent spittle spewing out of his round mouth.

"I do not serve you. Only Smith. No Master of Sinanju is permitted to serve a succeeding emperor, lest it be thought that Sinanju arranged the downfall of the first emperor. Now, I ask again: Where is Smith?"

"I promise you that you will see him shortly. And I have not succeeded Smith, as you so quaintly put it. I am merely replacing him until he is well. I believe that gets around your ancestral injunction against succeeding, er, emperors, does it not?"

"One does not get around correct thinking," Chiun sniffed. "One follows it. Now, Smith."

"As you please," Ransome said nervously. "Come with me."

The Master of Sinanju followed the corpulent man to the elevator, up to the third floor, and to a hospitalroom door.

"Please wait here while I see if Smith is presentable."

"Be warned, I will not wait long."

"I'll only be a moment." And true to his word, Ransome returned shortly to open the door for the Master of Sinanju. The man's body reeked. Every pore exuded mingled food odors that each movement renewed.

Chiun drifted to the bedside of his emperor. At a glance, he could see that Smith was dying. The deathliness of the skin. The ragged breathing.

"The doctors say his prognosis is quite good," Ransome purred.

"The doctors are wrong," Chiun snapped. "He is failing. "

"Oh, dear. I sincerely hope not." Ransome's voice was plaintive. "I have a very important assignment for you, which must be undertaken immediately."

"I will honor my contract," Chiun said simply. Ransome's jowly face perked up. "While Smith lives," he added.

Ransome's face sagged like taffy under a heat lamp. "I wish a few moments with Smith," Chiun said.

"Why?"

"Respect. A word you should commit to memory."

"I shall be outside," Ransome said aridly.

After the man had gone, Chiun lifted the oxygen tent and felt Smith's neck artery. The pulse was thready. He noticed the shower cap over Smith's sparse hair and wondered if a brain operation-a barbarism whites practiced because they lacked knowledge of the correct herbs-had been performed on Smith. Pushing the plastic back, Chiun saw no marks of bone saw or suture. Only a plastic bandage on the forehead with the words DO NOT RESUSCITATE inscribed in ink.

The Master of Sinanju removed the Band-Aid before he replaced the shower cap. He laid a bony hand over Smith's heart. Its muscles beat very close to the ribs. Enlarged. There was a gurgle in each beat, indicating damaged chambers.

Chiun laid both hands over Smith's heart. He closed his eyes, moving his fingers exploringly. When he found a certain vibration, he struck. His fist lifted, fell. Smith's body jumped. Chiun's eyes flew open. He lifted one of Smith's eyelids. His expression registered disappointment.

He laid an ear to Smith's heart, and then, his face sad, he replaced the oxygen tent. Solemnly Chiun returned to the corridor.

"He is gravely ill," Chiun intoned.

"He is receiving the best of care, I assure you," Ransome said. "Now, shall we conclude our little get-acquainted session in my office?"

Back in Smith's former office, the Master of Sinanju stood in silence as Ransome pulled a copy of the National Enquirer from a drawer. He displayed it so that the likeness of Remo Williams faced the Master of Sinanju.

"I believe you know what this means," he said. "It means that Smith's mania for secrecy does not sleep with him."

"No. The woman who's responsible for this outrage called Folcroft only hours ago, asking questions. We don't know what she wants. Or how much she knows about CURE. With Remo still on assignment, you are my only resource."

"Remo's assignment. It is not going well?"

"There are some problems. I believe I explained in my first message that Remo had gone undercover in a prison."

"That message was from you?"

"Ah, yes. I signed it 'Smith' so you would not be concerned."

"The second message was not signed at all," Chiun pointed out.

"A lapse on my part."

"I see," Chiun said vaguely. "Tell me of this assignment of Remo's. It is very unusual?"

"It's too complicated to explain," Ransome assured him. "But I expect him to remain there at least another three weeks, gathering evidence."

"I understand," Chiun said softly. But he thought: What madness is this? Remo is not a compiler of evidence. Such duties are for file clerks and detectives. Remo's task to is eliminate enemies.

"Here," Ransome was saying as he transferred his gaze from his computer screen to a notepad. He wrote furiously and handed the top sheet to the Master of Sinanju.

"Her name is Naomi Vanderkloot. That is her address. Eliminate her. Today."

"Do you wish it to appear as an accident, or would something more public be preferred?"

Ransome's mouth became a red rosebud. "Public?"

"Yes. Something to warn your enemies that such will be their fate should they dare uncover your secrets. "

"No. That would be counterproductive. But I don't mind if it's messy. In fact, why don't you make it look like a rape?"

Chiun stiffened. "A rape?"

"No, better," Ransome said, licking his pursy mouth. "Like she was gang-banged to death. Can you arrange that?"

"I will consider it," Chiun said distastefully.

"Excellent. By tonight. There's no telling what that woman is up to. I will make the arrangements for your travel. Please wait in the downstairs lobby."

"As you wish," the Master of Sinanju said, bowing formally. He noticed that the gesture went unheeded as Norvell Ransome picked up the telephone and began dialing.

Chiun withdrew. As he rode the elevator down, he looked again at the address on the sheet of paper Ransome had given him. He was not reading the address. He had memorized it at first glance. He was comparing the loops and swoops of the handwriting with the notation on Smith's forehead. They were the same. Chiun placed the scrap of paper in a hidden pocket of his kimono as he stepped into the lobby.

The guards looked at him warily, and he ignored them, for he was deep in thought.

It was unfortunate. If Smith died, it would be the end of Chiun's work in America, richest of Sinanju clients. The man called Norvell Ransome was hardly worthy of Sinanju service, but in time he could be educated in kingly ways. He was, in some respects-both good and bad-very much like Nero the Good. Too bad. There were so few Neros in the modern world....

Chapter 22

"Please don't leave me, I beg of you," Naomi Vanderkloot wailed.

"Do you mind?" Remo Williams said impatiently. "I need that foot to walk with. Let go."

"Not until you promise to stay. I want you."

"I can tell. I can't remember the last time I had a woman get down on her knees like this. Don't you feel embarrassed-you, a professor?"

"No. It's my mating strategy. In primate courting behavior, the female withholds her favors until she finds a male primate with whom she's willing to mix gene pools. You're him. For me, I mean. Take my genes. They're yours."

"I don't want your genes," Remo said, bending down and prying her fingers off his ankle. They jumped to his calf. Remo rolled his eyes ceilingward. "I've heard of women who fall for cons, but I never thought it would happen to me."

"That's not it at all," Naomi protested, hurt.

"Look. If I stay, will you behave? No more notebooks or pencils?"

"I swear."

"Okay. "

Naomi Vanderkloot jumped to her feet. Her face was a quarter-inch from Remo's. Her eyes were wide with appeal.

"Now?" she asked breathily. "I'm feeling very labial all of a sudden." That goofy smile came on again. Only this time it was more like a leer.

"Labial?" Remo said.

" 'Horny,' to you."

" 'Horny' I understand," Remo said. He was surprised at himself as they walked back to the bedroom. He was not looking forward to this at all....

An hour later, it was growing dark. Remo was lying back on the pillow, smoking thoughtfully. He was handling it better now.

"You probably think I'm some kind of space cadet, don't you?" Naomi asked quietly.

"Maybe. If I knew what a space cadet was."

"I'm not some ivory-tower type, you know. I don't just teach. My work at the Institute for Human Potential Awareness is important. We even do contract work for industry."

"Industry trying to design a better man these days?" Remo asked in a dry voice.

"No, human homogeneousness is not static. Population group studies show definite phenotypical trends. For example, people's rumps are getting wider."

"I hadn't heard that," Remo said, thinking: What a space cadet.

"It's no joke. We did work for the airline industry, measuring fannies so they would know how much to widen the next generation of airline seats."

"Can't have people getting stuck, now, can we?"

"Before that," Naomi went on brittley, "I did fieldwork. You probably never heard of the Moomba tribe."

"Not me. I can't even do the mambo."

"They were a culturally isolated group of hunter-gatherers discovered in the Philippines. I was the first woman-the first person, really-to be admitted into the Moomba secret rituals."

"Oh, yeah?" Remo said, interest flickering in his voice. "What was it like?"

"I was hoping you wouldn't ask," she said, picking through his chest hair. "Do you know in lower primates what I'm doing now would be the postcopulation checking for lice?"

"No, and I wish I was still in ignorance of that arresting fact."

"There are a lot of carryovers from primate behavior."

"Tell me about the rituals."

"Well, I've never told anyone this," Naomi said, looking up at him. "I refused to write a monograph about it. The head of the anthropology department at my last teaching position thought I had become initiated into some kind of primitive magic society, but it wasn't anything like that. I was a young, idealistic anthropologist then. I guess I couldn't get along in the modern world that well. I thought doing fieldwork with primitive cultures, which I had more empathy for, would work for me."

"Didn't, huh?"

"It took six months to gain the confidence of the Moomba tribe. Then one night we went into the rain forest to this circle of banyan trees. We all got naked together."

"Group sex?"

"I wish. Starting with the chief, we all took turns squatting in the center of the circle and . . . defecating into shallow wooden bowls."

"Sounds like that would be worth six months of preparation, yeah," Remo said dryly.

"That wasn't the worst of it. When everyone was done-and that included me-the chief took a so-called magic stick and measured each stool. Mine was the largest."

"Congratulations. Did you win a prize?"

"You might say so. They presented me with the magic stick and explained that I was now the consecrated measurer of stools."

"You lucky anthropologist, you. What happened after that?"

"That was it. That time. At the next meeting of the society, we did the same thing, only I did the measuring. Then we all sat around discussing the relative merits of one another's turds. Oh, God, this sounds so ridiculous now."

"Now?" Remo asked.

"I had gotten myself inducted into a primitive shit-appreciation society. That's all they did. Measure and discuss stools. When they got bored with that, they discussed color and texture and firmness of stools. Not to mention legendary stools of their ancestors. It was depressing. For years anthropologists had been speculating on the probable meaning of the ritual. It would have made my reputation, but I was too ashamed to publish my findings."

"I can see where you might be," Remo said, blank-faced.

"I was crushed. I had idealized these people as closer to nature than civilized people, imbued with elemental wisdom, and all that. And for recreation, they played with their feces like toddlers. That was it. I gave up fieldwork and ended up at U Mass with the other unemployable academics.

"Well, your story explains one thing," Remo remarked.

"What's that?"

"Why you keep trying to measure me," Remo said. "Must be a carryover from your primate ancestor experiences."

Naomi Vanderkloot had no answer to that, and Remo smiled for the first time that day.

His smile lived as long as it took him to inhale, for he happened to glance through the fern-choked window and saw a silent figure pass on the street like a figment from a dream.

Seeing the color seep from Remo's face, Naomi gasped. "What is it? What do you see?"

"A ghost," Remo said, reaching for his clothes. "As yellow and wrinkled as a raisin, and coming up your walk."

The door chimes rang and Naomi frantically scrambled for her clothes. She and Remo were dressed by the time the chimes sounded a third time. Before there could be a fourth, the rip-squeal of tortured hinges told them that they needn't bother to answer the door. It was open.

The Master of Sinanju had decided that he would not kill the woman known as Naomi Vanderkloot immediately. First he would question her about the source of her knowledge of Remo. The Nero-like Ransome had not considered that an important matter, but the Master of Sinanju knew that Smith would have made it a priority. And so would Chiun, who considered himself to be still working for Smith.

When the woman did not bother to answer the front bell, even though the sound of her respiration came clearly through the thick oval-windowed door, Chiun decided not to bother with the door. He sent it inward with a short-armed punch and stepped over it, careful not to injure his sandals on the broken glass. A thin-faced woman with a long nose peered around a doorway molding. Her mouth flew open and she cried, "It's him! The Mongoloid!"

"Still your tongue. I am no horse Mongol come to loot and pillage. I am Korean."

"That's what I said. A Mongoloid. Do you know you carry Japanese genes?"

Chiun's eyes made walnuts at the base insult. Before he could speak, another face joined hers at the door. And this time it was Chiun s mouth that flew open in surprise.

"Remo!" he gasped.

The pair came out of the room. They walked out with their round white eyes even rounder than normal, giving them, to Chiun's eyes, comically identical expressions. The girl cowered behind Remo, as if for protection.

"You're Chiun, aren't you?" Remo asked in an uncertain voice.

"No. I am not Chiun," the Master of Sinanju snapped. Even for Remo, it was a stupid question. But to Chiun's amazement, the retort did not bring a like response. Instead, Remo descended into imbecility.

"Well," he said, "whatever your name is, I thought you were dead."

"Who told you that?" Chiun demanded.

"Nobody. I saw it in a dream."

"I have been in Sinanju. And why are you not in prison?"

"You know about that? Then you do know me?"

"Certainly I know you. You are Remo." Chiun hesitated. His slit eyes narrowed. Had it happened again? The thing he most dreaded? Had the spirit of Shiva once again supplanted Remo's true personality? But no, his face lacked the stern demonic cast. And he was babbling. Shiva, the Hindu God of Destruction, would never babble. Still, something was amiss.

"So you hear me, O Shatterer of Worlds?" he asked loudly.

Remo and the white woman looked at one another and then behind themselves. Seeing nothing, they returned their stupid gazes to the Master of Sinanju. "Who are you talking to?" Remo asked.

"I wish to speak with Shiva, the Destroyer."

"That's a Hindu god," Naomi whispered. "I think."

"Never heard of him, or it," Rerno hissed back. Chiun tensed. Certainly Remo knew of Shiva. He did not remember the last time Shiva had overtaken his personality, during the time of the Japanese occupation of Arizona. And it soon had passed. But it was the fear of another such spell that had sent Chiun back to Sinanju to seek a remedy in his scrolls.

Remo would not know that either. But he knew that Shiva dwelt within him.

"You do not know Shiva?" Chiun asked padding forward. "Yet you know that you are Remo."

"Of course I'm Remo," Remo said, shaking a cigarette from his pack.

"What are you doing?" Chiun screeched, pointing to the cigarette dangling from Remo's mouth.

"Smoking a Camel," Remo replied coolly.

"You smell like you have been smoking camels-as well as cows and other malodorous creatures. But I was referring to the tobacco thing in your mouth."

Remo struck a match and lit the cigarette. Chiun reacted. He flew at Remo and plucked the cigarette from his surprised lips. He shredded it with furious finger motions.

Remo stood there in surprise. Naomi screeched and leapt behind Remo.

"Protect me, Remo!" she yelled. "He burns his sugar faster than anything I've ever seen!"

"Emperor Smith is gravely ill," Chiun said, ignoring the woman's obviously demented babbling.

"Emperor?" Remo's voice was blank.

"I wonder if he means Harold Smith?" Naomi said suddenly, peering out from behind Remo.

"Of course I mean Harold Smith," Chiun snapped. "And what do you know of Smith?"

It was Remo who answered. "He's the judge who sent me away."

Chiun blinked. In a mock-calm voice he said, "So you remember that much."

"I've had twenty years on death row to reflect on it," Remo said tartly, his tone so disrespectful that Chiun was tempted to discipline him. But the vibrations Remo gave off, as Chiun stood close to him, were wrong. They were not Remo's vibrations, nor Shiva's. They were ... off.

"Twenty years," Chiun said. "You mean twenty days, do you not?"

"No, I mean twenty years."

"I have had the misfortune to train you for more than twenty years, and I know where you have been. And it is not in prison."

"Then it's true. The dreams."

"Tell me of these dreams," Chiun demanded.

"You and I. We were doing incredible, impossible things. And Smith was in the dreams. And a place called Folcroft."

"Those were not dreams, but a reality you have somehow lost," Chiun said sagely.

"If that's so, then why did you let me languish in prison?"

"I returned to Sinanju to attend certain matters, and while I was sojourning there, the new emperor informed me that you had returned to prison on an undercover assignment."

"Undercover!" Remo burst out. "I was almost buried there."

"What do you mean?"

"I was on death row!" Remo said hotly. "They had me scheduled for execution at seven o'clock this morning. I went over the wall."

The Master of Sinanju indicated the woman with a fingernail like an ivory spear.

"And this woman," he said slowly. "How is she part of this wild story of yours-aside from your usual reason?"

"What's my usual reason?"

Chiun's nose wrinkled in distaste. "Sex."

"I resent that insinuation," Naomi Vanderkloot said sharply. "I'll have you know that I'm a full professor."

"Although I must admit that she is more attractive than your usual cowlike consorts," Chiun added.

Remo looked at Naomi. "She is?" he said incredulously. Naomi shot him a hurt look.

Chiun asked, "You are the woman Naomi Vanderfloot?"

"Kloot. Vanderkloot. It's Dutch."

"I do not differentiate between peas," Chiun sniffed, "although some are less green than others. It is the same with Europeans. You have forbidden knowledge of Folcroft, which you are spreading in newspapers. How did you come into possession of this knowledge? Speak truthfully, for your life depends upon this."

"He told me," Naomi said, indicating Remo.

"Yeah, I told her," Remo said. "What is Folcroft anyway? I keep dreaming of it. And you."

"Do you remember Sinanju, Remo?"

"No. What is it?

"A gift," Chiun said sadly. "Of which you are seldom worthy." And the Master of Sinanju began to turn in place, his saffron kimono skirts belled up and out like a parachute. He caught flashing glimpses of Remo simply standing there like any common white oaf, the woman cowering behind him.

And Chiun struck.

Remo's hands shot up instinctively as he dropped into a defensive crouch. One of Chiun's sandaled feet snapped out, and although the blow was restrained, it sent Remo spinning. At the last possible moment, Remo had parried the blow with one wrist.

Chiun alighted and pushed his skirts down as Remo, his face shocked white, slowly gained his feet. He bowed.

"Your mind may not remember Sinanju," he said solemnly, "but your body does. And for that I give thanks to my ancestors."

"Know anything about what he's saying?" Remo asked Naomi, not taking his eyes off the Master of Sinanju.

"Asians are culturally fixated on ancestor worship," Naomi said quietly. "But the rest of it must be some belief system. That's cultural anthropology. I don't do cultural anthropology any more." Raising her voice, she asked, "What do you want here?"

"I have been sent to kill you."

"Over my dead body," Remo snapped, returning to his crouch as Naomi slipped behind him. She grabbed the back of his T-shirt in nervous fistfuls, and Chiun noticed for the first time that it was neither stark white nor jet black, but a pleasing saffron. He wondered if this Remo might not be an improvement over the old.

"Your body is already dead," Chiun said. "For you are the dead night tiger of Sinanju legend, the avatar of Shiva. I could, if you wish, show you the grave where your government buried you."

"I knew it!" Naomi snapped. "It's a government plot. It's-" Her face went white. Her mouth made shapes but no sounds.

"Spit it out," Remo prompted. "What are you trying to say?"

"A clone!" Naomi shrilled. "The real Remo is dead, and you're a genetic clone of him created by the CIA. Not an evolutionary mutant. You're probably filled with yucky artificial ingredients. Oh, my God, I slept with a clone. What will my mother think!"

Remo looked toward Chiun. "Any idea what a clone is?"

"No, but it does not matter. Listen to me, Remo. Do you wish to know the truth about yourself?"

"Yeah."

"Will you accompany me to Folcroft, where the answers lie?"

"What do you think, Naomi?"

Naomi backed away. "Don't even speak to me, you ... you impostor!"

"What about her?" Remo asked.

"If she agrees to accompany us, she will not be killed."

"Well, I've come this far," Naomi said abruptly. "I'll see this through to the end."

"That is laudable," Chiun said with a tight wise smile. "Come, let us be on our way while there is still light."

The Master of Sinanju stepped aside for the two whites to lead. They hesitated, then, seeing the elfin twinkle that he allowed to come into his clear hazel eyes, they stepped past him. Remo pushed the nervous woman along with his hands on her shoulders.

At the precise moment that they passed him, the Master of Sinanju tripped Remo. Remo went down like a sack of potatoes. The woman shrank back but she was not swift enough to elude the talonlike fingers that reached up for her long-necked throat.

A moment's pressure on the base of the neck was sufficient. Her eyes rolled up in her head and she vented a sigh. Then she collapsed to the floor like a deflating balloon.

Chiun stepped back and put his hands into his joined sleeves as Remo, his face horrified, knelt at the woman's side.

"You little fraud, she's not breathing!" Remo said, looking up in anger.

"She breathes poorly, but she breathes," Chiun told him unconcernedly.

Remo placed a hand over her heart, and feeling a beat, let out his pent breath. The tightness in his face loosened.

"Now what?" he demanded tightly. "Are you going to sandbag me next?"

"Now that she will not interfere, you and I will go to Folcroft."

Remo stood up, his hands bone-white fists of tension. "No more tricks?"

"Not from me," Chiun said loftily.

"Then you go first," Remo said, motioning for the Master of Sinanju to lead the way, which Chiun was only too happy to do. For night was coming on, and miles away, at Folcroft Sanitarium, there was much to be done, and many matters to settle.

Particularly with the new director of CURE, Norvell Ransome.

Chapter 23

Norvell Ransome's watery eyes registered momentary shock as Remo and Chiun entered his office. Then a studied calmness dropped over them like a dingy veil.

"Remo Williams, dear boy!" he exclaimed. "What an astonishing turn of events. You two have obviously found one another."

"I found Remo," Chiun said, closing the door. Remo stepped off to one side, his dark eyes unreadable.

"And the Vanderkloot woman?" Ransome inquired. It was almost a purr.

"I dealt with her as Smith would have wished," Chiun said. "She will trouble us no longer."

"Smith was-I mean is-an exceedingly efficient administrator. I know he would be pleased." Ransome cleared his throat with a rumble of phlegm. He touched the concealed stud under the lip of the desk and the CURE terminal disappeared silently, a blank panel sliding over its well.

"I imagine, Remo, that you would like an explanation for your recent incarceration," Ransome said unctuously.

Remo started to speak, but the Master of Sinanju shushed him with a knifelike gesture.

"We would like an explanation," Chiun said pointedly.

"To be sure." Norvell Ransome laid his pudgy fingers flatly on the desk. This was a critical moment. Chiun had found Remo and brought him back, as he had expected. The question remained, how much did Remo remember? And how would he react?

"You are aware that the security of this operation requires extraordinary measures," Ransome began. "Especially measures in the event of compromise or catastrophic failure. Failure such as the compromising of this facility, or the death or exposure of one of its operatives."

"We know this," Chiun intoned.

Carefully Ransome lifted a copy of the National Enquirer from the desk drawer and held up the front page, showing the artistic likeness of Remo's face.

"You both know of Smith's unfortunate situation," he continued. "It was brought about by this regrettable display of journalistic excess. Hence the need to remove the Vanderkloot woman. This presented the President with a conundrum. To shut down CURE operations? Or to await Smith's recovery and decide upon a course of action later? The President, I am pleased to report, resorted to the latter option. That is where I came in. My first instruction was to set into motion Operation RESTORE, which is one of Smith's rather ingenious, ah, retirement programs. I must say that this presented me with an unaccustomed challenge, but it was made much easier by your fortuitous absence, Master Chiun."

"Are we going to listen to this windbag all night?" Remo demanded. "He's not giving us squat."

"Hush," Chiun admonished. "Forgive my pupil. He has been testy since his recent brush with death."

Ransome let that pass with a simple "Ah." He continued, "It was as simple as waiting until Remo was in the comfort of his very own domicile. A home which, I am sorry to inform you at this late date, Dr. Smith had the foresight to tamper with in certain subtle ways. In short, Mr. Williams, you were gassed in your sleep."

"Impossible!" Chiun snapped. "No vapor could catch Remo unawares."

"A colorless, odorless gas that insinuated itself into his bedroom while he slept," Ransome quickly inserted. "Remo was removed here to Folcroft by ambulance, where, still sedated, his memory was, I regret to say, tampered with. It is very complicated, but it involves a certain drug that wipes the memory clean, going back to any point the administrator-and I use the term advisedly-chooses. Rather like erasing a portion of audio tape. Artificial memories are substituted via posthypnotic suggestion. For Smith evidently felt that some memories might not suppress successfully. So they were transformed. I reviewed the computerized memory simulations before the Folcroft doctors-who thought they were conducting a modest experiment and was quite stunned.

If you remembered Smith, you would recall him as judge Smith. A deceased CURE operative named MacCleary became the fodder for a simulated memory involving the murder of a prison guard who never existed. And if you remembered Chiun-Smith's greatest fear-you would trigger a memory of his unfortunate demise. After that, you were transferred from here, using altered documents. The rest you know. You woke up on Florida's unparalleled death row, unaware that you had not spent the previous two decades at the New Jersey correctional facility, which was the last true recollection you were allowed to retain."

"You smarmy bastard!" Remo said, starting forward. Chiun stopped him with a hand placed to his chest.

"Please," Norvell Ransome said, "restrain yourself. This was Dr. Smith's program. I merely, ah, executed it."

"And the state of Florida nearly executed me," Remo snarled.

"What?"

"I was scheduled to die this morning."

"Dear me. Is this true, Master Chiun?"

"If Remo says it is true, it is true," Chiun returned coolly.

"This was most unfortunate. Some bureaucratic malfeasance, for which the responsible parties will pay dearly, let me assure you. You see, it was all very elegant, but quite harmless. Remo, without memory of CURE or Folcroft or any of it, was simply deposited back in the place where he came from-death row. A facility other than Trenton State was mandated, of course, because Remo Williams had been executed at Trenton. Or so it is believed."

"Then Haines was telling the truth," Remo gasped. Ransome's open face contracted suddenly.

"Haines?"

"The state executioner who was to pull the switch on me. The same one who did it years before," Remo said.

"Really? The same executioner? Remarkable."

"Dreadful," Chiun corrected. "We nearly lost Remo. "

"That was not the intent of Project RESTORE, let me assure you." Globules of sweat were breaking out on Ransome's forehead now. One ran down one side of his nose and dripped into his open mouth. He swallowed it absently. "The plan was simply to keep Remo out of the public eye while Dr. Smith's situation became clear. For you see, this particular plan suited both problems: Smith's illness and the Enquirer exposure. "

"What was supposed to happen to me if Smith didn't recover?"

"My dear man, you must understand me when I tell you that the answer to that question is classified. Who knows, but Dr. Smith or I may have to implement it at some future point." And Norvell Ransome broke out into bubbling laughter. It shook his bulky toadlike form, but left the Master of Sinanju and Remo unmoved. Ransome subsided.

"Truthfully, that would be up to the President," Ransome said in a subdued voice. "Remo's memory is easily restored in the event Smith's possible demise does not effectively shut us down."

"Well, now that we're all here," Remo said suspiciously, "what now?"

"Now," Ransome said; glancing at his wristwatch, "it is growing late." He pushed himself up from his desk. "I anticipated Master Chiun's return, but not yours, Remo. A room has been prepared for you, and let me suggest you take advantage of it. For the night is no longer young."

"I'm not sure I trust this guy," Remo said, causing a hurt expression to settle over Ransome's corpulent face.

"Remo," Chiun hissed. "Shame on you. You have heard this man's reasonable explanation." Ransome's face brightened. "Let us take advantage of his generous hospitality. Tomorrow will be time enough to discuss the pressing matter of our future. And CURE's."

"Excellent. Let me escort you to your room personally. Would you object to taking the elevator down? It's on the first floor."

Without waiting for an answer, Norvell Ransome led the way. The flooring shook with his thunderous tread.

"I've seen fat before," Remo whispered to Chiun, "but this bag of lard is an elephant. And his explanation may seen reasonable to you, but it sounds fishy to me. Take it from a guy who knows all there is to know about cons and con jobs."

Chiun said nothing as they rode the elevator to the first floor.

"Whew!" Remo said as they stepped out. "Good thing we had the elevator. Walking down an entire flight of steps is more than I'm up to tonight."

His sarcasm was ignored by Chiun and Ransome. Ransome led them to a room in the patient wing. It was large, but sparsely furnished. Chiun recognized it as quarters he had occupied in times when he lived at Folcroft.

"There are sleeping mats and a television, as you can see," Ransome was saying. "I will have dinner sent down if you wish. Would you like a menu?"

"Just rice for me," Remo said, bringing a delighted smile to Chiun's parchment visage.

"And rice for me as well," Chiun added.

"Excellent," Norvell Ransome said, "it will be served presently. Now, if you will excuse me, I must bid you both a pleasant good night."

After Ransome had gone, Remo looked at the solitary sleeping mats and, thinking of Naomi's futon, asked, "Doesn't anyone sleep on beds anymore?" Chiun's answer was lost in hissing white clouds spurting from the wallboards on every side.

It looked like steam but it bit the skin like dry ice. The Master of Sinanju reacted instantly. But instantly was too late, for his limbs were quick-frozen at once, like a TV dinner. He fell, one elbow and a bent knee preventing his rigid body from touching the floor.

Remo fell straight back, his hands on his hips. He hit like a board, still and unyielding. His face was as white as a snowman's. He's still-open eyes stared blindly, the pupils frozen with a dusting of opaque ice.

And out in the corridor, Norvell Ransome turned the hand wheel marked "Liquid Nitrogen" and closed the wall panel concealing it.

He took the elevator back to his office, suddenly regretting that he had not thought to ask either of them what the acronym CURE had stood for. Well, the night was young. Perhaps the computers would finally give up that most stubborn secret.

After all, CURE had surrendered everything else of value. Including its most potent human weapons. The too-brief sensation of weightlessness ceased and brought Norvell Ransome's bulk back down to earth. He stepped past the sliding elevator doors and into the dim corridor, where he spied a peripheral flicker of movement and felt a slight breath of disturbed air.

A fire door was closing, and beyond it came the soft pad of feet on stairs. Norvell Ransome went to the door and opened it. He peered down. The stairwell was empty.

"Security guard, no doubt," he told himself. Then he waddled back to the office, intending to call the captain of the guards about the annoying irregularity.

He had ordered rigorously timed tours of the building and grounds.

Norvell Ransome eased himself into the cracked leather chair and reached for the blue telephone. He stopped, his hand frozen over the receiver. It quivered as his eyes drank in the sight of the CURE terminal screen, up from its well like a blank-faced robot.

"What the devil," he said under his breath. He was certain he had returned it to its well before leaving. It was standard CURE security procedure, which he adhered to religiously.

Ransome blinked. In the exact middle of the screen, a short string of glowing green letters floated. Ransome leaned closer. When he read the words, every muscle in his face went slack. His jaw dropped, giving him two extra chins. He swore aloud, but all that came out was a froggy croak.

For the words on the screen constituted a simple message: I AM BACK.

Chapter 24

Dr. Alan Dooley crept down the third-floor corridor to Folcroft's hospital wing. He slipped into Dr. Smith's room, his eyes haunted.

Smith lay under the oxygen tent. He was the color of fish skin, Dr. Dooley saw. His lips and fingernails were gray. Not blue. They had been a faint blue just minutes ago. Smith was improving. Dooley couldn't understand how.

He stepped up to the plastic tenting and rustled it. Smith's eyes fluttered open. "It's me, Dooley," Dooley told him. "I did exactly as you asked. It was easy, once I located the status key."

"What did computer say?" Smith's words were a croak.

"The words were PALLIATIVE. RESTORE. FREEZE-DRY"

"PALLIATIVE," Smith muttered dryly. "That means he's sanctioned. And you say he ordered you to ignore my medical needs?"

"Not in so many words," Dooley admitted. "But it was clear that he preferred that you never recover. He forbade any significant medical intervention, such as an operation. When I insisted, he sent me away. But my conscience bothered me. I relieved the other doctor."

"You are not part of the Folcroft staff," Smith said.

"I was on staff of New York City Hospital. Ransome contacted me. Insisted I resign and come to work here. He ... he knew some things about me. I don't know how it's possible, but he did."

"The computer told him," Smith said.

"What kind of computer would know-"

"-that you are a suspected child molester?" Dr. Dooley started. "The less you know," Smith added, "the better off you will be. Now let me think. RESTORE means that Remo is out of the picture. FREEZE-DRY can only mean he's used the liquid-nitrogen room. He's very smart. He must have neutralized Chiun." Smith's voice lifted. "Dooley. Listen carefully. Go to the first floor, the dormitory wing. You will find a wall panel outside Room Fifty-five. Open it and depress the red button. Wait one hour and Room Fifty-five will open automatically. Assist the individual you will find inside. Inform him that you are acting on my behalf. Then bring him to me. Is that understood?"

"Yes. I think."

"Now, go. Ransome will be puzzled by the message you left on the terminal. This will be the first place he will look."

Dr. Dooley withdrew from the room. He started for the elevator, but the indicator light winked on. Someone was about to step off the lift. Dooley ducked back and slipped through a fire exit leading to the stairwell.

Norvell Ransome stepped off the elevator. It was most distressing, he ruminated. The CURE computer had been accessed. Remo and Chiun were out of the picture. That left only Smith.

Ransome hesitated outside Smith's door. What if this was a lure of some kind? Physical danger was not one of Norvell Ransome's loves in life. It was the reason why, when the government combed Ivy League universities in the 1960's for members of prominent old-line families, Norvell Ransome of the Virginia Ransomes opted for the NSA and not the CIA. Guns were the first resort of the intellectually limited.

Taking a deep breath, Ransome pushed open the door. Smith lay inert, apparently unchanged from hours before. He approached the bedside cautiously, noticing the absence of blue from Smith's lips and nails. They gave him a deathlier cast, but a glance at the heart monitor oscilloscope indicated a steady heartbeat. Smith's sunken chest continued to rise and fall with his faint breathing.

No, Norvell Ransome decided, Dr. Harold W. Smith had not been the interloper. It was not his nature to boldly proclaim his return with the childish statement "I am back."

Ransome hurried from the room, thinking: Who? Only four persons were supposed to know of CURE's existence. Its three operatives were contained. That left only the President, but he was hardly a likely candidate. Yet someone with knowledge of CURE was prowling Folcroft. It must be one of the secrets in the hidden files, along with the meaning of the acronym CURE.

This time Ransome impatiently suffered through the elevator descent. There was nothing to make the blood course through the body like a good mystery.

Dr. Alan Dooley was surprised when at last the door to Room 55 opened and he found two individuals on the floor. They lay there like grotesque discarded mannequins. The walls radiated a strong warmth. Dooley had noticed the hand wheel marked "Liquid Nitrogen" and understood. These men had been quick-frozen by the only substance known to do it safely without cellular damage. They probably never knew what hit them. Dooley shivered in the warmth as he knelt and raised their eyelids. He passed a hand over their pupils, intercepting the light. He got reactions from both men. Good.

"Wake up," Dooley hissed, slapping the white man. "Come on," he urged. The white man did not respond, but the Asian began to stir on his own. He sat up suddenly, his eyes fierce.

"I'm Dr. Dooley. Smith sent me."

"I am interested in the one called Ransome," the Asian said coldly. Then he noticed the other man. "Remo!" he said, shocked.

"He's okay. It's just taking him longer to come around. You were quick-frozen."

As the Asian ministered to the other man, he said, "And I promise you that the fate that awaits that elephant will not be quick, but infinitely slow."

Faster than Dooley thought was possible, the Asian brought the man he called Remo around. Remo sat up, blinking dully.

"What happened?" Remo demanded. "I remember a kind of fog, then nothing."

"I will explain later. We must go with this man. Come."

They made their way up the stairwell to Smith's bedside.

Smith didn't react until Dooley rustled the oxygen tent. Only then did his eyes snap open.

"Master Chiun," he said. Then, startled: "Remo! What are you doing here?"

"I broke jail," Remo said coldly. "Chiun explained who you really are. I work for you, he says. But I remember you as the guy who sent me to death row. "

"There will be time enough for explanations later," Smith said uncomfortably.

"Not for me. I've had enough of this craziness. I hereby give my notice. See you in the want ads." Remo started for the door. He found himself on his stomach instead, the old Oriental standing on his solar plexus. He bounced slightly, forcing air in and out of Remo's lungs. It hurt, but surprisingly, his brain began to clear. He decided he liked breathing through the stomach.

"Do not listen to Remo, Emperor," Chiun was saying. "He has not been himself since he was nearly executed again."

"Again?" Smith asked, looking toward Dooley. The doctor's brow furrowed.

"The pretender called Ransome arranged for Remo to be executed in my absence," Chiun explained.

"Then he is a rogue element," Smith muttered. "Sanctioned or not, he must be stopped."

"I will be happy to attend to that detail," Chiun said.

"No!" Smith hissed. "He is still the President's man. Eliminating him would only create problems. It must appear to be an accident."

"I have many excellent accidents in my repertoire," Chiun said, beaming.

"No. I have a contingency plan for this situation, as well. I want one of you to penetrate my office while the other distracts Ransome. Lift the blue telephone and push the loudness lever underneath to the highest position."

"Remo can do that. It is simple enough," Chiun said quickly. He looked down. "Is that all right with you, Remo?"

"It is if someone will get off my stomach," Remo replied.

The Master of Sinanju stepped off and Remo got to his feet. His eyes were clearer.

"I meant what I said about quitting," Remo told Smith. "Judge."

Smith ignored him and addressed Chiun. "I am told there are special guards now attached to Folcroft."

"I have already dealt with the worst of them."

"Kill them all," Smith croaked.

"Good God," Dr. Dooley blurted. "What is this all about?"

"We cannot take a chance that Ransome has allowed them to know too much," Smith added.

"How much is too much?" Dr. Dooley said hoarsely, looking from face to face. He stopped and did a double-take on Remo. "Have I seen you before?" he asked. "Your face looks familiar."

"Ever read the National Enquirer?" Remo asked.

"Of course not!"

"Liar," Remo snapped.

"Dr. Dooley," Smith interrupted, "I will require a telephone and a wheelchair."

"I'm sorry. As your physician, I strongly advise against exerting yourself."

"You are an employee of this facility," Smith said coldly. "And I am its director. You will do as I say."

The force in Smith's voice stopped Dr. Dooley's next words. The long fingernails of the Asian called Chiun suddenly floating up to his face helped too. Dooley left hurriedly.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" Smith asked Remo.

"Directions. How the hell would I know where your office is?"

"Oh," Smith said. "I had forgotten. Master Chiun, will you direct him, please?"

"Yes. We will return shortly," Chiun said, bowing. Remo and Chiun left. After the door closed, Dr. Harold W. Smith closed his eyes. It was a strain to speak, but despite the expenditure of effort, he was feeling better.

From the corridor, Remo's voice drifted back. "Explain something to me, will you? If you work for Smith, why does he call you master?"

Norvell Ransome ignored the beeping lights on his computer, warning of developing national-security and domestic concerns. Time enough for those matters later. There must be a hidden file in the Folcroft database. He brought up the system's diagnostic program and began scanning the dump. Lines of raw data sped by his eager eyes, showing a mixture of hexidecimal codes and plain ASCII-readable text.

To his befuddlement, he found no hidden files, no breath of a clue to the identity of the mysterious interloper. And worst of all to his inquisitive mind, the riddle of the CURE acronym remained unexplained.

The intercom buzzed. Annoyance on his face, Ransome reached for the button.

"What is it, Mrs. Mikulka?" he asked petutantly. And then it hit him. Eileen Mikulka, Smith's secretary. Perhaps she ...

But all such suspicions fled his mind when Mrs. Mikulka said breathlessly, "The captain of the guards is reporting a disturbance in the gym, Mr. Ransome."

"Order all security personnel to deal with it," he barked.

"That's the problem. The guard force are already in the gym. And they're requesting reinforcements. Should I call the police?"

"Absolutely not! What is the nature of the disturbance?"

"They're so frantic I can't get that out of them."

"I see," Ransome said slowly. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Mrs. Mikulka. I shall see to the matter personally."

Norvell Ransome ignored her as he bounded past her desk. His tread made the water in her desktop flower vase slop over the lip and onto the Rolodex.

Mrs. Eileen Mikulka felt nervous. Since Dr. Smith's heart attack-if that was indeed his problem-nothing had seemed to go right. She thought the whole matter of Norvell Ransome himself was very strange. The lecherous way he looked at the nurses. She had even caught him looking at her in a disturbingly carnal way.

Then a stranger thing happened. A man she knew only as Remo, who had worked at Folcroft in some custodial capacity months before, emerged from the stairwell, looking lost.

"Hi!" he said nervously. "Is this Dr. Smith's office?"

"Of course," she replied. "You know that, Mr.... I'm afraid I've forgotten your name."

"Thanks. Just checking," he said, slipping into the office.

"Wait!" she called after him. "You can't go in there." She started to rise from her desk, but the door lock clicked. He had locked it after him. Something was distinctly wrong, but Mrs. Eileen Mikulka was not about to do anything to get herself fired. She composed herself and waited for Mr. Ransome's return.

Inside Dr. Smith's office, Remo walked up to the desk and lifted the ordinary blue telephone. It was a standard AT nderneath there was a silver lever. He slid it to the end of the slot marked "Louder. "

That done, he paused for a look around the Spartan office. There was a big picture window behind the desk, showing Long Island Sound. None of it looked familiar to him. But it exactly matched the office Smith had occupied in one of his dreams. Puzzled, Remo hurried to the door.

Norvell Ransome approached the big black double doors to the Folcroft gym. He put his ear to the cold metal. There was absolutely no sound on the other side. Ransome procrastinated. This was not to his taste at all. Dealing with physical problems like a common field agent. That was why he had hired a fresh complement of guards. But summoning the police was out of the question.

With painstaking slowness he pushed the door open a crack. He peered inside.

There was a guard lying on his back on the Nautilus machine. His hand clutched the bar of the device that was weighted with heavy metal slabs. Ransome waited for him to push them up. But the guard simply held that position.

Ransome pushed the door open all the way. He saw the other guards. Two hung from gymnast hoops. Not by their hands, but by their necks, their faces a smoky lavender. Ransome gasped in spite of himself.

His entire guard force was dead. Some grotesquely so. The hanging guards, for example, had had their heads somehow forced through the aluminum rings. The rings were obviously too small for their necks, which was why their faces were purple, yet their heads had evidently gone through without crushing their skulls. The guard under the weights was literally under them. His head had been crushed, his hands clutching the handles in a death grip.

The others were worse. Yet there was no blood anywhere. Just mangled bodies. And neither was there any indication of who-or what-had decimated them.

Ransome hurried from the gym. This wing of Folcroft lacked an elevator, forcing him to run. He was puffing by the time he reached the main building. The reception-area guard was absent. Ransome assumed he had been the unfortunate with the mashed cranium.

Ransome reached the elevator in safety and stabbed the button marked two.

Mrs. Mikulka started like a frightened animal when Ransome appeared on the second floor.

"What is it now, Mrs. Mikulka?" he snapped.

"A man barged into your office. I couldn't stop him."

Ransome stopped in his tracks. "Where is he now?"

"I don't know. He left just moments ago."

"Is anyone in there now?" Ransome demanded nervously.

"No."

"Then be good enough to inform any callers that I am out for the day."

"Of course, Mr. Ransome."

Norvell Ransome locked the office door after him. He lumbered for the computer, which was up and running. Then he realized he had forgotten to conceal it this time. He frowned. Such sloppiness was unforgivable.

"Must get a grip on myself," he said, sliding behind the desk. He attacked the keyboard. Somewhere there must be a hidden file. He initiated another diagnostic dump.

The intercom buzzed and Ransome shouted, "I told you I am not accepting calls!" without bothering to trip the intercom.

"I ... I think you should take this one," Mrs. Mikulka shouted back.

Ransome blinked. He eyed the blue telephone. Gingerly he lifted it.

"Hello?" he said cautiously.

An unfamiliar lemony voice spoke into his ear. "It is over, Ransome. I am back."

"Who ... who are you?"

"That you will never know. There is a contingency for everything in this organization. You should know that by now. After all, every secret of this institution is at your fingertips."

"Not quite," Ransome blurted out. "There is you, and the meaning of the organization's code name. I don't suppose I can pry that out of you?"

There was a pause on the other end. Then the lemony voice resumed speaking. "The answer to that and other questions you have may be obtained by calling a certain number."

"I have a pen in my hand," Ransome said quickly. The lemony voice gave a phone number.

Then, abruptly, the man hung up, saying, "Good-bye, Ransome. "

"Wait! What about-?"

Ransome replaced the receiver. He looked at the telephone number. It bore a local exchange. In fact, it seemed familiar somehow, but he couldn't quite place it. After taking a few deep breaths to calm himself Norvell Ransome began punching the keypad with his fat stubby fingers.

He clapped the receiver to his ear and waited for the first ring. As his watery eyes jerked around the room nervously, he noticed the number in the plastic window under the blue telephone's keypad.

It was identical to the number he had dialed. "What on earth!" he muttered. Then, fear rising from his Brobdingnagian belly, he hastily let go of the receiver.

The problem was that he could not. His muscles would not respond. There was a sudden sharp whiff of something burning in his nose. He never realized that it was his own nostril hairs because the neurons of his brain had died and his corneas turned cataract white from the two thousand volts coursing through his blubbery body. He continued jerking and spasming even after he had been cooked to death.

Then the lights blew and his face hit the desk edge with a mushy whump!

Chapter 25

Folcroft Sanitarium was blacked out for no more than forty-five seconds before the emergency generators came on, filling Dr. Smith's hospital room with harsh white light. The oscilloscope beeped into life, but it did not register Smith's heart rate, for Smith was no longer hooked up to it.

Instead, he was sitting on an aluminum wheelchair, a robe covering his thin legs.

"What happened?" Remo wanted to know.

"Ransome used the telephone," Smith said tersely.

"You really should have better wiring," Remo remarked.

"The wiring is fine. Now, would one of you please push me to the elevator. We are going to reclaim my office. "

Chiun turned to Remo. "Remo, do as Emperor Smith says."

"Emperor?" Remo and Dr. Dooley said simultaneously.

"Now," Chiun added sharply.

Obligingly Remo got behind Smith and started pushing. Chiun and Dr. Dooley followed them to the elevator. They rode one floor down in silence.

Mrs. Eileen Mikulka jumped to her feet at the sight of her employer being wheeled up to her desk. "Dr. Smith!" she exclaimed.

"Mrs. Mikulka, you have the rest of the day off," Smith said firmly, his gray eyes on the closed door to his office.

Mrs. Mikulka didn't ask questions. She grabbed her purse and ran.

The Master of Sinanju took the lead. He found the door locked. He placed both palms to the panel and exerted what seemed to the others like testing pressure.

In response, the door groaned metallically and fell inward.

Remo rolled Smith over the horizontal panel, remarking to Chiun, "You really have a way with doors, you know that?"

"It is Sinanju," Chiun returned. "Something obviously beyond your white mentality."

Once inside, everyone fell silent as they absorbed the sight of Norvell Ransome collapsed behind the desk.

Remo smelled the air. "Smells like burning hair."

"That is one result of death by electrocution," Smith said while Dr. Dooley placed a hand over Ransome's fat-sheathed heart. Feeling nothing, he shifted to the carotid artery. He looked up.

"This man is dead," he said hoarsely.

Noticing that Ransome clutched a half-melted telephone receiver in one hand, Remo asked of Smith, "What happened to him?"

"He dialed the wrong number."

"Yeah?" Remo said slowly. "I don't suppose this has anything to to with that lever you had me throw?"

"It armed the telephone."

"Armed?" Remo said blankly. "How do you arm a telephone?"

"By pushing the little lever, of course," Chiun said impatiently. "Emperor, shall I remove the garbage?"

"How can you talk of garbage at a time like this?" Remo asked.

No one answered him. The Master of Sinanju stepped behind the desk. He plucked something from one voluminous sleeve and lifted Ransome's slack face up by the hair. Chiun affixed a Band-Aid to the still-steaming forehead. Written across it were the words Do NOT RESUSCITATE. He pushed the leather chair away and into a closet, Norvell Ransome's corpulent body-still clutching the half-melted receiver-jiggling with an almost boneless animation.

"Looks like he got the same medicine he tried to feed me," Remo said as the closet door was shut on the corpse.

At Smith's signal, Chiun pushed the wheelchair behind the desk. Smith wordlessly opened a drawer and pulled out a red telephone. He lifted the receiver and waited.

Presently he said, "Mr. President, this is Harold W. Smith. I am calling to inform you of the accidental death of my temporary replacement, Norvell Ransome." Smith paused. "He was electrocuted attempting to tamper with areas of our computer systern he was not authorized to access.... Yes, it is regrettable. Yes, I am prepared to resume my former responsibilities if you will sanction continued CURE operations."

Smith listened as he waited. "Thank you, Mr. President, I will report as soon as all the loose ends are cleared up."

Smith hung up, grim-faced.

"Master Chiun," he said coldly. "How compromised are we?"

"The woman named Vanderkloot knows of Folcroft, but not of CURE."

"I see."

Smith's gray eyes fell upon Remo Williams. "And you, Remo. Who knows you still exist?"

Remo considered. "Naomi. Haines. He's the guy who executed me once and almost got a second chance. The prison warden. And I'd say, oh, maybe two thousand hardened convicts, give or take a few." Remo's smile was dark and taunting.

"Hmmmm," Smith was saying. "Other than Haines, how many of these know you were executed years ago?"

"Just Haines, as far as I know. Why?"

"Because all serious security risks must be neutralized as rapidly as possible," Smith said. He was looking past Remo. Remo turned around. Dr. Alan Dooley stood helplessly, his eyes sick.

"Chiun," Smith said quietly.

"As you wish, Emperor," the Master of Sinanju said, advancing on Dr. Dooley.

"What's he going to do?" Remo asked anxiously. Dr. Dooley shrank back against a wall.

"Wait, you can't do this. I helped you, Smith. I saved your life."

"No," Chiun corrected. "I saved his life. I imparted new strength so that his heart could heal itself."

"But I'm on your side, Smith!" Dr. Dooley whimpered. He was afraid of the old Asian. He didn't know why. He was ancient. Frail. But those oblique hazel eyes filled him with dread.

"Wait a minute," Remo said, horrified. He addressed Smith. "How can you kill him? What did he ever do except help you out?"

"Make it quick and painless," Smith said, "even though the man is a child molester."

"A defiler of children!" squeaked Chiun. He was standing before the cowering doctor now.

"But I helped you!" Dooley screeched. "All of you!"

The Master of Sinanju's hands, nail-headed hydras, transfixed Dr. Alan Dooley. One homed in on his staring face. It filled his vision. He never saw the other hand disappear. It drove in once, into his heart, and pulled back so fast the nails were clear of blood. Dr. Dooley's face registered uncomprehending shock. He looked down. Over his heart, five bright scarlet dots grew into spots and spread in all directions, forming an unstoppable red stain.

Dr. Alan Dooley crumpled at the Master of Sinanju's unconcerned feet.

"Jesus Christ!" Remo said, turning on Smith. "You are the most cold-blooded son of a bitch I've ever seen outside of the can. That guy saved your butt. Or doesn't that count for anything?"

"He knew too much. And he had been targeted for exposure and probable prison. This was a better fate than prison would have been, don't you agree?"

"Whatever happened to due process?" Remo wanted to know. His fists were clenched in anger.

"Sometimes circumstances force us to make exceptions," Smith told him sadly, "so that due process can be maintained for the majority of Americans. That is the purpose of CURE. Ransome, for all his access to our secrets, missed that point. He thought CURE was an acronym. It is not. CURE is simply that -a cure for America's ills. If our work is allowed to continue to its ultimate end, CURE will cease to exist because the need for CURE will have ended. That is our goal. No one must be allowed to stand in the way of that goal."

"So what about me?" Remo said angrily. "Back to prison-or are you going to snuff me too?"

"Chiun," Smith said tonelessly, looking Remo in the eye. "You know what to do."

"Not without a fight," Remo warned. He whirled. He never completed the turn. A hand at the back of his neck squeezed and his vision clouded over like a fast-moving line squall....

Remo awoke suddenly. He was strapped down in a big steel-and-leather chair studded with dials and cables. And looking at him with clinical detachment, sitting in his wheelchair, was Dr. Harold W. Smith.

Oh, Christ, he thought. That bastard Smith is going to fry me himself. Remo tried to turn his head. When it wouldn't move, he became conscious of a band of metal encircling his neck, restraining him. He frowned, wondering what kind of electric chair went around the neck, not the temple.

"See you in hell, Smith," he grated. Smith gestured in such a way that Remo became aware that there was someone beside him, hovering at the edge of his field of vision.

Then the neckband popped. Remo jerked his head free. Someone reached over and lifted the domelike helmet that had covered his head. It was an unfamiliar man in hospital green. A doctor. Wordlessly he undid the straps that pinioned Remo's wrists, biceps, and ankles.

Remo looked around. The room was filled with complicated electronic equipment, computers, and wheeled control stations. Everything, it seemed, was connected to the chair by coaxial cable or wiring.

Chiun stood off to one side, watching him with the cocked head inquisitiveness of a terrier.

"Please leave us alone with the subject, Doctor," Smith said tonelessly.

The doctor complied and swiftly left the room. Remo got out of the chair, rubbing his wrists. "What do you remember, Remo?" Smith asked dryly.

Remo blinked. It was as if his brain had been cleaned of the foglike heaviness that he hadn't been able to shake since Florida State.

"All of it," Remo said bitterly. "Mostly how you rigged my very own house so you could dispose of me like used facial tissue."

"When you joined the organization, you understood that we were all expendable."

"Except me, of course," Chiun put in smugly.

"You're siding with Smith on this?" Remo accused. "I don't believe it. After all we've been through together."

"I serve Smith, as do you," Chiun rejoined. "Smith serves his president. What more is there to be said?"

"Thank you. Now I know where I stand. And what I said earlier still goes. I quit."

"Remo, let me explain," Smith said quickly. "First, what you went through was a contingency operation. Designed simply to get you out of circulation in the event of my being incapacitated. Upon my recovery, you would have been salvaged."

"I love your choice of words," Remo growled, folding his arms.

"It was Ransome's doing that brought you to the brink," Smith went on. "And he has been paid back in his own coin. You did that yourself. That is the end of that. But I have a higher responsibility to America. As you know, in the early days of our association, I had an arrangement with Chiun. Were CURE compromised, and I forced to swallow the poison pill I carry at all times"-Smith extracted a coffin-shaped pill from a pocket of his bathrobe-"it would be his responsibility to end your life quickly and painlessly and then quietly return to Korea. CURE would disappear as if it had never been. No one would ever know that democracy had survived the twentieth century because of our important work."

"Do me a big favor," Remo shot back. "Skip the lecture. My memory's fine now. Too fine."

"If you wish, we can ... ah ... edit out all recollections of your recent death-row experiences. There is no need for you to suffer from them."

"No, I'm keeping them. They'll remind me what a prince of a fellow you are, Smith."

Smith cleared his throat. "I devised this contingency plan after the crisis of a few years ago when the Soviets learned of our existence and blackmailed the last president into turning Chiun over to them."

"I remember it well," Remo said acidly.

"As do I," Smith said without rancor. "It was the first time I had been called upon to order you terminated. An order which Master Chiun refused pointblank."

"I did not feel like killing Remo that day," Chiun said officiously. "Not in front of my villagers. They foolishly believe that Remo will support them after I am dust. They would not understand."

"On that day, I took my poison pill. I would have died had it not been for you," Smith said tonelessly.

"I like your concept of reciprocity," Remo remarked dryly.

"You brought me back from the brink of death, but the problem remained. We solved it, you and I. Not as friends, but as uneasy allies. Do not misunderstand our relationship, Remo. I have orders and obligations to my country which come before everything. I will never shirk them as long as I live. But the events of that affair showed me without doubt that the old contingency plan was no longer valid. You have grown beyond your deep-seated patriotism. You are perhaps more Sinanju now than American. And Master Chiun sees you as the heir to Sinanju. You mean more to him than his loyalty to me."

"I could be persuaded to reconsider that attitude," Chiun said hopefully. "For additional gold." Neither Remo nor Smith looked in Chiun's direction. The Master of Sinanju watched them intently. "CURE cannot operate without safeguards to prevent our existence from becoming public knowledge," Smith went on. "It is not pleasant, but it is necessary. I hope you will see the events of the last week in that light."

"What I said before still goes," Remo snapped. "I quit. C'mon, Chiun." Remo started for the door. A squeaky voice stopped him in his tracks.

"Write if you get work," Chiun called pleasantly. Remo turned, his face hurt. "You aren't coming?"

"Alas," Chiun said in a forlorn voice, "I am under contract to Emperor Smith. But do not let that stop you."

Remo hesitated. "I'm really going," he said.

"It is always sad when a child takes off on his own. But perhaps one day you will return." Chiun turned to Smith. "If Remo changes his mind, Emperor, will you forgive him the heartbreak he is causing us both?"

Smith nodded. "Now, if you'll excuse me," he said, "I must return to my office. My examination of Ransome's message-traffic files indicates that our exposure extends to the governor of Florida. I have a very difficult decision to make."

Smith spun his wheelchair about.

"Maybe we should discuss this first," Remo said slowly.

At the door, Smith stopped and turned his head.

"Would you two please take your discussion elsewhere?" he asked. "The technicians need this room." Smith sent the wheelchair into the swinging door and was gone.

"So," Remo asked Chiun, "where do I stand with you?"

"I will tell Smith whatever he needs to hear, for I accept his gold. But you are the future of my village."

"I'll accept that," Remo said. "For now. You know, he probably has a contingency plan with your name on it too."

Chiun beamed happily. "I am not worried. And rest assured that should any harm befall you due to any action by Smith, he will pay dearly."

"I think Smith understands that."

"You see?" Chiun said, his elfin smile widening.

"And I think he's counting on that," Remo said flatly. "He already took his poison pill once. And he didn't like it. He probably figures you'll be quicker."

Chiun's beaming face quirked. His smile collapsed. "The fiend!" Chiun flared. "Is there no limit to his craftiness? Come, let us discuss this unpleasantness where the walls do not have ears. And I would like to examine our house for more of Smith's infernal devices. The man is truly a sneak. Invading our very home to work his underhanded schemes."

"All right," Remo said. "I could use a good meal. You wouldn't believe the kind of slop they serve in prison. "

"No brown rice?" Chiun asked, aghast. "Only white?"

As they left the room, they passed an attendant wheeling a bundled woman in a wheelchair. Her face was shaded under a wide sunhat.

"Hey!" Remo called as he watched the woman being wheeled into the memory-altering room. "I think that was Naomi. Smith's going to-"

Remo started back. Chiun stopped him.

"It is better than eliminating her," he cautioned. Remo hesitated.

"Guess you're right," he agreed reluctantly. "Besides, she was a twit. Hell of a business we're in, isn't it?"

Chiun shrugged. "It puts duck on the table."

In Starke, Florida, Harold Haines sat in his easy chair, a loaded .38 revolver in his lap. The TV was off. He had not watched it in days. He had not slept in days. His eyes were fixed on the triple-locked door as if on his own tombstone.

"He's coming back," Haines muttered. "I know he is. It's just a matter of time."

He was all alone now. The scuttlebutt was that Warden McSorley had been transferred to Utah. Haines did not believe that. He knew he would be next to disappear. He looked at the weapon in his lap. He picked it up. He wondered if a .38 had enough stopping power to kill a dead man. Did anything have enough stopping power to kill Remo Williams? He shuddered. The answer, of course, was no.

Slowly he placed the oily barrel of the .38 into his mouth. He bit down hard and with his thumb pushed on the trigger.

The report was loud in the tiny motor home. The window in back of Harold Haines' head shattered. Haines looked down the smoking barrel of the weapon he had yanked from his mouth at the last possible moment. It was like staring down a tunnel without another end.

"I ... I can't do it!" he sobbed.

Then Harold Haines remembered something he could do. He laid aside the weapon and got his toolbox out from under the sink.

He spent the last evening of his life wiring his favorite easy chair to the portable gasoline generator that sat out in the sultry, mosquito-infested Florida night. For once, he let the mosquitoes bite him. For it no longer mattered.

A week later, Remo burst into the front room of his Rye, New York, home waving a newspaper. "Hey, Chiun, check this out!" he called.

The Master of Sinanju emerged from the kitchen. His hazel eyes lit up. Remo's face was free of care. He was recovering. In time, even the foul tobacco smoke would be gone from his breath.

"What it is, Remo?" he asked, advancing happily.

"Naomi made the front page," Remo said. He held up the National Enquirer. The headline read: SPACE ALIENS STEAL RENOWNED ANTHROPOLOGIST'S MEMORY! Remo turned to an inside page and began reading. " 'Noted anthropologist Naomi Vanderkloot was discovered wandering dazed through the science building of the University of Massachusetts last Thursday. When questioned by local authorities, she claimed not to remember anything that had happened during the last five years. An Enquirer panel of psychics speculate that space aliens abducted her and sucked out her memory cells. It is believed that these beings come from a distant galaxy where the turbulent atmosphere prevents ordinary television reception, and are forced to steal earthling memory cells, which they play back on VCR-like machines. Similar memory wipes have been reported in Sweden, Rio de Janeiro and-' "

"Enough," Chiun said. "I do not need to hear any more of this nonsense. If it amuses you, that is enough for me."

"Wait," Remo said brightly. "I was just getting to the best part. Listen: 'Questioned about her plans, Professor Vanderkloot said that she's organizing a field trip to the remote Philippine jungles, where she intends to befriend the semilegendary Moomba tribe in hopes of solving the riddle of their secret magic rites.' Isn't that perfect?" Remo asked, laughing uncontrollably.

The Master of Sinanju examined his pupil closely and decided Remo was not necessarily demented. "White humor," Chiun said, returning to the kitchen. "I will never understand it."