Death Therapy

Remo waited until the man at the bow walked slowly by him and had his back to Remo. Noiselessly, Remo hoisted himself up over the low deck wall and on silent feet raced the twenty yards to a door in the ship's side. He slid inside quickly and found himself in a narrow corridor. Remo took off his white sports shirt and turned it around so that the buttons were behind his neck. At a fast glance, it might look like a tee shirt and with Remo's dark slacks, he might look enough like a sailor to avoid rousing suspicion.

Remo began to work his way up stairwells, heading for where he knew the captain's cabin would be. After three flights of steps, the steps ended. He turned left into a passageway, then darted quickly back into the opening to the stairwell.

A sailor with a shotgun stood in front of a door in the center of the passageway. That must be the captain's cabin.

Remo thought for a moment, then took a tank-type fire extinguisher down from the wall next to him. Cradling it in his arms like a baby, he began to whistle and quickly stepped off into the passageway, his feet wide apart, affecting the seaman's rolling walk. Up ahead, the sailor sprang to attention as Remo drew near. Remo grinned, nodded at him and kept walking.

"Hold it," the sailor called. "Where are you going?"

"Replacing that fire extinguisher down there," Remo said, holding the tank high in his arms to hide his shirt. "It's got to be recharged."

The man with the gun hesitated, then said, "All right. Step it up."

"Aye, aye," Remo said and then took a step forward, drawing abreast of the man. He spun and tapped him alongside the head with the heavy galvanized tank of the extinguisher. The man dropped heavily to the floor. He would be unconscious for quite a while, Remo thought.

Inside his cabin, Admiral Crust sat up on his bed. He was going to telephone Lithia Forrester. Maybe see her again tomorrow. If need be, even sign up for her stupid therapy program.

Crust's head snapped up as his cabin door flew open and a man slid in, closing the door rapidly behind him.

"Admiral Crust?" the man asked.

"Who'd you expect? John Paul Jones? You've got a hell of a nerve parading in here without knocking."

"Admiral, who I am isn't important. I've come to tell you your life's in danger."

Another nut come to warn him about Remo Donaldson, Crust thought. But then he looked into the hard eyes of the man facing him across the cabin and he knew that this was Remo Donaldson. Best to play it easy and gentle.

"Come in, man," the admiral said. "What's this all about?"

"Admiral, I believe you know a Dr. Lithia Forrester?"

"Yes, that's right."

"Well, she plans to kill you. In fact, she thinks I'm here right now killing you for her.*"

"I've only met this Forrester woman twice," Crust said. "Why would she want to kill me?"

"She's involved in some kind of scheme against our country, Admiral. I don't know all the details of it. But somehow you're in her way and she plans to kill you."

"And who are you? How do you know all this?"

"Just a government employee, Admiral," Remo said, stepping another pace into the room. "And it's my business to know."

"What would you recommend I do?"

"The guards are a good idea on the ship. Double them. And tell them no one is to be allowed access to you. At least for the next couple of days."

"Things will be safe in a couple of days?" Crust asked.

"Things will be over in a couple of days," Remo said, "Admiral, I don't have much time. But believe me. This is important. Stay out of sight. Stay away from Dr. Forrester. Be careful. I'm sorry that I can't tell you any more."

"Secret, hmmm?"

"Top secret, Admiral."

Behind Remo, the door flew open and he felt a gun barrel pressed against the base of his skull.

"Admiral. Are you all right?"

"Yes, Chief, I am. What happened to the man outside the door?"

"Knocked out. We saw him in the hall and decided to take a chance and bust right in."

"Good thing you did," the Admiral said, still sitting on his bed. The phone at his elbow began to ring. He held up a hand to the three sailors behind Remo, indicating they should wait a moment, and lifted the phone to his ear.

"Yes, Lithia," he said. "Just a moment." He smiled at Remo. Deep down in his stomach Remo felt the tension of being trapped. "Men," Admiral Crust said, "I want you to take Mr. Remo Donaldson here back to shore. Make sure he has an interesting voyage," he said, smiling.

"We will, Admiral. Very interesting," said the sailor who held the gun at Remo's neck. "Let's go, you," he said to Remo and jabbed him with the gun barrel.

Goddamn fool, Remo thought. He had been set up by Dr. Forrester, set up like a schoolchild, set into a trap, and he had walked in like the Redcoat Marching Band, noisily and stupidly.

Crust again brought the phone to his ear as Remo was herded away. At the door, Remo glanced back over his shoulder. Admiral James Benton Crust sat there on his bed, but his hard, piercing eyes were melting into pails of insipid mush. Admiral Crust was listening. And then he was humming. The same tune.

Remo could kick himself. The admiral had known his name. Lithia Forrester must have warned him that Remo was coming. She was calling to check on the results of her handiwork. Now these three sailors were going to have to pay the price.

As they stepped from the admiral's cabin, the sailor Remo had knocked out groaned on the floor. But the other three ignored him and marched Remo along the passageway toward the stairs. The one the admiral had called "chief" still held the gun to the back of Remo's neck as they walked quickly down the stairs to the main deck.

"How'd you get here, Donaldson?" asked the chief. He was not Hollywood's idea of a Navy frogman. He was a pudgy pail of fat with wild, thinning, black curly hair. Remo thought he would have been more at home behind the counter of a candy store in the Bronx than aboard the ship.

"I swam."

"Good swimmer, huh?"

"I can splash around a little."

"How come your clothes aren't wet?"

"They dried. I've been here three hours waiting for my chance."

Remo did not want them to know about the small boat tied up under the bow. He might have use for it yet. And if he were lucky—if they were all lucky—he might not have to kill them.

They were on the main deck now, amidships, and the thin salt air laid a coat of damp on everything. The three men herded Remo along to a side ladder and funnelled him down to the water where a small powerboat waited far below.

They sat Remo in the center of the boat. One of the sailors perched on the bow. The chief sat behind

Remo, his rifle still at Remo's neck. The third sailor got into the stern of the small launch, pressed the electric starter and untied the line lashing the boat to the steps.

He opened the throttle and the boat rapidly pulled away from the battleship Alabama, heading out into the inky darkness of Chesapeake Bay, toward the shore some four hundred yards away. The lights of houses and buildings twinkled on the shore in silent invitation.

They had gone only about a hundred yards when the motor was cut and the boat began to drift.

"End of the line for you, Donaldson," the chief said.

"Well, that's life," Remo said. "Don't suppose you'd change your mind if I offered to enlist? No. I guess you wouldn't." And then, in a startled voice, Remo called, "What in the hell is that?"

The man perched on the bow was a sailor, not a policeman. He followed Remo's eyes and turned to look out over the bow and Remo spun his head, sliding it alongside the barrel of the chief's gun. He locked an arm around the chief's blubbery chest and went over the side into the black water, pulling the chief after him. The rifle slid out of the chief's hands and swayed delicately away under the ink-black water.

Chief Petty Officer Benjamin Josephson was a good frogman, although that fact was disguised by his pudgy, bloated shape. He had all the arrogance of a man sure of his skills and it showed in his movements and gestures. His skill in the water had earned him the respect of his men, along with the worthiest kind of respect—his own self-respect.

But he found himself now being treated very disrespectfully with a powerful arm locked around him. With his feet, Remo tried to kick some distance between himself and the boat. As long as he had the chief with him, the sailors in the boat couldn't shoot.

Then Josephson wrapped his hands tightly around Remo's neck. The two of them went under, then surfaced for air. Josephson gulped it down impulsively, like a favourite whiskey, and growled: "Donaldson, you're dead."

"Not yet, swabby," Remo said and then went down again, pulling Josephson deep into the water. Under the cover of the dark water, Remo let Josephson go. Blows were out of the question, so he dug his thumbs into the back of Josephson's hands, crippling the nerves and slowly Josephson's grip on Remo's neck weakened and then released.

Then they were up again for air and then back down under the surface. Josephson drove his head forward, trying to smash Remo's face, but Remo slid alongside it.

Remo kept his legs moving and they were moving steadily away from the small powerboat. When they surfaced again, Remo could no longer see the boat. And since its motor had not started up again, the two seamen must still be there, still searching the water. Probably, Remo thought, they would be concentrating their search toward the shore. But instead, Remo was kicking and stroking his way back toward the Alabama.

He was far enough out of range now. They came up again and Remo pivoted around behind Chief Josephson and locked a powerful forearm around his neck and treaded water to stay in place.

"You want to live?" he hissed into the sailor's ear.

"Go screw yourself, Donaldson. You're a dead man." Josephson started a shout

Deep in his throat, Remo could feel the rumble and then hear the first sounds: "Hey, men…" and then it stopped as Remo muscled his forearm and cut Josephson's air, crushing his adam's apple back deep into his throat.

"Sorry, fella," Remo said. "Anchors aweigh." He continued to apply pressure until he heard the telltale crack of bones breaking. He released his arm and the chief pitched forward, head-first in the water, began to drift away and down, his stringy, curly hair floating about his head like an inverted Portuguese man-of-war, and then slowly sinking below the surface.

Remo took a deep breath and turned, swimming strongly for the ship. It was still silent behind him; the two sailors must still be searching.

Remo reached the small boat he had tied up at the bow and untied it. He climbed in and pushed himself off from the side of the ship and, using a single oar, began to stroke powerfully toward shore.

Then, behind him, he heard a tremendous roar. His boat bobbed in the water, and through the wooden floor, Remo could feel the ocean vibrating under his feet. He turned and looked back. The battleship Alabama had started its engines. Covered now by the roar of the Alabama, Reno started his own boat with a pull on the motor cord and began to head back to shore. Halfway there, he saw the battleship's power launch, the two sailors still in it, skidding back toward the battleship, their search abandoned.

Remo shook a chill from his shoulders. So Lithia Forrester had set him up. That was one he owed her, he thought.

Behind him, the powerful engines of the Alabama were running strongly now. What was that all about, Remo wondered as he eased himself into the dock. Was the ship going someplace? Was the song that Crust had been humming about to trigger another act of death and destruction?

CHAPTER TWENTY

The sun had already risen over the Island of Manhattan, illuminating the day's supply of air pollution, when the battleship Alabama came lumbering in from the Atlantic toward New York Bay.

Outside the control room, the helmsman was trying to explain something to the Officer of the Watch.

"I think there's something wrong with him, sir."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, before he chased me out, sir, he was humming all the time."

"Humming?"

"Yes sir."

"What is wrong with humming if the admiral wants to hum?"

"Nothing, sir. But that's not all, sir."

"Oh?"

"I don't know how to say this, sir."

"Well, just say it, man."

"The admiral was… well, sir, he was playing with himself."

"What?"

"Playing with himself, sir. You know what I mean."

"You'd better go below, sailor, and check into sick bay," the first officer said. As the sailor walked slowly away, the first officer scratched his head.

Admiral James Benton Crust had indeed been playing with himself. But he had stopped now. He had decided he would rather hum. So he hummed. Sometimes, for a change of pace, he whistled…

And every so often, just so those lazy fakers who didn't really belong in this man's navy wouldn't forget, he called down to the engine room for "More Power. Full Speed Ahead." Which was odd, since the ship had been at full power since leaving Washington.

Admiral Crust looked around the room, humming, soaking up the feel and tradition of its highly polished wood. The Navy could be a life for a man, if the man were big enough for the Navy. Admiral Crust—master seaman., master diplomat, master lover—was big enough for anything.

Onward, he steamed. To his left, he saw the Kill Van Kull and beyond that, the smoky air hovering over Bayonne's oil refineries. To his right was Brooklyn.

Up ahead loomed Manhattan. The Battery. Its beautiful skyline, beautiful not because of its beauty but because of its magnitude. And up ahead, slightly port of the ship, Liberty Island. The Statue of Liberty held her torch high in the air, her copper plates greened with corrosion, her smile benign, as she looked down upon her nation. Behind her back lurked Jersey City, doing all those things that the Statue of Liberty was better off not knowing about.

Admiral Crust picked up the horn again. "More power," he shouted. "You bilge rats produce some power. This is the Navy, man, not an excursion boat. More power."

Down below, in the bowels of the ship, the technicians, who monitored the power plants of a ship of the modem Navy, looked at each other in confusion. "He must think we still have people down here shovelling coal," one said. "Wonder where we are?"

"I don't know," a lieutenant senior grade answered. "But at this speed, we're going to get wherever we're going in a pretty big damn hurry."

Alone in the control room, Admiral James Benton Crust slowly turned the wheel to the left. Gradually, the big ship began to come about toward the port side, veering left, pulling out of its own channel and crossing over the southbound channel. He straightened the wheel. The ship was now on course.

Admiral Crust continued to hum as his big ship steamed ahead toward Liberty Island. The feeling of movement in the sheltered bay was so slight it seemed as if the Statue of Liberty itself were floating on top of the water, racing forward towards his ship.

The thousands of yards separating them quickly turned into hundreds of yards. Crust kept humming. Now he began to jump up and down on the floor of the control room, slapping his hands against his thighs.

"More power," he screamed into the horn. The ship was racing now. The sailboat "Lie-By" capsized in its trail. Two city councilmen out for a ride in a canoe were overturned. An excursion boat headed for the Statute of Liberty saw the battleship Alabama bearing down on it. Wisely, the skipper goosed his boat and narrowly got out of the path of the great warship, although two passengers fell overboard in the rocking turbulence that followed the Alabama through the water. Overhead, Navy planes that had monitored the cruise of the Alabama ever since it had taken off without orders, and all through the night as it refused to respond to radio messages, excitedly relayed reports to a nearby Naval air station.

Two hundred yards now and closing fast. Then the heavy battleship crossed out of the continually-dredged deepwater channels and its prow began to bite into the mud at the bottom of the bay. But its force and impetus kept it moving forward and the motors continued to scream. Now mud was enveloping the propellers and the ship was no longer cruising, it was sliding, still at full speed, but then it began to slow down as its sharp-edged prow bit more deeply into the mud, but it kept coming and then it crashed into a stone pier, shearing it off from the body of the island like a pat of butter sliced off a warm quarter-pound stick. The ship buckled up against the compacted garbage base of the island—bit its way in, ten, fifteen, then twenty feet, and then stopped, the motors still roaring through the mud, but without effect now.

The ship quivered and pitched over lightly on its side, a sputtering, frustrated behemoth emplanted in an island. On the island, park personnel ran about wildly in confusion and shock.

Admiral James Benton Crust left the control room on the dead run, heading for the engine room, far below in the hull of the ship. Seamen were running around in panic, ignoring him.

Some had already jumped overboard onto the island, even though the ship was in no danger of sinking. The whoops of boat sirens could be heard in the air as pleasure boats, then tags and other commercial vessels in the area began to ply toward the scene to offer help.

Admiral Crust raced through the now tilted corridors, oblivious to the excitement, humming to himself, occasionally waving at seamen he recognized.

He entered the engine room.

"All right. All hands, abandon ship."

Seamen began to scurry toward the door.

"You will leave in an orderly manner," the admiral ordered angrily. They slowed their run down to a trot.

The lieutenant senior grade in charge of the engine room saluted: "Admiral, sir. Can I be of assistance?"

"Yes, get out of here."

"Aye aye, sir. And the admiral?"

Crust was even now shoving the lieutenant through the bulkhead door. "The admiral is going to show you jug-heads of the Modern Navy how a real seaman dies with his ship."

He locked the bulkhead door, spinning the wheel lock, until it was secure. Then, humming to himself, he began to open the sea valves.

Oily black muddy water began to pour into the engine room. Clouds of oily putrid steam arose as the water engulfed the huge diesel motors and they sputtered and stopped. Admiral Crust giggled.

"Give me sail, every time, lads, give me sail. Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum."

The young lieutenant pounded on the bulkhead door.

"Admiral, let me in."

Inside, James Benton Crust shouted: "I know what I'm doing. It's the Navy way."

The lieutenant kept pounding for several more minutes. But then there was no one left to hear.

Admiral James Benton Crust, Annapolis '42, was face up, against the metal ceiling of the engine room compartment, the water pressure mashing his face against the steel ceiling plates.

The last thing he did in this world was hum.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The phone intruded on Remo. He rolled over and pulled his pillow over his head but still it intruded, an incessant squawking that seemed to get louder with each successive ring.

"Chiun, get the phone," he grumbled. But Chiun had already left their room at the Human Awareness Laboratories for his morning exercise, which consisted primarily of picking flowers.

So Remo rolled over and snatched the receiver from its cradle.

"Yeah," he snarled.

"Smith here."

"You gone bananas? What the hell are you calling me on this open phone for?"

"It might not matter much longer anyway if we don't get some results. Did you ever hear of an Admiral Crust?"

Remo slid up into a sitting position in bed. "Yeah, I heard of him. Why?"

"This morning he rammed a battleship into the Statue of Liberty. Then he drowned himself in the engine room. He was humming all the way."

"Poor bastard," Remo said. "I was with him last night. I wanted to warn him but I was too late. They had already hooked him."

Remo got to his feet now and was pacing back and forth. Smith said, "With luck, I'll know this afternoon about the bidding."

"Good," Remo said. "I'll call you. I've got some garbage to put out."

"Don't be emotional," Smith said. "Be careful."

"I'm always careful," Remo said, slowly replacing the phone on its stand.

It had been a good trap, he thought, and he had fallen right into it. Sent to kill Admiral Crust; sent into a trap from which he was not supposed to escape. And then Admiral Crust being triggered to run amok. Lithia had not been in her apartment last night when Remo returned. Probably out celebrating the death of Remo Donaldson. No doubt, she believed he was dead… as soon she would be. Remo Williams was finished playing games.

He was still wearing the salt-stiffened clothes of the night before. He changed rapidly into a fresh shirt and slacks, stepped out into the hall.

It was still early and there were no people in sight. Remo rode the elevator up to the tenth floor. Lithia Forrester's secretary was not yet at her desk and Remo walked past her empty chair, and without knocking, pushed open the large oak door to enter Lithia Forrester's office.

Her office was bathed brightly in morning sunshine pouring through the overhead dome. But the office was empty. Remo saw a door on the far wall and went through it, into a plush chrome and glass living room. That too was empty.

Remo's trained ears picked up a sound off to the right. He passed through another closed door and was in a bedroom, done all in black. The rug was thick and black; so were the bedspread and drapes. Not even a slice of yellow sunlight slithered into the room around the heavy, lined drapes; the only illumination came from an antique Chinese figurine lamp on the dresser.

The sound he had heard came from the bathroom off the bedroom, the sound of water from a shower and, merged with it, the sound of a woman singing.

Her voice was melodic and tuneful as she sang the melody: "Super-kali-fragil-istic-expi-ali-docious." She sang the one line over and over again in a high, good-humoured kind of chant.

Remo sat on her bed, his eyes toward the slightly-opened bathroom door, waiting, thinking that butchers always seemed to enjoy their work. And Lithia Forrester was a butcher. There had been Clovis Porter and General Dorfwill and Admiral Crust. The CIA man Barrett. And how many others had died because of her? How many had Remo himself killed?

Lithia Forrester owed America at least her own life. Remo Williams had come to collect.

The sound of the shower stopped, Lithia Forrester sang more softly to herself now in the bathroom. Remo could imagine her towelling the tall rich body that instilled in every man a satyr's dreams.

He began to whistle the melody. "Super-kali-frag-il-istic-expi-ali-docious."

He whistled it louder. She heard it, because she stopped singing and the bathroom door flew open.

Lithia Forrester stood there, naked and golden, the bathroom light from behind her casting an aura around her flaxen hair and peach body.

She was smiling in anticipation, but then she saw Remo sitting on her bed, only eight feet away, and she stopped. Her eyes widened in horror and fright. Her mouth hung open.

"Expecting someone else?" Remo said.

Then she was embarrassed. She turned her body slightly away from Remo and thrust an arm across her breasts.

"Too late to be shy," Remo said. "Remember? I turned off your lights last night? I've come to do it again."

Lithia paused, then dropped her arm and turned her full body toward Remo. "I remember, Remo. I remember. You did turn off my lights. And it was never better. I want you to do it again. Right now. Right here."

She walked forward until she was only inches from Remo. His face was at the level of her waist. She reached behind his head and pulled him forward until his face was buried against her soft, still-damp belly.

"What did you do last night, Remo?" she asked. "After you left me."

"If you mean did I kill Admiral Crust as you told me to, no. Did I fall into the trap you set for me and get killed by Crust's men, no. Did I stop Crust from ramming his ship today into the Statue of Liberty, no." He spoke softly as if confiding a secret to her stomach. He reached his hands slowly around her back, resting them on her firm smooth cheeks, and then he reached both hands up and grabbed two handfuls of long blonde hair and yanked her head back with a snap.

He jumped to his feet and spun Lithia Forrester around and tossed her onto the bed.

"I got cheated all around, sweetheart. And now I'm back for a refund."

She lay on the bed, momentarily frightened. Then she slid one leg up and turned slightly onto her side, a white pool of sensuality on the blackness of the bed. "Shall I wrap it or will you have it here?" she asked with a smile. Her teeth made her skin look dark. She reached her arms up toward Remo invitingly and her breasts rose toward him, pointed and inviting. Then Remo was over her and then he joined her.

He had never seen a more beautiful woman, Remo thought, as he paused over her before their bodies melted together in a confluence of passion.

And then Lithia Forrester was a dervish, bucking and rocking spastically under Remo, and Remo had no chance to do to her all the things he wanted to do because he was too busy hanging on.

She hissed and groaned and gyrated her way across the bed in a passion that was curiously without passion and then, from the corner of his eye, Remo saw her arm reach up to the bedside end table and fumble in the drawer and come out with a pair of scissors.

Remo was filled with fury at this woman who killed remorselessly and in whom he had not found a spark of honest passion or love and he began to grind her down, matching her artificial frenzy with an even greater frenzy of his own—a frenzy of hatred. Then she was pressed up against the headboard. Remo ploughed on, inexorably, and she was moaning, but it was a moan of pain, not pleasure. Behind his back she joined both her hands on the handle of the scissors and raised her arms high in the air over Remo's broad back.

Then she brought her hands down, scissors point first, as Remo slid out from under her arms. The scissors whizzed past the top of his head and buried themselves deeply in Lithia Forrester's chest.

She felt too much shock to feel pain. Then a look of blank stupidity crossed her face and she looked at Remo with kind of a quizzical hurt in her eyes as he pulled away from her. He watched the blood send trails down the sides of her golden body as the handle of the scissors throbbed cruelly in the light from the single lamp, shuddering with each weak beat of her dying heart.

"That's what I meant by turning off your lights, sweetheart," Remo said and backed away to stand at the bottom of the bed, watching Lithia Forrester die. He anointed her going by whistling, "Super-kali-fragil-istic-expi-ali-docious."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Dr. Harold K. Smith sat behind his desk at Folcroft Sanitarium, his back to the piles of papers, and stared out the one-way glass at the calm waters of Long Island Sound, waiting for the telephone to ring.

Since CURE had been founded years before to help equalize the fight against crime, Folcroft had been its secret headquarters. Now Smith found himself wondering how secret it still was. Some of its security had been breached; the attack on Remo had proved that. Unless Remo were successful, there was no way to tell just how high up that breach might have occurred. Smith shuddered at the thought, but it could have come right from the Oval Office of the White House.

If that were the case, there was an aluminium box down in the basement in which Harold K. Smith was ready to lock himself; to take to his grave all the secrets of a nation's last desperate fight against crime and chaos.

Unless Remo somehow could remove the threat; unless the Destroyer could again make America safe against those overseas forces who would buy its government to turn it to their own ends.

But why didn't the telephone ring?

Harold K. Smith, the only director CURE ever had, expected three calls and he wanted only two of them. The one from Switzerland and the one from Remo. The third? Well, he would worry about that when it came.

The phone rang and Smith spun around, hearing the squeak of the chair and telling himself to be sure to have it oiled. He picked up the phone and saids with no trace of emotion or haste;

"Smith."

It was one of the calls he wanted. A CURE division chief who thought he worked for the U.S. Bureau of Narcotics had finally heard from a friend in Switzerland who had been talking to his own friend, a ski instructor. And the ski instructor had told how his prize pupil, a young American secretary to a Swiss banker, was flying back to New York today. But she expected to be coming back right away because she had return tickets for tomorrow night.

The CURE division chief who thought he worked for the Bureau of Narcotics thought the Swiss banker was probably a narcotics courier and he asked Smith: "Should I have him picked up at the airport?"

"No," Smith said. "Just have customs wave him through."

"But…"

"No buts," Smith said. "Wave him through," He hung up the phone and turned again to the window. That jibed with information they had received from diplomatic sources about chiefs of intelligence coming to the United States under false names, supposedly assigned to the United Nations Missions. They would also arrive today; CURE had learned they would be leaving tomorrow night That meant the auction would be tomorrow. But where?

Tomorrow. Time was running out… running out on CURE, running out on Remo Williams, running out on America.

Dr. Smith watched the waters of Long Island Sound lap at the rocks In front of his windows and ate his frustration. With time running out, all he could do was wait. Wait and hope.

It was almost noon when the telephone rang again. Again, Smith spun and lifted the receiver.

"Smith."

"Remo," the voice said. "She's dead."

"The auction's tomorrow," Smith said.

"Where?"

"I don't know," Smith said. "If she's dead, will that cancel it?"

"Afraid not," Remo said. "She was in it with somebody."

"Who?"

"I don't know yet. I'm still looking."

"Then we really haven't accomplished anything," Smith said, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"Don't worry about it, Smitty. We'll tie it up with a bow by tomorrow. And leave the auction to me. I'll take care of it."

"All right, Remo. We're counting on you. Keep in touch."

Smith felt buoyed by confidence after talking to Remo, even thought he did not see how even Remo could bring the whole scheme crashing down.

He stood up behind his desk, anxious to leave his office, to escape the third phone call—the unwanted call—when the phone rang.

With a sigh of resignation but with the decisiveness built by a life's habit of doing his duty, Smith picked up the telephone.

"Smith," he said, then listened as a nervous voice poured out its worries and frustrations.

"Yes, I understand," Smith said.

"Yes, I understand."

Finally, he said, "Don't worry about it, Mr. President. We will have everything in hand."

Then he hung up. How could he tell the President the truth? How? When there was no guarantee that the President himself was not under the power of the strange mind-corruptors?

Smith sat down again, deciding against lunch, and began to bury himself and his worries in routine paperwork, to hope against hope that Remo Williams could act in time.

For all his confidence on the telephone, Remo was stumped. He had gone through Lithia Forrester's office files three times and had found nothing. He sat in Dr. Forrester's chair behind her desk, secure behind the locked oaken doors, papers strewn all across her desk.

Finally, in frustration and anger, he swiped all the papers off the desk, brushing them onto the floor.

He looked over the desk to the couch where Lithia Forrester's secretary lay, bound and gagged. She had come into the office shortly after 9 a.m. and found Remo rifling through the file cabinets near Dr. Forrester's desk.

Instead of screaming and running, she had demanded to know what he was doing. For her trouble, she was tapped unconscious, gagged and tied up on the couch.

Remo had found his and Chiun's files. Nothing. Test results; Dr. Forrester's observations about Remo who had aggressive fantasies. Zero. No file on Dorfwill or Porter or Barrett or Bannon.

There must be a private file, Remo thought. The secretary should know where it is.

He stood up from the desk and walked over to the couch, the secretary's frightened green eyes blinking with every one of his steps. It would have been impossible for Lithia Forrester to find a woman who could outshine her, but she had tried. The secretary was a statuesque redhead and as Remo stood over her and looked into those deep green eyes, he could tell that she was a woman, a real woman, unlike the dead excuse for one on Lithia Forrester's bed.

The secretary's arms were tied behind her back, wrapped around and around with Scotch tape Remo had found on the desk, and her arms, pulled back, swelled her rich breasts out in front through the thin green sweater she wore.

Remo sat on the edge of the couch and thrust his hand under her sweater, resting it on her bare abdomen. He could feel her skin tingle under his touch. It would be easy, if only she knew something.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Do you know why I'm here?"

She shook her head.

"I'm a murderer," he said, enjoying the shock in her eyes. "Haven't you ever seen my files? You should know that."

She shook her head.

"Where is my file?" he asked.

She pointed her eyes toward the filing cabinets behind the desk, then looked back at Remo.

"It's not in there," he lied. "Where else does Dr. Forrester keep her files."

The secretary shrugged and shook her head.

Remo snaked his hand up under her sweater and fixed it on one of her pendulous breasts. The breast was overrated as an erogenous zone, but there were nerves that worked. He began to press with his fingers against the nerves of her breast and he leaned his face over close to hers.

"Think again. Where does she keep the rest of her files?"

With his free hand, Remo flipped loose the gag around the girl's mouth and then covered her lips with his own before she could scream. His other hand worked her breast. Despite herself, she became aroused.

If she had had any inclination to scream, it was lost in her return of Memo's kiss and in the workings of his meandering hand. Finally, he pulled his face away slightly: "It's important," he said. "Where are Dr. Forrester's other files?"

"Some patient files are confidential," the girl said. "I'll be fired if I tell you."

Remo kissed her again, gently. "Not by Dr. Forrester," he said. "She's dead."

"Dead?"

"I killed her," Remo said and again covered the redhead's lips with his own. His right hand now traced spirals around her breast, pausing to pinch nerves. He freed her mouth again and looked at her hard:

"I need those files. Nothing can stop me.'"

The warming fires of her own passion had weakened her and the harsh cruelty of Remo's words crushed her.

"In the bedroom closet," she said, "A safe built into the wall. But I don't have a key."

"That's okay," Remo said and kissed her again. As he kissed her, he transferred his hand from her breast to her neck and squeezed slightly on a major blood vessel. The girl passed out, smiling.

Remo refastened the gag and went into the bedroom, ignoring the dead body of Lithia Forrester sprawled on the bed, the blood now hardening along its courses down the sides of her body, her eyes still open wide with shock and fear. The scissors had stopped quivering.

It wasn't much of a safe. Remo worked the lock until it snapped off under the side of his hand. He inserted a finger through the opening, popped the latch from the inside. The heavy door swung free and Remo pulled it open,

There were three racks of red cardboard folders and Remo made three trips to carry them all back out into Lithia Forrester's sun-bright office, where he stacked them neatly on the floor against a file cabinet

They were numbered in order, starting with number one. Remo placed the first folder carefully in front of him on the now clear desk, unsure of what he was looking for, not knowing what he might find.

He found nothing. It was another patient file, just like the hundreds of others in the file cabinets Remo had rifled, this time on an assistant secretary of defense. A pile of test papers from the psychological battery that all new patients underwent. Then a page of notes handwritten on a yellow sheet in pencil in the small handwriting of a woman. Remo read the notes. Psychological drivel. Repressed feelings of aggression. Unhappy childhood. Resentment of authority. He grimaced to himself. Why did everybody's problems sound alike in the hands of a shrink?

The file numbered two was the same. A Treasury Department official. More psychological problems,

Remo began to go through the folders more quickly. Number three, number four, number five. All the same. Government officials. Test results. Lithia Forrester's impressions. Remo began grabbing them by the handful now, placing the hard red folders on the desk before him, flipping quickly through the sheets they contained.

Mountains of information—yet nothing Remo could use.

He stood up, exhaling almost in a sigh and walked from behind the desk, padding softly back and forth across the deep pile rug.

The folders must have the answer. But where was it? Now Remo knew what government officials she had under her control. That was something. But how did she do it? Who was her partner—that person she had talked to last night as Remo lay on her couch?

Keep looking.

Remo sat down again behind the desk and pulled another batch of red folders off the floor. More names. More government officials. More test results. More written analyses.

A who's who of American government. Top policy makers. Cabinet officers. Security people. Nothing to help Remo.

Folder number 71. Number 72. Number 73.

And then there was one more folder.

It was the last one and it was not numbered. Remo opened it. No test results this time. Six pages in Lithia Forrester's crabbed handwriting, six pages listing names of government officials. Remo skimmed the first page and groaned to himself—they were the same names he had gone just through.

Read carefully.

Each name was numbered and next to each name was the man's government title, his telephone numbers, and a column labelled "fee schedule."

Remo whistled to himself. Some paid $200, a day which included $100 for 50 minutes of private time. And the government was picking up a lot of the tabs. No wonder the nation was $400 billion in debt.

But under each entry was another line. It read "Potential." The number one name was the assistant secretary of defence. "Potential: leak of secrets; falsification of documents."

Number 2 was the Treasury officer. "Potential: security problems on Fort Knox gold."

Remo read the list rapidly. All the names were there. All the things that Lithia Forrester could get them to do. Things to cripple America.

Burton Barrett, Potential: exposure of CIA agents.

Bannon: Potential: investigation; force if needed.

Dorfwill. Potential: bombing incident.

That was it. Down through all the names, through. all six sheets of paper, Lithia Forrester had marked what they could be counted on to do.

From Number one through Number. 72.

Remo sighed, then carefully folded the sheets and put them in his right hip pocket. Smith could use that. Seventy-two officials who had been compromised by Lithia Forrester. There might be more than that, but at least Remo had seventy-two.

Seventy-two?

Remo glanced at the red file folders near him on the desk, then shuffled through them quickly with his hand. He found the one he was looking for. It was number 73. The folders had gone up to 73, but the list had only 72 names.

Who was missing?

He took the list from his pocket and ran his finger down the handwritten lists of names again.

The list was in alphabetical order. Bannon… Barrett… more names… Dorfwill… more names… F"s… G's. And a name was missing.

And Remo knew which one it was.

He went digging through the red patient folders until he saw the one he wanted and opened it.

He had only skimmed it before, not even looking, just assuming it was more test papers and more analysis of problems.

The folder contained that But it contained more too. Detailed notes of the whole scheme. The secret of the humming. How Lithia had controlled her victims. All in the folder belonging to Lithia Forrester's partner—or, as it turned out while Remo read it, to her lover and boss. The man who had put together the scheme to sell America.

Remo pulled the pages from the folder and placed them with the list of 72 names. He refolded them carefully, and again put them into his back pocket. With a swipe of his arm, he knocked the other file folders all over the floor, clearing the desk. He kicked his way through the folders, papers splashing, their contents hopelessly jumbled.

He walked from behind the desk and paused at the side of the secretary on the couch. She was just coming to and he leaned over her.

"Just try to be comfortable, honey. Later on, I'll send someone up to free you. And I hope we get a chance to meet again sometime." He leaned over and kissed her on the eyelids and then, with his hands, put her to sleep again.

He had work to do.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Remo paused outside the door of the room on the sixth floor, reserved for patients at the Human Awareness Laboratory.

The other patients' doors were plain gray with shiny metal handles. These doors were black. Highly polished Hack doors. A passerby might think the room did not belong to a patient. Perhaps the passerby might be correct.

Remo paused in front of the door when he heard the periodic thwack, thwack, thwack. The sound was familiar but he could not place it.

Other patients' doors had no locks. But these black double doors had a central bolt, the worst kind of lock for a double door. Any grown man, with a little forward pressure, could ease the bolt out of its slot, Remo did it with a snap of his forefinger.

The doors sprung open. Standing in a very large, plush room was a mountain of nude chocolate, its back to Remo. The head on the mountain spun around with the wheezing of an asthmatic who had exercised too much.

"Get out of here," said Dr. Lawrence Garrand, the world's foremost authority on atomic waste disposal. "I'm busy."

Garrand stood, his bare brown feet sunk into a plush white polar bear rug, his two dark rolling arms containing an avalanche of flesh, at the end of which were two almost-pointed hands holding darts.

Garrand did not move his body around because it would take several steps to accomplish. Instead, he kept his head twisted over his sloping shoulders where the cascade of flesh seemed to begin. Large white stretch marks cut his billowing buttocks into a road map. The legs looked like dried lava flows defying the law of gravity, as if the polar bear rug had vomited up the dark mass.

Yet the face underneath the flesh, the face that turned over the shoulder to glare at Remo, was a delicate, fine face.

Remo could catch a glint on the flesh of the forehead from a diffused overhead light. Garrand was perspiring. Yet the room was cool and smelled of delicate mint incense. Garrand's perspiration came apparently from the exertion of his dart throwing.

"Get out of here," Garrand wheezed.

Remo stepped into the room, never feeling so light in his life. Two steps into the room, he saw what Garrand's target was, what his body had been hiding, like a mountain obscuring a view of a valley.

There was Lithia Forrester, about a third larger than life-size, in full golden colour, naked, seated on a purple cushion, one leg folded up in front of her and the other extended full, exposing her to view. Holes punctured the blue eyes and the erogenous zones were perforated with the memory of thousands of darts. Three red feathered darts protruded from her navel.

All the while, from the portrait, Lithia smiled seductively, the even, white smile of cool confidence and joy.

Remo looked back to Garrand.

Around his neck, the world's foremost authority on atomic waste disposal had hung his asthma spray bulb on a leather thong. A fold of flesh had hidden the leather thong from the back.

Garrand's eyes followed Remo as Remo moved into the room, and just the movement of his head set his body quivering. His breasts were larded with white streaks like an over-boiled hot dog just before splitting. Fat fought fat for space fore and aft on his arms. His nipples were bigger than Lithia's.

He squeezed his asthma bulb into his mouth, squirting his bronchial tubes with adrenalin.

"I thought I told you to get out of here," he said.

"I heard you," Remo said.

Garrand shrugged, a very slight shrug that made his flesh ripple. He dropped the spray back onto his rolling stomach, and turned his head again toward Lithia's picture.

Garrand raised a dart to precise eye level with his right hand. The left hand still held two more. With a flick of his fingers, Garrand let loose a dart as he announced:

"Left breast."

The dart thwacked in just over the aureole around Lithia Forrester's nipple.

"Right nipple," Garrand said and powerfully, almost invisibly with no curve in its trajectory, another dart flashed across the eight-foot distance and buried itself, quivering in the turgid right nipple of Lithia Forrester.

"Mons veneris," Garrand said, and the third dart flashed on too, punching its way into the triangular patch of golden hair on the portrait

Garrand reached down to a wooden dart box and took out three more darts. "You haven't told me why you busted in here."

"The game's over, Garrand."

"So the bitch talked."

"No, she didn't, if that's any consolation to you. She died without saying a word."

"Good for her. I knew the honky bitch was good for something. Right eye," he said and buried a dart into the sparkling blue eye of Lithia Forrester.

"Mouth," he called, and another dart hit its mark with a thwack.

"Why, Garrand?" Remo asked. "Just because of a traffic arrest in Jersey City?"

"Vagina," Garrand called and buried another dart in the exposed private parts of Lithia Forrester. "Not just because of a traffic arrest, Donaldson. Just because your country is rotten. It deserves what it gets. And I deserve whatever I can get for it. Call it back-dues to my people." He was wheezing now from the exertion of talking so long.

"Your people?" Remo said. "What about your people whose lives would be ruined if your scheme worked?"

"That's the tough luck associated with being a house nigger," Garrand said. "Listen. As long as you're there, give me more darts will you. On that table. In the box."

Remo had reached a waist-high white table with a marble top, an exquisite piece of furniture that went with the exquisite room, mostly furnished in white. On the table top was a black box, the size of a loaf of bread, with layer after layer of darts in it, like bombs in a storage hanger. Remo grabbed three by their heavy metal points. The feathers were trimmed and true. The points sharp. The wooden bodies were weighted, about a fifth of an ounce heavier than competition darts.

He handed the darts to Garrand who accepted them. Then Remo stepped back, eight feet away from Garrand.

"Left thumb," Garrand said, and flew a dart into Lithia Forrester's left thumb.

"Whose idea was it?" Remo asked. "Yours or hers?"

"Mine, of course. She didn't have brains enough to think of it." He turned now, shuffling and laboured, to face Remo. "But I saw the possibilities as soon as I came here for therapy and saw all the government personnel here. I thought right away of the kind of power she could have over them. She could get them to do anything."

"How'd you get her to do it?" Remo asked.

"You might not believe it, Donaldson, but she loved me."

"So you used drugs and post-hypnotic suggestion?"

"To simplify it for you, yes. Plus Lithia's peddling her ass. That helped. Men were just fascinated by her body. A little of her twiff and they'd do anything," Garrand said imperiously. He was lecturing now. "I never could understand it myself. She just wasn't that good."

"I thought you couldn't get someone to act against their will under hypnosis," Remo said.

"A typical piece of comic-book stupidity," Gar-rand said. "First you convince them that what they're doing is the right thing to do. That colonel, for instance. He thought you were a Russian spy. And General Dorfwill. He wasn't bombing St. Louis; he was bombing Peking in retaliation for a sneak attack. And Admiral Crust? Why shouldn't he destroy the Statue of Liberty, particularly since he knew it was the hideout for a band of anarchists about to blow up our country? That's how it's done, Mr. Donaldson."

"And the song?"

"That was my idea, too," Garrand said, smiling, his teeth pearled in the ground coffee brownness of his face. "You've got to be careful when you use trigger words to set a person off. You can't pick a word that someone's liable to hear in conversation. It could set them off before you were ready. When you think about it, not many people are likely to use super-kali-fragil-istic-expi-ali-docious in conversation."

"A lovely plan," Remo said. "I respect you for it. Now I need to know where the bidding will be held."

Garrand smiled and ignored the question. "One thing puzzles me, Donaldson. I had everything worked out. All except you. This government isn't that good that one of our sources shouldn't have a line on you. It's like all of a sudden there was an organization that did not exist. But it existed. And so did you. Now, if you wish to live, if you wish these darts not to enter your eyes or your temples or wherever I wish, you can tell me where you came from."

Remo laughed. "You lose," he said. He saw his laughter grate Dr. Garrand like a rasp and then the two pointy hands flicked and the darts were at him in that flat trajectory, across the eight feet of room, but Remo's head did not move. His eyes, toward which the darts flew, did not blink. Remo's hands flashed up in front of his face and his hands caught the darts by the points, between thumb and index finger; hands receiving the thrust of the killer weights, wrists like spring locks accepting the force and holding short, just short of the eyes.

Garrand's mouth opened. His eyes widened. He looked toward the box of darts on the table and querulously reached forward a hand. But suddenly his hand was pinned to the table as Remo pierced it with one of the darts. "Right thumb," Remo said. He still held the other dart in his right hand.

For the first time in years, Garrand became physical. He ripped his hand loose from the dart, tearing the flesh, and lumbered toward Remo. And for the first time in years, he felt his legs going high above him, above his head, and he was up at the diffused lighting, then at the walls, and than his head was buried in the polar bear rug, and there was that arrogant white face between his barefeet, and Lawrence Garrand was upside down, his head pressed painfully into the rug. He had scarcely seen the man move. And it was becoming hard to breathe.

"Okay, sweetheart," said the leering face between his feet. "Where's the auction?"

Garrand breathed in and tried to breathe out. It was getting more difficult. The blood was pouring into his head and his chocolate skin was taking on a blood-gorged purple colour. He fought to exhale. His chest pressed down into his chin. A strand of polar-bear hair caught in his eye and burned.

"Where's the auction?" that white face insisted, then began to press down on Garrand's legs, forcing them into his waist, and Garrand finally blurted out, "Villebrook Equity Associates. New York. Tomorrow." He was exhausted from the effort.

"Okay, sweetheart," Remo said. "Time to go bye-bye."

"You can't kill me," Garrand insisted. "I'm the foremost authority on atomic waste disposal. I deserve to live."

"Sure. So did Clovis Porter. General Dorfwill. A lot of others."

"Call the police then," Garrand gasped. "You can't kill me. If I were white, you wouldn't kill me."

"I'd kill you in any colour, sweetheart." Remo looked down along Garrand's wet brown body and his eyes met those of the world's foremost authority on atomic waste disposal. Remo extended the remaining dart out over Garrand's face with his right hand. "External jugular," he called, then dropped the dart. It buried itself into the flesh alongside Garrand's throat and a thin purple spurt of blood fountained out of his neck as the blood pressure was momentarily relieved by the pierced vein. Remo dropped Garrand heavily to the floor. Before Remo turned off his breath forever, Garrand managed to gasp something muffled by the fat folds of his cheeks and chin. Later, Remo would think that what he said was "I knew it wouldn't work. You people…"

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

When Remo returned to his room, Chiun was sitting rigidly in the lotus position, staring at the television.

Remo opened his mouth to speak and Chiun raised a hand for silence.

Only seconds later, organ music up and over, Chiun leaned forward and turned off the television.

"Good afternoon, little father," Remo said. "Have you had a pleasant day?"

"Relatively, my son, although I must admit I weary of telling that blighted mass of womanhood that she is indeed loved. And you?"

"Very productive. We must leave now."

"Our work is finished?" Chiun asked.

"Our work here is finished. We have other tasks to perform elsewhere."

"I will be ready to leave in moments," Chiun said.

He was and Remo realized that his uncharacteristic haste was fuelled by his desire to get back to their Washington hotel room and recover his TV taping machine to record the shows he was now missing.

But they stopped at the hotel only long enough to pay their bill and for Remo to slip the bell captain $100 to ship their luggage to a non-existent address in Avon-by-the-Sea on the Jersey shore. And then they were back in their rented convertible on their way to Dulles Airport outside Washington.

Chiun grumbled all the way at the idiocy of leaving a perfectly good television recorder behind and finally extracted a promise from Remo that he could buy another in New York that night.

And later that night, after they checked into a mid-town Manhattan hotel, Chiun insisted upon Remo's giving him $500 so he could buy one, which he did, along with five new robes, a pocket knife and a whistle. The latter two were to protect himself on New York's crime-ridden streets, he explained.

They both rose early the next morning and Chiun worked with Remo on his balance and rhythm, setting out strings of drinking glasses across the floor and having Remo race across the tops of them, barefooted, at increasing speeds.

Remo felt good. He could taste the end of this assignment. After he showered and shaved, he dressed, reluctantly donning the polka dot tie he had brought with him. If he was going to take part in the bidding for America, he should look the part, he told his image in the mirror. He buttoned his new double-breasted dark blue suit.

Before leaving, he entrusted Lithia Forrester's lists with Chiun, telling him: "Until you hear from me guard these with your life."

Chiun was deep in his morning meditation and only grunted, but that meant he understood. The lists lay on the floor in front of Chiun where Remo had placed them as Remo went out of their room.

In a men's store off the lobby, Remo bought a conservative regimental striped tie and dropped the other into an ash-bucket near the desk.

In the telephone book, he looked up the address and number of Villebrook Equity Associates then dialled.

A woman's voice answered and Remo told her he was an investor who wanted someone to propose a tax shelter for him. Could he make an appointment to see someone right away?

"Not today, sir, I'm afraid. Our offices will be closed from noon until 3 p.m. I could make you an appointment for tomorrow."

"That's a strange way to run a business," Remo said.

"Well, frankly, sir, the building is a little run down and we are having an exterminator in."

"And there'll be no one there at all?" Remo asked.

"Only Mr. Bogeste, our treasurer and founder. But he'll be keeping an eye on the exterminator. He won't be able to see anyone."

"Okay," Remo said. "Thank you. I'll call tomorrow."

He hung up the phone. That was it. Right after noon, with all the workers out of the office, the bidding would be held. He hoped they had room for one more.

Remo was in the eighth floor hall outside the offices of Villebrook Equity Associates shortly after noon when a dozen workers poured out from the glass doors, delighted at the prospect of a three-hour lunch, paid for by the company.

Behind them, a young, athletic-looking man with long black hair cast a quizzical glance at Remo, then closed and locked the door from the inside.

The crowd of workers took the elevator down, but Remo hung around the elevator door, as if waiting for an empty car. Minutes later, he heard a phone ring down the hall. It stopped ringing abruptly, and then, after no more than 60 seconds, another door down the hall opened and eight men walked down the hallway toward Remo. He pressed impatiently on the elevator button, but glanced at the men as they passed. It looked like a United Nations caucus, Remo thought, the men almost carrying on their faces the flags of their native countries. Did he look as American as they looked foreign, Remo wondered.

The men walked past the main entrance of Villebrook Equity Associates and through a second door, which was unlocked. Remo could hear it click shut behind them.

The elevator stopped again but Remo shook his head at the old woman in it who was riding down. "I'm going to wait for an empty one so I can get a seat," he said pleasantly and kicked his foot past the electric eye to activate the door, which closed quietly on the confused old lady.

Remo waited for almost five minutes and then went to the door the men had entered. He pressed his ear to the door but could hear, only faintly, the mumbled buzz of voices. They must be in another office beyond this one, he thought. Remo quietly tested the knob. The door was locked.

He went back to the double glass door marked Villebrook Equity Associates and with a coin from his pocket tapped lightly on the glass. He was sure that Mr. Bogeste would be guarding the front door.

He tapped again, very softly, and then the door, fastened by a chain lock, opened slightly and the young man he had seen before peered out

"Mister Bogeste?" Remo said.

"Yes?"

"I'm the exterminator," Remo said. He shot his left hand through the door opening and grabbed Bogeste's adam's apple between his fingers. With his right hand, he quietly wrenched the chain from the door and stepped inside.

He locked the door behind him and still holding Bogeste by the windpipe pushed him back into a leather secretarial chair.

He leaned over and whispered to him. "You like your children?"

Bogeste nodded.

"No more than I do," Reino said. "It'd be a pity if they had to grow up without a father. So why don't you just sit here and think about them?" With his right hand he pressed a vein behind Bogeste's ear and soon the blood drained from Bogeste's face and he passed out.

He would be good for at least twenty minutes, Remo knew. Long enough to accomplish his business.

Remo followed his ears. He went past a bank of secretary's desks, then right into a hallway that opened on two small private offices. At the end of the hallway, a door was ajar and light beamed from within. Remo walked quietly to the door and listened to the voices inside.

A cultured voice, European but not British, spoke in English. "You gentlemen all know the rules now and agree to them. I will now receive your sealed bids and I will open them in another room. I will return to announce the successful bidder. The others may leave and next week may pick up their nation's good faith deposits at my office in Zurich. I will arrange with the successful bidder to speak with my principal and to transfer the gold and the information. Is that clear?"

There was a polyglot rumble of assents around the table. Da, ja, oui, yes, si.

"May I have your envelopes, please?" the first voice said again.

Remo heard a rustle of papers, and then a chair slid along the floor. "I will now go inside to inspect the bids."

"Choost a moment, Mr. Rentzel," came a guttural voice. "How do we know that you will report the truth? Will you tell us the amount of the successful bid?"

"To answer your second question first, no, I will not announce the amount of the successful bid, since the raising of it will be a matter of some delicacy for the country involved. Knowledge of the amount might hinder those efforts. And in answer to your first question, would it not have been foolish to bring everybody here to bid if we had already agreed in advance to sell it to one specific country? Finally, sir, I might point out that the House of Rapfenberg is involved in these negotiations and we would not be a party to a fraud under any circumstances. Are there any other questions?"

There was silence, and then Remo heard footsteps walking toward the doorway near which he stood. He softly darted back into one of the private offices that opened off the narrow hallway, ready to collar the man from behind if necessary.

But the footsteps turned into the office in which Remo stood and as the man flipped the light switch and walked in, Remo softly closed the door behind him.

The man heard the door close and turned, startled to see Remo standing there.

"Who the hell are you?" asked Amadeus Rentzel of the House of Rapfenberg.

"I'd like to borrow money to buy a used car," Remo said.

"This office is closed. Get out of here before I call the police."

"Well, if you won't lend me money for a car, I'll buy something else. Maybe a government. Got any governments for sale?"

Rentzel shrugged. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'll make it clearer then. I've come to bid."

"From what nation?" Rentzel asked cautiously. "And why hasn't your country placed its good faith deposit?"

"From the United States of America," Remo said. "From the land of Clovis Porter, General Dorfwill, Burton Barrett and Admiral Crust. My bid is their lives and we have already paid in full. No other deposit is required."

Rentzel stared for a moment into Remo's eyes. He met and measured the hardness there, then rejected the possibility that Remo was a crank or a bluffer. Rentzel had stared down too many men across the table to be fooled.

He knew it; it was all over.

Rentzel took the news like a Swiss banker. He sat back lightly against the edge of the desk and ran a finger down a knife-edge crease in his trousers. "What of my principal?" he asked. "The man I represent."

"Dead," Remo said.

"What kind of man was he?" Rentzel asked. "I never saw him."

"He was a mad dog. He died like a mad dog," Remo said.

"And what will happen to me?"

"I have no desire to kill you, Mr. Rentzel," Remo said. "After today, I think you should return to Switzerland and spend the rest of your career doing what bankers are meant to do: fleecing widows and orphans, embezzling funds from estates, borrowing money at 5 per cent to lend at 18 per cent."

Rentzel shrugged and smiled. "As you would have it. Shall I go back in and tell them the auction is over?"

"No," Remo said. "Some pleasures I reserve for myself." Suddenly, his hand darted out. The knuckle of a bent thumb tapped lightly against Rentzel's temple; the Swiss banker fell back heavily on the desk, unconscious.

Remo eased the envelopes from Rentzel's hand and left the office. He walked down the hall, pushed open the door, then walked into a large walnut-panelled conference room.

Seven pairs of eyes tamed to meet him as he entered and when they saw it was not Rentzel, there was a murmured buzz of conversation. An Oriental said, "Where is Mr. Rentzel?"

"He is out for awhile," Remo said as he walked to the head of the table. "I am empowered to complete his business."

He stood at the head of the long glass-topped table, meeting the eyes individually, one after another, of the men who sat along the sides of the table.

"Before I announce the successful bidder," he said, "I would like to make several points pertaining to this auction."

He leaned forward on the table with his fists, one hand still holding the batch of envelopes he had taken from Rentzel.

"It was announced that the initial bid would be in gold," Remo said. "But the successful bidder has bid more than gold. He has also bid in courage and in blood and in dedication. In the courage to stand against the forces of evil; in the blood spilled to open a new land; in the dedication to endure and to be true to the ideals of freedom and liberty for all men.

"Gentlemen, the successful bidder is the United States of America."

There were shouts of protest and outrage around the table. Men looked at other men. A man who had to be a Russian, because no one else would wear such a suit, stood up and pounded on the table. "We will double our bid."

"So will we," said the Oriental. "Anything to prevent control of the United States from passing into the hands of these revisionist pigs," he said, staring at the Russian across the table.

Another babble of angry voices broke out and Remo halted it by pounding on the table. "The bidding is closed, gentlemen," he said coldly, "and all of you have lost."

He looked around at each in turn. "Now I would suggest you all return where you came from because in five minutes I am going to call the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

"If you are still here when they arrive, it might be embarrassing for your nations. And when you return home, tell your governments that the United States will never be for sale. If they want the United States, they must come bearing arms."

Remo stood back and waved his envelope-laden hand toward the door. "Leave now, gentlemen, while you're still able to. I will hold these bids for whatever use they will be to the government of the United States, Now leave."

Grumbling, but defeated, they got slowly to their feet and talking angrily with each other, passed through the door and began to leave the office.

Remo sat back down at the table, looking at the envelopes in his hands. How much was the United States worth to its enemies? Or to its friends? He tore the corner off one of the envelopes, then shook his head. One more thing he was better off not knowing. Smith could take care of it.

The sounds had died down and the office of Villebrook Equity Associates was silent.

Remo stood up and walked out into the hallway. As he passed the small office, he saw Amadeus Rentzel still on the desk. He would be coming to shortly.

And in the outer office, the Villebrook man was stirring. Remo smiled. The man had kids. He was happy he hadn't had to kill him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

It was after 2 o'clock when Remo returned to his hotel room. Chiun was fussing with his tape recorder when Remo entered, but Chiun turned and greeted him with warmth. The papers Remo had entrusted to his care were still on the floor where Remo had placed them.

"Why all the pleasantness?" Remo asked suspiciously.

"You had the look in your eyes today of a man with an awful mission. I am glad you have returned safe, full of accomplishment and nastiness."

"We're not out of the woods yet," Remo said.

He lifted the phone and got a local dial tone from the operator and dialed the toll-free number that from anywhere would reach Smith's desk.

The phone was picked up on the first ring.

"Smith."

"Remo. Someday I'm going to call and you're not going to be at your desk and I'm going to tell the Bureau of Antiquities—or whoever's payroll you're on—to dock you for the time."

"Save the chatter," Smith said. "What happened?"

"The auction's over. We won."

"Thank God." He paused, then asked: "Were there any… er, personal loses?"

"No," Remo said.

"Good," Smith said, his mind relieved because there would, be no international incident.

"Just a minute," Remo said, then called out: "Chiun, what time are you going to be done doing these?"

Chiun said: "Three thirty. I have had trouble with this apparatus."

Remo turned back to the phone. "Chiun will be at your headquarters by 4:30. By cab. Have someone meet him to pay the cabbie."

"Give him the money yourself," Smith said. "God knows you draw enough of it."

"Won't work," Remo said. "He won't hand the money through those money slots. Says it makes him feel like a criminal. Just have someone there to pay the cabbie. Chiun will have the lists from our lady friend. They're something to see. Cabinet officers, department directors, senators, congressmen, a Presidential assistant. Oh, and a communications specialist. I'll bet that's how we were compromised. I just hope the list's complete."

"How did the thing work?" Smith said.

"Drugs and hypnosis. They were triggered to go off when they heard a certain word. With the lists and the instructions, you should be able to put them back under and bring them back to normal."

Smith thought a moment before answering. "Yes, I suppose so. Although I guess they can never be trusted again in sensitive jobs. We can't just go firing the Congressmen, though." He paused. "Maybe they'll accept a suggestion to announce their retirements."

"Anyway you want to work it," Remo said. "Chiun'll have the lists. He'll also have the bids that were entered today. They might be good for something."

"You say it was a word that was the trigger?" Smith asked.

"Yes," Remo said. "A line from that song." He had feared this moment.

"What was the song?"

Remo cleared his throat nervously. "Are you listening, Dr. Smith?"

"Yes, dammit, I'm listening."

Remo spoke slowly. "Super-kali-fragil-istic-expi-ali-docious. You will forget that I ever existed. The experiment eight years ago failed and the man known as Remo Williams died in the chair. He does not exist."

There was a long pause. Back at Folcroft, a beatific smile crossed Smith's face. He began to hum the tune softly into the mouthpiece of the phone. Then he said:

"Forget it. You're in this, Remo Williams, until death do us part. I'll expect Chiun with the lists."

He hung up chuckling.

Remo's hands were wet as he hung up the telephone back in Manhattan. But he was not done yet.

He watched Chiun putter around until the last problem of the day had been postponed on the last of his television shows. Remo picked up the lists from the floor and, along with the envelopes containing the bids, stuffed them into a large manila envelope he found in the hotel room closet.

Then he walked downstairs with Chiun and called two cabs. As he helped Chiun into the first cab, he told him: "Remember, Chiun, give these to no one but Smith. I'll contact you at Folcroft soon."

"At my age, am I now to be lectured on caution?" Chiun asked.

Remo ignored him and leaned into the front of the cab. "The trip's to Rye, New York. Folcroft Sanatorium." Remo remembered Smith's habits and pulled a roll of bills from his pocket. He tossed a twenty to the driver. "Here's your tip in advance. Now don't go talking to the old fellow. Don't get him sore. And drive carefully or you'll never hear the end of it."

"Gotcha, Mister," the cabbie said, pocketing the twenty and lurching away from the curb in a screech of tires.

Remo got into the second cab. "Kennedy Airport" he said.

On the long rocky ride through afternoon traffic, Remo tried very hard not to think. He tried not to think of how he had breathed easier when he saw that Smith had not been compromised. Remo tried hard not to think on the plane to Washington. He tried not to think about the compromised men who could be transferred, put into jobs where they would not have a real chance ever again to expose America by their weakness. And in the cab from the Washington airport, he tried not to think of the last piece in the puzzle. The possibility that Lithia's list had not been complete; that there was one more man and that man could not be transferred if he had been compromised. He tried not to think of what could happen if that man mentioned CURE's existence, or if that man folded when the chips were down.

He was still trying hard not to think about it when the cab driver interrupted him.

"Here you are, Mac. Sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue." The cabbie looked out the window at the large white building behind the metal fence. "That guy's got a helluva job in there. I hope he knows what he's doing."

"He'd better hope, too," Remo said, giving the driver a twenty and stepping out onto the curb without waiting for change. Washington smelled fresh in the early evening and the White House looked imposing. Remo noticed the guards at the front gate and smiled.

Smith met Chiun's cab personally when it rolled up to the locked gates of Folcroft He helped Chiun from the taxi. Chiun clutched the manila envelope of papers to his chest. "How much?" Smith asked the cabbie.

"Nineteen seventy-five," the driver said. Smith extracted a twenty from his wallet, rubbed it between his fingers to make sure two had not stuck together, and passed it through the window. "Keep the change," he said. He turned to Chiun as soon as the cab had lurched away. "Where is Remo?"

"He said he had other business, and he would see you or he wouldn't," Chiun said.

Smith walked inside with Chiun, who left him outside the main building to take his evening stroll. Smith took the manila envelope and went back to his office in the rear of the building, overlooking the sound.

He pursed his lips as he read the names and notes that Remo had taken from Dr. Forrester. It was a cross-section of the American government, so it would be necessary to deal with each one individually. Smith spent several hours studying the names, and working out a complex, detailed program for bringing all the men out of their post-hypnotic state. It would be delicate. He would need the assistance of the President.

Smith's hand reached toward the telephone when it rang sharply. He lifted the receiver to his ear.

"Smith."

The familiar voice crackled into the phone sharply. "I thought you told me this afternoon everything was all right again."

"I did."

"Well, they've penetrated. They've gotten past my security. They're right here in the White House."

Smith leaned forward in his chair. "Just a moment, Mr.President. Please tell me precisely what happened."

"I was walking down the hallway outside my bedroom. And then this evil looking man jumped out from behind a curtain and stepped in my way."

"What did he do, sir?"

"He didn't do anything. He just stood there."

"Did he say anything?" Smith asked.

"Yes, he did. Some kind of nonsense. Super-fragile or something."

"What did you do?" Smith asked.

"I told him, look, fella, you better get out of here or I'll call the Secret Service. And he left."

"Then what did you do?"

"I called the Secret Service, of course. But they couldn't find him. He was gone. Doctor, do you think you should assign that person here until this entire business of selling our government is concluded?"

"It is concluded," Smith said stiffly, "as I advised you this afternoon. And that person has been there."

"You mean…?"

"Yes."

"What was he doing?"

"He was guaranteeing our nation's freedom, Mr. President. I will be in Washington tomorrow and I will explain it to you fully."

"I wish somebody would," the President said, then added: "So that was him, eh? He didn't look so tough."