Hostile Takeover

BBC 1 and BBC 2 broke in on regular programming with simultaneous bulletins. A stuffy red-faced newscaster read from a trembling sheet of paper as a graphic of Cleopatra's Needle floated beside his ear. A barge-borne crane was lowering the second basalt sphinx into place, facing outward to guard the granite monument. The other sphinx had already been set to rights.

"They did it!" Remo exploded in an unbelieving voice. "They actually did it."

"They still remember," said Chiun in a tight, pleased tone.

"Remember what?"

"The royal house had a minor problem at the end of your last century. An embarrassment they called John the Cutter. "

"Not Jack the Ripper?" Remo said. "We took care of him?"

"We did not," Chiun said haughtily. "My grandfather attended to that one. You were not even born then."

" I was using the collective 'we,'" Remo said defensively.

Wordlessly, Chiun stood up, the Royal Sceptre gripped in both hands.

When the phone rang, the Master of Sinanju took it.

"Do not speak," he said. "Listen. The problem that is plaguing the world's economy comes from somewhere in your government. This person will be brought to my quarters by dawn." Chiun paused. " I tell you it is true, and I will have him."

Chiun hung up. He returned to his spot on the floor.

Outside the window, SAS snipers were repositioning themselves.

"Don't look now," Remo said. "But I don't think they like your latest demand."

"They do not have to like it," Chiun said distantly. "They merely have to execute it."

"I think execution is exactly what they have in mind," Remo said glumly.

Down in the lobby, Colonel Neville Upton-Downs listened to the voice of the prime minister as it came through the desk telephone.

"At once, ma'am," he said.

Hanging up, he nodded to a trio of soldiers crouched in the corridor, facing the elevator and stairs, their telescopic rifles at the ready.

"We're going in, lads," he told them. "Half of you hold the lift. The others go up the staircase. Third floor. End of hall. Look sharp. "

The men deployed. Three guarded the elevator while the others went up the steps, their boots making a frightful racket.

Colonel Upton-Downs was so confident in his men, noisy feet aside, that he did not feel compelled to lead them into battle. By all accounts, the two terrorists were unarmed. One was an ancient Chinese or some foreign sort. As he waited, he wondered why it had taken so long for the prime minister to give the green light.

Going outside, Colonel Upton-Downs signaled his men that the matter was about to be brought to a successful conclusion. They visibly relaxed at their posts. He strode around to the rear of the hotel and into the yard beneath the window they had pinpointed as belonging to the terrorists.

He borrowed a pair of field glasses from a spotter and trained them on the target window.

"Be over soon, chaps," he muttered.

It was. The window glass abruptly shattered under the force of an SAS soldier in full flight. He struck the concrete like a sack of potatoes. After a short time, he was joined by a second man and then a third. They made a neat pile on the pavement.

A man's face poked out of the broken window.

"Don't make that mistake again," an American voice shouted from the wrecked window.

"The ruddy bastard!" Colonel Upton-Downs shouted. "Take him out! Take the bounder out now!"

Rifle muzzles jumped to the ready. Fingers caressed triggers.

"Uh-uh," the American said. "Naughty, naughty." Colonel Upton-Downs abruptly changed his mind. "Hold fire! Drat it! Hold your damned fire!"

For the American was holding the Royal Sceptre in front of his face. He shook one finger at them as if at pranking children.

"Let's not make any messy mistakes," he said, withdrawing from the window.

Dejectedly the colonel trudged back to the hotel lobby. The prime minister was not going to take this in good humor.

The prime minister accepted the news with a flinty "Thank you, Colonel. Stand by." She laid the phone down without hanging up and faced her cabinet, who were arrayed around a conference table at Number Ten Downing Street.

"The assault has failed," she told them. "We must now consider other options."

"Such as?" the home secretary inquired.

"Such as, my dear man, that these terrorists are sincere in their belief. You all know the American situation. Our exchange has just closed after taking a tremendous beating. It can only get worse. The Far Eastern markets are bound to react badly to what is happening in Europe and America. And we will feel the brunt of the next wave of selling panic. It may never end."

"I fear if the American situation is as bad as they say," the minister of finance pointed out, "it will not matter. They are practically bankrupting their exchange in their frenzy to sell."

"Could someone be causing this?"

"Balderdash." The murmur of assent that followed the foreign minister's remark reminded the prime minister of Parliament during her heyday, when she used to ride roughshod over the simpering cowards.

"What manner of bloody fool would attempt such a thing, knowing it would ruin our own economy?" the finance minister remarked pointedly.

"Communist plant, possibly?" Sir Guy Phillistone blandly suggested between sucks on his broken pipe.

"It's a thought," the home secretary muttered. "Lord knows we've had enough of them."

No one joined in the home secretary's uncertain laughter.

The prime minister shook her head. "The Communist world looks to the West for economic salvation," she said. "This is not one of their operations. If we sink, they follow us to the bottom." She spanked the table with a palm. "Think, gentlemen. Think. If you have the knack for it."

Stung, the cabinet looked to one another in embarrassment. But the cutting remark cleared the air. They stopped talking and began thinking.

"You know," the chancellor of the exchequer began slowly, " I have been receiving these wildly incoherent letters of late. About one every fortnight, informing me that the signal has been received and something called the Grand Plan has commenced."

"And what do you do with these letters?" the prime minister inquired.

"Why, I dispose of them, of course. They are obviously the scrawling of a crackpot."

"And does this crackpot have a name?"

"Yes, a Sir Quincy, I believe."

"And have you none of these letters at all?"

"I fear the most recent of them has gone into the rubbish," the chancellor of the exchequer admitted.

The prime minister rose quickly. "Find that letter. Get down on your hands and knees in the rubbish, if you must. It is all we have. Gentlemen, let's get on this, shall we?"

As they filed from the room, the prime minister picked up the still-open telephone line and began issuing new instructions to a very surprised Colonel Upton-Downs.

The letter, smelling of old cigarette butts and loose tea, was on the prime minister's Downing Street desk within the hour.

She picked it up with sure fingers and an offended expression on her face. The letter was still in its crumpled envelope. The return address was smudged, but the bottom line was still legible, reading "Oxford, Oxfordshire, OX1 2LJ.

"This narrows it down," she murmured, extracting the letter. It did indeed read as if written by a crackpot. It rambled, dwelling on the fading glory of the British Empire, soon to flower again like a phoenix. A colorful if illiterate metaphor, the prime minister thought.

The final paragraph said, "Vide Royal Reclamation Charter." It was signed: "Faithfully yours, Sir Quincy Chiswick."

The prime minister looked up Sir Quincy Chiswick in her office copy of Burke's Peerage. She learned that he was Regius Professor of History at Nuffing College. A call to the college brought the news that the staff had all left for the day. There was no one competent to retrieve his address or telephone number.

The prime minister called for directory information and asked if there was a telephone subscriber known as Sir Quincy Chiswick in Oxford or Oxfordshire. The prime minister was assured, after a ten-minute delay, that there was none.

She thanked the operator and hung up. Ringing her secretary, she told him, "Have them go through Public Records for a document called the Royal Reclamation Charter. "

"That could take a bit of doing."

"Then I would begin now," the prime minister said sharply, giving her secretary the benefit of her piranha smile.

The man went away. The prime minister personally put her own call through to the Morton Court Hotel.

"Hello, desk? Could you kindly put me through to the terrorists in Room Twenty-eight? Thank you."

Remo Williams picked up the phone. The woman's voice sounded familiar, so when she identified herself as the prime minister of England, he didn't give her an argument.

"Pssst! Chiun, I got the prime minister on the line."

I only speak with royalty," Chiun curtly replied.

"Sorry," Remo told the prime minister. "He's indisposed. Your sexless soap operas have him enthralled." Remo listened for five minutes without getting in a word edgewise. Then he turned to the Master of Sinanju.

"She says they have the guy's name," he said. "They can't find him, but they think he lives in Oxford. Isn't that a shoe?"

"Inform the prime minister that I will allow you to search for this person in the town of Oxford."

"You? Allow me?"

"Tell her," Chiun commanded.

Remo returned to the phone. "Here's the deal," he said. " I get safe conduct to Oxford, free rein to search for this guy, and the Sceptre and my friend stay here, unmolested. Got that?"

The prime minister did. Remo hung up.

"Okay, it's a done deal," he told Chiun. "Are you sure this is the best way to go about this?"

"No," Chiun said flatly. "But if I go, I will miss the end of this story." He did not look away from the screen when he said it.

"Good thinking," Remo said airily. "I'll be in touch."

Remo strolled through the lobby, passing the sullen-faced SAS soldiers.

"Keep a stiff upper lip," he called as he went down the steps.

At the curb, a car waited for him, along with an unarmed SAS colonel holding a set of keys up for Remo's inspection.

"Here you go, Yank," the colonel said in a civil if testy voice. "We've got you a Vauxhall Cavalier. Nice machine. British-made, you know."

"Thanks," Remo said, taking the keys. He opened the left-hand door.

"The wheel is on the other side," the colonel said, smirking.

"I knew that," Remo lied, sliding all the way in. He put the key in the ignition and started the engine.

The colonel leaned into the window. "Take the roundabout at Regent's Park. There you can pick up the A-Forty north to Oxfordshire. That will get you to Oxford in jig time."

"How many kilometers?"

"Haven't the foggiest. But it's about fifty miles as the crow flies, if that means anything to you."

"It does," Remo growled.

"There's a map in the glove- box. There's extra petrol in the boot, and the motor's under the bonnet, just as in the States."

" I sure wish we both spoke the same language," Remo remarked dryly.

"As I do, chap. Toodles."

Remo pulled away. He found the road. But as he drove along, the green-and-white signs that he assumed marked the A40 became the A35 and then the A40 again. None of them actually had an A before the numbers. Remo began wondering if maybe he was mistaking the speed-limit signs for highway markers. Occasionally he passed blue signs that also said 40.

After he got out of the city, Remo found a blue sign that said 404. He knew he had it figured out then. It must be the A404. Nobody, not even the British, drove 404 miles an hour.

Remo settled down for the long ride.

Chapter 27

The New York Stock Exchange bottomed out at high noon, after only two and a half hours of stop-and-start trading.

The Dow stood at 1188.7 like a rock poised at the edge of a precipice, buoyed by Crown Acquisition's insatiable appetite for undervalued stocks-which was virtually everything that traded over the New York and American stock exchanges, as well as NASDAQ.

Then others jumped in. Still monitoring the DOT system, Smith saw that the first wave consisted of frantic buying by Looncraft, Dymstar d. The Lippincott Mercantile Bank also leapt in with slavering jowls, buying up airline and electronic stocks. DeGoone Slickens went for the oil companies. And others came in-all prestigious centuried firms with good sound Anglo-Saxon names.

And Smith began to see it for what it truly was. An old-fashioned investor pool-the kind stock speculators used to employ to corner the market before SEC regulations put a stop to it. It was the original hostile-takeover scheme. The so-called Loyalists were working in concert, and no one could stop them.

For they represented the nation's oldest business concerns, its most affluent families. A hundred years ago, they would have controlled ninety-five percent of American commerce, education, and politics. But this was the late twentieth century, when even the Boston Brahmins no longer lorded it over Boston.

But soon all that could change. They were buying up the country, literally cornering the market in American business. Ten years ago this scheme could never have worked. But a decade of mergers and leveraged buy-outs had consolidated the national economy into a tight circle most of whom were either Loyalists or so-called Conscripts. Smith had seen the bulletin announcing that the New York Stock Exchange board had voted to keep trading no matter what. Their voting was a matter of public record. No wonder the chairman's warning had been overridden. They were the New York Stock Exchange too. They were also the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although what was transpiring before his eyes was flagrantly illegal, there might be no way to enforce those laws without crushing the nation's economic center of power. They were the economy.

More chillingly, they were America.

Smith sank back in his leather chair, his face haggard. The stock market was coming back, slowly, haltingly. But there was momentum. The bulls were running again. The market might even come roaring back. The Global News Network was already predicting it through its spokesman and owner, P. M. Looncraft.

But when it was all over, the economy of the strongest democracy on earth would have changed hands like a rumpled dollar bill.

Smith leaned into his computer like a fighter pilot about to trip his machine guns. It was time to play his trump card. He brought up the Mayflower Descendants bulletin board and engaged a program labeled "TRACEWORM."

When it was up and running, he pressed the "Send" key. He grabbed the red telephone next.

"Mr. President," he rapped out. "Do not ask questions. Just listen to me. This is merely a precaution. I want you to purge your Secret Service protective detail of all agents bearing Anglo-Saxon surnames. Just do it. Please . . . Yes, Italians are fine. It doesn't matter, just avoid persons of British ancestry." Smith paused. "Yes, it would be a good idea to cancel your meeting with the Vice-President. One final matter: were you successful in arranging Looncraft's summons to London? Excellent. I will explain everything later. Good-bye, Mr. President."

After he hung up, Smith wiped away the steam a sudden flash of nervous perspiration had caused to condense on his eyeglasses.

His intercom buzzed.

"Mr. Smith. Mr. Winthrop is here to see you."

Smith started. "Here?"

"He's very insistent."

"Tell him to go away," Smith snapped.

"I've tried to, but- Wait! You can't go in there."

Smith hit the concealed stud that sent the CURE terminal dropping into his desk interior. The desktop panel clicked into place just in time. The office door flew open.

Smith rose from his seat angrily.

"What do you mean by barging in like this?" he demanded.

The man who paused at the open door was well over six feet tall and built along the lines of Ichabod Crane. His face was red with indignation.

"I am Nigel Winthrop, Dr. Smith," he said testily. "And I will be put off no longer. This matter is urgent."

Smith hesitated. "Urgent?"

"If you will give me but a moment of your time . . ."

"Make it quick," Smith snapped. "I'm extremely busy. It's all right, Mrs. Mikulka," he added, nodding to his secretary, who hovered behind Winthrop like a nervous hen.

The door closed and Nigel Winthrop pulled a chair up to Smith's desk.

"I don't know if you remember me, Dr. Smith . . ." Winthrop began.

"Your name is familiar," Smith admitted.

"I managed your father's estate."

Smith blinked. Yes, it came back to him now. Winthrop and Weymouth. His father's law firm. He could remember seeing the letterhead on his father's desk many times as a boy.

"My father's estate was settled years ago," Smith said, stiff-voiced.

"And you were cut off."

"Ancient history," Smith snapped. He didn't like to be reminded that his own father had disinherited him.

Winthrop opened a leather briefcase and took out a sealed letter. He handed it to Smith.

"This letter was entrusted to me by your father, Dr. Smith. It was to be given to you, or to your eldest son in the event of your decease."

"I have no sons, only a daughter," Smith said.

"Open it, please."

Smith opened the letter with a red plastic letter opener and extracted a thick sheaf of folded papers. He read the salutation. It was addressed to him.

Smith read along, his eyes widening.

To my son, Harold:

I write this to you in life, but I will be dead when and if you read it. We have had our differences, Harold. You have failed me as a son. I know you bear me ill will because I could not accept your refusal to take over the family firm. I could not tell you otherwise while I lived, but this letter will help you understand that my hopes and dreams for you had nothing to do with publishing those cheap, shoddy magazines, but with something immensely greater.

If there is any family loyalty left in you, Harold, if any particle of red Anglo-Saxon blood flows through your veins, heed it now. Put aside your differences with me, for queen and empire are calling to you with clarion voice to rewrite a terrible wrong that a band of ragtag lawless rabble perpetrated on this proud colony many years ago. I refer to the shameful severing of this country from Mother England.

"Good God," Smith choked. He looked up at Winthrop. "Do you have any idea what this says?"

"I do. Please finish the letter, Dr. Smith."

Smith read on. It was all there, in his own father's handwriting. How after the signing of the Treaty of Yorktown, ending the American Revolution, a cell of Tory sleeper agents had been created on order of King George III. They were to await the proper time, and a signal from the crown, to activate. And by whatever means possible, to bring America to financial ruin.

"My own father . . ." Smith said under his breath. The papers in his hands shook. He shook. His weak gray eyes seemed to recede into his gaunt patrician face.

"Your father is offering you a second chance," Nigel Winthrop was saying quietly. "Here is an opportunity to redeem yourself in his eyes, Smith. You loved your father. Like these colonies, you were strong-willed, stiff-necked, and stubborn. All that is past. I must have your decision now, for my inability to contact you has kept you from entering the fray like the true Englishman that you are by birthright. "

Smith looked up from the letter. There were tears in his eyes.

"But . . . I love my country," he said in a quavering voice.

"Surely you must love your father more," Winthrop said firmly. "And do not fear for America." Winthrop smiled, exposing tea-stained teeth. "It is our country too. We are merely returning it to its proper place in the grand scheme of things. Now, I must have your answer."

Chapter 28

Remo Williams got lost on the A40 and ended up in a pastoral hamlet called Aylesbury.

He had to ask directions of three different people-not because the natives weren't forthcoming with directions, but because he had to hear the same directions three times before the thick local accent was comprehensible to him.

As he got back on the A40, he understood what was meant by whoever had said that Americans and British were a people separated by a common language.

Oxford resembled a crumbling fairyland from a distance, but when he found his way onto its narrow ancient streets, he was surprised to see a Kwik Kopy photocopy outlet and the usual fast-food restaurants. There was even a store that dealt exclusively in comic books, called Comic Showcase.

Remo looked around for a place to park. He caught sight of a space in a long row of undersize European cars on High Street, and he pulled into it--only then noticing the bright red cast-iron device set in the sidewalk. It looked like an overgrown fireplug, and Remo wondered if he'd be towed for parking there.

He decided the economy of the world mattered more than being ticketed.

When he got out, Remo saw that the supposed fireplug was actually a postal drop box. It made him wonder what a British fireplug looked like-a litter basket?

The street was busy with passersby, many of them students carrying books. Remo decided to start with them.

"Excuse me, pal," he asked one. "I'm looking for a Sir Quincy. "

"Sorry. Never heard of the chap. And it is pronounced Quinsee, not Quin-zee, you know."

"Thanks a heap," Remo said, next approaching a middleaged woman, on the theory that no one knew a neighborhood better than a native housewife.

"Sir Quincy, you say, Yank?" she replied. "I don't believe there's ever been a Sir Quincy in these parts. Not as long as I've been here. Are you lost?"

"No," Remo muttered, "but Sir Quincy is. Any suggestions what I could do?"

"Yes. What you should do is have a good sit-down with a nice strong cuppa tea, while you get your bearings. You look positively knackered."

"Actually, I'm just wet," Remo said, wondering what "knackered" meant.

"Good luck to you, then," the woman said, walking away.

"I'll need it," Remo said glumly. "I'm wet, lost, and I barely speak the language."

It started to rain again, and Remo ducked into the nearest store. It was the comic-book shop.

Remo pretended to browse, wondering why there were no copies of Captain Marvel on the shelves. Maybe Billy Batson had finally grown up.

The bell over the door rang, and a pair of book-laden students came in, talking among themselves. One of them spoke American English in a distinctly Oklahoma accent, and to Remo it was as if he'd heard a foghorn in a sea mist.

"Hey, pal. Maybe you can help me," Remo began.

"Sure."

"Ever hear of a Sir Quincy? He's supposed to live around here."

"Sir Quincy Chiswick?" He pronounced it "Chizick."

"That's it," Remo said.

"I know him. He's a don."

"He's Mafia?" Remo said in surprise.

"No. He's a professor. Teaches history. They call them dons. Walk to the end of High Street and turn right. He's on St. John's Street."

"Thanks," Remo said, leaving the store. He ran through the rain, one hand over his eyes. He got lost immediately.

Remo stopped an elderly man in a tweed cap, who seemed completely oblivious of the downpour.

"Can you point me in the general direction of St. John's Street?" Remo pronounced it "Sinjin's Street," because, unlike the American student, he knew that the Brits pronounced "Saint John" as "Sinjin."

"sorry," the elderly man clipped out. "No Sinjin Street in Oxford."

Remo watched him go, muttering, "I must have accidentally blundered into the Twilight Zone or something."

Deciding the old man might possibly have misheard him, Remo entered a dark musty pub.

"Sinjin's Street," he called out. "Anybody ever hear of it?"

"It's pronounced 'St. John's Street,' Yank," a gruff voice called back.

"I thought you Brits pronounced 'St. John' as 'Sinjin,' " Remo complained.

"That we do. But 'St. John's' we pronounce 'St. John's.' "

"Do you people have a rulebook for this stuff; or do you just make it up as you go along?"

"Do you want directions or do you want to hang about complaining?" he was asked.

"I'll take directions. I can always complain later."

"Up the street, walk east and it's at the crosswalk."

Remo found St. John's Street just as the rain began to slacken off: He was soaked to the skin and cold. He willed his blood to move faster through his system to generate heat. Steam actually began to rise from his shoulders and back.

Instead of cold and wet, he felt hot and wet. It was not much of an improvement, and Remo started to look forward to leaving Great Britain.

At Number Fifty St. John's Street, Remo found several nameplates. One said "Chiswick." That couldn't be it. The student had said the last name was "Chizick."

Remo canvassed the street in both directions twice before he realized that finding Sir Quincy Chizick wasn't going to be easy.

It was all he had, and so reluctantly he pressed the bell under the Chiswick nameplate at number fifty.

A mousy-haired woman with long yellow teeth and a faded housedress answered, her face peering around the door as if she'd been expecting the Grim Reaper. "Yes, what is it?"

"I'm looking for Sir Chizick."

"No Sir Chizicks hereabouts."

"Are you sure? I was told that Sir Quincy Chizick lived on this street.

Her face brightened. "Oh, Sir Chiswick. Yes, yes, come in. You have the right place."

The inner hall was dank with old wood and several hundred years of accumulated food odors. Remo noticed the phalanx of grandfather clocks as the woman called up the stairs, "Professor, you have a caller."

"He'll be just a mo," the woman assured Remo.

"You say 'Chizick' and the nameplate says 'Chiswick.' Which is it?"

"How does that little ditty go? 'You say "potato" and I say "potato." You say "tomato," and I say-' "

"Never mind," Remo said sourly. "I get it."

A querulous voice called down from the landing at the top of the stairs.

"Yes, what is it, Mrs. Burgoyne?"

"An American to see you, Lord Chiswick."

A head popped out of the doorway. "An American, you say? What about?"

"Why don't you ask me that?" Remo asked, mounting the stairs.

"And who are you?" demanded Sir Quincy Chiswick. He was a bookish man of indeterminate age, with his haired combed back like a 1930's movie star's. His funereal black gown made Remo wonder if the clock had stopped for him the day he graduated from college.

"Call me Remo. I'm here about the letters you've been sending to the British government."

Sir Quincy Chiswick perked up. "You have?" he said in delight. "At last! I had been wondering if the postal department had mislaid them. Come in, come in," he added, waving Remo in.

The room was what Remo imagined his grandmother's place might have looked like had he ever known his grandmother. It was neatly shabby, if vaguely effeminate. There was an electric heater in the much-painted-over fireplace, and one wall was all bookshelves.

"Don't mind the place," Sir Quincy rumbled. "The woman who does for me doesn't come until Saturday."

"Does what?" Remo asked, looking around.

The professor blinked. "My domestic," he said. Then, seeing Remo's expression go even more blank, added tartly, "My char."

" I only speak American."

"Oh, bother! Never mind. Sit down, sit down. Would you care for a cuppa tea?"

"No, thanks. Look, I don't have time to beat around the teapot. Are you the one responsible for this economic mess?"

"Dear me, no. It was a mess to start with."

"That doesn't answer my question," Remo said edgily.

"What is your question, dear boy?" the don asked.

"Are you the one who's been writing the chancellor of the checks?"

"Exchequer. A check is an instrument of payment."

"Spare me the classroom lectures. Are you him or not?"

"I am he. I trust all is proceeding satisfactorily."

"Are you crazy? Stock markets all over the world are disintegrating. "

"Really?" The thought apparently intrigued Sir Quincy Chiswick, because his eyes grew momentarily reflective.

"Don't you read the papers?"

"Dear me, no. Dreadful nuisance, those rags. Not one of them worth a bent copper anymore."

"Well, congratulations," Remo snapped. "You've just wrecked the world's economy, and before I snap your stuffy throat in two, I want to know if you can stop it."

"Stop it? Why should I do that?"

"Because the British economy is going down the tubes, along with everyone else's."

"It's taking the underground?" Sir Quincy asked, perplexed.

"I mean, down the john."

"Eh?"

"The loo! The loo!" Remo said in exasperation. "Everything's going down the loo. Do you understand that?"

"No need to shout, dear boy. Would you care for a scone? They're a trifle hard now, but still scrumptious, I think. "

"Why? Just tell me why you're doing this."

"Because I received the signal to put into effect the Grand Plan."

"Now we're getting somewhere," Remo said. "What Grand Plan?"

Sir Quincy blinked. "Why, King George's, of course."

"King George III!" Remo exclaimed.

"Ah, you know your history. Good. Yes, it was George III's idea. My great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was entrusted to be the expediter of the plan. I, as his descendant, have had that glorious duty fall upon my shoulders. And frankly, at my age, I had all but given up that I would ever receive the signal."

"What signal?"

"Why, the signal to effect the Grand Plan, of course. What other signal is there?"

"Silly me," Remo said distractedly. "Of course, that signal. Who gave it to you, by the way?"

"The Duchess of York-indirectly."

"Isn't she the redhead with the freckles?"

"That's the one. Good chap. Yes, the duchess. Although they all had a hand in it, from the queen mother to the relatives in the Netherlands and elsewhere."

"The royal family is behind this?"

"I do not care for your tone of voice, my good man. Now, keep schtum and let me finish my story."

Remo stood up.

"Sorry. You've told me all I need to know. It's time to go bye-bye."

"Where are we going?"

"I'm going back to America. And you're going to the nearest boneyard. Sorry, old chap. But that's the biz."

Just then, Mrs. Burgoyne's voice called up from downstairs.

"Professor. Another caller. A doctor. Says his name is Smith."

"Smith?" Sir Quincy Chiswick said, blinking owlishly.

"Smith?" Remo said in disbelief.

Chapter 29

If it hadn't been an emergency, if the economy of the entire world had not hung in the balance, Dr. Harold W. Smith could never have justified it to himself.

But time was critical, and so after disembarking from the British Airways jet at Heathrow, Smith eschewed the cheaper Piccadilly Line tube and actually hailed one of the ubiquitous black London taxis that reminded him of what the British version of a mythical 1938-vintage Edsel might have been.

Smith directed the driver to take him to Victoria Station.

At Victoria Station he actually told the driver to keep the change. It was painful but necessary. He could not wait for change.

Smith paid five pounds, fifty pence for a day-return ticket to Oxford and was told that it would depart in five minutes. Smith had already known that. He had timed his transatlantic plane trip to arrive with enough time for him to catch that bus.

Smith sat in the upper deck of the CityLink bus, oblivious of the darkening British countryside as it rolled past him; his briefcase was open and he was monitoring the world economic situation via his portable computer.

In America, the Big Board was upticking, as small investors, attracted by the bargains of the century, returned to the market in droves. Activity among the pool of Crown investors had slowed to a trickle. As Smith watched, the last Crown stockholder stopped trading. Smith smiled thinly. Success.

Reuters was reporting the discovery of a long-forgotten eighteenth-century document in the dusty archives on the Public Records office on London's Chancery Lane. Details of the document were not being released; a joint statement from Buckingham Palace and Ten Downing Street was issued, repudiating it.

Smith frowned as he read this.

Too little, too late, he told himself.

In one corner of the screen was a phone number. It was the number of a house on St. John's Street in Oxford, which his computer had spat out after several agonizing hours of backtracking through the Mayflower Descendants bulletin board. As Smith had suspected, the trace had gone through several terminals throughout the U. S. to a relay point in Toronto and from there to London-and finally to Oxford.

Because the computer net operated through telephone lines, Smith was able to access the phone number. The telephone was registered to a Mrs. Alfred Burgoyne, at fifty St. John's Street. It was there, he knew, he would find the person who controlled Looncraft and the others.

It was there that Harold Smith would be forced to make the ultimate choice of his life-between loyalty to his country and duty to his father.

For the hundredth time, Smith read through the closely typed letter his father had written so many years ago.

Finally he put it back into its original envelope and closed the briefcase. He closed his red-rimmed eyes as well. The long ride from London to Oxford would be about one hundred minutes long. And Smith knew he'd need his sleep for the final resolution of this incredible matter.

Chapter 30

"Sir Quincy, I am Harold W. Smith. Harold Winston Smith."

Sir Quincy blinked. "Of the Vermont Smiths?"

"Exactly. I received my orders today."

"Well, dash it all, man. What are you doing here? You should be going about your business. There is work to be done."

"Hold the phone," Remo Williams put in. " I have a question."

Both Smith and Sir Quincy looked to Remo.

"What happened to your wheelchair?" Remo demanded hotly.

"Not now," Smith said peevishly.

"Yes, now. I've been working for you on this because you needed me. You couldn't use your legs, you said. And here you just stroll in like a frigging stork in a three-piece suit. "

"Remo, Please. I have to know about Sir Quincy's operation. "

"Be glad to fill you in," Remo snapped. "He's behind it, all right. Says the royal family put him up to it. He's some mastermind, too. He's not exactly up on the fine details. I was just about to take him out when you sauntered in."

"No," Smith said firmly. "You will not kill this man. That's an order."

"I don't work for you, so I don't take orders from you," Remo said, grabbing Sir Quincy by the collar. He lifted the man off the threadbare rug.

"Unhand me, you . . . you vulgarian!" Sir Quincy sputtered.

" I was thinking about a heart-stopping punch," Remo suggested. "Say, right about here." He stabbed Sir Quincy in the chest, above the heart muscle.

Sir Quincy went white. He looked like a crow that had gotten his head into a flour sack.

"Remo, no!" Smith said hoarsely. He grabbed for Remo's hand, desperately attempting to pry his fingers loose from Sir Quincy's gown collar. They might have been cast of metal.

"What's with you, Smith?" Remo asked in exasperation. "This is the head market manipulator. We take him out and it's over."

"No, it is not over. This man knows the secret behind a conspiracy that dates back to the days of the American Revolution."

"He said something about that, yeah," Remo admitted. "How'd you know that?"

"Put him down and I'll tell you," Smith said calmly.

Remo shook Sir Quincy like a drowned rat. "I like killing him better."

"You no longer work for the organization," Smith pointed out. "Killing this man is not your responsibility."

Remo thought about that. He released Sir Quincy from his grasp. The don struck the rug like a black sack of kindling.

"I don't like being manipulated," Remo warned Smith.

"This is important," Smith said, helping Sir Quincy to his feet. He sat him down on a faded lumpy sofa near the fireplace.

Remo folded his arms angrily, but he didn't interfere.

"Sir Quincy, first let me apologize for your rude treatment."

"What!" Remo exploded.

"I must ask you this," Smith went on "Who gave you the signal?"

"I can answer that," Remo said. "The Duchess of York, no less."

Smith shot Remo a harsh glance. "That is not funny."

"It is true," Sir Quincy said as he brushed off his gown.

"What? The Duchess of York? Prince Andrew's wife?"

"Quite. It was planned all along. As the Royal Reclamation Charter stipulates, when a member of the royal family gives birth to a girl and names her Beatrice, that will be considered the signal to begin implementing the Grand Plan."

"What?" Smith's haggard face was comical in its dumbfoundedness.

"It's really quite sound, my dear chap. As you know-as you should know-the royal family must obtain the approval of every branch of the family, no matter how distant, before a name can be decided upon. Not only the queen mother and the queen, but the distant relatives in the Netherlands and elsewhere must be consulted. And agreement must be unanimous. It is quite foolproof."

"I see," Smith said. "And the nature of the takeover?"

"Actually, I'm somewhat muddy on the details. The Loyalists handle that end of it, chiefly Percy."

"Percy?" Remo wanted to know.

"Looncraft," Smith supplied.

"Sterling lad. Like his forefathers. The Looncraft family quartered in the Fourth Regiment-the King's Own-during the Rebellion, you know. Yes, the Looncrafts were the family charged with the duty of effectuating the Grand Plan once they received the signal from me."

"By computer?" Smith asked.

"Confounded nuisance," Sir Quincy said gruffly. "I do not like the bloody things. Refuse to have a telephone. But the mails, you know, they're so dashed slow these days. "

"It's like that in the States too," Remo said sourly.

"Quiet " Smith said flatly. "Go on, Sir Quincy. What is the plan?"

"Why, dear boy, you must have an inkling by now. To compel the colonies back into the fold, of course."

"By force?"

"No, dear boy. Nothing so dreadful. We bear no ill will toward our wayward cousins. Even back to King George. He felt that the colonies couldn't survive without the protection of Mother England. That proved untrue, which he foresaw, and so he created the Grand Plan. The idea was brilliant. To force America into financial ruin, so that it must rejoin the empire. I imagine this stockmarket business has something to do with it."

"Sir Quincy," Smith said firmly, "you must know that the British economy is in very sorry shape right now."

"That's an understatement," Remo snorted.

Sir Quincy cleared his throat. "I have heard rumblings," he admitted, "but every era has its lean periods. Things will bounce back, don't you fret. Everything will be all right if we simply keep our peckers up, as the young ones are so fond of saying."

"Unbelievable," Remo said, throwing his head back and staring at the yellowing ceiling. "This guy doesn't even live in the real world. He thinks it's still the eighteenth century."

Smith glared at Remo. In a calm voice he told Sir Quincy, "You must stop this. It's wrecking the British economy. "

"Oh, stuff and nonsense. England will endure. You must have faith in our traditions. We are too hardy a race to perish over some minor economic hiccup."

"The global markets are in turmoil," Smith said firmly. "There is financial panic in London. The pound sterling is depreciating by the minute."

"Confound it! Have those colonists mucked this up?"

Smith stared at Sir Quincy. "You don't even know the operational details of the plan," he said in a small voice.

"The Grand Plan," Sir Quincy corrected, "and no, I do not. History is my forte, not economics. I am merely the man who lights the lighthouse that will bring the colonial ship back to home port. The details are not my concern. "

"They should be," Smith said harshly. "Given the current economic situation, England will be ruined long before America if your people persist in this mad scheme. You must call them off."

"I cannot. There is no way to stop it. Nor would I. And on what authority? The word of a Yank who doubtless drinks his ale ice-cold and doesn't have the breeding to knot his necktie with a full Windsor?"

Smith touched his tie self-consciously.

"Dartmouth?" Sir Quincy asked, noticing the stripes.

"Yes," Smith said tightly.

"Worthy school, I hear. It's not Oxford, but what is?"

Smith noticed the oversize tea cozy on the writing desk. A gray electric cord snaked out from under it. He pulled the tea cozy off, revealing a computer terminal.

"This is your computer," Smith said. It was not a question.

"Yes," Sir Quincy admitted. "How did you know about that by the way?"

" I inserted a worm into the Mayflower Descendants network. It enabled me to trace this address."

"Jove! It must be a talented worm to do all that."

"A worm is akin to a computer virus," Smith explained, turning on the machine. "I designed it to follow the audit trail and replicate at every relay point, which I see it has."

On the screen appeared amber letters:

***WARNING!!!***

TUBE IMPLOSION IMMINENT!

STAND CLEAR!

***DANGER***

"Good God," Sir Quincy gasped. "It is about to explode." "No," Smith said. "The message is harmless. It's designed to prevent anyone from attempting to rid his system of my virus worm. And without their computers, no further stock transactions can be consummated by your people. They are effectively frozen out of the market, which is now rebounding."

"Dammit, man!" Sir Quincy said furiously. "You are one of us. Why would you do a dastardly thing such as that?"

"To save the world from a lunatic scheme hatched for an eighteenth-century political situation. You see, the British government knows nothing of this so-called Grand Plan."

"Rubbish! They have in their possession a copy of the Royal Reclamation Charter."

"Which was misfiled in 1877 and forgotten by successive governments," Smith snapped. "The signal you thought you received was just a coincidence. In a sad way, it was almost inevitable that this would happen. It was fortunate that it did on my watch. You see, Sir Quincy, the royal family has repudiated the charter."

"The deuce you say!" Sir Quincy Chiswick said in astonishment. "This would explain why the queen did not answer my letters. I was reduced to writing to the chancellor of the exchequer, who also does not bother to read his mail, it seems. This is a most unlikely turn of events, if true. "

"I have one more question for you, Sir Quincy. Then I must go. Of the people who have carried the torch over these last two centuries, who are the leaders?"

"Why, Percy is paramount. I have no idea whom he has selected as his lieutenants. Those decisions were made in 1776 by H. P. Looncraft, his great-great-great-"

"Never mind," Smith said. "I know all I need to know. Good-bye, Sir Quincy."

"Good luck, chap," Sir Quincy said. "But where are you off to?"

"America. There is work for me there."

"Glad to hear it. For a moment, I was fearful that you were not loyal."

"I have always been loyal to my country," Smith said coldly. He turned to Remo. "You know what to do. Meet me outside when you are finished with him."

"Now, just a moment, Smith," Sir Quincy said. "You can't leave me here with this . . . this Mediterranean type. As one Englishman to another, I implore you. What would your father say to this? Think on that, Smith. Listen to your heritage. It is calling you."

Dr. Harold W. Smith went out the door without a backward glance.

"Wait a minute," Remo called after him. "You can't stick me with the dirty work just like that."

Smith's leaden footsteps were heavy on the staircase. Down below, a door clicked open and then shut heavily.

Remo turned to Sir Quincy Chiswick.

"What happens if I don't kill you?" Remo asked.

"I do not die," said Sir Quincy as if speaking to an idiot.

That almost made up Remo's mind for him. "No, I meant now that this squirrely scheme has gone south, are you going to try it again?"

"Of course. I have received the signal-regardless of what your misguided friend believes."

"Smith's not my friend," Remo said coldly. "And neither are you." He took a fistful of Sir Quincy's gown front and pulled him to his feet.

"Unhand me, you . . . you rebel!"

"I'm an American," Remo said firmly. "Just like Smith. It's the one thing we have in common."

Sir Quincy sneered. " 'Common' is precisely the word for it. You are both commoners. Not a drop of Anglo-Saxon blood in either of you, you Yankee Doodle traitors."

"A lot of innocent people were massacred by your Cornwallis Guard," Remo said slowly, his eyes hard. "People I knew. What do you say to that?"

"Were any of them of British descent?"

"It never occurred to me to ask," Remo said bitterly. His mind was made up now. He led Sir Quincy Chiswick over to one of his dingy beds and asked, "Any last words?"

"God Save the Queen! Rule Britannia! For as long as one of us upholds crown and country, the English shall ever be free."

"That's enough," Remo said. He punched Sir Quincy in the exact center of his chest, stepping back.

For a moment Sir Quincy teetered on his heels. His eyes rolled up into his head and his face acquired a faint blue tinge at his jowls.

Remo decided it was taking too long, so he pushed the teetering corpse of Sir Quincy Chiswick onto the bed.

Remo took a moment to lift his feet onto the bed and tuck him in, where, when he was eventually found, his death would be taken for simple heart failure.

On his way out of the flat, Remo took a moment to type the word "CHECKMATE" onto the silent computer screen.

Out on the sidewalk, Dr. Harold W. Smith waited impatiently.

"Is it done?" he asked tonelessly when Remo emerged from the row house.

"Yeah," Remo said unhappily. "I've got a few bones to pick with you. First it's kill him. Then don't kill him, and then it's go ahead and kill him. And you walk out. Not wheel out, but walk out. And I'm still waiting for an explanation on that one."

"My country means everything to me," Harold Smith said, tight-lipped. "More than my heritage, more than the memory of a father who disinherited me because I dared to choose my own path in life. It's what I sacrificed for all my adult life. I do not like to lie. I abhor killing. And I did not ask for the responsibility that forces me to do one and order you to do the other. But it was thrust upon me and I accepted. I have had to live with that choice for many years, and I do not regret it. Not a bit. There will be no other Harold Smiths to take my place when I die, in the family business or in government service. I must do as much as I can while I'm alive, because after I am gone there will be no one to take my place. Lying to you, even eliminating you if it serves the national interest, does not seem too high a price to pay for freedom."

Remo Williams stared at the man he had known for nearly twenty years. A cold rain began falling on Oxford's benighted spires.

"Sometimes I hate you, you bloodless son of a bitch," Remo said.

"But you understand me?"

"Too much."

"You were chosen for this work because your patriotic quotient was extremely high, you know."

"I like to think I just love my country."

"Many people love their country. You're privileged to serve it in a way no one has since the Founding Fathers."

"I never thought of it that way before," Remo admitted.

Smith opened his briefcase and logged onto his computer.

"The stock-market crisis seems to be over," he said absently. "The Far Eastern markets have opened up. Investor confidence should stay high. There will be some sorting-out to do, but that is the SEC's responsibility. If we eliminate Douglas Lippincott and DeGoone Slickens, the rest do not matter. Without leaders, they will revert to their sleeper status, passing their heritage on to the next generation, who will wait for a signal that will never come. You see, Remo, like myself, Sir Quincy is the last of his line. His landlady told me that. There will be no more Chiswicks to activate the Loyalists."

"You want me to take out Lippincott and Slickens?"

"It's your choice."

Remo considered. "Why not?" he said at last. "I'll do it for the Nostrum employees who died. What about Looncraft?"

"He should be arriving in London for what he thinks is to be a royal audience. The British are very unhappy with him and he will be dealt with severely, rest assured." Smith snapped his briefcase shut. "Then you are back with the organization?"

"Maybe. But we won't be friends."

"We never were. I won't hesitate to sacrifice you for the cause. If you keep that in mind, we will get along."

"You know, Smith," Remo said thoughtfully, "I never knew my father. I always thought that was pretty tough. But from what I heard back there, your situation was worse than mine."

"I threw away my last chance to make amends in the flat," Smith said, glancing up at Sir Quincy's window. He adjusted his glasses. "I will never forget that, but I will never regret it either. My duty was clear. I hope that you will come to see your duty more clearly, and with less pain. "

Remo smiled tightly. "Give you a ride back to London, Smitty?"

"No," Harold Smith said without warmth. "I bought a return bus ticket. I like to get my money's worth."

And Harold W. Smith walked away, looking old and stooped and very fragile.

Remo waited until he turned the corner before trudging off to his car. It started to rain, but he didn't notice this time. He had too much to think about.

Chapter 31

P. M. Looncraft arrived in London's Heathrow Airport confident that back in the soon-to-be-defunct United States of America, the balance of economic might had shifted to Crown Acquisitions, Limited, and its stockholders. It would take another year, possibly two, before everything was consolidated, Looncraft reflected, but it was better than running tanks in the street. The Conscripts would be a great help once the stubborn ones were brought into line by the impressment gangs.

As the Jetway ramp was moved into position to accept disembarking passengers, he adjusted his chalk-striped Savile Row coat and patted his tightly combed hair.

The stewardess said good-bye in a homey British accent and P. M. Looncraft stepped out into the waiting room, smiling thinly.

"British soil at last," he said.

He looked around, wondering if perhaps the queen herself might be waiting for him. He dismissed the happy thought as sheer vanity. Of course not. A coach from the Royal Mews would suffice, however.

Instead of a coach from the Royal Mews, there was a quartet of stern-faced London constables. One of them stepped up to him after glancing at a Forbes cover. Looncraft recognized it as the one that had first proclaimed him King of Wall Street. He wondered if he would be knighted.

"Percival Marylebone Looncraft?" the constable inquired with proper British civility.

"Precisely, my good man," Looncraft said, trying to match his accent. "I presume you are to escort me to my destination?"

"That we are. A car is waiting."

"Capital. "

The car proved to be a common police car.

At the sight of it, Looncraft's long face became positively sunken.

"I was hoping for something more . . . ah, ceremonial," he complained as the door was held open for him. "One does not normally go to Buckingham Palace in a common police vehicle."

"In you go," one of the bobbies said. "We'll explain it on the way."

Looncraft climbed in. The door slammed and the others entered the car.

The drive took them to the outskirts of London, and the car kept going. Perhaps they were taking him to Windsor Castle. Looncraft asked.

"You are not going to Windsor Castle, bloke," the man seated next to him said tartly. "Your destination is Wormwood Scrubs."

"Remarkable name," Looncraft said. "Is it the royal retreat?"

"Wormwood Scrubs is a prison," he was told. "For you have been detained in the name of the queen."

Looncraft's lantern jaw dropped. "Prison?" he bleated.

"The charge is perpetrating crimes against the crown."

"There must be some mistake," Looncraft insisted. "This is highly uncivilized. I understood I was to see the queen. "

The bobbies broke into raucous laughter at that remark.

They were still laughing an hour later as they unceremoniously threw him into a dank prison cell.

P. M. Looncraft grabbed the scabrous bars and stuck his long nose through two of them.

"A dreadful mistake has been made!" he called. "My family has been loyal to the crown for over two hundred years. The Looncrafts billeted the King's Own regiment during the Rebellion. You must get word to the queen. She knows who I am."

"Queen?" a mincing cockney voice asked from the creaking double cot directly behind P. M. Looncraft. "You've come to the right pew, mate."

Remo Williams pulled up in front of the Morton Court Hotel, wondering where all the SAS commandos had gone.

The Indian girl at the reception desk told him that the Master of Sinanju had checked out after receiving a telephone call from a man who said his name was Smith.

"Know where he went?" Remo asked, noticing that the girl was not returning his smile.

"No, I do not," she said coolly. "And he neglected to pay his charges."

Remo sighed. "Give it here."

After Remo had paid the bill, the clerk found her smile and her memory.

"Oh, I nearly forgot," she said. "He did leave you a note. "

The note was brief. It said:

"REMO: I AM TAKING TEA WITH THE QUEEN MOTHER. AWAIT ME OUTSIDE BUCKINGHAM PALACE GATES. CHIUN."

Remo took the underground to Green Park and walked up the tree-lined Queen's Walk to the Mall and Buckingham Palace. There was no sign of the Master of Sinanju, so he cooled his heels outside the gates until, nearly two hours and three intermittent rainstorms later, Chiun emerged from the gates, beaming contentedly.

A matronly woman in what Remo thought was a dowdy dress and a gold crown waved good-bye from the big front door.

"How did it go?" Remo asked grumpily.

"It went well," Chiun said airily. "The queen mother is a sterling woman. She accepted the Royal Sceptre with grace and without recriminations-unlike that common scold, her daughter."

"I saw Smith in Oxford," Remo said as they began walking in the direction of Saint James's Park.

"I know. He told me everything. I understand the matter is settled."

"I got the head guy. And an earful from Smith about duty. "

Chiun looked up at Remo's set profile with lifted eyebrows.

"And what have you decided?"

"I haven't. I'm still pissed at Smith. But I'll string along with you until I figure out what I really want to do with my life."

"Then be good enough to string along with me for a few more hours," Chiun said. "Then we will leave this gray city of gray people and gray skies."

"An island full of Smiths," Remo remarked dryly.

"There is some good in all peoples," Chiun said, lifting a yellow forefinger. "Except possibly the Japanese."

"Don't forget the Chinese," Remo said good-naturedly. "Whom we are never, ever going to work for."

"The Thais also have their shortcomings," Chiun put in.

"I was never a fan of the Vietnamese. Or the French."

The Master of Sinanju led Remo to Oxford Street, near Oxford Circus, where he went into a store called Virgin Mega.

Remo waited outside, where he bought a copy of a tabloid which ballyhooed the realigning of the sphinxes at Cleopatra's Needle. He gave the vendor a fifty-pound note and received what seemed like a piggy bank's worth of coins in change. His pockets were already bulging with pound coins.

"Don't you have any pound bills?" Remo demanded.

"Sorry, sir. The pound note's been abolished."

"Keep the change, then," Remo said, letting the coins drop to the sidewalk. His pockets couldn't bear any more weight.

Chiun came out and crossed the street to another store called simply HMV. When he came out again, his arms were filled with plastic bags.

"Where to now?" Remo wanted to know.

"Heathrow," said Chiun. "I have summoned the Nostrum jet. Now that we are once again honored in this land, we need not leave as we entered, in secret."

"What do you mean-we? I was catching my death, as the British say, while you were sipping Earl Grey."

"Green tea," Chiun replied smugly. "The British may be uncouth, but their royalty continue to uphold certain meager standards-un-Korean as they are."

Chapter 32

The next morning, Remo Williams walked into the Lippincott Mercantile Bank. He wore a fresh black T-shirt and a businesslike expression on his high-cheekboned face.

He went directly to Douglas Lippincott's office and breezed past his secretary with such feline fluidity of movement that she never noticed him, not even when Lippincott's door opened and closed behind Remo.

Douglas Lippincott looked up from his hand mirror with a startled expression. He had been caught trimming his nostril hair with a sterling-silver rotary-blade tool.

"I beg your pardon," he sniffed, shoving the tool-and-mirror set into a drawer. "Are you my eleven o'clock?"

"More like your high noon," Remo said, coming around the desk.

Lippincott looked at Remo with sudden recognition. "Do I know you?"

"Not unless you read the National Enquirer."

" I should say not."

"Then you don't know me," Remo said casually, looking at a desktop computer whose plug dangled loose. "I hear you took a big beating in yesterday's stock market."

"I do not discuss matters of business with persons I do not know socially. Please leave."

"I will." Remo said. "After you."

"Why should I leave?" Douglas Lippincott demanded, following Remo with his eyes.

Remo went to one of the office windows. He attempted to throw the sash up, which made Lippincott smirk to himself. Who was this ruffian? Everyone knew that modern office windows did not open. It was a design element that had come into popularity after the 1929 stock-market crash, when, but for the convenience of an open window, many fewer panicked investors might have committed suicide by defenestration than had happened.

When Remo realized the sill was locked in place, he blew on his right index fingernail and used it to score a rough oval in the glass. It screeched. He tapped the glass with a knuckle. It popped from its pane. Remo grabbed it before it could fall, and pulled the crystal oval inside.

He dropped it on Douglas Lippincott's desk, where it broke into triangular pieces.

"My word," Douglas Lippincott gasped.

"I hear you took such a big beating in the market that you're beside yourself," Remo went on in a cheerful voice. "Can't cover your margins and all that investor kind of stuff. "

"I will say it again. That is not your concern." He reached for his intercom. Too late.

Douglas Lippincott stood up, his face quirking in sudden surprise. He had not given his legs the command to stand. But there he was standing nevertheless. And then he was walking. He felt the tightness at his shirt collar and the thick wad of his full-Windsor necktie knot pressing his Adam's apple, and realized that he was being led to the portholelike window opening by the scruff of his neck.

"Any last words before you throw yourself into instant and permanent bankruptcy?" Remo asked nonchalantly.

" I fancy 'God Save the Queen' is appropriate."

"Not in this country," Remo Williams said, arranging Douglas Lippincott's limbs in preparation for throwing him through the hole.

Lippincott didn't quite fit. He took most of the remaining glass with him on the way down. It made Remo glad he had checked for passersby first. Falling glass was dangerous.

DeGoone Slickens wet his lips. His typing fingers-the right index and the left middle finger-were poised over his office computer terminal. There had been no word from P. M. Looncraft since he had rushed off to England. Doug Lippincott had sounded like a broken man over the phone. That meant it was up to DeGoone Slickens to pull it all together.

If only the danged computer would work. Settling himself, he hit the "On" switch.

The amber lines were slow to appear, like a TV set warming up.

Slickens leaned forward, squinting.

The message read:

***WARNING!!!***

TUBE IMPLOSION IMMINENT!!

STAND CLEAR!

***DANGER***

"Dang!" Slickens said, ducking to escape the flying glass that never came.

When he felt it was safe, he lifted his head to read the screen again. He was no computer expert, but when a computer warned that it was about to go berserk, he took the threat seriously.

But this computer didn't look like it was going to do anything but scream its silent warning.

Slickens started to pick himself up from the floor when something changed. The warning still glowed in smoldering amber letters, but a shadow had crossed the glareproof screen. It was a face, dark, ghostly, with hollow skull-like eyes and a cruel mouth under high cheekbones.

Steeling himself, DeGoone Slickens lifted his face to the screen to see the face more clearly. His face kept on going, propelled by a hand he neither saw nor felt, because it was moving faster than his nervous system could react to it.

The screen accepted his face with unqualified hostility. The tube imploded, swallowing DeGoone Slickens' head. Sparks flew like electric spittle, and something inside the housing buzzed like a dying cicada.

As DeGoone Slickens' soft organic brain matter mingled with the terminal's hard-wired brain matter, Remo Williams unplugged the device. He didn't want to start a fire.

An hour later Remo showed up at Faith Davenport's apartment lobby. The blue-blazered security guard was only too happy to fax the joyous news of his arrival.

Under his arm Remo carried the thick paper-wrapped bundle he had brought from the car to the elevator and up several flights to Faith's door.

"Remo, lover!" Faith said excitedly. "I was so worried about you."

Remo stepped in, his face screwed into glum lines. He willed his facial muscles to hold that expression, hoping for the best. This wasn't going to be easy, he knew.

Faith threw her arms around his neck the moment the door was closed. "I missed you so much!" she exclaimed. Her nose touched his; her eyes were practically mating with his own.

Gently, with one hand, Remo unlocked her embrace. Faith's hands went to his thick right wrist, and, moving slowly, began to caress his index finger.

" I can't stay," Remo said seriously, pulling his finger away.

Faith's face went into shock. "No?"

"No," Remo echoed. "This is good-bye. I don't know how to tell you this, but we can't see each other anymore. "

"But . . . but I love you."

"No," Remo said, paraphrasing Australian soap-opera dialogue he had heard in London. "You don't love me. You only love my index finger. Admit it."

Faith's expression broke like a mirror. "It's true!" she sobbed. "But we can work it out. I know! We can go into counseling."

Remo shook his head sadly.

"Give me one reason," Faith demanded, hurt.

"Here," Remo said, handing her the paper-wrapped bundle.

Faith carried it to the sofa, where she began unwrapping it. The rolled-up pelt of Bear-Man came forth.

She looked at it, at Remo, and at the suit again. "You!..

"Now you know my secret," Remo said, solemn-voiced. "Now you know why our love can never be. I am needed elsewhere." He took her trembling hand in his. "You're the only person I've told my secret to. Promise me that you'll keep it."

Faith's lower lip trembled. Her chin joined in. Her eyes began to well up and overflow.

"Y-yes," she said. "Of course. I'm so . . . honored you told me. I feel just like Kim Basinger."

"-my life is too dangerous to share it with anyone. You know how financial crime-fighting is."

"Oh, I know! I know!"

"Well," Remo said, thankful his facial muscles were holding together. "I gotta go now. Duty calls. Someone has to protect the market from the greedy."

He gathered up the Bear-Man suit and stuffed it under one arm and started for the door.

Faith rushed to him. "Before you go," she said. "Do you have any hot market tips?"

"Yeah. Dump all your faxes. They cause sterility in laboratory rats. The AMA is about to blow the whistle on the whole thing."

"Oh, I will. I promise."

At the door, Faith bestowed on his lips a wistful butterfly kiss. He gave her a discolored bear's tooth souvenir in return, then left, feeling her eyes follow him to the elevator.

His pent-up laughter held long enough for the elevator to reach the lobby. He laughed all the way down the street.

It stopped abruptly when he passed a teenager in a T-shirt that read "I SAW THE BEAR!" Under the legend was a picture of Bear-Man's ferocious head. Two blocks further along, a business type carrying The Wall Street journal under one arm almost bumped into him. He wore a brown baseball cap with a bear's head mounted on top. Remo saw bear-teeth bumper stickers, necklaces, and even a street mime in a shaggy grizzly costume.

"Oh, no," Remo said. He hailed a cab and raced to the Nostrum Building.

Remo found the Master of Sinanju fuming in the emptiness of his office. The trading room was still in ruins from the shooting. There were no workers to be seen anywhere.

Remo stepped over the litter of broken glass and furniture. Chiun caught sight of his worried expression.

"What is wrong, Remo?" he squeaked.

"What makes you think something is wrong?" Remo asked innocently.

"Your face betrays you, as always."

"Tell me your troubles and I'll tell you mine," Remo countered, joining him in the office.

"I have just been on the telephone with that deceiver, Smith," Chiun complained.

"Let me guess. He's taking Nostrum away from you."

"He would not dare. He says it is mine if I will assume all the debts. Nostrum is overleveraged, whatever that means."

"Search me," Remo said. " I don't understand business talk."

"It has something to do with Nostrum having borrowed money from something called the Social Security Trust Fund. They have called in the note. Nostrum must sell all its stocks to accomplish this. I knew nothing about this debt. Did you?"

"It's news to me," Remo admitted. "So what did you tell Smith?"

"I asked him who this Social Security Trust Fund was and he told me it belonged to the American government. I then told Smith that if the President wishes to sue Nostrum, I will take this to the Supreme Courtyard. You see, I have learned how these business people think."

Remo masked a smile. "And what did he say?"

"He began babbling about the elderly persons who will not be fed if the money is not returned. And then he made me an offer I could not refuse."

"He did?" Remo said. "Smith? Our Smith? Tightwad Smith? What did he offer?"

"Something more worthy than all the stock certificates in the world," Chiun replied.

"Yeah?"

"Australian beautiful dramas!" Chiun cried triumphantly. "Beamed by satellite to our very home every day. Think of it, Remo. I will once again have beautiful dramas with which to pass my declining years.

"I'd say that's worth millions of dollars any day," Remo said wryly.

"I knew that you would agree," Chiun said. "That is why I freely and with clear conscience offered him your share of Nostrum as well."

Remo's eyebrows shot up. "My share?"

"Smith threw in British dramas. How could I refuse anything so magnanimous?"

"Especially when you're not footing the bill," Remo said dryly. "What about Cheeta Ching? I thought she was number one on your wish list."

"A woman is young for a time," Chiun said loftily, "but art endures forever. And I think that when she learns of my magnificent treasure trove of beautiful dramas, she will beat a path to my very door, begging me to share these riches with her."

"Could be," Remo said. Chiun's wrinkled features broke into a pleasurable smile. "But I doubt it," Remo added quickly.

Chiun frowned. "We shall see," he said in a careless voice. "Now, what is it that troubles you?"

"I see Bear-Man everywhere I go. And he's not me."

"I know, I know," Chiun said unhappily.

"You must be cleaning up, huh?" Remo prompted.

Chiun's frown soured even more. "That lazy woman Faith," he spat. "She is ill-named. Her mother should have named her Faithless. A common shooting happens and she is afraid to come to work. I have fired her. I have fired them all."

"What happened?" Remo asked.

"She did not do as I instructed," Chiun explained. "Some bandit has appropriated the Bear-Man merchandising. Faith neglected to secure the proper copyrights or some such white nonsense, and now others are copying what should be only mine to copy."

"Great," Remo said. "I'm off the hook for personal appearances. The Bear-Man suit's out in the hall. It's yours. I never want to see it again."

"And you will not," Chiun snapped. "I have lost billions. Billions."

Chiun looked about him with the air of a Napoleon bidding farewell to Paris before going into exile.

"Good-bye, Nostrum," he said. "I will miss you."

"But I won't," Remo said.

"We will leave now. Let the new owners clean up this place." Chiun went to a file cabinet and began pulling out plastic bags.

"Come, Remo," he said. "Help me carry these away."

Remo accepted an armful of the bags. They were very heavy and bore store logos such as HMV and Strawberries.

"What's all this?" Remo asked, looking into the top bag. He saw only stacks of clear flat plastic boxes.

"My CDs," Chiun said proudly as he emptied the cabinet. "You see, I have not been completely cheated. On the advice of Smith, I have invested all my Nostrum salary in CD's."

Remo shifted the package to one arm and pulled out a box.

The label read "NANA MOUSKOURI IN CONCERT." The box under it featured Barbra Streisand's face.

"Compact discs?" Remo said, blinking.

"Now that the stock market is healthy once more," Chiun said "I am going to redeem these for gold."

"Where?" Remo wanted to know, his face a study in sobriety.

Chiun closed the final drawer. "Smith said any bank will take them."

"I have an idea," Remo said as they walked through crunching glass to the elevators. "Why don't you get Smith to handle the transaction? He knows lots of bankers. He can probably get you the best rate."

"That is an excellent idea, Remo," Chiun said. "It is the least that man can do after the cunning way he has tricked me. Do you mind if we do this tonight? You know these Americans and their gambling manias. Today the markets are up. Tomorrow they may crash anew."

The elevator arrived, and they stepped aboard.

"Little Father," Remo said, grinning broadly, " I absolutely insist that we rush back to Folcroft and take advantage of Smith's investment acumen."