Last Call

"Good," said Chiun. "We will make his death a lesson for all those everywhere who would dare to trifle with this glorious country of the Constitution, Emperor."

Smith shook his head. "No, no, no, no."

He looked at Remo for help. Remo looked out the window.

"I want you both to make sure nothing happens to him while he's here," Smith said. "Until this missing assassin can be turned up."

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"AH right," Remo said.

"Of course, mighty Emperor," said Chiun. "Your friends are our friends."

"Karbenko is meeting him at the airport," Smith said.

"He knows we're coming?" asked Remo.

"Not exactly."

"How not exactly?" Remo said.

"He wouldn't hear of having any American personnel involved. He wants to do it on his own."

"Very wise," Chiun said.

"He runs a risk of losing the man," Smith said. "But it's a matter of pride with him."

"Very foolish," Chiun said.

"We'll keep him alive," Remo said. "That's it?"

Smith looked at him for a moment, then turned slowly in his chair to look out the one-way windows toward Long Island Sound. "That's it. For now."

Remo had heard those "for nows" before. He stared at Smith's back. The CURE director continued, looking out the window.

Outside Folcroft, Chiun said to Remo, "I do not understand this. Russia is your country's enemy, correct?"

"Yes."

"Then why are we saving the head of all the Russias? Why do we not kill him and install our own man on their throne?"

"Chiun," Remo said decisively. "Who knows?"

Admiral Wingate Stantington was walking around the perimeter of his office. The clicking

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sound of the pedometer on his hip gave him a sense of satisfaction. It was the first time he had felt reasonably good since he had been taken out of his office in a Hefty bag.

Not that he had forgotten that. He never would. And he would get even, he vowed. With the dark-eyed American. With the old Oriental. That black woman who set it all up. His own secretary who allowed it to happen.

He would fix them all. In due time.

It probably had been easier in the old days. He could have just unleashed a CIA hit team, given them their targets and told them to do it. And afterwards, they would be whisked out of the country, set to work in a foreign mission somewhere, and that would be that.

It was different now. Try to find somebody who'd do a little dirty work without worrying all the time about being arrested and indicted. Try to find one who could do it without writing a book about it later on.

When it came time to write his book, he'd let them know what he thought. All of them.

When his private telephone line rang, it was the President telling him that the premier of Russia was arriving that afternoon.

"He can't," Stantington said.

"Why not, Cap?" the President asked.

"We haven't had a chance to put together any kind of security arrangements," Stantington said.

"That's not your concern. I'm just alerting you so you know what's happening in case you hear anything later."

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Stantington depressed the button on his telephone tape recorder.

"Officially, Mister President, I have to advise you that I am against this entire idea. I think it is needlessly risky, fraught with peril, and ill-advised."

"I have received and noted your opinion," the President said with chill in his voice as he hung up.

All right, Stantington thought. He was on record. When things went wrong, as they were bound to later, he could tell any Congressional committee with a clear mind and heart that he had advised the President against this course of action. And he had it on tape. He'd be damned if he'd be arrested and indicted for somebody else's mistake.

Stantington sat heavily behind his desk and sighed. But was that enough? Was it enough that he had protected his ass ?

He thought about that for no more than thirty seconds and reached his decision.

Yes, it was. There was nothing more important than surviving. The man who had the job before him could languish in a prison chowline. The President could bumble and blunder about. But Admiral Wingate Stantington was going to be as clean as a hound's tooth, and perhaps someday, when they were looking around for viable, clean candidates for offices like President, Wingate Stantington would stand out like a silver dollar atop a pile of pennies.

He leaned back in the chair as he had an idea. He might be able to help that process along-par-

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ticularly if he was the man who prevented World War III and saved the Russian premier's life in the bargain.

The killings of the three ambassadors had been done by people close to the targets. Now it was Vassily Karbenko's idea to bring the premier to America and Karbenko, it was well known, was like a son to the premier.

Karbenko might fool some others, but could there be any doubt that he was bringing the premier to America so that he would be within the range of Karbenko's own guns ?

Stantington was sure of it. Karbenko was the assassin and the President was playing into Karbenko's hands by allowing the Russian premier's visit.

"Get me the files on Colonel Karbenko," Stantington barked into his telephone.

As he waited, he thought about it, and the more he thought, the more sure he was. It was Karbenko. Of course. He felt good about the decision. He felt like a real spy. The buzzer rang. "Yes?" he said.

"Sorry, sir, there are no files on Colonel Karbenko."

"No files? Why not?"

"They were probably stolen yesterday afternoon."

"Yesterday? What was yesterday?" "Don't you remember, sir? You proclaimed it Meet-Your-CIA Day. An open house. We had thousands of people here. Somebody must have taken the files."

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Stantington slammed the telephone back on its base. It didn't matter. He was still going to save the Russian premier.

Dulles International Airport was cleverly located so far out of Washington, D.C., that most people couldn't afford the taxi ride to the city and had to take a bus. The smart ones packed a lunch.

The Russian premier and his wife, Nina, arrived quietly in a leased British plane that had picked them up at an airfield in Yugoslavia where they had transferred from a Russian Aeroflot plane.

Colonel Karbenko had made the arrangements. He had to choose among British, French, Italian, and American planes for the last leg of the journey. He had rejected the Italian plane because it might get lost, the French because he knew what French airport mechanics were like, once having lived in Paris. Left to choose between a British aircraft and an American, he picked the British, because, like the Americans, they were competent, and unlike the Americans, the pilot would not immediately sit down to write a book entitled, Mystery Passenger: A Journey Into Tomorrow.

Karbenko had an unobtrusive green Chevrolet Caprice parked next to the plane. He went into the plane's passenger compartment, and a moment later, came down the steps followed by the premier and Nina.

The premier was wearing dark sunglasses with a straw hat pulled down over his face. His wife had on a red wig and blue tinted glasses. She wore a two-piece brown suit, so formless that it

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looked as if it had originally been fitted to a refrigerator.

"We speak the English," the premier said. "That way, nobody know we not Americans."

Karbenko led them across the tarmac of the runway toward his car. He glanced up and noticed Remo and Chiun standing there.

"Good work," said Remo.

"How'd you get here?" Karbenko asked.

"Hail, mighty premier of all the Russias," said Chiun.

"Who is this ?" asked the premier.

"I don't exactly know," Karbenko said.

"I am not an administrative assistant," Chiun said. "Hail again."

"Thank you," the premier said. "It is a great pleasure to be here among my American friends."

"I am not an American," Chiun said.

"But I am," Remo said.

"Forget him," Chiun said to the premier.

"What are you doing here?" Karbenko repeated.

"Just making sure," Remo said, "that everything goes right."

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Two cars followed them as they drove away from the British jetliner. There were four men in each of the cars, and when Vassily Karbenko saw them, he grunted softly and tromped down on the gas pedal of the Chevrolet Caprice.

The car was speeding down an unused runway at the airport, toward an emergency exit onto the highway that surrounded the field. As Karbenko's car sped up, the two other cars separated and increased their speed also, moving up on either side of the premier's car.

The premier seemed oblivious to the chase. His neck was craned and he was looking out across the broad network of runways and hangers at the scores of commercial jetliners. His wife, though, saw the two following cars. She looked toward Karbenko.

"Are they your men, Vassily?" she asked.

"No."

The two cars had pulled up even with Karbenko now. The occupants looked like Americans, Remo thought. The cars started to pull ahead.

"They're going to nose in and nip you between them," Remo said.

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"I know," said Karbenko.

The car on the right had its driver's window open.

Remo rolled down his window.

"Vassily," he said. "You stomp on that gas pedal and swerve in close to this car."

"What for?"

"Just do it," Remo said. "When I tell you." Remo raised himself up in the seat, and put his left .hand on the door of his car. The car was about two feet in front of them.

"Now," Remo yelled. Karbenko pressed down heavy on the accelerator. The big powerful car surged forward and as it came alongside the car on the right, Karbenko swung the wheel so that only a few inches separated the two cars. At that moment, Remo leaned out his open window. His hands flashed into the car alongside them. Karbenko heard a cracking noise. He glanced to his right, in time to see Remo sinking back into his seat, the steering wheel from the other car in his hands. Beyond Remo, the driver of the other car looked as if he had gone into shock. His face was contorted and his hands waved futilely as he sought some way to steer the car, ripping along the runway at almost 80 miles an hour.

"Get out of here," Remo said. Karbenko powered the Chevrolet forward, just as the driver of the car to their right hit the brakes. But his wheels were not straight and the sudden braking action spun the car sideways and its 80-mile-an-hour forward momentum turned the car over on its side. As Karbenko watched in the rearview mirror, he saw the car roll over three times and

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then, upside down, skid into the second chase car, knocking it out of control and into a flat grassy field next to the runway, where the driver finally muscled it to a stop.

The four men got out of the car and were running back to free the occupants of the overturned car, when Karbenko pulled onto a narrow gravel road, slowed down, and turned sharply into the line of afternoon traffic.

"Vassily," the premier said. "Don't drive so fast. It makes me nervous."

"No, sir," Karbenko said. He grinned at Remo, who shrugged his shoulders.

"Any idea who that was?" Remo asked.

"Yes," Karbenko said. "I know who it was."

Karbenko had rented three rooms in the name of the Earp family at an eight-dollar-a-night budget motel outside Washington. He left the premier and his wife in the car while he went inside and inspected the three adjoining rooms.

"Is this where visiting officials always stay?" the premier asked Remo.

"Only heads of state," Remo said. "We've got a tent in one of the town parks for everybody else."

"Oh," the premier said. "I do not think I would enjoy sleeping in a tent."

Nina asked Remo, "Have you been a friend of Vassily's for a long time?"

"Not really," said Remo. "It's been a short but intense relationship."

"Why is everybody talking to him?" Chiun asked from his rear seat next to Nina. "I am real-

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ly much more interesting than this thing. If you like, I will tell you about my screenplay."

"What is a screenplay?" asked Nina.

"It is a story for a motion picture," Chiun said. "In your country, they are about tractors and farmers."

"Tell me your story," Nina said.

"You'll be sorry," Remo said.

"Quiet," said Chiun, "or I will write you out of the picture."

"Yes," said the premier. "Tell us this wonderful story."

Chiun was describing the quiet, gentle, peace-loving, handsome, noble, virtuous, and strong main character of the film when Karbenko came back and ushered the premier and his wife into the central of the three motel rooms.

As they unpacked, Chiun was getting around to the fact that this beautiful soul was not appreciated by those around him, particularly those upon whom he had squandered the gift of knowledge only to find them incapable of receiving it.

Karbenko took Remo aside.

"Those were Stantington's men at the airport. I want to go talk to him."

"I'll go with you," Remo said.

"The premier-" Karbenko began.

"He'll be safe," Remo said. "I've heard this screenplay before. It's got four more hours to run. Chiun will never let anything happen to his audience until he's done with the story. We'll be back by then."

"He is very old. Can he protect them?" Karbenko asked.

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"If he can't," said Remo, "no one in the world can. Don't write that off as a typical American exaggeration. That's a fact. No one in the world, if he can't."

Chiun had decided that the premier and his wife would probably appreciate the story more if it was told in Russian. He began to tell it in Russian. He started again at the beginning.

Riding up in the elevator toward Stantington's office, Remo asked, "Any ideas on the assassin?"

"None," said Karbenko. "But thank god, he's back in Russia. Let the KGB there find out who he is."

"If they're like our CIA, you're going to have a long wait," Remo said.

"Ain't it the truth, pardner ?"

Remo's special director's office pass got them through the guards to Stantington's office complex and the secretary's memory of Remo got them inside Stantington's private office.

"What are you doing here?" Stantington said when he came out of his bathroom. He was staring at Remo.

"He drove me here to make sure I didn't get in an automobile accident," Karbenko said. Stantington glared at him angrily.

"You know that the premier has arrived?" Karbenko said.

Stantington nodded.

"He is staying at the Colony Astor," Karbenko said, naming one of Washington's poshest and oldest hotels. "Can I count on you to assign men there to assist us in protecting him?"

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"I have been ordered not to get involved," Stantington said.

"But I'm requesting your help," Karbenko said. "I think that changes the situation."

Stantington sat down behind his desk. "Yes, I suppose it does," he said. "And are you staying at the Colony Astor, too ?"

Karbenko nodded. "The premier and his wife are in Room 1902. My men and I are in 1900 and 1904, on both sides of them. I'd like to have some of your men spotted around the hotel, the lobby, the public rooms. Just to watch out for anybody suspicious."

"All right," Stantington said. "I'll have them there in twenty minutes."

"Thank you," Karbenko said. "An unusual thing happened at the airport by the way."

"Oh? What was that?"

"Our car was chased by two carloads of men. Fortunately, they had an accident and we got away."

"Lucky for you," Stantington said.

"Yes, wasn't it? I wonder why they were there?"

Stantington shrugged. "Perhaps they thought the premier was in some danger?"

"Perhaps," Karbenko said. "Thank you for your cooperation, Admiral."

Riding back down in the elevator, Remo asked Karbenko, "Why'd you let him off the hook, if you know those were his guys at the airport?"

"There was no need to push it. I know and he knows I know. I just wanted to be sure what he was up to."

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"What is he up to?"

"He thinks I'm the assassin," Karbenko said.

"Are you?"

"If it was me, buddy, he'd be dead by now," the Russian spy said.

"Why'd you give him the song and dance about the Colony Astor Hotel ?"

"If he put men out searching for us, they might get lucky and find us," Karbenko said. "This way, he can tie up his men at the other hotel and they won't bother us."

Remo nodded. The Russian colonel was impressive.

"This man is impossible." Nina spat out the words, then wheeled and pointed toward Chiun who sat on the floor, his arms folded under his saffron kimono, looking impassively at the motel wall.

"What happened?" Karbenko asked.

"I wanted to watch television," the premier's wife said. "He told me I should not because all the shows were obscene. If I wanted a good story, he said, he would tell me one. Finally I succeeded in getting the television turned on. I was to watch the news. He told me I should not watch the news. That they were showing pictures of some fat man."

"Yes?" Karbenko said.

"The fat man is the premier. His picture was on the television. Now what do you think of that?"

Karbenko looked at Remo. Remo shrugged.

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"Maybe your husband ought to lose some weight," he said.

"Then he broke the knobs off the television set so we could not watch it."

"Philistines," Chiun said. "The Russians were always a people without taste."

"Where is the premier ?" Karbenko asked.

"He is in the next room. Watching the television there," Nina said.

"I hope his eyes rot," Chiun said.

"I guess you didn't like Chiun's movie," Remo said.

"We began to get tired of it after the first hour," she said. "So we asked him to stop."

"A Russian could lie in a field of flowers and complain of the smell," Chiun said. "There has not been a sensitive Russian since Ivan the Good."

"Ivan the Good?" Karbenko said. He looked at Remo, a question mark on his face.

"Right," Remo said. "Chiun's family did some work for him once. He paid on time. That raised him from Ivan the Terrible to Ivan the Good."

They left Chiun staring at the wall and went through the open door into the next room.

The premier was sitting on the small single bed, smiling.

"I have been much on your television, American," he told Remo.

"What did they say?" Karbenko asked.

"That I am visiting America to confer with the President about the deaths of our three ambassadors. That our mission here has refused to give any details of my whereabouts or my schedule."

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"Good," said Karbenko.

But the premier did not hear the comment. His eyes were fixed, almost glazed, looking at the TV tube.

"Look, Nina. Look," he said, pointing at the tube. "That is where we are going."

Remo and Karbenko leaned over to look.

It was a commercial for Florida's Disneyworld.

Nina nodded.

The premier said. "I want to go there."

"When?" Karbenko said.

"Why not now?"

Karbenko thought for a moment.

"Why not?" he said.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

At 9 o'clock that night, the premier and his wife, along with Remo, Chiun, Karbenko, and the Russian spy's four top men, were on a private plane heading for Orlando, Florida.

Ten minutes earlier, Admiral Wingate Stan-tington had learned, in his condominium apartment at Washington's Watergate Complex, that the Russian premier had never checked into the Colony Astor Hotel.

"That son of a bitch," Stantington swore as he slammed down the telephone. Karbenko had done it; he had gotten himself along somewhere with the premier and was just waiting his chance to gun him down.

Not if Stantington could help it though.

Within an hour, his men had found the budget motel where the Earp family had been registered. And only a half hour later, they learned of the specially chartered plane that had left Washington on its way to Orlando.

They checked all the hotels in the Orlando area, before they found one with a block of four rooms registered to Doctor Holliday and family.

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Doc Holliday. Karbenko's cowboy passion had given him away.

The hotel manager confirmed that the large group had ordered four taxicabs in the morning to take them to Disney world.

Admiral Stantington sat alone in Ms apartment for an hour, thinking, before he made up his mind.

He would not let Vassily Karbenko assassinate the Russian premier on American soil.

And if there was only one way to stop him, that was the way Stantington would take,

Vassily Karbenko was as good as dead.

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The premier wanted to go as an American.

"I want to walk the streets and alleys of Disneyworld, like American peoples. I will mingle among them. No one will know we not American."

Karbenko's four KGB agents looked at each other, then they all nodded.

Remo looked at the premier. He was wearing a Hawaiian plaid shirt, and a large straw hat, and big tinted sunglasses as a disguise. But he still had a face like a mudslide and anyone who had seen his picture on television was not likely to mistake him for anyone else.

The four taxicabs arrived on time. Remo, Karbenko, the premier, and Nina crowded into one cab. Two KGB agents rode in the first cab and two more in the third. Chiun insisted on riding alone in the last cab, because he would not share a taxi with Philistines.

"Remember, Chiun," Remo said. "We've got to keep him alive. Nothing else matters."

"Trivia," said Chiun. "All my life is bogged down with trivia."

At the gate, the Russian contingent ran out of

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money for entrance fees. Disneyworld did not take credit cards, nor did it recognize the International Monetary Fund or Russia's natural gas reserves. This decision was based on the judgment that Russia's natural gas reserves might well run out before Disneyworld did, Disney-world being an eternal and replenishable resource needing only fresh paint and teenagers who could run around dressed like mice and ducks.

Fortunately, Remo was carrying money and he was able to pay the $2,365.00 in cash for two days of rides for the group. This left the premier with enough money to buy "diplomatic necessities." Everybody got a diplomatic necessity. Karbenko's four KGB men got the winding kind, and the premier and Nina got the digital kind where Mickey Mouse's face appeared and lit up when the diplomatic necessity clicked off noon and midnight. Chiun got one too and proclaimed his love for Russia.

The monorail led over lush green fields with manicured trees. A large perfectly blue lake glistened in the late morning sun. One of the KGB men wondered if they dyed the lake blue.

When they got off the monorail they were greeted by the rich smell of fresh popcorn. To their left was a bank which would translate the cotton crop from Russian Tashkent into American dollars. The Russian cotton crop got the contingent through Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pioneer World.

Chiun wanted a Davy Crockett hat. The premier decided to buy one for everybody, so one of the KGB men was sent back to the Disneyworld

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bank where he negotiated away mineral rights in the Ukraine, and brought back a satchel of cash to the premier who was waiting at Polynesian World.

The mineral rights also paid for a grass skirt for Nina and Mickey Mouse heads made from coconuts and sea shells.

"This is very nice," Chiun said to Remo, pushing the Davy Crockett tail out of his eyes. "But you are a liar."

"What now?" Remo said.

"Once you took me to a place and told me it was Disneyworld. But that wasn't Disneyworld. This is. You lied to me."

"Chiun, just keep an eye out so that nothing happens to the premier."

By now the Russian party was hungry and the premier found out that the entrance fees did not pay for lunch. Another KGB man was sent back to the main Disneyworld bank, with a promise of two months' tractor production. This allowed everyone to have soft drinks and a meal. When they were done with the meal, no one got up.

Remo asked why they continued to sit at the tables. The premier said the appetizers were a bit flat but he had high hopes for the main course.

When Remo told him he had just eaten the main course, the premier said he would not give up the Balkans for anything, not even a piece of bread.

Finally they settled for foot-long hot dogs, and Disneyworld got the rights to build a Black Sea resort and an option on the Urals.

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The Urals did not entitle the Russians to arcade games or dessert.

The premier missed the noon parade of Pluto and Donald Duck and Mickey and Minnie because the contingent was stuck in Future World and could not get over to the main plaza in time. The parade was free, there being no charge for eyesight.

About 1 P.M., Nina confessed that she had the feeling they were looking at the same thing over and over again, with different colored paint.

"There's a trick to telling one exhibit from another," Vassily Karbenko said. "If they have already clipped your ticket book, you've been there, I think."

One of the KGB men on the Paddlewheeler ride wanted to shoot real bullets into the imitation fort to see if anything would happen. Karbenko told him no because he might need his bullets to get out of there if they ran out of money.

Remo said to Chiun, "No sign of any trouble yet."

Chiun looked at his Mickey Mouse wristwatch.

"You have forgotten the lesson of the Great Ung," he said.

"Instantly," Remo agreed.

"Idiot," Chiun said.

Nina wanted a doll from It's a Small Small World, and got one on the premier's promise to conclude a SALT agreement as soon as possible. By now, Nina had a large shopping bag filled with souvenirs.

When they passed the haunted house, there was a sign on the front of the building announcing it was closed for the day.

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But a well-tanned young man motioned them to the entrance.

"We've just finished making some improvements inside," he said. "We'd like you to test out the house as our guests. Before we open it to the public."

"You mean free?" the premier asked.

The young man nodded.

"You do not want the Ukraine?"

The man shook his head.

"Our submarine fleet? No cutback in missile construction?" the premier asked suspiciously.

"Free," the young man said.

"Let's go," the premier said. He whispered to Karbenko, "Lenin was right. Given time, the capitalist system will break down."

The heavy door clanged shut behind them as they entered the haunted house. Two of the KGB men led the way as they walked single-file down a long dark corridor.

Remo walked in front of the premier and Nina and Chiun followed them.

Up ahead, there was a faint light at the end of the long dark tunnel, and then they were standing in a large oak-panelled room with oil portraits of men in nineteenth-century garb mounted high up on the walls.

A recorded voice announced that they were going back through time, to another dimension, and as the voice spoke the paintings around the tops of the walls began to change their visage and the men in them seemed to grow younger.

Vassily Karbenko was gone.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The electronic voice intoned, "And now, when the secret panel opens, move through the chamber of the past."

There was a faint hissing sound as one of the oaken walls began to slide to the right, revealing another passageway.

Chiun led Nina and the premier through the opening. The four KGB men followed. Remo turned his back and ran back down the dark passageway toward the front entrance.

For ordinary eyes, it would have been almost impossible to see in the corridor. But for Remo, there was no such thing as darkness; there was only less light and more light, and the eye adjusted accordingly. Once all men had seen this way, but now after thousands and thousands of years of laziness, the eye muscle had lost its tone and the eye surfaces their sensitivity, and men had adopted the habit of being blind in the dark. Only a few animals had retained their ability to see at night, and the darkness belonged to them. It belonged to Remo, too.

Flush against one of the wooden panels on the corridor walls, he saw a pushbutton. He pressed

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it, and the panel hinged back and opened into a small room.

Vassily Karbenko lay on the floor of the room. Blood stained the front of his light blue shirt. His own gun lay in a corner of the room.

Remo knelt over him and Karbenko slowly opened his eyes. He recognized Remo and tried to smile. Blood appeared at the corner of his mouth.

"Hiya, pal," he said.

"Who did it?" Remo asked.

"Stantington's men. That was one of them at the entrance way who let us in," he said. "My own fault. I should have known."

"Don't worry," Remo said. "I'll get help."

"Too late," Karbenko said. "Is the premier all right?"

"He's okay," Remo said. "And I'll keep him that way."

"I know," said Karbenko. He tried to smile again, but the small facial movement caused him pain. His voice came in a slight whisper and his breath in a heavy gasp.

"Sorry I didn't meet you sooner," Remo said. "We could have been a helluva team."

Karbenko shook his head.

"No," he said. "Too many miles between us. If Stantington didn't get me today, it would've been you. You'd have to do it later on 'cause I knew too much about you people."

Remo started to protest, then stopped. Karbenko was right, he realized. He remembered the scene in Smith's office. Smith had told him to protect the premier. He had said that was all ...

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"for now." But later, he would have sent Remo after Karbenko.

"Don't feel bad," Karbenko said. "That's the business we're in." He opened his mouth to speak again but a thick gush of bloody ooze welled up in his mouth. He tried to swallow, could not, and then his head lolled off to the side, his eyes still open, staring at the wall.

Remo stood up. He nodded down at the Russian spy. He felt a curious emotion toward the man, an affection he did not often experience. It was respect and he had thought it no longer lived in him.

"That's the biz, pardner," he said. He turned back to the corridor, to follow the premier, to make sure he was kept alive.

The lights in the chamber of the past had been turned out. But Remo knew where the hidden door was, and he jammed his fingertips like the points of screwdrivers into the wood and yanked it to the left. There was a whooshing sound as his power was pitted against a hydraulic door lock. The whoosh turned into a total expulsion of air from the device and as the air rushed out, the machine's pressure against the door ended, and the oaken panel slammed to the left, crashing into the innards of the door, with a wood-cracking sound.

A twisting corridor stretched out in front of him. Remo went down it at full speed. After twenty yards, the corridor twisted off to the left and opened onto a miniature railroad platform.

Chiun stood on the edge of the platform alone. He looked up as Remo approached.

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"Karbenko is dead," Remo said.

Chiun nodded. "He was a good man," he said.

"Where's the premier?"

"He is with the four security men."

Just then a small train appeared at one end of the track and picking up speed, it began to move past them. The four KGB men were on it.

"Where is the premier ?" Remo called.

"In the back car," one of the men responded as the train moved quickly past them. The car with the guards vanished into the tunnel. Remo and Chiun looked toward the other end. The last car of the train came by them. The premier and Nina were not on it.

"They must have changed their minds," Remo said.

"Fool," hissed Chiun. He ran to the far end of the platform. A fiberglass wall, molded to look like the stones of a dungeon, separated the train "station" from the small boarding area.

As Remo raced up behind Chiun, he saw the small man leap into the air, and then come down against the wall. His hands flailed out in explosive fury, and the fiberglass splintered and parted, and in the same forward motion, without his feet ever hitting the floor, Chiun was through the rip in the wall. Remo followed him at a dive.

He saw Nina turn toward them. She had been facing her husband over a distance of six feet. When she saw Chiun and Remo she turned again toward her husband. Her finger closed on the trigger of the pistol she held in her hand. But she was too late.

The tiny Oriental, his green kimono swirling

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about him, moved in front of her. As the gun fired, he deflected her hand and the bullet dug into the ceiling of the room. Then Chiun had the gun from her hand.

He gave it to Remo.

"Compliments of the Great Ung," he said.

The premier's face was ashen with shock.

"Nina," he said heavily. "You? Why?"

The woman looked at him for a moment, then dropped her head and began to weep. "Because I had to," she sobbed. "I had to."

Remo put his arm around the woman.

"It's okay now. It's all right," he said.

The premier came up to his wife, and took her hands in his. He waited until she lifted her eyes to meet his.

"We go home now, I think," he said.

"Not until I get my ride on the train," Chiun said, inspecting his Mickey Mouse watch.

The President and the premier had met at the White House and issued a joint statement that both condemned all acts of political terrorism and would work jointly to prevent the kind of senseless violence that had cost the lives of three Russian ambassadors in the past week. Project Omega was not mentioned.

Nina met with the President's wife for tea and at a press conference later charmed everyone by announcing how smart and pretty the President's wife was, and that the President's daughter who had spilled a cup of tea on Nina's dress would benefit from a good spanking.

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The body of Vassily Karbenko, a cultural attache at the Russian embassy in Washington, was found in a lake in Florida. He had been on vacation and apparently had been drowned in a boating accident.

Smith looked across his desk. "I don't understand why," he said.

"MacCleary had gotten close to Nina in the old days," Remo said. "Her husband was barely able to make a living. MacCleary conned her somehow into taking money from him. She needed it to keep the family alive."

"Did he tell her that she'd have to kill her own husband if he became premier ?"

"Yes, but she never thought it would happen. Then one day it did and she was stuck."

"Why?" said Smith. "Couldn't she just ignore the Project Omega signal ?"

"MacCleary had filled her head full of crap," Remo said. "He had told her that if she didn't act, America would have documents to prove that she was an American spy, and we'd release the documents. This would bring her husband down in disgrace. Probably send both of them to the slave camps. It was better, she figured, for the premier to get killed in America. He'd be regarded then as a glorious Russian hero. She'd rather have her husband a dead patriot than the live husband-of-a-traitor and maybe a traitor himself."

Smith shook his head. "We didn't have any information to release on her. She was safe." "She didn't know that. MacCleary had really

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done a number on her. She didn't say it, but I think they were probably a thing one time. She used to be a good-looking woman," Remo said.

"Well," Smith said, "all's well that ends well."

"You think it ended well?" Remo said.

"Yes. Didn't it?"

"Karbenko died," said Remo. "He was one of them but he was a good man."

"And if the CIA hadn't gotten him, we would have had to," Smith said. "He knew too much."

"That's our rule, right?" said Remo. "Anybody who finds out about CURE is dead meat, right?"

"I wouldn't put it in exactly those terms," Smith said. "But that's about it."

Remo stood up.

"Thank you, Smitty. Have a nice day."

Ruby followed him into the outside office.

"You're strung really tight today," she said. "What's wrong?"

"Karbenko would have had to die because he knew about us," Remo said. "Well somebody else knows about us. And he's still alive."

Ruby shrugged. "Rank has its privileges," she said. "I guess one of them privileges is staying alive."

Remo held her face in his hands and smiled coldly at her.

"Maybe," he said.

It happened just after Time magazine's deadline and by the time the next issue came out, the other press had all covered the story to death.

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So Time's story was brief:

When Admiral Wingate Stantington, the newly appointed head of the CIA, drowned in the bathtub in his private office bathroom last week, his body was not discovered for a day. CIA personnel had to break into the bathroom by cutting away a lock that had been installed only the week before (at the usual Washington, B.C., cost of $23.65).

Three days later, Ruby yelled at Remo for wasting $23.65 of taxpayers' money and told him if he did it again, she'd give him more trouble than he could handle.