Look Into My Eyes

Destroyer 67: Look Into My Eyes

By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

Chapter 1

It was better than being in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan the bandits would shoot you from ambush, or if they captured you, they would cut you into pieces very slowly. Sometimes their women did it with their cooking tools.

Sometimes the officers would throw you under the treads of a tank if they thought you might desert. Afghanistan was where you died horribly.

And so Sergeant Yuri Gorov did not find duty in Siberia a burden, nor did he question his strange orders. He was to allow no one, under any circumstances, to leave the small town he and his division surrounded. He was to beg first and then to plead with anyone trying to leave, and if that failed, he was to call an officer, and if that did not work, he was to shoot the person, making sure the person did not leave alive.

Shooting escaping prisoners was not strange. What was strange was that supposedly no one in the village was a prisoner. Even stranger was the notion that anyone might want to escape.

Yuri and his platoon had driven into the village once to dig a sewer for one of the residents. For Siberia, it was a very nice village, and one house was particularly nice. The house was two stories high, and only one family lived in it. There were three color television sets. Wondrous American and Japanese appliances filled the kitchen. Carpets from Persia, and lamps from Germany, and wall switches that turned on the lights every time. And the rooms were the size of several apartments combined.

There was red meat in the refrigerator and fruits from all over the world, and whiskey, wine, and cognac in a little closet.

And toilets, with soft seats, that flushed every time, and ceilings that had no cracks in them. It was a marvel of a house, and every house in the village seemed to be almost as glorious.

Officers noticed the men dawdling in the house instead of just using the toilets, and ordered the house off limits. But everyone had seen the enormous luxury of this house and sensed the grandeur of this village.

It was heaven on earth. And under no circumstances were the soldiers posted outside the village to let anyone leave alive.

To this end, four soldiers were posted outside for every person inside. One of the old-timers of the division claimed the people inside did witchcraft. But a recruit pointed out he had seen high-ranking KGB officers and scientists enter. He knew they were scientists because one stopped to talk to him once. The KGB and scientists certainly would not countenance witchcraft.

But a recruit from Moscow said he thought he knew what this village did. Back home in Moscow he would sometimes meet visitors from the West who asked him about Russia's parapsychology experiments.

"What is parapsychology?" asked Yuri. He had never heard of such a thing, and neither had the others in the barracks.

"We are supposed to be famous for it, according to this American woman I met."

"Did you sleep with her?" a corporal asked of the Moscow recruit.

"Shhh," said the others.

"Let him talk," said Yuri Gorov.

"She told me," said the Moscow recruit, "that we have done more experiments in parapsychology than anyone else on earth. There are books on some of our experiments printed openly in the West, and there is a center for it here in Siberia. I think this village is the center."

"But what is this parapsychology?" asked Yuri.

"Seeing things that aren't there. Like halos over people's heads. Or having their minds go back into past lives. Witchcraft things."

"No wonder they would keep a thing like that secret. Assuming, of course, they were doing those things."

"Everything with the human mind that you can imagine is done there. Mind reading, mind bending, everything."

"I don't believe it," said Yuri. "We would not do such things. "

"I bet someone is reading your mind right now."

"If that were so, the KGB would use it already."

"I bet they do, but they only use it on important people," said the recruit.

"Nonsense," said Yuri. "Those things don't exist."

"Have you ever had a message and known who it was from before you got it? Have you ever had a feeling that something bad was going to happen before it happened? Have you ever known you were going to win something before you won it?"

"Those are just hunches," said Yuri.

"Those are the parts of your mind that parapsychology deals with," said the Moscow recruit. "And that village we surround is filled with people who experiment in such things. I'm right."

"I'd rather know if you slept with the American woman."

"Of course I did," said the Moscow recruit.

"Is it true that they do strange things?" asked another. As in all barracks, sex was always a major interest.

"Yes, they enjoy it," said the Moscow recruit. Everyone laughed.

And then one night, when a gentle chill enveloped the rich land, a man in an expensive Western suit came walking up the road from the village muttering to himself. He was about five-foot-seven and walked in a splay-foot fashion, as though he couldn't care less where his feet went. He was muttering something quite furiously.

"Excuse me, sir," said Sergeant Gorov. "You can't come through here."

The man ignored him.

"Left alone. Left alone. I want to be left alone," said the man. He had soft, woeful brown eyes and a collapsed bag of a face that looked as though he was perpetually tasting something unpleasant. He wore gold-rimmed eyeglasses.

"Sir, you must stop," said Yuri. He stepped in front of the shorter man.

The man tried to walk through him, then with the physical contact realized where he was.

"You can't go any farther," said Yuri. "It's not allowed. "

"Nothing is allowed," said the man. "It never is. Nothing."

"I cannot let you pass."

"You cannot. He cannot. She cannot. Everybody cannot. What is the matter?" said the man, raising his arms toward the dark Siberian sky.

"You'll have to turn around."

"And what if I told you no? The simple, beautiful, exquisite word no. That single syllable that comes off the tongue like sunshine in a winter hell."

"Look, mister. I don't want to shoot you. Please go back," said Yuri.

"Don't worry, you're not going to shoot me. Don't make such a big deal already," said the man. He put his hands in his pockets. He did not turn around.

Yuri yelled back to the little guard post. "Sir, comrade refuses orders to turn back."

An officer drinking tea and ogling a magazine filled with seminude women yelled back:

"Tell him you'll shoot."

"I did."

"Then shoot," said the officer.

"Please," said Yuri to the man with the sad brown eyes.

The man laughed.

With trembling hands Yuri raised the Kalishnikov and put it to the man's head. No matter what was said in basic training, every soldier knew many men never fired their rifles in combat. He had always suspected he would be one of those. In combat he could maybe get away with it. But here, if he didn't fire, it would mean being sent to Afghanistan for sure. It was either this poor fellow or himself. And the man didn't seem to be stopping.

Yuri leveled the gun at the sad brown eyes.

Better you than me, he thought. He hoped he wouldn't have to look at the body. He hoped that the blood would not spray too much. He hoped that he would someday be able to forget what he had done. But if he pulled the trigger at least there would be a someday. If he went to Afghanistan, there wouldn't be. Yuri felt his finger slick with sweat against the trigger.

And then his mother was talking to him. His saintly mother was standing right in front of him, talking ever so softly and reasonably, telling him to put down his gun and not shoot her.

"Mother, what are you doing here in Siberia?"

"Don't believe everything you hear or see. I'm here. What are you going to do, shoot your own mother?"

"No, never. "

"Put down the gun," said his mother.

But that was unnecessary. Yuri was already lowering the gun. And the man with the sad brown eyes was gone. "Mama, have you seen a little guy with brown eyes?"

"He went back to the village. Go relax."

Yuri looked down the road. It stretched a mile toward the village, with no hills or bushes where anyone could hide. The little fellow had disappeared. He looked behind him, to see if the little fellow had somehow snuck by. But that road was empty also. It was quiet and empty, and the still, chill night made clouds of every breath, and the man was not there. Only his gray-haired mother, hands gnarled from arthritis, waving to him as she passed the guard post. The officer ran out through the door and put his pistol to Yuri's mother's head. Yuri raised his rifle. This he could kill for. This he had to kill for.

He fired a dozen automatic rounds with his Kalishnikov, plastering the wooden guard post with pieces of the second lieutenant and the magazine he had been reading.

The next day at the board of inquiry, Yuri explained he couldn't help himself. He had a right to defend his mother. The lieutenant was going to kill her.

Strangely, every officer seemed to understand, even though Yuri admitted tearfully (because now he was sure he was going to be shot) that his mother had been dead for four years.

"All right. Don't worry. What did the man say to you? Remember everything," ordered the KGB commandant assigned to the village area.

"But I shot my commanding officer."

"Doesn't matter. What did Rabinowitz say?"

"His name was Rabinowitz, sir?"

"Yes. What did he say?"

"He said he wanted to be left alone."

"Anything else?"

"He said he was sure I wouldn't shoot him. He seemed happy to say the word no. He made such an awful big thing of it."

"Anything else?"

"That's all I remember. I had to shoot the lieutenant. Wouldn't you if your commander was going to kill your mother?"

"No. I'm KGB. But never mind about shooting your officer. What did your mother say?"

"She told me not to shoot."

"Anything else?"

"She said don't believe everything you see. And things like that."

"Did she say where she was going?"

"She's been dead four years," sobed Yuri.

"Never mind that. Did she say where she was going?"

"No. "

"She didn't mention anything about Israel?"

"Why would she? She's not-wasn't-a Jew."

"Yes. Of course," said the KGB commandant.

There was one advantage the commandant saw. They were already at the parapsychology village and the sergeant would not have to be sent here to relive his experiences perfectly. Rabinowitz might have said something that would lead them to him again, and then it was just a matter of giving Rabinowitz whatever he wanted. Heads were going to roll for this one and it was not going to be some poor little sergeant in the regular army.

Someone had lost Vassily Rabinowitz, and there would have to be some pretty good answers all the way to the Politburo.

The picture of the sad-eyed, middle-aged man was sent to every KGB unit in the Soviet Union and especially to border countries of the Eastern bloc. The instructions were strange. No one was to try to stop Vassily Rabinowitz. They were only to report his presence to Moscow, unless Rabinowitz was spotted near any border to the West. Then without talking to the man, without looking into his eyes, they were to shoot him.

The secret police of East Germany, Poland, Albania, and Rumania found the next message totally confusing. They were to report to Moscow the sighting by any guard at any post of anyone strange, such as a relative who had been dead for many years, or a close friend.

"Appearing where?" the satellite police asked.

"Anywhere they shouldn't," answered the Moscow KGB. There were questions, too, about how the dead could appear.

And the answer was that they really didn't but the guards would be sure they had.

In Moscow, a Rabinowitz desk was set up. It had three functions. First to get him back, and second to find out who had failed to give him what he wanted. The third objective was to get him what he wanted.

Even as it tracked Rabinowitz's route away from the parapsychology village, the inquiry revealed a problem that should have been worked out.

The officer assigned personally to Rabinowitz, who knew his life was at stake, explained it.

"When he wanted women, we gave him women. We gave him blond women and dark-eyed women. We gave him African women and South American women. We gave him women from the Middle East and women from the Middle West. Kurds and Koreans did we supply," came the statement.

"And what was his reaction?"

"He said we never came up with the right one."

"And who was the right one?"

"The one we hadn't come up with."

Rabinowitz had been given a catalog from Neiman-Marcus, a great American department store, and told to mark off the items he wanted and they would be delivered. Exotic foodstuffs, hams and smoked salmon and tropical fruits by the barrel, rotted in his basement. Military priority for any item destined for Rabinowitz had been declared in four major defense command zones. In a world of luxury, Rabinowitz had lived in the highest luxury.

Every morning, noon, and evening someone from the KGB command came to his home or laboratory to ask him what he wanted. And when they weren't doing that, generals and commissars were phoning him personally to ask if they could do favors for him. He had lots of friends in high places, people who needed him and would not take his loss lightly.

Even though the KGB commandant of that village could prove beyond any doubt he had given Rabinowitz everything a human being could want, someone was going to have to pay. And the price would be death.

In growing horror, Moscow command tracked the route of the strange incidents, from east to west.

A conductor on a train headed west through Kazan, south of Moscow, was demanding a traveling pass when he realized he was talking to his pet dog. He reported this strange incident when he got home to Kuybyshev because there he found his pet had been at home all the time. Therefore he was suffering some form of mental breakdown; therefore he was due a vacation. The conductor was surprised that it was not the hospital board that examined him but the KGB.

In Kiev, an Aeroflot stewardess confessed she had allowed her favorite uncle onto the airplane without a ticket. She confessed her deed because she was sure she was going crazy; she had seated the favorite uncle twice on the same flight, both in the luxurious rear cabin and in the crammed front seats. She had walked back and forth three times to confirm that he was sitting in both seats.

The uncle who got off in Warsaw was the one she would have bet was the real one. But when the one she thought was the impostor went to bed with her aunt, she was sure she was going crazy.

And then from a bus in Prague, the Rabinowitz desk got their first breakthrough.

A passenger was asking questions about Berlin. This was not unusual, except a fight occurred on the bus where several people tried to take care of him, thinking he was a close relative. Then the bus driver suffered a migraine headache. He told all the passengers they would have to wait half an hour or so while he wished he were dead; then the migraine would pass.

But the passenger with the multiple family ties went to the front of the bus, spoke to the driver, and the driver drove off singing, his headache gone. Of course the driver changed his route to drive further west, closer to Berlin. But no one minded. After all, who would deny such a small thing to his closest relative?

By the time Rabinowitz reached Berlin, the city with the wall to keep in all the people of the East who might want to leave the liberated and progressive countries for the decadent West, fourteen specially selected KGB units were waiting for him. The East German guards were dismissed from their posts and Russians stood five deep, guns at the ready.

But these were not just any Russians or any KGB officers. Every one of them had been carefully selected to be willing to shoot his closest relative if that relative tried to make it to the West.

"Let us warn you, you will only think you are shooting your mother and your brother and your favorite pet. Your mind will not be your own. Don't trust it. What you will shoot is the greatest danger that could befall Russia. Of course, if that greatest danger chooses to go back home, give him anything he wants. Anything. If he wants to ride on your back all the way to Moscow, get on your hands and knees."

"Hello, Vassily," said the deputy commander of the KGB at the access point the Americans called Checkpoint Charlie. A tired man of five-foot-seven with sad brown eyes trudged wearily to the last gate to the West. Backing up the deputy commander were enough ruthless, vicious men to clean out half of Berlin. He didn't know if they frightened Rabinowitz but they certainly terrified him.

The deputy commander, Krirnenko, was in his seventies and had risen so high not because of ruthlessness, usually a requirement for the policemen of a police state, but because of his exceptional judgment. Krimenko had been given this job personally by the premier.

"I want him back. And if we don't get him back, no one else can have him. He's got to be with us, or dead."

"I understand. I've used him myself."

"I am not talking about personal things. I am talking about international things. I am talking about our survival as a nation. We cannot let the West get its hands on him."

"I understand that too," Krimenko had said.

And what he wanted now most of all at this bridge between East and West, where exchanges of spies took place, was a little reasoning talk with Vassily Rabinowitz.

And he did something quite shrewd. He pretended a greater weakness than he really had. Because Rabinowitz had no way of knowing his special talents and powers might be of no use at this bridge, that even if he succeeded in what he did so well, he would still be dead if he tried to leave.

"Look, my friend," said Krimenko. "I know I can't stop you. And since I can't stop you, maybe you will tell me something before you leave."

"Will you people never leave me alone?" said Rabirrowitz.

"Certainly. Just tell me, Vassily, if we are ready to give you everything, anything you want, why on earth do you have to leave? What is there to leave for?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"I am not here with an army at my back for my health," said Krimenko. He was careful to show Rabinowiiz he was making no threatening moves. He knew Rabinowitz operated so quickly the average human mind could not keep up with him.

He had first met this wizard of the mind when he had a vicious toothache and was complaining that he did not want to undergo the pain of Russian dentistry so late in his life. A Politburo member had told him about Vassily Rabinowitz. He had flown to the special village in Siberia and had gotten an immediate appointment along with a warning not to bother the hypnotist with questions.

"Is he just a hypnotist? I have been to hypnotists. They don't work with me," Krimenko had said.

"Just go in, state your problem, and leave."

"I am sorry I came so far just for a hypnotist," Krimenko had said.

Rabinowitz was sitting in an armchair by the window, reading a prohibited American magazine. It was one famous for its artistic photographs of nude women. Rabinowitz had a large black crayon. He was checking off the women. He hardly looked up.

"Yes," he called out.

"I have a bad tooth. Incredible pain. It's abscessed and rotting."

"Okay, and I'd like the redhead first, an Oriental maybe at the end of the month. Sometimes I like to stay with the redheads." He handed the magazine to Kimenko and went back to his window.

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Hand it to the man at the door. Those are who I want today. "

"But what about my toothache?" asked Krimenko.

"What toothache?" asked Rabinowitz. He was smiling. Krimenko reached for his jaw. Blessedly, it was free of pain. Just like that.

"How did you do it?"

"That's why I'm here. The redhead first, please."

"This is wonderful," said Krimenko.

"You can eat candy on it right away. Won't hurt you. But I'd have it pulled if I were you. The abscess can kill you. Don't worry about Russian dentists. No pain. You won't feel a thing. If you want, I can make you have an orgasm while the dentist is butchering your mouth. Some people like that," Rabinowitz had said.

He had looked so fresh there in that room, and so tired now coming to the bridge. Krimenko actually felt sorry for him.

"You want to know what I want? I want you people to get out of the way."

"I would do that, but these men won't. Come, let us just talk somewhere. Let us find a cafe, and we will talk. Just a bit. Then you can leave."

Shots rang out in Krimenko's ears. The men behind him were firing. Ugly sharp bits of pavement ricocheted up from where Rabinowitz was standing. Rabinowitz fell and his body continued to be riddled by automatic fire, bullets shredding it like a Chinese cleaver. And then another Rabinowitz appeared and he too was shot down, and Krimenko felt the sharp, hot, burning slug hit his back and throw him to the pavement, where he became so much shredded meat on the bridge where East and West trade spies.

Less than a day later, in New York City's Kennedy Airport, a customs officer saw the strangest man standing at his counter.

Here was a Russian-sounding fellow without a passport, unshaved and looking very seedy, and smiling at Luke Sanders as though he were going to let him through.

"You don't have a passport. You don't have identification and you're a Russian to boot. So I'm going to have to hold you, fella."

"Nonsense, son. Here's my passport. You know me," said the man, and sure enough, Luke knew him. He was his brother. He asked his brother what he was doing coming in on a German flight, when Luke thought he was back home in Amarillo, Texas.

"I've come to get a bialy and maybe a shmear of cream cheese," said Luke's brother.

"What's a bialy?" asked Luke.

"It's a Jewish roll. And I want one."

"Then you've come to the right city," said Luke, who tried to find out where his brother was staying in New York because he sure as shootin' wanted to meet him that night. He passed him through with a handshake, a laugh, and a hug.

"Not so tight on the hug, already," said Luke's brother. In Moscow Krimenko's death was not the disaster. Nor were the deaths of twenty-two other KGB officers. The real disaster was that none of the bodies picked up on the bridge was Vassily Rabinowitz.

The question that haunted everyone was, what if the Americans should get hold of him? There was even talk of launching a first nuclear strike immediately. Better to take a chance on survival than to be sure of losing.

But cooler heads prevailed. First, Russia had not been able to conquer the world using Vassily, although he was incredibly useful in training people for so many special missions.

Nor was there any guarantee that the Americans would be able to capture him and use him.

The only, and therefore the best, solution was to alert every agent in America to be on the lookout for him. Every mole, every counterintelligence operator, every secret police operative was to divert all efforts to the finding of that man.

And most important of all, America was not to know what might be within its borders. No one who looked for Vassily Rabinowitz, late of the Soviet Union, would know why he was looking.

Someone mentioned the risk of such a blatant, all-out effort. The Americans were sure to spot the activity. How many agents would be risked? How many moles who had worked so hard to penetrate into the belly of the American beast might expose themselves to capture? Just what was Moscow willing to pay to stop America from getting Rabinowitz?

And the men who had seen him work answered, "Everything. "

Chapter 2

His name was Remo and he couldn't count the number of men he had killed, nor did he want to start. Counting was for people who thought numbers meant something. Counting was for pepole who didn't understand what they were doing so they needed numbers to reassure themselves they were doing well.

Counting was for people who wouldn't know which side won if there wasn't a score. In Remo's game he always knew who won.

He was going to kill three men who could count. They could count transistors and microchips and all the electronic devices that kept them invulnerable to surveillance. They could count on their lawyers who had made them invulnerable to conviction. They could count on all the people they bought along their way, and they could count on the American drug users to make them rich.

Perhaps the only thing they couldn't count was all the money they had made, hundreds of millions of dollars. They controlled two or three South American governments where coca leaves grew and were made into the white crystals Americans liked to suck into their noses to rot out what was left of their brains after all the other chemicals had gotten to them.

Remo wasn't counting. He sensed the strong cold of the damp clouds and the harsh wind pressing his body against the metal. He could smell the special chemicals used to polish the metal he pressed his body into, could feel the metal carry the vibrations of the engine, and was prepared for the only real danger. If the pilot should dive suddenly and Remo allowed an air current between him and the roof of the plane, he would be sheared off like confetti and plunge thirteen thousand feet to the jungle floor below the luxury Lear jet.

The scant oxygen at those heights was more than enough for him, although if he needed to he could always put a hole in the airtight skin of the jet, forcing the pilot to dive lower, where his passengers could breathe without the use of oxygen masks.

That wasn't necessary. There was more than enough oxygen at these heights if the body used it properly, but people tended to use it like drunks, burning vast quantities in uncontrolled gulps. People did not know their bodies, did not understand the powers they were capable of but refused to allow to develop.

It was this loss of balanced use of oxygen that made people pant from running, come up after only a minute underwater, three at the most, and hold their breath when frightened.

Scientists had yet to discover that holding of the breath when frightened was a weak attempt to energize the body for flight. It didn't work because the only breathing that unlocked the power of humans was controlled breathing, giving the process up to the rhythms of the universe and in so doing becoming part of all its powers. One didn't fight gravity or wind or weight, one worked with them, like a piece pressured into the roof of the cabin of a Lear jet at thirteen thousand feet, closer than the paint that had only been sprayed on, closer than the wax that had only been spread on. The controlled body made itself one with the alloyed metal of the jet, and if Remo did not allow any air to disrupt the bond, he would remain attached tighter than a rivet.

It was the only way to break into the protected realm of Guenther Largos Diaz of Peru, Colombia, and Palm Beach.

Guenther had done wonderful things for himself with the profits from the coca plant. He had made friends everywhere, this man who could count. He helped supply the communist guerrillas, and in exchange they guarded his fields. He helped finance retirement programs for government troops and now they acted as his stevedores.

And in those American centers where cocaine was distributed, Guenther Largos Diaz had played havoc just as easily with the policemen earning twenty-five thousand dollars a year as he did with policemen earning five thousand dollars in pesos.

This handsome South American with a German mother and a Spanish father knew how to bribe, knew, as they said south of the border, how to reach a man's soul. He had every man's price, and so, after he had met the prices of many men, it was decided that it was no use losing more good men to Guenther Largos Diaz. He was so good, so competent, that he would have to die.

Remo felt the plane change pitch. It was going to land. It came down out of the sticky, wet, cold clouds into the sharp air of the Andes and continued to descend. At this height he could not tell what country was below them. He saw a river sparkling like tinsel under the sun off to the east, but he had no idea what river it was.

He didn't care. Of course, if he didn't know where he was, there might be a problem getting back. But he was sure someone in the plane would know. The trick was not to kill that person. Remo didn't want to be left with a bunch of peasants who thought wherever they were was the center of the world and knew only vaguely how to get outside. Also, he didn't want to walk through hundreds of miles of jungle.

He had to remind himself not to lose concentration, because the moment his mind and body separated, so would he, from the plane.

The airstrip was surprisingly modern for such a backward-looking area. There were no major roads leading to this strip, just small tree-lined single-lane asphalt strips. And yet the runway could accommodate big jets, and when the wheels touched down in that screaming burst of rubber, Remo could see sensors implanted into the strip every ten yards. Moreover, the runway was dyed a color that most human eyes would not recognize as asphalt from above, a dark color that sparkled in the sun so the landing strip looked like part of a river that began nowhere and ended in a bunch of trees. The control tower looked like a pile of rocks.

Remo did not know how upstairs knew this was headquarters. He didn't understand how computers worked or how the minds of people who understood computers worked.

But when someone went to the trouble of disguising the place, someone who was vastly shrewd, then the place had to be his real home.

As it was said in the histories of Sinanju, home is where a person feels safe, and a man like Guenther Largos Diaz could never feel safe in one of his exposed mansions.

From the disguised control tower, people came running, pointing guns and yelling. The door to the jet swung open and someone beneath Remo waved the guards back.

"What's going on?" came a voice from inside the cabin.

"I don't know, they're crazy. They've been radioing that someone is on top of the plane."

"Are they using the product? If they are, we've got to stop it now."

"There's no product allowed in here, sir."

"Then why do they claim they see someone on top of the plane? We just landed. We were flying at thirteen thousand feet."

"They're aiming their guns, sir."

"Cut them down," came the calm voice from inside the cabin, and suddenly bright yellow flames danced from the door of the plane. Remo saw the light first, heard the shots second, felt the slight impact of the backfire third, and finally saw each bullet land on its target on the runway, sending shiny bursts of reflective coloration dancing along the landing material designed to imitate a river to nowhere. On the open landing strip, the men from the tower were easy game. The slugs dropped them like laundry sacks. Apparently the marksmen inside were competent because there was not the wild, continuous fire one saw in soldiers who would use a machine gun when a slap would do, and artillery when a gun would do, and a bomb when artillery would do until they earned a reputation as a professional army.

"Has someone taken over?" came a voice from inside.

"They're reporting everything is all right," answered another voice. "They say there really is a man on the top of the cabin."

"That can't be."

"They're saying it's so, sir."

"Tell them to get us a visual, but don't trust it entirely. This could be some trick."

"By whom? They're all our men."

"Anyone can be bought," came the voice.

"But we are the experts. We would have spotted something. No one knows better how to buy people than you, sir. "

"Still, check the visuals. Have them give us a camera angle."

"Or we could just look," said the man at the open door.

"No. Shut the door."

The door clanked shut with such force that the jet trembled on its rubber tires.

Remo could still hear them talk.

"If someone is really up there, we will take off again and do maneuvers."

"'But if he lasted the flight, how are we sure the maneuvers will shake him off?"

"Because we flew smooth before. It certainly is worth a try, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes, Mr. Diaz."

So Diaz was aboard. Remo hadn't known that. He was just told that since a large amount of money was being transported, Diaz had to be close by. That was how counters worked. They counted where people would be.

Remo had climbed on the roof just before takeoff. He had dressed as a ground mechanic, and then as soon as the blocks were removed from the wheels, he had slipped onto the roof at the tail, carefully compressing himself so the sudden weight wouldn't shake the plane and alert those inside. During the takeoff he hid himself on the far side of the plane's skin. Out of sight of the control tower. He had known the money was inside, but not that Diaz was. Until now.

That was really all he needed. As the people inside the plane worked the electronics to receive the television signal from the tower, Remo pressed the fingerpads of his right hand into the alloy skin of the plane. The metal, still cold from the flight at thirteen thousand feet, became sticky and warm under the increasing pressure from Remo's fingerpads. Pressure that flowed with the very atoms of the metal itself in rhythms with the electrons moving around the nuclei, collecting the metal within itself until the skin of the plane melted like ice cream on a hot day. As the hole enlarged, vaporized metal rose into the air in a cloud. Remo peered down into the airplane.

"Hi, I'm up here. Don't settle for the replay. I'm live from America."

"Who are you?" said one of the bodies ducking away from the hole, as others scrambled to the cabin or aft. Remo tore off a bigger piece of the cabin and slid down, removing a firing automatic along with the wrist that fired it. He threw the garbage out of the plane as the bodyguard collapsed from shock.

"Would you believe the spirit of Christmas Past?" asked Remo. Which one was Guenther Largos Diaz? You couldn't tell the millionaries nowadays because they dressed in jeans and leather jackets like teenagers.

In fact, it was very hard to tell who was who, although Remo did assume that the man behind the instruments was the pilot. He was going to have to save him. That might be difficult because there were lots of bullets going off now from all directions. Apparently Christmas Past was not the answer these people wanted.

Remo saw the source of each bullet flash while he used other bodies as sandbags. It might have been more confusing if he didn't see everything so slowly, if he had not slowed the world and all its actions to a drowsy universe by slowing himself. The secret of speed, as athletes knew, was being able to slow down the perceptions of the world. A flash could be seen and recognized much faster than the bullet, signaling that the bullet was on its way, announcing it as a matter of fact, and then the bullet would be there.

Of course, one did not duck, because that was the easist way to put the body into a receiving position for death. One had to let the body understand its role, and to do that, one moved alongside one slug while deflecting another with lesser bodies. Those were the bodyguards.

Someone was screaming "Stop" long before the trigger-happies stopped, or, to be more precise, before Remo stopped them.

The cabin was filthy with blood and torn metal.

One man in a once-white suit stood proudly at the cockpit door, unyielding.

"Excuse me, Christmas Past, but my men panicked. I assume you are of sterner stuff. Sit down."

"Where?" asked Remo. "This place is a mess."

"It would have been much neater if you hadn't torn your way inside and dismembered my employees."

"I didn't know they were your employees. I was looking for you."

"Well, you've found me. How can I be of service?"

"Actually, Mr. Diaz, you don't have to do a thing. I do everything. I kill you. No work on your part whatsoever." Diaz was cool to the marrow.

"Before I die, may I ask why?"

"I think it's drugs and buying people. Or something," said Remo. "Whatever it is, nobody else can get to you, so here I am."

"My most reasonable young man, may I ask what your name is, and why you would not care to reason with me a bit before I die? I could make you very wealthy, just for a few moments of talking with me. A bank account would be set up for you, and for, say, one minute of talk, provide you with a million dollars. I am not even buying my life, mind you. You can do your duty as you see fit. But for one minute of conversation, you will get one million dollars and of course remove this scourge you believe me to be. What do you say?"

"Nah. I don't need a million."

"You are rich then?"

"Nah," said Remo.

"A man who does not want money. What a rarity. Are you some kind of saint?"

"Nah. I just don't need money. I don't have a real home. I don't have anything."

"Ah, then you must want something."

"I'd like transportation out of here after I kill you. I don't know how well this plane will work with its roof torn off and bullets peppered into the cabin."

"Agreed," said Diaz with a smile of arrogant grace. The man certainly knew how to give up his life.

"Okay, you've got twenty seconds left."

"I thought I would get a minute."

"I've given you talking time. I mean, if I'm getting paid at the rate of a million dollars a minute I'm not throwing away hundreds of thousands of dollars. You've got fifteen seconds left."

"Fifteen?"

"Twelve," said Remo.

"Then of course all I can do is say good-bye and express my felicitations."

Guenther Largos Diaz nodded and clicked his heels, folding his arms together and waiting for his death as others would for a glass of champagne. Remo was impressed by this dark-haired man of calm and grace. "Where's my plane out?" he asked. "You certainly don't look like the type who would bother to lie."

"But my time is up, sir. I don't even have the pleasure of your name."

"Remo. How many minutes do you want for the plane?"

"A lifetime," answered Diaz. The pilot peered around from behind him and then quickly looked back to the controls when he saw the thin man with the thick wrists smiling back at him. What was so chilling to the pilot was not the dark-haired, high-cheekboned handsomeness of the man standing in so much blood, it was the casual, almost friendly way the man looked at him with those dark eyes that seemed oblivious of the carnage.

And especially the answer he gave when Mr. Diaz asked for a lifetime.

"Don't worry. Whenever you give me that plane and pilot out of here, it will be your lifetime."

Diaz laughed. The pilot looked to his copilot. Men worked for this ruler of an illegal empire out of respect almost as much as money. But this was more than Mr. Diaz's legendary courage. This was sheer folly. The pilot cringed when he thought of the strange way the bodies had been strewn around the cabin. He looked straight ahead at the landing strip, as his stomach screamed for him to run and his legs sent up signals that they would refuse to move in such a dangerous situation.

And Mr. Diaz was still laughing.

"I like the way you do things. I will tell you what, my friend. We will talk while I arrange another plane. We must bring one in. I never allow two of my planes to be in the same airport at the same time."

"Why's that?" asked Remo. "In case someone rides in on the top of one, tears it up, and needs another to get out?"

Diaz laughed.

"No. You see, one way to ensure the loyalty of your people is to keep them out of contact with others. Contact creates danger. Come, we will get out of this bloody mess and get some fresh air, a shower, dinner while the plane is on its way from another base of mine. And then, if you must, kill away. Agreed?"

Remo shrugged. It was better than walking through jungles. Diaz was a lion among his sheep. While his soldiers and bodyguards and ground personnel cringed or kept sweaty palms near their weapons, Diaz coolly ordered another jet into the airport.

And then he ordered a repast set before them, great shiny mounds of delicacies set on white Irish linen in the still; pure air at the foot of the Andes.

Amid shellfish, meats, and champagne, Remo ate only a few grains of rice.

"Are you afraid of being poisoned?" asked Diaz.

"All of that's poison," said Remo. "You eat that junk and you need to burn up oxygen just to get it into your system, and then your system closes down."

"Ah, so you have special eating techniques."

"No. I just don't kill myself with my mouth. How long is that jet going to take?"

"Shortly, shortly," said Diaz. He lifted a glass of champagne and savored it a moment. "You work for the government, I take it, the American government. That is why you want to stop an evil man like myself."

"You got it, Diaz."

"Call me Guenther, Remo," said Diaz with a gentle gesture of a palm. The smile never left his eyes, as though he was as amused by his death as threatened by it. "You know I am not the big shot who escapes. I am more a very rich middleman."

"Yeah? Who're the big shots?"

"Certain very rich and established banks. They are the ones who make my dollars usable."

"You mean certain banks in Miami?"

"Small-time. I mean a very big bank in Boston, owned by an old, establishment family which regularly allows us to bring the money back into America and buy very safe American property, and very safe American stocks, and very safe American havens for the American dollar. And yet, who ever hears of them?"

"Your water's good, too."

"I take it you don't care about that?"

"Matter of fact, I do. Very much. It's in my bones. I hate to see the big shots get away with it."

"I thought that might be the case," Diaz raised a finger. The smile now disappeared from his eyes. His voice was low and intense. He spoke slowly. "I will make you this deal. I will give you the big shots."

"And let you go?"

"Would you?"

"Probably not."

"Then considering that life is but one day after another, why don't I offer you this. Let me live as long as I give you the big shots in your own country. Unless of course you are here just to kill Latinos. In which case, I will finish my champagne, and you may finish me. The plane will be over the mountains shortly."

Remo thought about the deal. Somehow, this cool, cunning man had found the one price Remo might accept. "Can you get me a phone link-up to the States?"

"Of course, I have everything your Central Intelligence Agency has in the way of electronics."

"It's a very private call, so you'll have to keep your distance. "

"Any call can be listened to without standing nearby, you know," said Diaz.

"Yeah I know," said Remo. "But it's form."

The telephone Diaz gave him was hardly bigger than a coffee cup. It was shiny aluminum and had a speaker at the bottom and a receiver at the top, and a dial pad.

"That is about as safe as you can get, but I wouldn't guarantee anything," said Diaz. "No matter how it is scrambled, someone will pick up the message."

"Will they be able to read it?"

"Probably not. But they will know it has been sent."

"That's good enough," said Remo.

"It may not be for your organization."

"I don't know what is good enough for them," said Remo. He called for another glass of water as he dialed. There was no such thing as pure water. All water really carried elements of something else. But when you got it from the runoffs of the snows of the Andes you did not get the chemical wastes of poisonous factories which was known as pollution.

As soon as the phone rang, another strange ringing occurred. And a computer voice said:

"This is an open line. Use another. Use another. Use another. "

"No," said Remo.

"This is an open line. Disconnect. Disconnect immediately," came the computer voice.

"C'mon, willya, Smitty, just talk for a minute."

And then a screeching interruption. And the voice of Harold W. Smith himself.

"Remo, hang up and reach me on another line."

"I don't have one."

"This is important."

"It's always important."

"There is a national emergency regarding Russia. Now will you get to another phone before someone gets a fix on us?"

"Can we get another line?" Remo called out to Diaz, who was, out of courtesy, standing away from the table, leaning against an elegant carved stone railing looking at his mountains.

"I think so," said Diaz. "Yes, I see the problem. They're picking up certain waves. Yes, I could have assured you there would be a problem."

"You did," said Remo.

"Who is that?" asked Smith. The voice was horrified.

"Diaz," said Remo, hanging up.

"I think your commander will not like the fact that I heard things."

"Yeah. He'll hate it," said Remo, smiling.

Diaz called an aide and was very specific about the type of telephone he wanted. This one would use a different transmission system, which Remo did not understand in the least.

He did understand Smith, however. Smitty's normal, taciturn, dry behavior had turned hysterical. He spent three minutes explaining the dangers of letting the organization be compromised. Even more important than the success of any mission, Remo had been made to understand, was that the organization never be made known to the public.

For its purpose was to do outside the law what America could not do inside. It was to carry out the survival missions of the nation that the nation could no longer perform. It was an admission in its basest form that America did not work within the Constitution.

"All right. All right. I understand, Smitty. But first, I'll be killing Diaz, so that information, whatever it is, will die with him, and second, he has a wonderful idea. I like it."

"Remo, do you understand that Diaz is so dangerous precisely because he offers people wonderful ideas? That's how he ruined the narcotics squads of three police departments. "

"Yeah, but we're missing the big guys. There's this bank in Boston that-"

"Remo, neither the bank nor Mr. Diaz matters. There is something coming in from Russia that may be the most dangerous threat to our country ever."

Remo put a hand over the receiver.

"I think you've been dropped to second place, Diaz," said Remo.

"In these circumstances it might be welcome," said Diaz, toasting Remo again.

Remo took his hand off the speaker.

"You're already having conversations with Guenther Largos Diaz that you're not sharing with me. If that doesn't tell you something, Remo, nothing will."

"What is this big deal from Russia?"

"We don't know. But something big is happening."

"When you find out, let me know, Smitty. In the meantime, Guenther and I are going to Boston," said Remo, and he hung up.

"Shall we take a slow boat?" asked Diaz.

"Nah. You bought yourself a day at most," said Remo.

"Then to a wonderful last day," said Diaz.

The flight to Boston in the Diaz jet was luxurious. The 747 had beautiful women and movies and couches and deep pile rugs.

But Diaz found Remo more interesting than these pleasures. He sent the women to the rear of the plane while he talked with the thin man with the thick wrists. So well appointed was the plane that it carried its own tailor and Diaz offered Remo new clothes instead of his bloodied dark T-shirt, gray slacks, and loafers. Remo asked for a new dark T-shirt and a new pair of gray slacks.

"You will have it by the time we reach Boston. I gather your agency is not listed in the line of command in Washington. "

"Right."

"I would gather very few know of it, less than a handful." Remo nodded.

"But let me take another guess," said Diaz. "Because I have quite an extensive knowledge of what I thought were all of your country's law-enforcement structures."

Remo nodded for Diaz to guess away.

"An agency could not remain secret using many personnel, least of all those who kill like you."

Remo nodded.

"So I would estimate that there are fewer than three of you in the entire organization, three who are licensed to kill."

"I never knew someone needed a license."

"Governments give them to agents. The only way your organization could have escaped detection was with a very small enforcement arm."

"Are you trying to find out that if you kill me, there won't be someone else coming after you?"

"No, as a matter of fact. I've given that up. I don't think I'll have to. I am more valuable to your people alive than dead. And I think you people and I can make a deal. I would like to meet this Smitty."

"No deal. He'd have a heart attack."

The boardroom of the Boston Institutional Bank and Trust Company of America seemed unchanged from the nineteenth century. The walls were paneled in dark mahogany. The painted portraits showed rigid, moral New Englanders casting their gazes down as if considering whether the viewer were good enough to be in the room.

These were the framers of the American Constitution, and the arbiters of America's moral standards. These were the men who, when they decided slavery must go, helped finance the Civil War. Of course, these same men had built their family fortunes on buying slaves in Africa, selling them for molasses in the Caribbean, and turning that molasses into rum in New England, which they sold for slaves in Africa. It was called the golden triangle. And it made them and their descendants rich beyond imagination.

But only after the slaves were bought and paid for did New England provide the strong impetus to abolish slavery. As one Southerner had said:

"If we were smart enough to have bought our nigras on time instead of paying outright, there never would have been a Civil War."

The descendants of these righteous souls now sat beneath the portraits of their ancestors in the boardroom, keeping to the strictest morality in their banking. They would accept no cash of uncertain origin.

However, when one talked hundreds of millions of dollars, one was not talking cash, one was talking wealth. With that amount, there were no questions asked; so when their biggest depositor, Senor Guenther Largos Diaz, insisted on a meeting that day, they were more than happy to talk with him.

And this despite the presence of the man in the very casual black T-shirt and gray slacks, which were such a contrast to the elegant white suit of Senor Diaz.

"Tell me, young man, where do your people come from?" asked the chairman of the board.

"I don't know. I'm an orphan," said Remo. "I'm just here with Mr. Diaz to see if what he says is so. That he does business with you. And I see by this meeting that he does. "

"We find him above reproach."

"Guenther here runs cocaine and suborns police departments. Is that above reproach?"

"I know nothing of that," said the chairman of the prestigious bank.

"Well, you do now," said Remo.

"I only know what you say, and I am not going to jump to hasty conclusions to defame the character of an upright businessman," said the chairman of the board. The other board members nodded.

"Well, I'm sorry to say, fellas, this isn't exactly a fair trial."

And there in the stuffy boardroom of the Boston Institutional Bank and Trust Company of America, the chairman of the board watched a thin man go from chair to chair, and as though flicking a finger, send head after head crashing to the table. Some members tried to run, but they were caught, their eyes going wide and stupid as their brains fluttered out under the shrapnel of their shattered skulls.

Their best depositor only stood by as though waiting for the beginning of a show. The chairman of the board was about to use his imposing moral presence when the intellectual signals for that presence scattered with the rest of his nervous system around the prestigious boardroom of the Boston International Bank and Trust Company of America.

"Thank you for your lead, but I really am sorry, Guenther, to tell you you've had your day."

"But, my dear Remo," said Diaz. "These are only the small fry. "

South of Boston in Rye, New York, on Long Island Sound, a computer gave Harold W. Smith some of the most frightening information to come in during CURE's history. Through its actions, Russia was telling the organization's computers that it was after something far more formidable even than atomic weapons. And there was no way to reach the killer arm. He was off somewhere disposing of bankers.

Chapter 3

The President was calling, and for the first time in his life, Harold W. Smith did not answer his commander in chief when he should have.

He watched the blinking light signal that the President was on the line and he let the light blink off. He knew what the President wanted, and he knew he couldn't help him.

The network that had made this one organization so powerful was revealing two things. First, Russian internal activity was extraordinary in volume. Anyone could spot it. There was no great mystery to intelligence operations. When one nation prepared to attack another nation, you could see the armies massing for months and miles.

Something very important was happening. What Smith didn't know, and he was sure the FBI had to be just as aware of this, and just as worried. They had to have contacted the President. He could imagine the FBI mobilizing its magnificent staff; the organization that had momentarily faltered with a loss of its strong leader was now better than ever. It was the great secret of international politics that the FBI was perhaps the finest counterintelligence agency in the world. So, if the President was phoning Smith, it had to be for the use of CURE's special techniques, namely Remo, and hopefully not his trainer, Chiun.

The second piece of news coming into the headquarters hidden within Folcroft Sanitarium on Long Island Sound was a multiple murder in Boston. Six directors of a prestigious bank had been killed when, according to the best police reports, someone using a powerful device had crushed six skulls.

The coroners had determined that only a hydraulic machine could have done such damage to a skull, and since there were no marks of such a multi-ton machine within the boardroom itself, it was therefore concluded that all six were killed elsewhere and brought to the boardroom. The papers were rife with speculation.

But Smith knew who had done it, and he was furious. The organization only existed to handle that which the government couldn't. And now Remo was off somewhere keeping Diaz alive in order for Remo to vent his own delusions of a crusade. He had forgotten what they were about. He had forgotten their purpose. He had become lost in the killing and couldn't tell what the war was about anymore.

Maybe it was too much to expect Remo to keep his head after so many years. All the man had wanted was a home and a place in the world, and these were the last things he could have. He had to remain the man who didn't exist, serving the organization that didn't exist. And so it was hotel room to hotel room, for years now. And how much had his mind changed under the tutelage of Chiun, the Master of Sinanju?

That one was stranger still. Smith toyed with the Phi Beta Kappa key from Dartmouth stuck into his gray vest. He looked out the one-way windows of his office on the darkening clouds over Long Island Sound.

The President's line was ringing again. What could he tell him?

Perhaps he could tell him that it was time to close down the killer arm of CURE, that it had become too unreliable. And that was the reason he had not been answering the telephone. Because the moment the President asked for their services, Harold W. Smith, sixty-seven, was honor-bound to tell him the truth. The organization now had to be considered unreliable.

Harold W. Smith picked up the telephone, knowing that all his years of service might now be over. What was it about time? It seemed like yesterday when a now dead President had commissioned CURE for an interim job, just to help the country through the crisis ahead, and then disband. It was supposed to be a five-year assignment. And it had become decades. And now the decades might be coming to an end.

"Sir," said Smith, picking up the red phone in the right-hand drawer of his wooden desk.

"Is everything all right? You're usually there at this time," said the President. "I phoned before."

"I know," said Smith. "No sir, everything is not all right. I regret to inform you that I believe the organization is out of control and it has to be shut down now."

"Doesn't matter. The whole shooting match may be out of control now. What do you have left?"

"We only have one in the enforcement area. The other is his trainer."

"His trainer is even better than he is. And he's older, too. Older than me: Not too many people can make that statement in this government. He's wonderful."

"Sir, the Master of Sinanju is not exactly the congenial sort of fellow he makes himself out to be."

"I know that. They're an ancient house of assassins. The glorious House of Sinanju. I know all the talk Chiun makes is just buttering up clients. I wasn't born yesterday. But we need him or his pupil now. The whole Russian spy system is going crazy. Joint Chiefs, CIA, NSA, they all say Russia is activating its whole network. We are seeing activity from moles who would only be called on in case of war."

"So are they getting into position for a war? What about their missiles and submarines?"

"No. That's just it. It may not be a war, but the KGB is acting as though there is a war."

"Just what can we do that isn't being done already?"

"About time you asked it, Smith," said the President. On television talking to the nation, he appeared to be a sweet, reasonable man. But underneath he was all cold logic and finely honed executive skills, a lot harder than most reporters could perceive. But reporters rarely knew what was going on. They only knew what appeared to be going on.

"We want," said the President, "to stop the unstoppable."

"And what is that?"

"That," said the President, "is a special-force team from the Soviet Union. And they're headed toward America to get something. Now our FBI can handle everything else within our borders. But they can't handle this team of men."

"Can they get Army backup?"

"They have, and did. Twice. And twice that team came into our borders and got out again. Once they managed to take a missile warhead with them."

"So I heard. The CIA seems to be trying to work through a few solutions, but I don't think they'll come up with anything," said Smith.

"You're not alone. We only found out about these boys after they got out of the country. They could have been in here three or four times for all we know. We know we've had them at least twice."

"How do you know they're coming in again?"

"Because Russia is sending in everything. We can handle all the other stuff. Can your people handle their special team?"

"We'll have to," said Smith. "What else do you know about them? Any identification? The big thing is going to be finding them."

"We'll have the CIA feed you."

"That's all right. I'd rather tap into their lines. Any idea if it's something we have that they are afraid we'll use to start a war?"

"Doubtful. All we know is that it has a code name, Rabinowitz. "

"Strange code name. Sounds like a person."

"I would have thought so too. But can you imagine any single person who is so valuable as to put Russia's entire spy network on virtual war alert?"

"No, sir. I can't. We'll do what we can."

In a time of crisis, Smith, perhaps the most perfect organizer ever to come out of the old OSS, always got a pad and pencil. For some reason a computer was not good for flat-out reasoning. The pencil and paper somehow made it real. And within a few lines he set a parameter. If Remo did not check in by noon that day, he would enlist Chiun. He had time. The CIA still did not know who had to be stopped as Russia searched for this code name Rabinowitz.

And Smith did not want to deal with Chiun now if he did not have to.

Remo checked in by eleven A.M. and he was gleeful. "Guess where I am, Smitty."

"Remo, your country needs you."

"And it's getting me. I'm here at the Chicago Board of Trade, and guess who is not going to be able to use narcotics money anymore to manipulate the grain market."

"I could tell you in five minutes, if we had five minutes. Remo, this is a national emergency."

"So is a bunch of farmers going bankrupt."

"Has Mr. Diaz convinced you that you're saving farmers by eliminating a corrupt broker?"

"At least I know I'm getting the bad guys."

"Who made you a judge?"

"All those judges who let these bastards off."

"Remo," said Smith, looking at the instruments attached to the line in use, "this is not a secure line. I have very important information. Get to any land line phone. Stop using that damned gadget Diaz must have given you. "

"Smitty, there's always a crisis. And you know what comes after one crisis? Another crisis. At least I know now I'm doing some good. And I'll tell you something. I've never felt better in my life."

"Good, because you're in the wrong place, idiot, if you want to help farmers. Their problem is that oil prices have made food more expensive while their own technical ability to produce more drives down prices. They've been caught in the middle. It has nothing to do with the Chicago Board of Trade one way or the other."

"Never felt better in my life, Smitty," said Remo, and the phone went dead. There was no choice but to contact the Master of Sinanju. If Remo was an unguided missile, Chiun, his mentor, was an explosion. This latest Master of the most deadly house of assassins in all history would do absolutely unfathomable things. Even if he had an assignment from Smith, which he usually did, he might end up at the other end of the world eliminating an entire royal court for some reason entirely his own.

Using Chiun always had the element of throwing a bomb into a crowded theater hoping the person you had to get might be inside. But Smith had no choice. The deadly killer had to be ready to be unleashed. He dialed.

In New Hope, Pennsylvania, among the apple blossoms of spring and the gentle green hills of Bucks County, a ringing telephone interrupted the placid perfection of what had to be the most gentle mind at a gentle time of year.

So kind and perfect was this mind, so innocent in its love of simple beauty, that to interrupt its serenity had to be a crime worthy of immediate and final punishment.

Thus when the jarring noise of the telephone cruelly abused the tranquillity of the innocent one, the innocent one looked about for some help for the frail, gentle soul that wished above all only peace for the entire world.

And in so doing, his gaze rested upon a repairman for a television company, and in simple supplication did Chiun, Master of Sinanju, ask that the phone be taken from the wall.

"Hey, buddy, I ain't gettin' paid to tear up phone-company property," answered the repairman.

What would a gentle soul with a spirit of such placidity do when abused by one who denied that soul the quiet it so desperately sought? He begged again. Of course the repairman did not understand the simple three-word pleading. He took offense at:

"Do it now."

And the repairman began an answer with the letter F. Fortunately the forces of peace and tranquillity did not let him complete the hard consonants CK at the end of the word.

Chiun walked over the body and quieted the noise of the phone by enveloping it in his fingers. Altering the rhythm of the molecules of the plastic, soon caused it to disappear into steam.

He glanced back at the body. He hoped Remo would be home within a day, before the body began to give off foul odors. And yet, for this gentleman in the bright kimono with a wispy beard, long fingernails, and calm countenance wrapped in parchment-yellow skin, the day might prove regrettable. Remo might not come, and even if he did come, he would, as he always did, make a fuss about who would remove the body. Even after all Chiun had given him. And to support his sloth and ingratitude, he probably would accuse Chiun of murder without cause, an accusation against the perfect and pure reputation of the House of Sinanju itself.

Thus was Chiun's day ruined, but this was to be expected. The world had a nasty habit of abusing the gentle souls. He would have to be less accommodating in the future. His only problem was, as it had always been, that he was too nice a guy.

In Moscow, an American mole secreted in the higher echelons of the KGB since the Second World War received his message the way he had been given instructions for the last forty years: by reading a famous American newspaper's front page. On the front page, for no reason the paper ever cared to explain, were classified ads. Since it was such a prestigious newspaper, everyone assumed it was a traditional quirk. The ads were small, usually less than three lines each, and filled the bottom of the page.

But they had been absolutely vital in the intelligence agency's efforts to reach people throughout the world. After all, no intelligence agent would be suspect for reading the front page of this most prestigious newspaper. It probably would be part of his job anyhow.

And thus, reading the paper over three days gave the colonel an entire message. Decoded, it revealed a request to know what Rabinowitz stood for and when the special force would be dispatched to get it.

As with all good intelligence agencies, no one was allowed to know anything he did not need to know. Though the colonel was in electronic surveillance, and sent messages through this same surveillance equipment, as he always had, he did not know what a Rabinowitz was and had never heard of the special force.

But unlike all the other times, this time he was pressed to risk exposing himself to find out. And so he opened computer files he was forbidden to open and got answers that were not complete, but they were better than nothing.

The special force Russia used within America was marvelously protected until it was used, and only then it would be vulnerable. Its commander was the youngest general in the KGB, Boris Matesev, a man with a licentiate from the Sorbonne in France.

Rabinowitz was not a code name, but the name of a person assigned to the parapsychology village. There had been a botched attempt to keep him within Russia. And he was considered extraordinarily dangerous-the most dangerous single human being on the face of the earth.

The CIA knew the information was correct, because the mole had paid for it with his life.

Smith's tap on the CIA lines picked up the name Matesev, and he sent out under CIA auspices an urgent request for more information on this man, what he looked like and, most important, where he was. The request cost three lives.

On the day this costly information arrived, Smith got another phone call from Remo, this time in Denver. He was punishing a bookmaker. And the report on Chiun's phone was that the service had been disconnected for equipment failure.

There was nothing for Smith to do but go himself to New Hope, Pennsylvania, and try to reason with Chiun face-to-face. For some reason the phones that he had ordered installed never quite worked, and the phone company refused to send any more men into that area because repairmen and installers kept disappearing.

Smith arrived in a plain economy car, and if he were not so tired he would have sensed the silence in the area. Even the birds were quiet. Two telephone trucks and a TV repair vehicle were parked in the driveway.

Inside the unmistakable odor of death permeated the walls. The door was open. But blocking the entrance were four brightly colored steamer trunks.

"Quickly, pack them in the car," came Chiun's high, squeaky voice.

"What's happened?"

"Viciousness and discord have run rampant. We must move quickly lest the sheriff come with all his white viciousness. You are, after all, a racist country."

"I don't know if I could lift the trunks," said Smith.

"You must. You don't expect a Master of Sinanju to carry them himself, do you? What will the world think of you hiring an assassin who carries his own baggage? Quick. Quick. I will help, but don't let the world see."

The help Smith got was an occasional long fingernail balancing a trunk on Smith's shoulders. The chests filled the back seat of the car and the car trunk itself. Smith could hardly see well enough to back out of the driveway. "What happened in there?"

"Someone kept trying to phone me," said Chiun, smoothing out his gray traveling kimono.

"What does that have to do with killing? How can a phone call create rotting bodies?"

"Ah, that is Remo's fault," said Chiun.

"Remo's returned?" asked Smith, feeling a wild sense of panic creep up on him with every bizarre and inexplicable answer from the Master of Sinanju.

"No. That is why Remo is responsible. If he were here it would be his job to take care of the bodies. But he is not here. And why?"

"Well, I think he has some problems. He has gone off on his own."

"Eeahhh," wailed the Master of Sinanju.

"What's the matter?"

"The Master's disease. It happens every fifteenth generation."

"But that's for Koreans, isn't it?"

"Remo has become Korean in his soul, even though he may not respect that fact," said Chiun. "And now the Master's disease."

"What is it?"

"I should have known. Does he think now that he alone provides justice for the world?"

"Something like that, yes," said Smith, making sure he kept the proper speed limit on the narrow winding road through the beautiful countryside of Bucks County. Behind him he heard the wail of police sirens. He had gotten to Chiun just in time. They couldn't afford the attention if an entire police department were wiped out. That would be too much to cover up, even for CURE.

"This is a very crucial time. Remo must be allowed rest. Above all he needs rest, and he needs me. He needs me most of all."

"Is there any way we can use him for a mission at this time? It's vital."

"Ah, a vital mission. They are the most important, but Sinanju, which has served you so well and faithfully, must reorient its basic unity with the cosmos. Remo must meditate. He must breathe properly. He must rethink himself, and then, after the visitation, stronger, we will come back to carry the standards of Emperor Smith to final and ultimate victory."

The long fingernails fluttered as Chiun spoke. "We need someone now. Can we use you?"

"I am always of service, ready to bring your glory to its ultimate brilliance at your every whim."

"Good. Then I think you should know we have a target who will be coming to America, we suspect possibly in the vicinity of New York. I want you placed in New York City now-"

"It would be the wrong time to leap to your very whim. We must get Remo well again before we go on."

"How long will that take?" asked Smith, who remembered he had a back problem that doctors had pronounced incurable until Chiun, with less than three seconds of manipulation, blessedly cured it forever.

"A rapid fifteen years," said Chiun.

"We don't have fifteen years. What can we give you to get your services, services I might remind you we are this very moment paying for in gold tribute to the village of Sinanju, gold that is delivered on time when you want it."

"And we are here for you. Forever to sing your praises. Only in your service has Remo's mind been injured. Yet we humbly accept that harm as part of our service to you."

"Remo is now gallivanting around the countryside with a man I ordered executed-"

"One you have certainly paid to have executed," said Chiun. "And it should be given you."

"And Remo is eliminating people we have not asked him to."

"For nothing?" asked Chiun, in horror.

"Yes. Remo doesn't care about money. You know that."

"It has come to this. He has taken the wisdom and skill of Sinanju and become an amateur. Oh, how the world has cruelly vented its scorn upon this lowly head in your gracious service, O Emperor Smith."

"Well, I am glad that for the first time we have agreed on something, Chiun," said Smith. "In this disaster, at least that is a blessing."

He wondered if the sheriff's car would be following them. He wondered how many other reasonless killings this aged Oriental had committed, only to have them hidden by Remo.

He wondered if he could keep things together enough to save America one last time. He felt tired. His body and mind were telling him to toss it all in, maybe drive off the road into the river along which the road ran. Let the water come in cold and dark and final and give him some peace at last.

And then without even being aware, Harold W. Smith felt as bright as a summer morning, fresh as his orange juice, and more chipper than anytime since the morning of his tenth birthday.

He saw Chiun remove his long fingernails from behind his neck, and Smith's neck was still tingling.

"You were letting the tiredness of your body make your decisions," said Chiun. "Now how does the world look?"

"Difficult."

"For the great emperors it is always difficult."

"'I don't suppose it would do any good to tell you I'm not an emperor. I guess not. There is a difficult problem. And I can't reach Remo."

"All problems are the same. They just have different faces and times," said Chiun.

"You mean you may have run up against something like this in the histories of Sinanju?"

"I guarantee we ran up against it in our history. The question is, will I recognize it? You see, our histories are our strength. That is what Remo must learn. He would know what he is experiencing now if he had properly revered our histories."

"He didn't like that part of the training, I take it," said Smith.

"He called it an ugly name," said Chiun.

"I'm sorry," said Smith.

"Now we are all paying for it," said Chiun. "Ah well, he will be back soon. I will tell him you are angry also."

"How do you know he's coming back?"

"He always comes back to me after he completes a service for you."

"But I thought you said he suffered from the Master's disease. "

"And he does, most gracious Emperor Smith. He will wreak acts of vengeance upon mankind. It is an old Hindu curse interpreted by them as a duty imposed by one of their gods."

"But if he is wreaking vengeance, his own personal vengeance, how will he do what he is supposed to do for me?"

"You mean your assignment?"

"Yes. This man he was supposed to eliminate," said Smith.

"Oh, that," said Chiun, dismissing the worry as trivial. "That's business. The man is dead."

"Guenther Largos Diaz is perhaps the most cunning briber in the world. He should have been dead days ago."

"Yes, I admit, Remo may be late, but there is no question. Mr. Diaz may think he is saving his life, but Remo will come to his senses because the disease fevers the brain in waves, not in a constant barrage. Don't worry. Remo is Remo."

"Yes," said Smith wearily, "but who that is, I don't know. "

"You read the souls of all men, O most gracious Emperor," said Chiun, who thought that it would take a white to deal with someone for twenty years and then come out with a statement as stupid as that. If he didn't know Remo by now, he never would.

* * *

Guenther Largos Diaz had understood immediately there was a quality to this man called Remo that he had never seen before. And even though he had learned many things about him in the last few days, he did make the disastrously impulsive judgment that he knew Remo.

He had seen him kill at the foot of the Andes, seen his work in Boston and now in Denver, seen the flippant grace that made awesome deeds seem no more than the simple manipulation of the hand, like swatting away a fly.

It was this very simplicity that made it all seem so natural, which in Diaz's understanding made it all the more magnificent. He could feed this force victims and thus prolong his own life, but life was too valuable to live it poorly, to constantly be running around America one step from death.

There had to be a significant move along the way when Remo would make that switch to working for Diaz instead of Diaz working for Remo. The more subtly it was made, the more possible it would become. What Guenther Largos Diaz wanted was for their goals, his and Remo's, to become indistinguishable, and then once that had been established, to slowly substitute Diaz's real goals.

For in this one man Diaz would have an army of killers. To this end, he questioned Remo. They were aboard the private jet on their way to Atlanta, where Diaz had assured Remo a major builder was also using Diaz cocaine money. "We are really getting the big shots, Remo."

"You seem happy about it, Diaz."

"I am happy to be alive," said Diaz. He examined a tray of truffles brought to him by the steward aboard his jet, and dismissed them as inadequate. They could always fly to France for the best truffles. Life was so short, why settle?

"You didn't seem to be too frightened," said Remo.

"Why be frightened even though life is dear? But I am thinking, why not get the true masters of crime. We have dealt with bankers and bookies and commodities dealers, and now we seek a builder. Let us get the great criminals of the world."

"These are big enough for me," said Remo.

"Do you know how much a country steals every day? What does one communist government steal when it has everyone within its borders providing cheap labor? What does the American government steal when it taxes? Cocaine smugglers are pipsqueaks, and so are bankers. Are you willing to go for the really big boys, Remo?"

"No," said Remo. "As a matter of fact I should be getting home. I'm late."

"I thought you didn't have a home."

"I don't really. It's my teacher I live with."

"And he teaches you these powers."

"Yeah. In a way," said Remo. He liked the plush white cushions on the plane. He wondered what it would be like to live this way, to have many homes. Guenther Largos Diaz had many homes. If he worked for Diaz, so would he.

"In what way, Remo?"

"I'd tell you but I don't have time."

"We have all the time in the world," said Guenther Largos Diaz, making a broad gesture with his hands.

"No you don't," said Remo, and he did not throw Diaz's body out of the plane because they were over America and it might hit someone.

Chapter 4

Vladimir Rabinowitz was free. He was in the land where people ate meat all they wanted. No one stood over your shoulder. No one told you what to think. No one bombarded you with the correct view of the world.

Those were the good parts. The bad part was nobody cared what you thought. Nobody cared where you slept or whether you ate at all. You had no set place in the world. Living in Russia was like wearing a truss around your soul. It smothered the spirit, but when the truss was removed, you felt as though the spirit was now dangerously without support.

For the first time in his twenty-eight years of life Vladimir Rabinowitz had no place to go, no place to be, no one to have to talk to, and it was not exhilarating. It was terrifying. He looked over his shoulder for the police. He looked around for some official, and then with a deep sigh he told himself this was what he had wanted all his life and he should enjoy it.

He watched the people rush through Kennedy Airport until one glanced at his eyes. She was young, but apparently wealthy because she wore a fur coat. Her eyes were ice blue, and he caught them in his own gaze.

The trick was to get behind the eyes into the mind. Human eyes were really set like those of predators, not victims. Antelopes and deer had their eyes in the sides of their heads to spot anything sneaking up on them. They were runners for their lives. Lions and wolves had their eyes set in the front of their heads. They were hunters for their food.

When people glanced for the first time at anything, their eyes were really searching for weaknesses or strengths. If one knew the eyes, one knew that. The second glance was sexual. And only after these two stages were over did people get to talking. But it was in these stages that Vassily Rabinowitz worked.

The woman's eyes said no danger, and then said no to sexual partnership. But by that instant he had locked her pupils with his and smiled, and what he did here with people rushing around them and distracting them, with overhead speakers blaring in English, with the scent of harsh cleaners still on the floor and the air stuffy from so many people using it, was to let her eyes see through his that she was safe. The message was friendship. She no longer had to worry about safety.

"I am telling you what you know," said Vassily in his best English, "better than what you know."

His voice was not soft, but held that note of confidence beyond confidence. It was someone speaking the truth. The people never remembered he had said this afterward, in fact sometimes they didn't remember direct suggestions at all. As he had explained to the scientist who was assigned to him back at the village:

"Most of the decisions for immediate action and recognition are not decided in the conscious part of the brain. That's too slow. It's an instantaneous thing. It's there immediately. What I do is lock in at the first stage."

"But all hypnotism requires relaxation, comrade," the fellow scientist at the village had said.

"The mind is never relaxed. You're thinking of presleep," Vassily had said, and the scientist had liked that. He liked the description of the levels of the mind. He liked the stages of recognition through the eyes. He liked all of it, and Vassily, being rather creative, kept on expanding. Of course the scientists could never reproduce what Vassily Rabinowitz did, because Vassily didn't know how he did it. Never did. Nor did he know why everyone else in his village could do it to those born outside the village.

All he knew was that when he went to the outside world, which at the time was the special village in Siberia, he promised the elders of the village never to tell anyone about them.

And here in America the woman with the ice-blue eyes said:

"Darling, I didn't know you were in New York!"

"I'm here. Don't hang on me. I want something to eat already," said Vassily.

"You're always so thoughtful. Never thinking of yourself, Hal. Always me first. Of course we'll get something to eat."

"Right," said Vassily.

"I love you too, precious," said the woman. Her name was Liona. Her mind had taken over the job of telling herself what she wanted to believe. This Hal she was in love with apparently had a nice way with words.

Vassily never had a way with words, least of all English words. So he told her what he wanted, and she heard what she wanted, and they got along fine all the way into the biggest, busiest, dirtiest city he had ever seen. New York. And she bought him lunch. And took him to her apartment. And made violent love to him, screaming, "Hal, Hal. Hal."

"So long," said Vassily.

"You're wonderful, Hal."

"Sometimes. Sometimes I'm this guy Morris, who is awful," said Vassily, but he knew she didn't hear that. He had been three Morrises in his life; none of them had ever been good lovers. Once he was a Byron. Byron was terrific. He liked being Byron.

Vassily, untrained in war and the strategies of war, could not imagine he would ever be a danger to anyone. When you had the powers of his home village of Dulsk you really didn't have to worry about dangers from the outside.

But as he left the apartment, something bad happened. The worst fears of Russian planners were realized, though not in a way they might have expected.

In this fine country, in this land where store windows were filled with plenty, Vassily Rabinowitz was mugged. They were three teenagers. They were of the oppressed black race. Vassily, whose only knowledge of American racial matters was the historic injustice done to these people and the daily persecutions they suffered, felt an immediate sense of brotherly compassion.

In the midst of his compassion he suffered contusions about the eyes, lacerations of the head, a broken left wrist, and a damaged kidney. When he got out of the hospital he was told to check his urine for blood.

This could never happen in Moscow. A drunk might take a loose swing at someone, but never would anyone so blatantly assault another.

Coming out of the hospital, Vassily Rabinowitz knew he was going to have to take care of himself. In every aching part of his body, in every accidental brush against a wound, he knew he was never going to allow this to happen to him again. He would create a fortress Vassily. He would trust no one to take care of him. He would do everything for himself. He would protect himself, he would set up a business for himself, and foremost, he would never again expose himself to the vicissitudes of brotherly love. He was going to get his own police force, to substitute for the people dressed in blue who called themselves police, whom he had never seen hit anyone on the head with a nightstick. He was going to get himself the strongest, deadliest, most powerful protection available in this new country.

Rabinowitz wasn't quite sure what that was, but he knew how to find out. And so he began protecting himself. He talked with a policeman. The policeman thought he was talking to his father.

"Dad," said the policeman, "the toughest man in the city, the one I would hate to be left alone with, the one I would walk miles to avoid, has got to be Johnny 'The Bang' Bangossa. "

"Is a strongy, huh?" asked Vassily.

"Pop, that man has been breaking bones for a living since he was twelve. I heard he beat up four patrolmen by himself when he was sixteen. By the time he was twenty he had made his bones."

"What is this making of bones?" asked Vassily.

"Dad, how long have you been on the police force, that you don't know what making your bones is?"

"Talk to your father already," said Vassily. They were in a luncheonette. Some of the food Vassily recognized from Russia. The rest he wanted to eat.

People were looking strangely at them. Vassily could sense that. He didn't care. The man had red hair, blue eyes, and was six feet tall, almost a half-foot taller than Vassily. He was also by any reasonable estimation a good ten years older than Vassily.

"Pop, making your bones is killing someone for money."

"So where does this Bangossa fellow live?"

"Queens. He's been under surveillance for a month. And he knows it. Word on the street is he's going crazy 'cause he hasn't busted anyone's skull in a hell of a long time. Everyone's waitin' for him to break."

Vassily got the address of the stakeout, took a large sugary roll from the counter, told the counterman his son would pay for it, and headed out for Queens, New York, and the address of the stakeout.

When the wife of Johnny "The Bang" Bangossa saw a little fellow with sad brown eyes come up the walkway to their brick house in Queens, she wanted to warn him to stay away. If he did not stay away, Johnny would mangle him, the police stakeout that everyone knew was in force would close in, and Johnny would be incarcerated, using the remnants of the sad-eyed little fellow as evidence, probably for a lifetime, leaving Maria Venicio Bangossa virtually a widow. A woman without a man. A woman who could not marry again because in the eyes of the Church she would still be married.

Maria Bangossa opened the door.

"C'mon in," she said. "Have you come for Johnny Bangossa?"

"Indeed 1 have," said Vassily Rabinowitz. He was amazed at how much red brick was used in this house. Someone would think this was a bunker. The windows were small and narrow. The roof was low, and nothing but brick reinforced by brick was used in the exterior.

Inside, furniture glistened with a sheen he hadn't seen anywhere else in America except on luncheonette counters. Suddenly Maria Bangossa realized she was talking to her mother.

"Ma, he's in a lousy mood. I just leave some pasta by his door three times a day. I don't go in. You gotta get outta here."

Maria saw her mother shrug.

"Don't worry already. We'll be all right, and everything will work out. Just show me where the animal is."

"I'm fine, Ma, and Johnny's in his room. But he's sleeping. He's even worse when he wakes up. I rush out of bed because I don't want to be near him when he opens his eyes."

"It's all right, Maria. Your mother will be fine," said Vassily.

The carpeting was a deep maroon and looked like bad imitation fur. The lamps were porcelain figurines holding facsimiles of fruit. The stair banister was made of chrome. Airports were better decorated than the home of this Johnny Bangossa.

When Vassily got to the room, he knocked on the door and called out.

"Hey, Johnny Bangossa, I want you should talk with me awhile."

Johnny Bangossa heard the foreign accent. He heard it in his house. He heard it outside his room. He heard it while he was asleep and when he awakened from that sleep. The first thing he did was swing wildly, hoping someone was near him and would be crushed by the blow. But his fist met only a piece of the wall, shattering plaster.

The voice had come from the door. Johnny grabbed the corners of the door and ripped it away. Standing there in front of him was a little man with sad brown eyes, probably a Jew.

Johnny reached for the Jew. His anger almost blinded him.

Vassily Rabinowitz saw the big, hairy hands come down toward him. Johnny Bangossa filled the doorway. He wore an undershirt. His massive shoulders were covered with hair. His face was hairy. His nose was hairy. Even his teeth and fingernails seemed to be hairy. He had small black eyes that looked like coal nuggets, and a wide face that underneath the hair was very red.

Vassily sensed he was going to die very soon. And then he locked eyes with the massive man.

The hulk paused, then cringed.

"Hey, Carli, leave me alone. C'mon, Carli," whined Johnny Bangossa, covering his head and retreating into the room.

"I'm not going to hit you. I need you," said Vassily.

"Don't hit," said the large man, and he winced as though he was being struck on the head.

"I need you for protection," said Vassily. "You will be my bodyguard.'

"Sure, Carli, but don't hit."

Vassily shrugged. He knew his bodyguard would be actually feeling the slaps and cuffs used by the person who raised him.

It was a bit unsettling to walk downstairs with a hulk of a man wincing, ducking, and covering his head.

Maria Bangossa stood in shocked amazement as the two of them left the house. It was as though her beloved husband was reacting to his older brother Carl who had raised him. Johnny had said Carl had raised him strictly, in the old-fashioned way. Nowadays, with the advent of social workers, this was considered child abuse.

Carl Bangossa had been proud of the way he raised his younger brother Johnny to follow in the family footsteps. Unfortunately, Carl never saw Johnny reach manhood because Carl too followed in the Bangossa family footsteps.

He was buried at the bottom of the East River in a tub of cement. It was the Bangossa way of death. A greatgrandfather was the only one to have died in bed. That was the place he was stabbed to death.

"Hey, Carli, there's a stakeout here," said Johnny as they reached the sidewalk.

"What is stakeout?" asked Vassily.

"You don't know what a stakeout is?" asked Johnny, and then ducked, expecting a hit in the head for asking that kind of question.

"You tell me," said Vassily.

The large hairy man talked a foot over Vassily's head. This Carli had to be big also. A stakeout, he said, was when the police were watching you.

Why were they watching him? Vassily asked.

" 'Cause they hate Italians. You know, you got a vowel at the end of your name and they think they got a right to lean on you."

"All Italians?"

"No way. Some of the paisans are the worst cops and prosecutors. You got a vowel at the end of your name, they lean on you harder."

"And a paisan is?"

"Carli. You crazy? . . . Sorry, Carli. Sorry. Don't hit. Don't hit. All right."

It was very difficult dealing with someone who had been raised with violence as a teaching tool, but Vassily came to understand that the policemen in the stakeout were sitting in a car across the street.

"You stay here, Johnny. I'll take care of them."

"Not in front of my house. They'll get us for sure. You can't kill a cop in front of your house. We'll never get away with it."

Johnny Bangossa felt the slaps and the hits on his head, heard Carli tell him not to worry about it, and then to his amazement saw his older brother walk over to the car, and not kill anyone. Nor did he have money in his hands. He only spoke to them and they drove away.

That was even more amazing than Carli being alive. Johnny could have sworn Carli had been put in the East River for good.

"Hey, Carli, word had it you was sleeping with the fishes," said Johnny.

"Don't believe everything you hear," said Vassily Rabinowitz.

He now had his bodyguard, but of course one had to be able to feed a bodyguard, and probably pay him too. Vassily needed a business, He could go into a bank and probably withdraw money, but sooner or later, numbers, which did not lock eyes with people, would show something was wrong and eventually people would come looking for him. Besides, he had looked in one of the banks and there were cameras on the walls. They would probably get his picture anyhow. He could have become the lover of a wealthy woman or the lost child of a wealthy man. But he had not come this far to be cosseted with some stranger who needed to be intimate. He wanted freedom. And to have this freedom he knew he had to start his own business.

And what better business than what he did better than anyone else in the world? He would set up an office to supply hypnotism. He was, after all, the best hypnotist in the world.

Johnny Bangossa would stay near him all the time, and act as doorman to his little office. He would act as chauffeur when Vassily got a car. He would do everything for Vassily while making sure no one ever laid a finger on his beloved Carli. Otherwise his beloved Carli would punish Johnny Bangossa.

But business was not easy at first. Not even for Vassily.

His first customer refused to pay him. He was a chronic smoker.

"Why should I pay you for quitting smoking? I never smoked in my life and I don't smoke now," said the customer.

"Then what are the cigarettes doing in your pocket? Why are your fingers stained with nicotine?" asked Vassily.

"My Lord. You're right. What have you done to me, you bastard?" said the man, who had come in with a cigarette in his mouth, hacking away, explaining how he had tried everything and couldn't quit. Johnny had to quiet him down, but Vassily learned it wasn't what you did for a person but what they thought you did for them.

For the next patient the first thing he did was to convince the obese woman she was going through an exotic experience of hypnotism. And this time, the important message was not that she would no longer overeat. Not that she did not want to overeat, but that she was getting her money's worth.

"This is the best hypnotic experience of your life and you will come to me twice a week for the next fifteen years," said Vassily. "And you will pay me ninety dollars for a mere fifty minutes of my time even though you will have to imagine any improvement in your life, because there's going to be none."

The woman left and recommended fifteen friends, all of whom agreed Vassily was just as good as their psychiatrists. In fact he functioned just like one.

And Vassily had another trick up his sleeve. He learned to give fifty minutes in thirty seconds' time. All they had to do was believe they were getting that much time.

The line stretched out of his office right to the elevator every day. He was making fortunes. But he was spending fortunes, too. There were the lawyers he had to hire because Johnny Bangossa defended him a little too well.

There were tax advisers he had to get because he was making so much money. And he realized Johnny could not do it all. Johnny had to sleep from time to time. So Vassily had to get other bodyguards and of course he got the toughest men that money and great hypnotism could buy.

And he had to have somebody to order them around. So in came a second in command. Within a very short time, Vassily Rabinowitz, formerly of Dulsk, Russia, formerly of the parapsychology village in Siberia, was running one of the most powerful crime families in the country, but he couldn't support them all with just hypnotism. No matter how profitable that was, he had to let them earn their money at what they knew-narcotics, extortion, hijacking, and sundry other things.

It was a horror, except something began to stir in the heart of Vassily Rabinowitz, and it would ultimately threaten the entire world.

A portion of his mind that had never been used was being called on now. He had to organize his deadly people, and he found he liked it. It was much better than hypnotism, which he could do with no effort at all: this was a challenge.

And so what had started as a way to be safe from muggers now became a game of war. And it was just the nightmare that Russian planners had always feared. Because here was a man who, once he looked in someone's eyes, owned that person, could get him to do virtually anything. What would happen, asked the Russian strategic planners, if he got into the game of international conflicts? He could go from one small state to another, and all he had to do was have one meeting with an enemy or one with a general. He could turn the whole world around.

That was the real reason they had never used him against enemies. They never wanted him to get a taste of war. There was nothing closer to war than the manipulation of racketeer armies.

But Russia did not yet know this had happened. They were only out to find out where he was. And they found out only by accident, an accident that accomplished what their entire alerted espionage network failed to do, pinpoint exactly where Vassily Rabinowitz was.

Natasha Krupskaya, the wife of a Russian consul who had been assigned to America for the last ten years, decided at last that weighing 192 pounds might be a fine thing in Minsk, Pinsk, or Podolsk, but not on Fifth Avenue. Americans had started to make fun of Russian figures on television. And since she also had a face like the back end of a tractor, she decided she had to do something to avoid ridicule. But dieting was hard. She would find herself at the end of the day craving a roll slathered with butter. Dieting in America was impossible. Not only was there wonderful food, but it was for everyone. And not only was it for everyone, but television advertisements created by geniuses enticed everyone to eat. In Russia the best minds went into making missiles hit targets; in America the finest minds went into making people buy things. And when they made you want to eat food, no one from Minsk, Pinsk, or Podolsk could resist.

Natasha needed help, and when she heard of the greatest hypnotist in the world, she decided to try him. She waited in line, hearing people come out saying the strangest things, like:

"That was the best fifty minutes I ever spent in my life. "

"That fifty minutes went like three seconds."

"That fifty minutes was grueling."

What was strange about all this was that they had been inside the office for less than thirty seconds.

A big hairy man sat in front of the inner office. He made sure a younger man got the money. The younger man had very curly hair and the wife of the consul could see he carried a gun. The receptionist, a very pretty blond, called him Rocco.

The woman found herself pushed through into the inner office and there she saw an old friend. She was about to say hello when she was out of the office feeling drained from fifty hard minutes working on her weight problem.

But in her case, she recognized someone she had seen just the year before in a visit to Russia. She had been privileged to use Vassily Rabinowitz in the parapsychology village where he had solved a sexual problem for her.

Natasha had been having difficulty enjoying an orgasm. More specifically, she couldn't get one at all. Her, husband had the nasty habit of being a world-record premature ejaculator. If she smiled lasciviously he was through. And so was she.

Ordinarily the man would have sought treatment. But he was a ranking member of the Communist party and she was not. Therefore it was her problem, not his, and therefore she went to see this wonderful man who had cured another wife of the same problem. He had helped her to understand that she could have an instant orgasm as soon as her husband wanted to make love.

It worked beautifully. Natasha could even honestly tell her husband he was a great lover.

"Next time, wait until I take off my pants," he had said proudly.

But here in New York she had recognized Vassily Rabinowitz and she wanted to ask what he was doing there. Unfortunately, no one was going to get through those thugs. So she mentioned this strange occurrence to her husband, seeing a Russian citizen do business in America.

"Has he become a spy for us?" she asked.

"Vassily?" said her husband.

"I saw him today. Practicing on Fifth Avenue. I went to lose weight."

"Vassily!"

"Yes. I remember him from the parapsychology village."

"This is fantastic!" said her husband. He notified the head KGB officer in the consulate, who practically fell out of his chair. He refused to let the consul leave, demanded that Natasha come into his office immediately, and grilled her for twenty minutes before he sent an urgent message back to Moscow. The man Moscow was looking for was right here in New York City on Fifth Avenue and they had the address.

The response was even more urgent. "Do nothing."

In Moscow, there was jubilation. This time, though, they would not be sending some KGB officer, or KGB troops.

This time Boris Matesev himself would go into America, as he had before, and with his special force snatch Vassily Rabinowitz and bring him back to Russia where he belonged. Maybe kill him just to be safe. It didn't matter. The nightmare was coming to a close.

Matesev was a thin man by Russian standards, more German-looking, with an aquiline nose and blond hair. He was also very neat. He had been waiting for word to go back into America for many days now.

When an officer arrived with the message, he merely smiled and packed a grooming kit with a brush, a comb, a razor, and a toothbrush. Then in a fine English tailored suit he boarded a plane to take him to Sweden, where he would catch another plane to America.

The officer, worried about Rabinowitz' legendary abilities, asked the young General Matesev where his special-force troops were. Wouldn't it be dangerous to send them in separately? An axiom in a surprise raid was to have the highest-ranking officer with the troops themselves.

To this General Matesev only smiled.

"I am asking because I know how important this is."

"You are asking because you want to know my secret of getting a large number of men in and out of America without being discovered until we are gone. That is what you want to know," said Matesev.

"I would never reveal it to anyone."

"I know you won't," said Matesev, "because I am not telling you. Just let me know if they want this Rabinowitz alive or dead."

"Alive if possible, but definitely dead if not."

Chapter 5

The CIA, alerted to his coming, spotted Matesev almost immediately. His handsome face had been logged and posted, and the minute he got on a plane bound for New York City from Sweden, the man with the Norwegian passport and name of Svenson was recognized immediately as the Russian commander of the special force that had entered America twice without being spotted, which was known to exist only after it had sucessfully gotten out of the country twice.

Two strange things happened almost immediately. First, although everyone knew that the special Russian force was coming in again, Matesev arrived in Kennedy Airport alone. Not one other Russian was logged coming in with him. Both FBI and CIA coordinating teams began an alert for any large body of men arriving together or even many men arriving singly from one location.

And shortly thereafter, intercepted in communications to Moscow from New York, was an unmistakable Matesev message:

"Force assembled. Preparing to strike within twenty-four hours."

For the third time General Boris Matesev had smuggled in no less than 150 men without being detected, something the President had been assured would be impossible for a third time.

And stranger still was the order from the White House.

"Stand down. Matesev and force will be handled elsewhere. "

None of them knew what the elsewhere was.

And if they knew what the elsewhere was, they would have been far more worried than they were now, seeing this danger enter America's bosom with no apparent defense.

Once Harold W. Smith got the contact call from Remo, he told the President that CURE would be capable of handling this Russian mystery man who could move 150 men invisibly into America three times. Handle Matesev with ease. In fact, Smith's people were expert at movement without being seen. They knew all the tricks of thousands of years of the House of Sinanju.

And Remo was back. He had, as Chiun had assured Smith, performed his services. As Chiun had proclaimed, no Master of Sinanju had ever failed a service. Of course Remo had implied the histories of Sinanju were a bit suspect when it came to the service of the House of Sinanju. In other words, if Sinanju ever failed a commitment, Smith was never going to hear about it from Chiun.

And yet Chiun was right. Remo was back. And the mission was too complex and important to trust communication by sound alone, no matter how secure the most modern electronics could make it. Smith had to have a face-to-face conversation with Remo.

Smith would not have been so happy if he knew what was happening the very moment his plane took off for Remo's and Chiun's new safe house just outside Epcot Center in Orlando, Florida. Smith had secured a condominium for them at Vistana Views, where visits of a week or a month or even a year would not be particularly noticeable.

After the New Hope incident he needed a place for Remo and Chiun where their neighbors were transients also. It was much safer.

But for Remo this two-room condominium with a view of an elaborate fountain, televisions in almost every room, and Jacuzzi, was just another place he was not going to stay very long.

He arrived at the condo glad to see Chiun and not knowing if he could share the sadness he felt now. Surprisingly, Chiun was solicitous. He did not have some peeve to work out on Remo. He did not stress the fact that Remo was ungrateful for the wisdom of Sinanju, that Remo thought more of his country than he did of Chiun, when Chiun had given him everything and his country had given him nothing.

None of these things did Chiun mention when Remo entered without saying hello. Remo sat down in the pastel living room and stared at the television set for an hour. It wasn't turned on.

"You know," said Remo finally, "I don't own this place. And if I did, I wouldn't want it. I don't have a home. "

Chiun nodded, his wispy beard almost unmoving in the gentleness of the old man's affirmation.

"I don't own anything. I don't have a wife and family. I don't have a place."

"These things that you don't own, what are they?" asked Chiun.

"I just told you," said Remo.

"You told me what you don't know, but you did not, my son, tell me what you do know. Show me a house that has lasted thousands of years."

"The pyramids," said Remo.

"They were tomhs and they were broken into almost immediately, within a few centuries," said Chiun. "This country you so love, how old is it? A few hundred years?"

"I know what you're getting at, little father," said Remo. "Sinanju is five thousand years old, older than Egypt, older than the Chinese dynasties, older than buildings. I know that."

"You know, and you don't know. You don't know what is alive today at Epcot Center."

"Mickey Mouse? You tell me," said Remo. He knew the Master of Sinanju liked Walt Disney, along with one other American institution, and that was just about it for whites and America.

"What endures today more unchanged than the very rocks of the earth? What is more unchanged than precious jewels that time wears away in infinitesimal amounts? What is more unchanged than great empires that come and go? What is that which defies time, not just delays it for a few millennia?"

"You playing games with me, little father?" He looked at the dark television screen. No wonder he wasn't bothered by what was showing.

"If life is a game, I am playing games with you. Something is going on in this room, this very room, more lasting than anything you have seen."

Remo cocked an eyebrow. Whatever Chiun was getting at, it was the truth. Unfortunately it was opaque as the rocks he'd been talking about, and Remo knew that the harder he tried, the less he would understand it. That was one of the secrets of Sinanju, that effort and strain really worked against a person's powers.

One had to learn to respect them and allow them to work. All the great geniuses of mankind understood that. Mozart could no more tell where a symphony came from than Rembrandt could his miraculously inspiring lighting.

The average human had powers he had ignored since the day he started to rely on tools. Spear or guided missile, every dependency on a tool caused the death of those powers. So today when someone discovered little parts of it, they called it extrasensory perception, or some extraordinary act of strength like a mother being able to lift a car by herself when her baby was underneath it.

The truth was, she always had that power, and so did everyone else, except they did not know how to gain access to it, except in extraordinary situations when the body took over.

Sinanju was the way to the full use of man's power. Remo was no more extraordinary than anyone else. He simply knew how not to let his mind interfere with his intelligence.

Ordinarily.

When Chiun was not staring at him. When Remo was not so depressed. On other days, and at other times.

"I give up. I don't have the foggiest what's going on in this room."

"Perhaps it is not going on now," said Chiun. "Now that you have given up."

"What are you talking about? Just tell me," said Remo.

"Are you breathing in gulps of air, without thinking? Are you letting your nervousness and body decide how to breathe instead of your essence? Are you gulping air?"

"No. Of course not."

"Then just as perfectly known as it was to the first Masters of Sinanju, beyond the pitiful recorded histories of the world, so it is known to you undiminished. No one time will wear away your excellence. No little war will end your skills as some empires have ended. No thieves can enter as they have in the pyramids. You have the only thing that will last all the days of your life. The skills that I have given you."

Remo looked at his hands. They were thinner than they were when he began, decades ago. But they had knowledge now and sensitivity he could not have even imagined before.

"You're right, little father," said Remo.

"So let us leave this temporary country you happened to be born in, and once, just once, serve Sinanju, whose treasures you lost."

"I didn't lose them, little father. They were stolen," said Remo. Chiun headed for the door.

"We're missing Sea World and Future World while you deny guilt," said Chiun.

"There was this thing that could have melted the polar ice cap. I am sorry that the collected treasures of Sinanju were stolen, but I didn't steal them. That Korean intelligence guy stole them. Not my fault someone killed him before he told you where he put them. It was his trick to get you to work for North Korea."

"Exactly. Your fault," said Chiun.

"How is it my fault?" asked Remo.

"If you had been willing to serve other countries, North Korea never would have had to steal our treasures to get our services."

"That's like blaming the people who won't give in to the terrorists for what the terrorists do. It's nonsense."

"We have never recovered the treasure. Five thousand years of treasure. Gone. Your fault."

"You didn't spend it anyhow, little father. It sat there for five thousand years. Tribute from Alexander and the Mings. How many thousands of mint-condition Roman coins lay in that house? And stuff that isn't even valuable nowadays. A chunk of aluminum from 1000 B.C., when it was a rare metal; hell, a case of soda would be worth more today. "

Remo was feeling good again. And so was Chiun, seeing Remo come back with his usual ingratitude. He was healthy again. As they walked out to the road that would take them to Epcot Center, Chiun told Remo of the wonders of the world and emperors yet to be served, of treasures they could exact, of tricks they could use to manipulate the wisest leaders. There was a great new day waiting out there for the services of Sinanju, but first, Chiun wanted to see Future World.

Smith arrived at the condo and found Remo and Chiun were out. He had to wait until evening. When he noticed the unmistakable smooth movement of Remo and Chiun's walk, it was getting dark.

"I'm glad you're back, Remo. We don't have much time," said Smith.

"Yeah, I want to talk to you about that, Smitty. I'm afraid this is the end of the line."

"Stop joking, Remo. America has been penetrated by a Russian no one's been able to stop. The world's going to end. "

"That's what you said when the treasure of Sinanju was stolen. Five thousand years of Sinanju tributes stolen, and almost none of it recovered," said Remo.

Chiun was so pleased he almost cried. Of course, Remo was breaking the basic rule in dealing with an emperor. One never told an emperor the truth. One allowed an emperor to find the truth one presented. An emperor was never wrong or to blame. An emperor was the person who could take the right course when that course was laid out clearly for him.

Remo should have learned the proper good-byes. Chiun would show him. Remo would need them now that they would be servicing many clients. The long years of serving the mad emperor Smith, who had never used Sinanju to seize the American throne called the presidency, were over now.

Chiun chose the most florid of laudations to lay at the feet of Harold W. Smith, who had already gone down in the histories of Sinanju as the mad white emperor in the land discovered by Chiun.

It took twenty minutes to deliver them, and at the end, Smith thanked Chiun, and then said to Remo:

"What are you waiting for? We've got to start the briefing. This is a complicated matter."

"Smitty, when Chiun told you the glorious name of Harold W. Smith would live on in the histories of Sinanju, eclipsing Alexander, Augustus of Rome, and the great pharaohs, he meant good-bye. It's good-bye for me, too."

"But you can't. Not now."

"Now's as good a time as any, Smitty. I think I've done my job for America. Good-bye."

Smith followed the two of them into their condominium. It was on the ground floor and had a small screened porch facing the water fountain. The spray masked sounds more effectively than any electronic device.

"Which country are you going to serve? You can tell me that at least," said Smith. The problem here was that in his heart, Smith knew Remo was right. Remo had done more for the country than any single man ever had. He had done it year after year after year. He never flagged and he never failed. And what had America given him'? There had to be a time when it all stopped, even for a patriot.

Remo answered that he did not know which country they were going to.

"I may not even work for anyone. I may just rest and look at palm trees and pyramids. I don't know. I'm tired. I'm more than tired. I was tired years ago. It's over, Smitty. Good-bye. And good luck."

"So it isn't determined yet who you will work for?"

"No," said Remo.

"Let me speak to Chiun a moment, if I may."

"You won't understand him."

"Let me try," said Smith.

Remo went into the main bedroom, where Chiun was packing his kimonos.

"He wants to talk to you," said Remo.

"Aha. Now you will see him bid for our services. You should come and watch. Now you will see as I have always suspected that the tributes of gold brought by American submarines to the village of Sinanju might only have been a pittance."

"I'd rather not see," said Remo. He knew Chiun would never understand that Smith served a country he believed in and it was not his private gold but the property of the taxpayers of America. It was a country Remo still felt for. He would always be an American, and he didn't want to be there while his country was twisted by a thousand-year-old manipulation.

Remo was going because he was going, and that was it. Smith did not hear Chiun enter the porch, but then he never heard Chiun. He was gazing at the fountains when he noticed Chiun was there, totally composed as always, and looking not one day older than he had when first they met and he was told this was the man who would train the one enforcement arm for CURE.

"It's been a long time, Chiun. I want to say thank you, for America is honored to have had the magnificent services of the House of Sinanju."

"Sinanju is honored, most gracious one," said Chiun. Just when they were leaving, Mad Harold of America was learning how to speak to his assassin.

"I hear you are going to bid out your services," said Smith.

"We can never find one as gracious, O Emperor," said Chiun.

"May we bid also?"

"We will always consider the offer of the gracious Harold. "

"We have shipped gold regularly in amounts that are now twenty times the size of what they were the first year. How can we improve?"

"If it were just gold, O wise one, we would never leave your sublime service. But as you know, the treasure of the House of Sinanju is missing. Five thousand years of collected tribute is gone."

"Gone is gone, Master. We can help replenish it."

"Can you replace the obols of Alexander, the marks of Demetrius, the tolons of the Ming? Where are the bracelets from the great African tribes, or the statues from Athens? Where are the boxes of coins with the visage of Divine Augustus therein stamped?"

"I'll make you an offer. What we cannot find for you, we will replace. We will never stop until we replace it. There is no country as capable of this as we are."

"You will undertake to replace fifty centuries of tribute to the House of Sinanju?"

"Yes," said Smith. "We will do that."

Chiun thought a moment. This was awesome. America was going to match what all the previous civilizations in the world had contributed. Ordinarily an offer like this from a king or emperor would be suspect. But Chiun had seen America, had visited its cities and factories, villages and farms. He had seen its great electronics and land so rich that crops grew in a profusion never before seen in the world.

As he had always thought, there was plenty of money here. Now Sinanju was going to get a real piece of it. America just might be able to do what Mad Harold had promised. This could mean only one thing. Smith had to do the sane and reasonable thing for the employer of Sinanju. He was going to have Sinanju do what Sinanju did best. Replace the current president and put Smith on the throne. There could be no other reason for such an awesome sum.

"Agreed. It is our true honor."

"I'd like to speak to Remo, please," said Smith.

"Of course. A fine selection. Let Remo hear it from your lips himself."

Remo had packed his one small suitcase when Chiun entered the bedroom, chortling.

"We have one last mission for Wise Harold," said Chiun.

"Why is he no longer Mad Harold? And I thought we were tired of this place."

"Remo, if you do this one thing for Wise Harold, then I will forgive you forever for the loss of the treasure of Sinanju. It will make up for your chasing around the world on foolishness while our treasures remained unfound. Smith has agreed to replace the treasures. I must prepare the list. It is very long."

"He must be desperate. What does he want?"

"Not desperate. He realizes the time has come. I have agreed on your behalf to kill the President of the United States so that Wise Harold might bring order and decency to a ravaged land."

"I don't believe it," said Remo.

"We have promised. There is no greater sin than for an assassin to break his promise."

"I'll handle one more, little father. But I am sure it is not doing in the President."

"What else could it be?" asked Chiun.

"Something extraordinarily big that only we can do." Chiun had barely begun on the list when Remo returned, asking him if there was nothing in the history of Sinanju showing how a man could enter a country two times with more than 150 men and not be even noticed until he was gone.

General Matesev knew the moment he had lost his tail. That was the first part of his invasion of the United States, that he had pulled off twice before and had no reason to believe he could not do again, at least once more.

He moved through the giant and busy New York City for two hours, testing to see if by some miracle a tail could stay with him. When he was assured it did not, he went into an American bank and pushed a five dollar bill through the window.

"Ten quarters, please," he said.

The teller shuffled out the coins quickly. Without knowing it, she had just given General Matesev the tools he needed to bring about another successful invasion of America.

He took the ten quarters and went to a phone both. Within three hours, 150 select Russian commandos would be operating within America itself. The special force would have invaded again without a trace.

With the ten quarters he made ten phone calls. With each phone call, he said:

"Good afternoon. The sky seems a bit yellow today, don't you think?"

And with each phone call he got back a statement: "More blue, I think. But who knows. Life is so strange, yes?"

And to that answer he said ten times: "Riker's Island Stadium."

Joe Wilson's wife saw him pick up the phone. She had been sure he was having an affair until she listened in to one of the conversations. There was never another woman on the end of the line.

Joe didn't work. He didn't play much, other than exercising by running around the backyard five miles every day in a simple circle, and doing jumping jacks and other routines that reminded some neighbors of basic training.

Yet he didn't need money. He had income from a Swiss bank account his father gave him and the checks were deposited in his Queens bank account with more regularity than his mother received her social security.

In fact, the only way Joe's wife had ever gotten him to marry her was to agree to have the wedding at the house. And why not? That's how they met. That's how they dated. And that's how he insisted on living. Well, that wasn't so bad. Lots of people had the disease called agoraphobia that kept them chained to their homes all the time.

Yet this was entirely different. She had picked up the phone for him in the other room because he was outside exercising. When she said it was a man talking about the sky he practically ran through the door. She listened in.

"Good afternoon. The sky seems a bit yellow today, don't you think?" asked the man on the other end. "More blue, I think. But who knows? Life is so strange, yes?" answered her husband, Joe.

"Riker's Island Stadium," said the man.

Joe hung up and began dialing other numbers. And giving orders. She had never heard him give orders before. He made fourteen phone calls and told every person at the other end the same thing.

"Riker's Island."

And then for the first time since she knew him, Joe Wilson, her husband, left their home. He kissed her lovingly good-bye and said something that terrified her.

"Look. I wasn't supposed to marry you in the first place. And you're a good kid. You've put up with a lot. An awful lot. You've let me stay at home all this time. But I want you to know that no matter what happens, it doesn't mean I don't love you."

"Are you leaving me, Joe? Are you leaving?"

"I love you," he said, and he was gone. The house seemed woefully empty without him in it. He had never left before, and the way he left so quickly and so easily told Mrs. Joseph Wilson he had never suffered agoraphobia at all.

The man called Joe Wilson took a New York bus to Riker's Island. The bus was unusually crowded that day, crowded with men, all going to Riker's Island, all in their late twenties and early thirties, all quite fit.

Riker's Island Stadium was not being used that day, and their footsteps echoed through the tunnels out onto the field. They all took seats at the fifty-yard line, looking every bit like some large team getting ready for a game.

But the man who came out of the tunnel was not a coach. No coach ever got this sort of respect.

He snapped his fingers and said, "Group captains," and ten men left the stands where the other 140 sat, and walked out onto the running track to speak to General Matesev, in his fine English suit.

"We are going to be out of America in two days maximum. If we can't leave on a plane peacefully we will shoot our way out at any point I select along the Canadian border. Any of you have men who you think are unreliable?"

All ten shook their heads.

"I didn't think so. You were all well selected," said Matesev with a little smile. The joke was that he had selected every one of them individually, men who could keep in training and wait for that one phone call.

Because the method he had devised to invade America at will with 150 men was as simple as good logic could make it. No 150 men could invade in a single body without being seen. But 150 separate men coming into a country one at a time over the course of a year would never be noticed, 150 men who would only have to wait for a single phone call to become a unified force again. One hundred and fifty men each trained to speak American English fluently, each trained as part of a team years before in Russia, now becoming that team again.

Matesev had pulled this off twice before so that the only time America knew he had been around was after he had left, after it had seen the force leave.

It had cost the services of three hundred men, because none of them could be used again. Each operation used one deep-planted force. Expensive in training and time, but during a crisis like this so definitely worth the cost.

"We have a special problem," he said. "We have to do a snatch on someone who might be unsnatchabie."

"Explain, sir," said one of his captains.

"He is an escapee from the parapsychology village in Siberia. He has special powers. He can hypnotize others instantly. A KGB unit failed to stop him at Berlin. He got out of the best protection in the village. I don't think he's stoppable. I think the minute he knows someone is going to try to snatch him, he will use his powers."

"So we are going to kill him?"

"Wrong. We are going to make sure we kill him."

"How?"

"Give me a little flexibility on that. I want to see what he's got. I'd rather spend forty-seven hours of the forty-eight hours we have to do our job in planning and preparing, than forty-seven hours of shooting up a building and one hour figuring out what went wrong. We'll get this little hypnotist good. "

"What about drugging him?"

"How do you know someone is drugged? You could be hypnotized to think he was, when he wasn't."

"You could be hypnotized to believe he is dead."

"That is why we are going to work in waves. He is not going to get all one hundred and fifty of us hearing and seeing the same things. First, we stake him out. He has an office on Fifth Avenue."

"A typical capitalist address," said one captain, glad to be using the language of communism again.

"Our consulate is just off Fifth Avenue, you idiot." Matesev assigned one unit to the stakeout, a second unit to back them up, and to the other eight units he gave the mission of procuring the proper weapons.

With the first two units, he isolated the building by intercepting all communication lines and putting them through his own command center. Vassily Rabinowitz did not know the day a new neighbor moved in downstairs that now Hypnotic Services of Fifth Avenue Inc. was located directly above a headquarters of the most effective commando squad in Soviet history.

In Washington, the President of the United States heard the one thing he never thought he would hear from the organization called CURE. When it had been organized, the need to keep its budget secret was just as great as keeping the organization itself a secret. So it was allowed to covertly tap into budgets of other departments. This avoided a hearing on its costs that would in turn, reveal its nature.

CURE could have run an entire country with its budget without anyone knowing where the cash went. Of course, Harold Smith was a man of the greatest probity. That was why he had been chosen to run this organization with an unlimited budget.

What the President had to deal with that day, besides the still mysterious danger from Russia, was the startling news from the man with the limitless budget.

"Sir," said Harold W. Smith, "I'm afraid we're going to need more funds."

To save America, CURE was going to have to pay the accumulated fortunes of five millennia of Sinanju Masters.

Chapter 6

On the day before the world was supposed to fall on him, Vassily Rabinowitz heard a terrifying story from Johnny Bangossa.

"They gonna do the job on you," said Johnny, wincing. Vassily had tried to make Johnny believe his brother never used to hit him. This, of course, the master hypnotist did easily. The wincing and ducking bothered Vassily. However, the moment Johnny Bangossa didn't believe that his older brother Carli (in the form of Vassily) would abuse him anymore, he became downright disrespectful, and even dangerous. Vassily had to get him to believe again that his brother Carli was a brutal, insensitive, and, cruel dolt.

This fact having been reestablished, Johnny Bangossa returned to his form of loyalty.

"What is this thing 'doing the job'?" asked Vassily. "I have heard you mention the same phrase in regards to romance. "

It had amazed Vassily with what hostility his men talked about the women they seduced. It was like a war. They talked of doing the job on this woman or that, of really "giving it to her," a phrase they would also use for beating up someone.

"Doing the job, Carli, is they're gonna kill you. Waste you. Off you. Give it to you."

"And how did you find out this information?"

"They tried to bribe me to set you up."

"I see," said Vassily. "How boring."

"Why is that boring?"

"Because they also did it with Rocco, Carlo, Vito, and Guido. This is the fifth plan to kill me. Why?"

"Carli, you know that you're cuttin' into their territory. They gotta make the move on you."

"The move. Didn't you make the move on the secretary?"

"No, that's a different move."

"How am I cutting into their territory? I just run a weight-loss, quit-smoking, sexual-problem clinic. That's all I do. I only try to protect myself."

"Well, you know the guys do a little stuff on the side. Rocco's got some narcotics, Carlo's got some prostitution, Vito does a little extortion, and Guido breaks people's legs."

"That's a business? That's a territorial territory?" asked Vassily, panicked at what America would consider a profitmaking enterprise. He had heard capitalism had evils but had always assumed most of it was propaganda from the Kremlin.

"That's what they're in, and you should be taking your cut. It's good business, especially the narcotics. "

"I don't want to be in narcotics, prostitution, extortion, and breaking people's legs, Johnny," said Vassily. What had gone wrong? All he wanted was to live in freedom and then after he was mugged all he wanted was to live in safety. Now he had to deal constantly with these hairy animals, and people were always trying to kill him.

"We got to do the job on them first. We gotta lay it on them. We got to really bang them hard," said Johnny Bangossa.

"I suppose we will have to fornicate them," said Vassily, trying to get into the spirit of it all. But it didn't seem to work. There were a full half-dozen men he was supposed to kill. Considering his powers, he thought, there had to be a better way.

"I'll meet with them," said Vassily.

"They'll kill you on the way to the meeting," said Johnny Bangossa.

"I'll tell Vito, Carlo, Guido, and Rocco to stop."

"Vito, Carlo, Guido, and Rocco will start workin' with the others. And we'll be done for."

"Is there any way I can get out of committing murder?"

"What for, Carli? We can have the whole thing. If we win."

While Vassily did not see breaking legs as winning something, there definitely was a major advantage to living through the day. But he had seen these men work for him. Their collective IQ was insufficient to build an outhouse.

He had also seen that reason was not something that appealed to them. They had two emotions, greed and fear. Usually they showed these two emotions in a combined form, which was anger. They were angry all the time.

The moment any one of them realized Vassily was not the man they thought him to be, he would be dead. He thought of running again. He even thought momentarily of running back to Russia. But in Russia, once he got back, they might think of a way to keep him there forever.

Something about the size of a fingernail decided Vassily's course of action that day. It was not an especially imposing thing, being a dull gray, and was rather soft for a metal. It was an ugly little piece of lead. What made it such an important piece was how quickly it was moving, faster than the speed of sound. And even more important, it was moving very close to Vassily's head. Three inches. He felt the wind of it in his hair as he got into the rear seat of his limousine. It cracked through a large plate-glass window on Fifth Avenue, and Guido and Rocco had their pistols out almost instantly.

The man who fired the rifle was now speeding away in the rear seat of a car.

Vassily picked himself up out of the gutter and wiped the dirt off his expensive new blue suit. He was more frightened than he had ever been in his life. Always before in danger he could catch the eye of his attacker. But here he could be killed without ever seeing the man.

Like most people captured by fear, Vassily lost all sense of balance and proportion. He was yelling when he got his boys together. He wanted to know everything about his enemies. What were their habits, what were their routines?

And in that state of mine, he devised a simple plan that could be put into effect that very night. He took three leaders of his opposition and targeted them for death, even as he told them he wanted to make peace with them. He hated himself as he did this, but fear almost always wins over self-respect.

Slimy was the way he felt about himself, but he had no choice. He had one shotgunned to death inside an elevator where the man couldn't move. Fat Guido took care of that one. Another was machine-gunned in bed with his woman, and the woman was killed also. But the most vile part of it all was having one of his men, Carlo, pose as a policeman and shoot one of his targets on the steps of Saint Patrick's Cathedral, a house of worship, a place where people prayed.

By midnight, as the reports came in of one horrid deed after another, he found he couldn't took at himself in the mirror. Outside the plush living room of his Park Avenue apartment, Vassily heard noise. It was his men. He could always hypnotize them to believe they hadn't done these horrible deeds. He could have them know in their bones that this horrible day did not happen, but he would know. And one day, he might be so overcome with remorse that he would slip and fail to keep one of these men in a hypnotic state.

The noise increased outside his living room. Were they in a state of rebellion, revolted by the horrors they were forced to commit, horrors that even for gangsters had to wrench their souls?

Suddenly the door burst open and there were Johnny Bangossa, Vito, Guido, Rocco, and Carlo, and they were all coming at him. Johnny was the first to grab his right hand. So stricken was he by his guilt that Vassily failed to make eye contact and convince Johnny he had never done such a horrible thing as to machine-gun a man in bed with his lover.

Vassily closed his eyes and waited for the first horrible sensation of death. He felt something wet on his right hand. Then he felt something wet on his left hand. He couldn't pull his hands away. Was this some form of liquid poison?

He waited for it to penetrate the skin. But there was only more wetness. He heard a strange sound at one hand. All right, he thought. Poison is not the worst thing. There are worse ways to die. Being shotgunned in an elevator is a worse way to die. Being machine-gunned while making love is a worse way to die. Being surprised by a man posing as a police officer shooting you on the steps of a house of worship is a worse way to die. Perhaps poison is too good for me.

But he was not dead. He could not free his hands, but he was not dead. He heard the noise of kissing coming from the ends of his arms. Smelled the horrible oils his boys used on their hair. And felt lips caressing the back of his palms. He opened his eyes.

Vito, Guido, Rocco, and Carlo were bumping heads trying to be the first to kiss his hands.

It was a form of honor, he knew.

"You really did it, Carli. You're wonderful. You're a power now. You got respect. You always had our love, brother. Now you got our respect. And the respect of New York City," said Johnny "The Bang" Bangossa to the man he thought was Carli Bangossa.

"We're a major family now," said Guido, who allowed as how for his wonderful services that day, he should be made a caporegime. And so did Johnny, Vito, Rocco, and Carlo.

"Certainly," said Vassily. Only later was he informed that he had just given these five thugs the right to recruit and organize their own crime families under his general command.

The bodies were still warm when the New York media began analyzing the results. Dealing with the brutal killings like some ball game, they announced a new player making a brilliant move. None of the inside sources knew for sure who this new Mafia don was, but he had shown himself to be a brilliant strategist. In one master stroke he had immobilized the other families who were now suing for peace. And an informed source indicated this organizational genius was collecting the remnants of the other temporarily demoralized crime families.

Vassily Rabinowitz realized now he was some kind of hero. What he had considered a form of degradation was genius here. Who knew, maybe he would even like breaking legs for a living, if they broke cleanly and did not create too much pain and blood.

He wished his mother could see him now. She would have to agree he was not the most reckless boy in town as he had been called back in Dulsk, before he allowed himself to go to that village in Siberia, before all this, when he was just a simple ordinary lad. He wondered if he could get his mother out of Russia, perhaps set her up here. Maybe as the mother of a don, as he understood the head of a "family" to be called, she would be called a donna. There were women here of that name. He would be Don Vassily and his mother would be Donna Mirriam.

When General Matesev's first unit hit the Rabinowitz office of Fifth Aveuue the following morning, they made their way through a long line of customers, pushing aside the secretary, and opening the door to the inner office, using an old technique for city warfare. You didn't rush into a room. You threw a hand grenade into the room first. They you looked to see if anyone was in there.

When the first unit had determined there had been a kill in the office Vassily Rabinowitz had been using every day for the last few weeks, the second unit quickly followed with bags, suction equipment, and various specimen collecting devices. Quickly the remnants of what had been a person would be whisked out of that office into a truck that was really a laboratory. What they wanted from the remnants of a person was blood type, cell type, and fingerprints if they were lucky. If they got a whole face, so much the better.

But General Matesev was not going to risk anyone talking to this man who could turn even the most hardened minds of the finest KGB officers. Kill first, identify second, return to Moscow third, the mission accomplished. One had to keep things simple.

Unfortunately the first wave found only shattered furniture and windows. No one had been in the office.

"Mr. Rabinowitz is not seeing anyone," said a secretary, getting up from behind a desk. People were now scattering in the hallways and screaming.

"Where is he?" demanded the unit leader of the fourteen men of the lead squad of the Matesev force.

"Won't do you any good. You can't get an appointment."

"Where is he?"

"I think he's moved to Long Island. He's got a big house and a wife with a mustache, I think. I don't know. He's not coming in anymore. He phoned this morning. No more appointments. I've been telling that to everyone."

Remo approached the large brick house on Long Island, walking between the moving vans that were unloading dark lacquered furniture, pink lamps, and sequined chairs. It was a collection of furniture that any merchant would have been glad to pawn off on a drunken aborigine.

General Matesev had come to America looking for Vassily Rabinowitz. Rabinowitz' Fifth Avenue office had been blown up that morning by hand grenades. Fifteen men working in unison had demolished the place. The police came. The newsmen came. Then the newsmen started asking if this were another hit in the new Mafia war. Remo mingled among them. He had found out Rabinowitz had an apartment on this fashionable street. He rushed to the apartment. He didn't want Matesev getting this Rabinowitz and getting out of the country before Remo had a chance at him.

Smith had also had another requirement: he wanted to know what Matesev was after. Remo had said that was simple. Rabinowitz.

"But why does he want Rabinowitz? No one can figure that out. A simple Russian citizen is not worth all this." So there were two things to do that morning. Matesev first, Rabinowitz second, get them both before one did in the other.

At Rabinowitz' apartment, he saw workmen carrying out furniture.

He asked where it was going. The workmen refused to say anything and warned him that if he knew what was good for him, he would keep his mouth shut and his eyes closed.

Remo said that was an unkind way to respond to a simple question. The movers said if Remo knew what was good for him, he wouldn't ask those kinds of questions. Besides, they didn't have to answer. There was nothing that could force them.

So Remo offered to help them with the moving. He moved a large couch by grabbing one leg, and held it perfectly level with complete ease. Then he used the other end of the couch to play with the movers.

"Tickle tickle," said Remo, coaxing a large mover's rib with the far end of the stuffed white couch. He coaxed the mover up into the truck. Then he coaxed him to the front of the truck. Then he coaxed him against the front of the truck. Remo was about to coax the mover through the front of the truck when the mover had something very important to say to Remo.

"Great Neck, Long Island. Baffin Road. He's got an estate there. But don't mess with him."

"Why not? I like to mess."

"Yeah. You don't see how we're haulin' this furniture? You don't see it?"

"No, I don't see a scratch on it," said Remo, dropping the couch and giving the load its first scratch. With a crash.

"Yeah, well, when you see movers not even getting a scratch on furniture, you gotta know it's for racketeers. No one who can't break your arms and legs is going to get furniture moved this nice. Mafia."

"Rabinowitz. That doesn't sound Italian. I always thought you had to be Italian."

"Yeah, well, that ain't what I just heard. This guy's got more funny names than anyone I know. One guy calls him Carli, one calls him Billy, and another calls him Papa. And I wouldn't want to be alone in an alley with any of those guys. So you tell me. Is he Mafia or is he not Mafia? I don't care if the guy's got a name like Winthrop Winthrop Jones the Eighth. If you got the thugs around you like he's got, you're Mafia."

And so Remo had gotten the new address of Vassily Rabinowitz, and went out to the Long Island estate to await the attack of General Matesev's men. It was a large estate with high brick walls and a big iron fence at which two very tough-looking men stood guard.

"I'm looking for work," said Remo.

"Get outta here," said one of the guards. He had a big lead pipe on his lap, and under his jacket he had a .38. He allowed the bulge of the gun to show, no doubt considering it an effective deterrent. He had the sort of pushed-in face that let you know he would happily use either weapon.

"You don't understand. I want work and I want a specific job. I want yours."

The man laughed and tightened his ham fists around the lead pipe. He started to push it at Remo's chest. He hardly saw the thin man's hands move, but suddenly the pipe was doubled in half.

"Sometimes I wrap it around necks," said Remo, and since the man looked on with some incredulity, he showed him how. Remo bent the gray lead pipe around the man's thick neck like a collar, leaving a little bit extra for a handle.

The other man went for his gun, and Remo put him quickly to sleep by glancing a blow off his skull, causing reverberations that would not allow the brain to function.

He tugged the pipe along with him, down the long brick path to the elegant main house with the gables and dormers, and guns sticking out of them.

He tugged the guard a good quarter-mile to the door of the main house. Yellow and red tulips, the flowers in full blossom, made a bright pattern against the red brick. Newly trimmed grass gave a rich earthy smell to this walled haven on Long Island. The door opened and was filled with a hairy man.

"I want his job," said Remo, nodding at the guard whose neck was still encased in the lead pipe.

"You do that?" asked the man. Remo nodded.

"He do that?" asked the man. The guard nodded.

"You're hired. You're in my regime. My name's Johnny Bangossa. My brother Carli runs this family. There's no one more important after Carli than me."

"And what about Rabinowitz?"

"Who is that Jew?" asked Johnny. "I keep hearing about him everywhere."

"I heard he owned this place," said Remo.

"Maybe he was the one what sold it to us," said Johnny Bangossa.

"But his name's on the furniture and address here."

"That guy gets around," said Johnny. "But my brother Carli says he's all right. He says nobody should hurt him for nothing."

"I see," said Remo. But he didn't.

The entire first unit had failed. The second unit was useless, and the third did not know where to go.

General Matesev smiled slightly and took a sip of coffee. The men had to see he was not panicked. The worst thing a commander could do to men behind enemy lines was to let them succumb to fear. They had enough tension already. Many of them had been living with it for years. Perhaps much of it had dissipated after awhile, but now they all knew they were going to have to fight their way home and something had gone wrong.

What Matesev would do now would earn him the awe of his men. Ordinarily when something went wrong a Russian commander would punish someone. Nothing bad could happen without someone being at fault.

Matesev merely looked at his coffee intently and asked what kind it was. He was in the back of what looked like a large refrigerator truck that was really his headquarters. It could easily hold thirty men and all the equipment they would need. It had been waiting for him with one of his units.

"I don't know, sir," said one of the men hastily.

"Very good. Very good. But we now have a very serious problem. Very serious."

The men nodded gravely.

"How do we get enough of this wonderful coffee back to Russia to last us a lifetime?"

Everyone in the back of the sealed truck suddenly burst into laughter.

"All right," he said. "Back to our problem. Unit One didn't fail. Neither did Unit Two. Our friend Vassity Rabinowiiz failed. He failed to be there. Now, we have a day and a half to find out where he is. That should be no problem. But what I want you good fellows to think of is how we can get this coffee back with us."

Matesev knew Moscow would not accept such levity, but Moscow was helpless. They wouldn't have wasted this last group on this mission if they could have done it with anyone else. The problem with secreting entire units within America was that once the unit was used, it could never be used again.

But Matesev did not tell his men how alarmingly bad the news got. His reports came in that Rabinowitz had somehow gotten himself involved with local criminals and now was beginning some sort of an empire. This was the Kremlin's worst fear. No one cared whether Rabinowitz controlled all the narcotics in America, or the world for that matter. That was not what frightened those at the parapsychology village who knew his power.

Their worry was where he would stop, because once he had a taste of criminal power, he most certainly would want more and more and no one would be capable even of delaying him. The time to get him was when he was alone, before he used his powers to create followers.

But that point had already passed.

Matesev decided to ignore it. Instead, he made a calculated gamble. He was sure no criminals in the world could match 150 of the best Russian commandos. Criminals were never that good in a group. The attack this time would not be by small units but one massive assault with everyone thrown into it. There might be one or two or at most three effective men with weapons among that group Rabinowitz had surrounded himself with, but no more than that. Let them taste a full-scale assault.

And of course this time he was going to make sure Vassily was home.

When it was determined that he was secluded in an estate in Great Neck, Long Island, Matesev drew a large loose ring around the estate, leaving his men in little groups at every road, far enough away so that the gangsters would not think Rabinowitz' estate was being surrounded. Sure now that Rabinowitz could not escape by road, Matesev waited until the first night, and then sent in two of his most agile men, not to kill, and most assuredly not to look into Rabinowitz' eyes, but to place extremely accurate sensors in the building itself.

This time, Matesev would only attack when he was sure Rabinowitz was there. And this time it would work. He himself insisted on constant access to the eavesdropping devices. They provided him with many strange bits of information and an insight into American life he never had before.

Rabinowitz, as could be expected, had all his top lieutenants believing he was someone else, so that if Matesev wanted to be sure where Rabinowitz was he had to understand that a man named Johnny Bangossa thought Rabinowitz was Carli and a man called Carlo referred to Rabinowitz as "Papa."

Even more interesting was how well this organization seemed to work because everyone thought he was related to the boss.

Matesev began to appreciate how truly dangerous Rabinowitz could become if he were going to survive another day. The Kremlin, as was their occasional wont, was most right in this matter. The fact that Rabinowitz' voice print could be picked up and verified from the equipment on the truck was reassuring.

In the morning, Matesev's men spotted the police chief's car headed into the Rabinowitz estate. Was Rabinowitz getting police protection? Was he getting arrested?

The sensors verified neither. There was no arrest and no talk of protection. In fact, the lieutenants of the mob greeted the policemen most cordially.

And then the police officers, Monahan, Minehan, and Moran, were heard talking to Rabinowitz. And since none of them started talking to relatives, Matesev had to assume Rabinowitz had not hypnotized them yet.

"Look here. You move into town with all this criminal element, Mr. Rabinowitz, and you could give this pretty little village a bad name. There could be shootings. There could be gangsterism. And we're worried about that," said Captain Monahan's voice.

"We got to look out for this community," said Lieutenant Minehan's voice.

"There's decency and a clean spirit here," said Lieutenant Moran's voice.

"I have three very fat white envelopes for you boychicks," said Rabinowitz' voice. "Johnny Bangossa, Rocco, Vito, and Guido said that's what you wanted. That's how business is done here in America."

"Always glad to receive an upstanding new member of the community," said the voices of Monahan, Minehan, and Moran in unison.

When the police car was outside the gate, new words came from Monahan, Minehan, and Moran. The words were "kike" and "wop." They were having difficulty distinguishing which one Rabinowitz was. The only thing Minehan, Monahan, and Moran could agree on was that "they" were all alike. Unfortunately, with Vassily Rabinowitz and his brother Johnny "The Bang" Bangossa, Minehan, Monahan, and Moran couldn't exactly decide which "they" they were talking about.

It was 9:35 A.M. Rabinowitz had been in the main drawing room. He was probably still there. The key fact of this meeting was that when it came to police, Rabinowitz was not using his special powers.

Matesev saw now not only exactly how he could kill Rabinowitz with certainty, but also how he might even attain the harder goal, capturing Rabinowitz alive.

Not until this very moment had he dared even to consider this harder plan. But there was just a chance. The question was how to make the most of that chance and still make sure that, at worst, Rabinowitz would be dead.

It was ten A.M. when three of his strongest men, each dressed as a policeman, entered the gates of the Rabinowitz estate asking to speak to Mr. Rabinowitz. They said they were bringing information from their commanding officers, Monahan, Minehan, and Moran.

They were allowed into the house. So far so good. Matesev heard the voice of Rabinowitz. Better yet. There was a scuffle, and then silence. No voices, just some scraping. Then a loud thud.

Now all Matesev's other units had left their road posts and were ready to converge on the estate. It was a full-scale assault one way or another. Dead or alive, win or lose, there was no better time than now.

"He's taped on the mouth and eyes. We got him," came the voice.

"All right," said Matesev. "Hold there as long as you can. If you're about to lose him, kill him. Good work."

And then the order went out: "Attack now, full speed. Everyone hits. We've got him."

The assault forces poured out of their cars and over the wall. One unit broke through the main gate and headed straight up the driveway. It was a charge to shame the greatest Cossack legions.

Inside the Rabinowitz house, the forces of the great new don ducked under chairs and tables and looked for ways out. They knew instantly those animals on the lawn meant business and were no friends of theirs. Treachery and sellouts would do no good. When a few shots hit some of the advancing men, and the rest kept coming anyway, all resistance ceased. For a while.

In the confusion no one saw a thick-wristed man grab one soldier by the neck, speak to him briefly, and then head the other way. After all, why notice one more gangster trying to save his life? Except this "gangster" had just found out where General Matesev was.

Matesev listened to the reports as his precise plan worked to the letter. The group that had seized Rabinowitz had linked with the main assault force, with a loss of fewer than three men, and were now headed back toward the escape points for their flight out of America. Only when they were out of the country would America know they had been there. But by then General Matesev's special force would have performed its third successful mission.

Now Matesev contacted the Kremlin for the first time. Now he would let them say whatever they wanted.

It was all over but the shouting. The message he wired home was that they had gotten what they came for and were bringing it home alive.

He had a big grin on his face when he heard someone knocking on the steel doors of the back of the refrigerator truck.

"Hey, c'mon, sweetheart. I don't have all day here."

Chapter 7

Remo saw into the darkest corners of the refrigerator truck. The equipment was set into the wails so it could travel and still work. It was a command post and the blond man with the shocked face seemed to fit the description of Matesev. Considering this was where his man said he would be, it was almost a positive identification.

"General Matesev, welcome to America," said Remo. The man still did not move. Sometimes things like that happened when the rear doors of trucks were taken off and a person was counting on it for protection. Perhaps it was the fact that the steel door was still in Remo's hand, held off to the side, catching the wind like a heavy wing on an aircraft, and that Remo just peered in like a child who had ripped the top off a box of ants.

"No. No Matesev here," said the man. "We are an electronics firm. Would you be so kind as to put down the door?"

"C'mon, buddy. I got work and I'm tired. You're Matesev. "

"I've never heard of a Matesev," said Matesev with perfect control. His first instinct was to ease a pistol into firing position and let off a clip. But that was a steel door he saw held out behind the man. He was sure this thing that looked like a man had done the ripping. If he could do that, what else could he do? A bullet at this distance might not work.

Besides, the units with Rabinowitz would be converging on the truck any moment now. Better more than 140 men than one man.

This one certainly was different. He didn't climb into the truck, he moved into it with what would have been a jump, except there was no effort. No more effort than a cat sitting down and he was in the truck and at Matesev's back where suddenly the man was pouring molten metal down Matesev's shirt.

Matesev screamed as the metal tore through his rib cage, obliterating his intestines and reproductive organs on its way through his chair.

And then it was gone. No smoke. No burning flesh. No burns. Not even pain as the man removed his fingers from Matesev's chest. Matesev was still quivering as he examined himself and was surprised nothing stuck to his hand. Not even his shirt was damaged.

"I can do it again," said Remo. "It's a trick, you know. Do you know when I stop doing it?"

Matesev shook his head. He was afraid if he spoke his tongue would fall out. Even if his body had recovered instantaneously, his mind had not. He was being held in a vat of molten metal even though the metal did not exist anymore. And never had. It was all in the manipulation of this strange man's hands.

"I stop doing it when you tell me who you are. Now I think you're Matesev, General Matesev, and I've got to talk to you."

"Yes. I am. I am he." Matesev glanced out of the rear of the truck. The men would be there any moment. The trick was to let the men know this man had to be killed without letting the man know he was doing it.

"Good. Now who or what is Vassily Rabinowitz?"

"A Soviet citizen."

"There are a few hundred million of them. Why are you people so excited about that one?"

"I am just an ordinary soldier. I was assigned to capture him."

The molten metal was burning Matesev's chest, and this time he was sure he could smell the burning, that it was not a manipulation, that somehow this man of great powers had actually melted the metal to wound Matesev. Only when it stopped did the general realize that if it really were molten metal it would have burned right through and it would have killed him. The pain was so intense his mind had snapped into thinking the flesh was actually burning.

"I am Matesev. I am in charge of the special force. Rabinowitz is the greatest hypnotist in the world."

"So?" said Remo.

"Don't you understand what that means? He can hypnotize anyone instantly. Instantly. Anyone."

"Yeah?" said Remo.

"Well, if he can hypnotize anyone instantly, what happens when he tells one general to do this and another to do that?"

"He joins the Defense Department. I don't know," said Remo. "Lots of people tell generals to do this and that. That's what you have generals for."

"You don't understand," said Matesev. "How could a man with such powers be so dense?"

"Right," said Remo.

"He could take over any government in the world."

"So?" said Remo.

"We couldn't allow that to happen."

"Why?"

"Don't you understand the international implications?"

"Better than you, Russky. There's always going to be another country every few hundred years. Five hundred years from now you'll probably have the czar again. I don't know what we'll be. Whole thing doesn't matter, jerk," said Remo.

Matesev had always been taught that Americans never really planned ahead. That if you were to ask them where they would be in fifty years they would say that was the business of some astrologer instead of a government planner. American foreign policy ran from one four-year election to another. That was its trouble.

But here was a man, obviously American, obviously thinking in terms not of fifty years or even a century, but in millennia.

And it all didn't matter. Matesev saw the units come down the street, almost like a mob, not marching of course, but walking in a pack.

They had a trussed bundle with them, its eyes and mouth taped. Rabinowitz.

"We've got company," said Matesev, nodding to his own men. The man turned.

"What's in the bundle?" he asked.

He kept looking at the unit advancing on the truck. The back of his head was within reach. It was too good a target for General Matesev to pass up. The small handgun was within an instant's grasp.

Matesev took it smoothly, put it to the dark hairs in the back of the man's head, and fired.

The bullet hit the roof of the truck. And the head was still there. He fired again, this time aiming at a specific hair. The bullet hit the roof again.

"Don't do that," said the man softly.

Matesev emptied the chamber, and missed with all the rest of the slugs, but in so doing, in firing rapidly, he was able to get a glimpse of the head moving back and forth as it dodged the shells.

"All right. You happy? You had your thrill?" asked Remo.

"I'll call my men off," gasped the stunned Matesev.

"Who cares?" said Remo. "You are General Matesev, though. I mean, is that determined? There is no question about that?"

"Yes."

"Thanks," said Remo, who rattled the man's brains into jelly by shaking the skull like a soda jerk mixing a milk shake.

Then he was out of the truck and amidst the startled Russians, bouncing many, killing some, and getting the trussed bundle out of their hands. He took it behind a house, over a fence, and to a road about a mile away, where he untaped the eyes and mouth and hands of Vassily Rabinowitz.

"You okay?" asked Remo.

Rabinowitz blinked in the harsh sunlight. He was still trembling. He didn't know where he was. He had released his bladder in panic. The man could barely stand. Remo got to the spinal column, and with the pads of his fingers set the rhythms of peace into Rabinowitz's body structure. With a little cry, Rabinowitz recovered, brushed himself off, and noticed the wetness in his pants.

"The bastards," he said.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" asked Remo. Rabinowitz looked shaky.

"No. I'll be all right."

"Your countrymen say you're the world's greatest hypnotist. Is that true?"

"To them anything is true. I can do things," said Rabinowitz. "How did Russian soldiers get into the country?"

"I don't know. Maybe they posed as Mexicans," said Remo. "You sure you're going to be all right?"

"Yes. I think so. Do you know what happened to Johnny Bangossa, Guido, Rocco, Vito, and Carlo?"

"I think they ran."

"Some crime family," said Rabinowitz. They could see the beginning of the main street of the town down the road and walked to it. Back near the truck there was gunfire. Apparently the Russian soldiers, without the genius of General Matesev to plan their escape, resorted to what soldiers naturally did. They dug in and shot at everyone who wasn't their kind. Now they were zeroing light mortars on the Long Island Expressway and planning to fight to the death.

Remo found a coffee shop.

"You are the first person who has been kind to me since I have come here to America. You are my first friend," said Vassily.

"If I'm your friend, buddy, you're in trouble."

"Is what I am saying. I am in trouble," said Vassily. "I don't have a friend. I don't have my crime family. I had one of the best crime families in America. See? I'll show you."

As the large sugary Danish pastry arrived with the heavily creamed coffee, Vassily came back to the table with a handful of New York City newspapers. He went right to the stories. Apparently he had read them before.

Proudly he pushed them across the Formica table for Remo to read.

"You know, sugar's a drug," said Remo, glancing at the glistening layer of chemically colored goo enveloping the sugar-and-flour concoction. If Remo had one bite, his highly tuned nervous system would malfunction, and he would probably pass out.

"I like it," said Vassily.

"They say that about cocaine and heroin, too," said Remo, wincing as Vassily took a big bite.

"Is good," said Vassily. "Read, read. Look at the part about the 'cunning mastermind.' Is me."

Remo read about shotgunning in elevators, machinegunning in bedrooms, and shooting in the back of the steps of a church.

"Pretty brutal," said Remo.

"Thank you," said Vassiiy. "Those were my bones, as they call them. Have you made your bones?"

"You mean do a service?"

"Yes. Most assuredly. Do service."

"Yeah," said Remo.

"Would you like to join my new crime family?"

"No. I'm going overseas somewhere."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

"Crime families are not what they're cracked up to be," said Vassily. "They all ran. What is this with them? I made them caporegimes, too. And then they ran. What are crime families coming to nowadays'? That is what I ask. I hear so much about America deteriorating. Is this true of the crime families?"

"I dunno," said Remo. "I got my own problems. Once I find out what you do, then I'm done. More than twenty years and I'm through here. Well, okay, good enough. What should I tell my boss you do? I mean exactly. I mean, would a country invade another country just to get back a hypnotist? I thought he might have been lying."

"Was not lying. Russians are crazy. Crazy people. They invaded, you say?"

National Guard helicopters buzzed overhead. In the distance, small-arms fire could be heard. Many people had rushed out of the luncheonette and were being warned by policemen to stay back. Somehow the Russians had invaded America, but the word was, not too many of them. A bunch of Russians was trapped, someone yelled.

"And in one of the best neighborhoods, to boot," said another.

"They sent soldiers," said Vassily, covering his eyes with his hands. "What am I going to do? I can't fight a whole country. Not a whole country. You've got to be my friend. "

Vassily now decided that if this man would not be his friend voluntarily, he would do it the other way. It was always better to have a sincere real friend, but when one couldn't, one had to make do with what one had.

Just like with women. One would prefer that a woman would undrape herself with honest passion, but when one did not have honest passion available, the next best thing was dishonest passion. It certainly was better than no passion at all. He would give the man who introduced himself as Remo one last chance.

"Be my friend," he said.

"I got a friend," said Remo. "And he's a pain in the ass. "

"Then hello," said Vassily, taking his hands away from his eyes to make contact with Remo, who was going to be his best friend whether he liked it or not.

Unfortunately the man moved faster than anything Vassily had ever seen, and he did it so gracefully it hardly looked as though he were moving, except that he was out the door and into the street in an instant.

The reports out of Washington buzzed with relief. The President had nothing but praise for CURE. Smith, however, felt uncomfortable with praise. As Miss Ashford used to say in the Putney Day School back in Vermont:

"One should never do a job for praise, but because it should be done. And it should be done well. One should never be praised for doing what one should, because all jobs should be done well."

This parsimonious attitude was not peculiar to Miss Ashford. It was what the Smiths believed, and the Coakleys, and the Winthrops, and the Manchesters. Harold W. Smith had been raised in an atmosphere that was as rigidly uniform as in any of the courts of China. Everything had changed since then but the memories of the older folk, of which Harold W. Smith at age sixty-seven legitimately counted himself.

And so when the President told Smith he had come through in the hardest times, Smith answered:

"Is there anything else, sir?"

"We easily captured that special Russian group, and do you know how they got in every time without us finding them? They were planted ahead of time. All set to go. Bang. All they needed was their commander to tell them to go. And your man got him, and the rest of them are useless. And we know now how to take precautions against any other attempts at this. These are tough times and it feels damned good to win one for a change," said the President.

"Sir, what can we do for you?"

"Take a damned compliment for once," said the President.

"I do not not believe, sir, we were commissioned to win medals and such. If I ever mentioned a medal to either of our two active people, they would laugh at me."

"Well, dammit, thank you anyhow. You should know that the Russians have denied any involvement with their own soldiers, publicly declaring it a capitalist imperialist Zionist plot. Privately they threw up their hands and apologized. I think this thing is turning everything around. Their espionage system is exposed as it never has been before, their special group will never exist again, and we have them on the run. They've pulled back into their shell and word is they are running scared. Scared."

"Except we don't know why they risked so much yet."

"Did you find out?"

"Not yet, but I suspect when one of our active people calls in, I will."

"Let us know," said the President, and again he surrendered to bubbling enthusiasm. "These are great days to be an American, Harold W. Smith. I don't care how expensive that laundry list of treasure is to get. It's worth it."

"It might be a strain on the budget, sir."

"What budget? Nobody knows how this thing works. Besides, what's another few billion more if it's worth it? We lost a few billion just in accounting."

"Yessir," said Smith, hanging up.

Down at Vistana Views, Remo looked around the condominium to see if he had left anything. He was leaving America for good now. He had completed his last mission. Smith would be here soon for the last debriefing.

He felt sad, but he didn't know why he felt sad. He told himself it was fitting that he was leaving from Epcot Center, a Walt Disney production. His whole life might have been Mickey Mouse all along.

Was America any better for the work he had done? Was he any better? The only thing that made him better was his training. Chiun tried to cheer him by talking about the glories of the courts of kings, how one could play games with dictators and tyrants as employers, how Smith was inexplicable and treated his assassins poorly, ashamed of them, hiding their deeds, even hiding himself. But in the land of the true tyrant, an assassin was flaunted, an assassin was honored, an assassin was boasted about.

"Yeah, good," said Remo. And still he felt like yesterday's old potatoes, somehow being thrown out with the rest of his life.

"Do you feel bad, Remo. The Great Wang understood these things. It happens to all Masters, even the great ones. "

"Did it happen to you, little father?" asked Remo.

"No. It never happened to me."

"Why not?"

"Well, you have to feel that somehow you have done something wrong. All I had to do was look at my life. As the Great Wang said: 'Do not judge a life by how it ends, as do those of the West, but judge it by the whole.' If I did nothing but fail for the rest of my life, I would still be wonderful. "

"That's you, not me. I feel like the world has fallen out from underneath me and I don't know why."

"As the Great Wang said: 'Before perfection is that awareness of not being perfect, so that you feel your worst before you achieve your new level.' You are only getting better, Remo. And we should be grateful for that, because you certainly needed it."

"Great Wang. Great Wang. Great Wang. There are lots of Masters. I studied them. Why is he so damned great? I don't see it."

"Because you're not good enough to see it."

"Maybe you're better than the Great Wang. How do I know?"

"You are not to know, I am to know. Hurry, all the good tyrants seem to be falling."

"How do you know the Great Wang was so great? Was he greater than your father?"

"No. I was greater than my father."

"Then how do you know?"

"When you reach a certain level, you see the Great Wang."

"Is he alive? Does his spirit still exist in this world?"

"No. It exists in the greatness of Sinanju. And when you achieve that, that next level, you will see him."

"What does he look like?"

"A bit overweight, as a matter of fact, but he told me I was thin, so on his advice I gained an ounce and a half."

"You actually talked to him?"

"You can when you make the passage. What you are feeling now is the beginning of your passage."

"So what is the big deal about passing into a better level? I'm already more than good enough for what I need. "

"How cruel the stab of one's own son, nurtured like a natural son, reverting to his white attitudes again. It is the reason that the white race will never be great."

"Anytime you want to call it quits with me, little father," said Remo, "say so."

"Testy today, aren't we?" said Chiun with a smile. The Master of Sinanju knew he had won. No matter what Remo said, he was on his way to his new level. It was not that he would seek it. Indeed, if he didn't try so hard sometimes, he would be there already. But the truth about Remo's new level was that it was not taking hold of him. And soon he would see the Great Wang for himself and hear the advice given only to the great Masters of Sinanju, whatever that advice would be. It would be right. The Great Wang was always right. Never was there a time when he was not right. This was recorded in the histories of Sinanju, this was reality. Every time Remo could move up a wall vertically and understand it was only the fear of falling that was his enemy, every time he breathed in concordance with the great forces of the cosmos, the Great Wang lived. And now he was only waiting to say hello to Remo at the right time.

This Chiun knew, and this Remo could not know until it happened.

Mad Emperor Smith arrived, a half-hour late. The one thing the lunatic had had in his favor was punctuality and now that was gone. Good riddance, said Chiun in Korean.

The translation for Smith into English lost something, however.

"Oh, gracious benignity," intoned Chiun as he opened the door for the head of CURE. "In our last day of perfect service, glorifying your name, the tears of our parting rend the hearts of your faithful assassins, knowing there will be no equal to your glory."

Even Smith, color-blind, recognized the red kimono with the gold dragons. That was the kimono Chiun had worn the first day they had met, and never worn since. They were actually leaving at last, thought Smith. It was good-bye. Well, at least they had saved the country. That force that had invaded America with impunity not only had been destroyed, but Russia had been thoroughly embarrassed and was really whipped on all fronts as the President had said. The two sides were no longer teetering toward a world-ending conflict. Russia was in retreat. They had given America the breathing space it needed to avoid launching missiles that could never be called back. Now all Smith had to do was find out why Russia had sent in the Matesev group.

Remo offered his hand.

"I guess this is the end," he said.

"I guess it is," said Smith.

"Yeah. Well, who knows," said Remo.

"Sit down. Let's talk about Matesev's mission."

"Don't have to sit, Smitty. They were after a hypnotist. Supposed to be a great hypnotist."

"They have lots of hypnotists," said Smith. "The Russians are famous for doing experiments with the human mind. Why would they be after this one?"

"Supposedly he could do it with everyone instantly. I mean when I found him, Matesev's people had his eyes taped and his mouth taped. They were scared of him."

"Of course, they should be. If he is what they say he is, someone like that could control the world. I could see how he would escape Russia easily. Escape anywhere easily. This man could walk into the Department of Defense and start a war. No wonder they wanted to keep him under wraps. I'm surprised they didn't kill him when they found out he could do those things."

"Why not use him to their advantage?" asked Remo.

"Who would be using whom when he could hypnotize anyone into believing anything? He was like an atomic warhead, but with a mind of his own. They must have been on tenterhooks all the time they had him."

"Maybe," said Remo. "In any case, Smitty, good luck and good-bye."

"Wait a minute. What did he look like?"

"About five-foot-seven. Kind of sad brown eyes. Nice guy. Lonely."

"You spoke with him?"

"Sure," said Remo.

"You let him go?" asked Smith. The lemony face suddenly turned red as horror set in. "You let him go? How on earth could you let him go, knowing what he was? How could you do such a thing?"

"That wasn't my job. You said do Matesev. I did Matesev. All right? You said find out what he wanted. I found out what he wanted. Case closed."

"You could have thought. We have to get Rabinowitz. There's no way we can let that man roam around this country. For both our sakes. Those damned stupid Russians. Why didn't they tell us? We could have worked together. "

"Good-bye, Smitty."

"You can't leave, Remo. You can recognize him."

"Recognize him, hell. He wanted to be my friend."

"You have too many friends, Remo," said Chiun. He was waiting for Remo to lift the trunks. It would not be seemly for a Master of his stature to carry the luggage. He would have Smith do it, but like most Westerners Smith only became more feeble as he grew old.

This was not a way for a Master of Sinanju to leave an emperor, carrying his own bags.

"I have one too many," said Remo. Chiun was too happy to be leaving the Mad Emperor Smith to quibble about such minor slights.

"Remo, do you understand why we have to get Vassily Rabinowitz, and do to him what the Russians did? Do you understand?"

"Understand?" sighed Remo. "I don't even want to think about it. C'mon, little father. I'll carry your steamer trunks out to the car."

"If you wish," said Chiun. Life was becoming good already. He didn't even have to work on Remo to make him do what he should have done out of the love in his heart, instead of forcing Chiun to practically beg for it. If one had to ask, one was demeaned. This might not be the absolute truth, but it sounded good, so Chiun decided to use it sometime when he had an opportunity.

"Chiun, tell him the job isn't over," said Smith.

"How can I reason with one who has served you so well? Only your words, O Emperor, are inviolate, and once spoken must be followed forever. You said he should eliminate this evil one Matesev. Is Matesev alive?"

"Well, no, but-"

"You said he should find out about this Rabinowitz. Did Remo not personally speak to Vassily Rabinowitz himself, even to the discussion of friendship?"

"Yes, but-"

"Then we leave with glad hearts knowing we followed to the absolute letter your magnificent commands."

"Name your price," said Smith.

"We are still waiting for the last tributes," said Chiun. "Not that we are crass servers of gold. But we understand as you understand that America's credit is its most priceless possession. And you most of all wish to keep your name and your credit at the highest levels of history. This when all the treasure of Sinanju is restored according to our agreements, then we would be more than happy to serve you again."

"But it will take years to search out that list you sent us. There are artifacts in there that haven't been around for centuries. "

"A great nation faces a great task," said Chiun, and in Korean to Remo: "Get the blue trunk first."

Remo answered in the language that had over the years become like his first language.

"Pretty neat, little father. I never could have gotten out that clean."

"It's only time. You'll learn it. When you know you're not working for some patriotic cause but realize you are in the family business, then you'll see. It is the easiest part of things. Emperors are all stupid because they can be made to believe we actually think they are somehow better than we just because of the accident of their births."

"What are you two talking about?" asked Smith in English.

"Good-bye," said Remo.

"I will match what any other country, tyrant, or emperor offers you, Chiun."

"Put back the trunk," said Chiun to Remo in Korean.

"I thought we were leaving," said Remo.

"Not when we have a bidding situation. It is the first rule of bargaining. Never walk away from a bidding situation; you will regret it forever."

"I don't know about you, little father," said Remo. "But I am through with Smith and CURE. Get your own trunk."

Smith saw the blue steamer trunk fall to the ground, and watched Chiun look aghast at such disrespect.

"So long," said Remo to both of them. "I'm going to play with the real Mickey Mouse instead of you two guys."

When Remo was gone, Smith asked Chiun what he knew about hypnotism.

"Everything," answered Chiun. "I used to own five hypnotists."

If Smith knew what Rabinowitz was doing at that moment, he would have run after Remo on his hands and knees and begged him to be the sad Russian's friend.

Chapter 8

Two men, each with different keys, were needed to launch an American nuclear missile. Each missile was pretargeted. In other words, those who fired it did not decide where it would land. They only followed orders. There was a strict procedure. First, the airmen had to make sure the missiles absolutely did not go off accidentally, and second, when they did, it would be only on properly validated orders from Strategic Air Command.

"And where does the Strategic Air Command get its orders?"

"From the President, Ma. Why are you asking me all these questions?"

Captain Wilfred Boggs of Strategic Air Command, Omaha, did not like coffee shops, and especially meeting his mother in one. And what really bothered him was that his mother had been asking around town about where the big missiles were, the ones that were aimed at Russia.

Captain Boggs, on security duty, had been assigned to interrogate the person. Boggs thought he was to interrogate a Russian immigrant, something so ludicrous as to make him laugh when he first heard it.

"You mean to tell me that there's a Russian going around looking for our biggest in Omaha?"

"Says he was told the missile bases was out here," answered the local police liaison officer. "But don't be too mean to him. Fella's real nice. Wants to see you, anyone from SAC. I told him, you wanna see someone from SAC, you go around this city asking for the biggest missile and you'll see someone real fast."

But the local police had made the biggest mistake of their lives. It was Wilfred's mother whom they had arrested. "You want to speak to me, Ma, phone me."

"I'm here, so tell me. How do you fire a missile at Russia?" And that was how his mother began the questions of who controlled what and where in the Strategic Air Command. Of course he got her out of jail immediately and went to a more suitable place to talk, a coffee shop she insisted on because she liked pastries. He was lucky to get her out of jail, but the policemen seemed unusually willing to break a few rules for a person every one of them found very special.

The question Ma wanted answered most of all was: "You couldn't fire one for your mother?"

"Ma, it takes two."

"Let me speak to the other one."

"Ma, I don't have a key. I'm in security now. I don't fire them."

"All of a sudden you can't fire a little missile? This is what you're telling your mother?"

"I never could fire a missile even when I had a key. It takes two and then we have to have the proper orders. Even if two of us decided we were going to fire one of these things, we'd have to have the proper command sequence wired in to our station."

"Hold on. Just a minute already. We're into a lot of things I didn't suspect," said his mother, and she took out a little notebook and a pencil and said:

"All right, give it to me from the very beginning."

"Will you put away that pad and pencil? I can't be seen telling you the SAC structure with you taking notes. And why are you taking notes?"

"Because I'm trying to find out why a red-blooded American boy who will fire a missile if some machine says fire, won't fire one for his flesh and blood. That's why. One missile and you're making a big deal already. One little missile. How many missiles do you have? Hundreds, right?"

"It could start a war, Ma."

"It won't start a war," said his mother in a strange singsong, dismissing such an idea with a touch of her hand and a low sad nod. "Russia will learn not to bother innocent people. They respect that sort of thing."

"I don't know that the missiles at our base are aimed at Russia. It could be Eastern Europe. Asia. We don't know."

"You mean, you'd fire a missile and not know where it landed?"

"It helps. We don't want to know who we'd be killing. We might read books about those places and refuse at the last minute."

"So I've come all the way out to Omaha in Nebraska for nothing?"

"Not nothing, Ma. We haven't seen each other since Christmas. Boy is it good to see you. How're Cathy, Bill, and Joe? You've got to fill me in."

"They're fine. Everyone's fine. Everyone loves you, good-bye. Are you going to finish your Danish?"

"I don't like pastry, Ma. Come to think of it, neither do you. "

And his mother left without kissing him good-bye. Stranger still, when he confessed to the local police that he had released the subject they had put into his custody, the one who had been asking about missiles, his mother, all they said was, "Thanks. We owe you a lot. And we'll never forget it."

Spring in Omaha was like spring in Siberia. It was warmish nothing, as opposed to winter, which was frozen nothing.

Vassily Rabinowitz stood on the street corner with one single Danish pastry in his hand and the entire Soviet Union as his enemy.

Missiles were out. He had nothing against Russia, never had. All he wanted was to be left alone. All he wanted was to be able to walk around awhile without having people come up to him asking questions. He had thought America would be like that. Yes, one could walk around, but not for long. Muggers could get you before you could get them into a proper frame of mind.

So he had gotten himself a crime family, and from the newspaper reports, he was pretty good at it. He had become a criminal mastermind. And one single Russian commando unit had shown him that his crime family, his tough desperate criminals, were about as tough as a dozen cannoli in a paper box.

They had deserted him, and Vassily had been bound sightless and soundless and carried, terrified, over a long distance until the only family person he met in this country rescued him and then left. The man had been definitely friendly even without Vassily's influence.

But Vassily had been scared out of his wits. He knew the Russian government. A nice word to the government meant you were weak. Peace was weakness. How many times had he heard Russian generals comment, on hearing of a peace overture, that the country offering it was weak? Peace was weakness. Of course, when the other country armed itself, then it was aggressive.