Prophet Of Doom

Down at the bakery Mama had gone on double shifts, and Papa—now proud owner of a cobbler shop—had redoubled his tireless efforts to finance Telemachus's continuing education. The young man would be the first of their family to receive a college diploma.

With no social life and few extracurricular activities to distract him, Telemachus graduated from the University of Wyoming with his B.A. in two and a half years. He then told his aging parents that he wanted to stay on in school to receive his Master's. A good education, he argued, was the surest way for him to achieve his ultimate goal of national prestige and power.

Once his next educational goal was met, Telemachus Kaspurelakos, who now went by the more American-sounding "Mark Kaspar," had informed his parents that he wanted to stay on in school to get his B.Sc. His father had just celebrated his seventieth

276

birthday and looked forward to Mark's graduation so that he might at last retire from the shoe shop. Arthritis had forced his mother to leave her job long before, and the patriarch of the Kaspurelakos family had worked night and day to fund his only son's ever rising college tuition.

With a weary sigh of resignation, the senior Kaspurelakos returned to the sweltering back room of his tiny shoe-repair shop. Family was family. And Mark was the future of the Kaspurelakos family.

The father died a month into Mark's next semester. Young Mark—in truth not quite so young any longer—was devastated. At his father's funeral, he begged his grieving mother to return to the bakery, but his pleas only made the poor woman's mournful wails all the louder.

Without the financial support, Mark couldn't afford to hide out in the halls of academia. This realization terrified him. For the truth was, in spite of all the grandiose talk of his future greatness, Mark Kaspar hadn't a clue what he was going to do with his adult life.

Mark ultimately convinced his mother to surrender the proceeds of the sale of the Kaspurelakos shoe-repair shop so he could continue along his march to glory. At that point the old woman was only too willing to give in—anything to get her son out of the house.

Money in hand, Kaspar returned to the world in which he had squandered his adult life. He got a job as an English professor at a local state college.

Truthfully the only driving ambition Mark Kaspar owned was a compulsion to further the myth that Mark Kaspar possessed any ambition at all. He was,

ultimately and in spite of his own delusions, intellectually lazy and bereft of any marketable skills whatsoever. He never recognized this, however. Everything wrong in his life could always be blamed on some external factors. It was the worst kind of self-deceit, but Mark Kaspar had practiced it skillfully all his life.

And so it was for fifteen years that the young man with the glorious dream of some ill-defined future languished in a mundane job. As the days stretched into years, his early assuredness of his own destiny devolved into a visceral hatred of all that had cheated him of the life he deserved.

Until the day a quirk of fate pushed him onto the path of greatness that he had wandered from.

To impress the faculty dean, Kaspar had signed on to teach a summer course in archaeology. It was a fledgling department, and Kaspar hadn't quite studied the course requirements when he agreed to add it to his schedule. But it meant tenure. And tenure meant job security.

A month later he was in Greece.

His class had been signed up as part of an international student team set loose at the site of a new dig in the ruins of ancient Delphi.

The students—some natives of Greece, others from the U.S., Great Britain, France, Belgium, as well as a handful from as far away as South Africa and New Zealand—attacked the pile of rubble with spoons and brushes. Representatives of Greece's archaeological-affairs office dug in right beside the students, and the careful, studied excavation was soon a bustle of activity.

Mark Kaspar surveyed the work area from a dis-

278

tance, slumped sullenly in a folding beach chair beneath a heavy, sweat-stained pith helmet.

The work went on for the better part of a month. Kaspar grew increasingly sullen as the permanent stains beneath the arms of his jungle jacket grew stiffer and encrusted with salt.

"My life is not supposed to be like this," he growled.

As his time in his ancestral homeland wore on, he spiraled deeper into his self-made pit of misery.

But just before the dig was to end, something happened that would change the course of Mark Kaspar's life forever.

A new chamber was discovered at the ruins of the temple to Apollo on Mount Parnassus. At first this was less interesting to Kaspar than his next decent American meal, but the team leaders acted as if they had stepped miraculously into another time.

The students beamed, while older members of the dig handed out bottles of warm wine. The discovery was talked up as of greater importance than it actually was, for although that sort of find occurred with some frequency, whenever a new chamber was discovered it was treated as if it could contain treasures as important as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Besides, the children were leaving in a week, and their Greek hosts wanted to make them feel as if they had participated in something more important than sifting teaspoons of sand through wire-mesh screens.

It was too late in the day to continue working. Once the last wine bottle was drained, everyone agreed to meet shortly at the tavern in town to continue the celebration. They would return to the site at dawn.

279

They hugged and shook hands and, with the camaraderie of shared hardship, the entire group marched proudly down the hill, arms draped over one another's shoulders, and singing. Their raucous cadences boomed across the ancient rock-strewed hills, making polyglot echoes.

Once they were gone, the site of Apollo's former temple was as lifeless as it had been the day after the last worshipful Greek supplicant had come to pay his respects to the sun god over two millennia before.

Almost as lifeless.

As the jubilant crowd passed down the road and out of sight, a lone pith helmet bobbed into view behind a pile of overturned stone.

Once he was certain everyone was gone, Mark Kaspar slipped down to the excavation pit. It was marked with poles tied at the end with bits of flapping white cloth.

Mark didn't see what the big deal was. It was nothing but a hole in the side of a mound of scrub-covered dirt that might have been dug by a giant prairie dog. Beyond that there wasn't much to see.

Kaspar noticed that someone had left a flashlight near a pile of empty wine bottles beside the mouth of the cavern.

He never knew what compelled him to get down on his hands and knees and crawl through the dirt and stone chips into the midnight black opening. But a minute later he found himself crouching inside a chamber that had not encompassed a human inhabitant since before the time of Christ.

Mark still didn't see what was so fascinating. He

280

played the dusty flashlight beam around the cramped room.

It was man-made, obviously. The ceiling was cut of large, rough-hewn stone. The walls, as well, were stone. The floor was dirt. Kaspar guessed that the room had filled with sand over the years. It was possible that the original floor was much farther below.

As Kaspar examined his surroundings, he noticed that the stones in the wall and ceiling were strangely marked. He had heard that the temple had been destroyed by an earthquake around 400 B.C. and he reasoned that the rocks had probably been shattered and then salvaged for the rebuilding. But the pitted areas in the stone were odd. Kaspar peered at the markings. Each came in a series of four. As he studied them closely, he realized they looked almost like...knuckle marks.

As he moved along the interior of the chamber, examining rock after rock, each etched with the same knucklelike indentations, Kaspar's curiosity heightened. Several yards in he stumbled upon something of recognizable historical value.

It was a large stone urn, still intact.

It rested on a rock shelf and was half-buried in two thousand years' worth of settled earth. Excitedly Kaspar brushed the dirt away with his hands, exposing a stone exterior that was decorated with delicately intertwined serpents.

Kaspar's mind fired.

He knew that Greece was once a powerful civilization. He knew that historically, powerful civilizations were always, always very wealthy. And he knew that he had discovered something in the ruins of an

r

i

281

ancient temple from what, in its day, had been the most powerful civilization on earth. And in that ancient urn had been placed something mysterious that someone back then thought valuable enough to store for safe keeping.

Ignoring all protocol for a discovery of such magnitude, he pulled the lid from the top of the dust-covered urn.

And in the sickly beam of the flashlight, Mark Kaspar thought he had unearthed an ancient pot of pure gold.

With a shaking finger, he touched the glistening yellow substance.

His hopes were immediately dashed.

It was powder. A pot full of some ancient spice, probably.

In disgust Kaspar started to replace the heavy stone lid.

All at once he felt something slither into his mind.

The sensation shocked him. He dropped the lid to the ground. It landed on a slab of rock and its edge chipped off a dozen small stone pieces.

Kaspar watched in wonder as the yellow substance in the urn began to glow brightly in the center of the ruins of Delphi. The strange, powdery residue on his hand flared up in sympathy.

And a voice inside his mind spoke to him, and it said, You have returned, my peristiarchoi. Your great future is at hand.

And he accepted the truth of the voice in his excited mind.

When Kaspar left the ruins, the shelf on which the

282

ancient urn had sat for more than two thousand years was empty.

The spirit of Apollo's Pythia was weak in the yellow powder.

Kaspar found it necessary to enhance the strength of the oracles by artificially steaming the powder, just as had been done in the hills of Greece all those years ago.

Back in America he began harvesting virgins himself, at the urging of his unseen master. The first was a freshman in his English class. He used her in the spare bedroom of his attic apartment and, when she was of no further use to him, he drove her out into the night like a stray dog.

The last Kaspar had heard, she had been institutionalized, her mind a gibbering blank. But that didn't matter to him. The girl was no more than a vessel. Something to be used and discarded by his master.

There were other vessels as the years wore on. Kaspar was forced to move from city to city. The Pythia always provided for him, and he never had cause for any bitterness at the life he had been chosen to lead. Fate had led him to Delphi. And it was fate that led him back to his home in Wyoming. It was here, in a dingy boardinghouse room in Thermopolis and through the utterances of the gymnast Pythia—the girl he would eventually bring with him to Ranch Rag-narok—that he finally learned of his great destiny.

America was a nation where many had gotten out of touch with its Judeo-Christian roots. New Age mys-licism and faith healing had taken the place of a mono-ihcistic religion. The Pythia foretold that the greatest

283

of all Western nations would become the seat of Apollo himself in the dawn of the next millennium. And Telemachus Anaxagoras Kaspurelakos, the high priest of Apollo, would be the herald of the great new era.

You are destined, Telemachus, it said, to rule the land in which you dwell. The prophecy had sent a chill up his spine.

But it was only fitting that the god of the new American theocracy have a proper place to reside, a place from which it could spread its influence to the powerful and influential.

Esther Clear-Seer's ranch was the perfect choice.

Esther had founded the Church of the Absolute and Incontrovertible Truth with her husband during the 1970s. When he had passed away, she had nearly bankrupted the entire church by trying to cash in on the faith of all of her worldwide members. She thought that if she bilked her entire membership in one fell swoop, she could live like a queen for the rest of her life. And so, even as the United States and the Soviet Union were beginning to ease nearly fifty years of tension, Esther had created Armageddon in her own mind.

She had made a young fortune in the single venture but lost out in the long run. After her predicted apocalypse failed to materialize, members of the International Truth Church finally figured out that they had been had. Church membership dropped off dramatically, and what with all the bills she still had to pay, Esther found that her anticipated windfall was only a passing breeze.

284

It took years to rebuild an acolyte pool productive enough to sustain her lavish life-style.

When Mark Kaspar showed up at her door with his ancient urn and uncanny stock-market predictions, Esther thought at last she had hit the mother lode.

With greed, power and corruption to unite them, Mark Kaspar and Esther Clear-Seer were truly a perfect match. And the Pythia's plan for the future of America moved along with flawless rapidity.

There was only one small problem.

Mark Kaspar didn't know why the President of the United States hadn't yet responded to his threats.

Former governor Michael Princippi had assured Kaspar that the leaders of the President's party had informed the Chief Executive that more congressional resignations would follow if the young Sinanju Master wasn't turned over at once.

In actual fact the sorry truth was that without the Pythia, Kaspar's threat was hollow. He only had minor dirt on two other members of Congress, and the nature of the charges was survivable in the new permissive political climate in America. What Kaspar had done was fire all of his seven major salvos at one time, hoping sheer numbers would force the President to turn over Remo and thus return the essences of Apollo and his Pythia.

But official Washington had so far refused to take the bait.

"He's got to respond," Michael Princippi insisted. He wrung his hands as he paced anxiously.

They were in Kaspar's office in the corner of the abandoned hangar on the Ranch Ragnarok site.

285

"Now that you're a bona fide candidate, he can no longer ignore you," Princippi added worriedly.

Kaspar had taken out the proper papers and filled out the necessary disclosure forms several weeks before. In a brief statement to the press that morning, on the heels of the congressional resignations, Mark Kaspar had declared himself an official candidate for the United States Senate.

"He is doing just that, my friend Michael," Kaspar said, leaning back in his leather chair.

A rap at the door was quickly followed by Esther Clear-Seer herself, who didn't wait for permission before marching into the office.

"I just caught one of the acolytes trying to take off with Cole's daughter," she announced. She didn't acknowledge Princippi's presense.

Kaspar leaned forward, peeved. "What happened?"

Esther shrugged. "No big deal. I had the guards take care of her. She was yelling her head off about being a Fed, but she didn't have any ID in her room." She shook her long raven tresses. "I don't like this, Kaspar. It's getting too weird around here."

Kaspar seemed distracted by some vague, distant thought. At last he exhaled deeply and slapped his palms onto his desk.

"Mr. Princippi, would you excuse us for a moment?" he asked.

Miffed, Princippi nodded his respects while shooting a frosty glare at Esther Clear-Seer as he left the room.

Once Princippi was gone, Kaspar asked, "You saw my press conference?"

Esther nodded. "Senator Mark Kaspar. I would

286

have figured that was beneath you." She seemed too weary to give the remark a biting edge.

Kaspar smiled. "All in good time," he explained vaguely. "You realize that with or without the Pythia, I still have a schedule to keep." A casual shrug indicated that Esther understood something was going on. "There are issues that must be dealt with now," Kaspar explained. "The Senate race being one of those things."

"You better run one hell of a campaign. Cole just went on CNN, vowing to stay in the race, 'come hell or high water.' Unquote."

"I am aware of his intentions," Kaspar said. "I had hoped the peril to his daughter would be enough to force his withdrawal. But the Pythia's prediction was strangely vague on that point."

"Pity for you," Esther said with an unsympathetic grin.

Kaspar smiled back. "Mr. Princippi has been on the phone with the senator's advance man to arrange a meeting for the two of us. We are, after all, now the leading candidates for the office. When our meeting is over, I want to be certain that I am the only candidate left in the race."

"You want to off Jackson Cole?"

"It is rather crude," Kaspar admitted with a shrug. "But at this point we haven't much of an alternative. ft could be days, even weeks, before the one from Sinanju succumbs to the power of my master. It is imperative that I win this race so that my ultimate destiny can be fulfilled."

Esther sighed. Since this creepy little man had shown up, she had found herself involved in assault,

kidnapping, extortion and murder. And now she was being set up to assassinate a senator of the United States of America.

It was as if Kaspar had been born to play power politics. And she had no choice but to go along for the ride.

Esther sighed. "Just tell me what you want me to do," she said resignedly.

chapter Twenty

Smith learned of the impending meeting between Mark Kaspar and Senator Jackson Cole in a news story that was sandwiched awkwardly between a segment on dog grooming and an in-studio "Mr. Chow" wok demonstration.

The story was brief. As well as mentioning his daughter's abduction and the fact that he was neither going to give up hope for her safe recovery nor allow the tragedy to dictate the rest of his life, the story also stated that Jackson Cole was a resident of Thermo-polis, Wyoming, and that the senator would be making his regular public appearance at his hometown's an­nual spring fair. Political neophyte and pundit Mark Kaspar was also scheduled to appear at the same pub­lic event.

When the story concluded, Smith placed a call to the White House.

He didn't know what Kaspar's game plan was, but he knew that Senator Cole was at risk every moment he spent near Mark Kaspar and his Truth Church ac­olytes.

The President picked up on the fifth ring.

"Mr. President, are you aware of the meeting be­tween Mark Kaspar and Senator Cole?" Smith asked.

289

"What about it?"

The President sounded cold, and Smith realized he was still upset over their previous phone conversation.

' 'I do not believe it would be prudent for the senator to meet with Kaspar at present," Smith explained.

"Is this political advice, Smith?" the President asked frostily.

Smith silently adjusted his tie and pressed on. "I have reason to believe Mark Kaspar is a dangerous individual."

"You're telling me?" the President said sarcastically. "I've been taking the press and party flak for two days straight over these resignations. Now my staffers are telling me the boys on the Hill have been getting some pretty mysterious phone calls from Prince Princippi."

"Phone calls?"

' 'Apparently his boss is looking for someone named Sinanju or something. Princippi is about as subtle as a mud pie in the face. He suggested to my colleagues on the Hill that they take the matter up with me. Can you believe the gall of this guy? And no one can dig up anything on this Sinanju. Probably some fringe special-interest group is my guess."

Smith swallowed his horror silently. Kaspar was trying to use the President to flush out Remo. Fortunately, though the Chief Executive had used the services of his two operatives in the past, he had never heard or did not recall the name Sinanju. A blessing for CURE.

Smith pursed his lips. "I believe the man is bluffing, Mr. President," he said after regaining control over his voice.

290

When the President asked him how he could be certain, Smith reluctantly explained the Ragnarok connection and how each of the seven men who resigned had visited the ranch on at least one occasion.

"There are only two other congressmen who have had contact with Kaspar in the past three months," Smith added. "And it seems reasonable to assume that if he had anything incriminating on them, he would have targeted them also."

"Or he's got something so toxic he's holding back until he needs to strike a death blow against my administration," the. President suggested worriedly. "We've been doing nothing but damage control up here for the past two days."

"That is not my impression, Mr. President," Smith said. "I believe Kaspar's hand is played out. There was an incident involving one of my special people. I cannot go into the details, but as a direct consequence Kaspar has become desperate enough to try to contact you, even if it is through a surrogate. And I do not need to remind you, sir, that desperate men sometimes do desperate things. I urge you to persuade Senator Cole to reconsider this joint appearance with Kaspar."

The President lost his cool attitude. "You sure about this, Smith?"

"I am certain Kaspar is dangerous."

The President was silent a moment. "I'll call you back shortly," he snapped.

He was back on the phone within fifteen minutes.

"I personally contacted the senator's office," the Chief Executive reported. "Cole's administrative assistant informed me that the senator is adamant about maintaining his normal campaign schedule, even if it

291

means attending the Hot Springs State Fair at the same time as Mark Kaspar."

Smith politely thanked the President for his cooperation and hung up the phone. He spun around in his cracked leather chair and stared out at Oyster Bay on the other side of Long Island Sound, his face pursing like a wet leather glove.

He had few options now.

Remo was nowhere to be found. He had vanished not long after visiting Chiun the previous day. Smith only knew Remo had left after a Folcroft guard reported seeing someone matching Remo's description slipping across the grounds late that night.

Chiun had become even more withdrawn after the disappearance. He hadn't mentioned the phantom submarine to Smith in more than a day. The Master of Sinanju simply sat immobile in the center of his Folcroft quarters, eyes closed, deep in meditation.

That left only one CURE operative for field work.

With great reluctance, Smith unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk. In an old cigar box tucked deep in the back of the drawer behind a stack of dummy sanitarium files, Smith found his old Army-issue Colt automatic.

He collected his battered leather briefcase and tucked the automatic in a special side pouch that was impervious to airport X-ray machines. Always cautious, Smith slipped a plastic laminated card in his wallet identifying him as airline security and thus legally entitled to carry a firearm on a plane.

Smith reserved a seat on the next flight to Wyoming, then shut down the Folcroft computers.

292

He made one stop before leaving the building.

When he entered the room, Smith noted the candles and incense bowl of the previous day were gone, presumably packed away somewhere in the mountain of steamer trunks awaiting transshipment to North Korea. The heavy draperies were open, and dirty sunlight filtered grudgingly through the white translucent windows set high up in the concrete walls.

Chiun sat on the floor in the middle of a diluted patch of sunlight. The old man's eyes remained closed as Smith shut the door behind him.

"Master Chiun?"

"It is customary to knock," he informed Smith.

"I am sorry," Smith replied. "I thought you should know that I am leaving for Wyoming within the hour."

"You do not need my permission," Chiun said, thin of voice.

Smith felt a minor chill. The old Korean was usually effusive in his compliments to the man he called Emperor Smith. But now he was cold and distant. Chiun was at his most dangerous in these moods.

Smith cleared his throat and changed the subject. "There has been no word from Remo?"

Chiun's eyes squeezed more tightly as a cloud of worry passed across his aged brow. "I have not seen my son since yesterday," he admitted. "However, I have been attempting to locate him."

Smith frowned. Chiun had not left this room since the previous evening.

"Locate Remo?" Smith blurted. "How?"

Chiun sighed deeply. And for the first time that day

293

opened his eyes. His stare was as barren and frigid as an Arctic winter.

"Why is gold the color gold?"

"Is that a riddle?" Smith asked.

Chiun merely stared.

"Gold is simply...golden," Smith offered.

"You would understand what it is I do even less," said Chiun, as if this settled the issue once and for all. And with that, the wizened Asian closed his eyes and refused to speak further on the matter. The whereabouts of Remo were a problem for Sinanju and would be dealt with by Sinanju; that seemed to be the Master of Sinanju's unspoken thought.

Smith got the message and backed quietly from the room. He would have neither Remo's help nor the help of the Master of Sinanju on his trip to Thermopolis.

Long after Smith had gone, Chiun remained immobile in the basement room, hazel eyes shut like trapdoors.

His desperate quest for his lost pupil continued.

No human being was present when the shadow emerged from the sea of posttwilight darkness. Therefore no man saw the black shape slide effortlessly through the gates like a silent fog.

Like a knife the distinctive wail of a frightened lemur sliced through the cold, dead heart of the night. The sound set off a chain reaction of complaint.

Nearby gibbons and spider monkeys howled when the shadow drifted past.

Gorillas propelled themselves swiftly away on leathery knuckles, finding safety behind trees and inartifi

294

straw-filled corners, as far distant as possible from the wisp of moving darkness.

Farther away a dozen lions roared in terror at the night as a small herd of elephants trumpeted and stomped in fear beyond their heavy walls.

The shadow moved through turnstiles and past rusting metal railings. The lock on an unmarked rear door shattered as it passed. Fragments from the door handle skittered off in a symphony of metallic clinks, landing in large part beneath a pair of vacant benches and under a boarded-up vendor's cart.

The shadow passed inside.

The building was warm, the corridor suffused in the dull white glow of a single recessed light. A sudden hand movement shattered the light casing, and the bulb exploded in a spray of delicate wedges. The glass tinkled softly to the floor in the wake of the passing shadow.

The corridor led into a large chamber that had baked in the daytime sun. It still held the faint trace odors of hundreds of sweating men, women and children.

The main pathway in the center of the chamber was lined on either side by metal railings, the height and design of which vaguely resembled horse rails in an old Western. Beyond the railings, high Plexiglas panes cordoned off large cubicles from one another and offered a view inside each of the giant glass cages.

Most of the creatures within the boxed-off sections of glass didn't move as the shadow passed them by. Some did slither in lazy S-shaped paths through patches of transplanted grass and shrubs. Still more were looped around the branches and trunks of

295

artificial or transplanted trees, but the movements these made were barely perceptible to the naked eye.

The shadow passed the cages of the cobras, asps and rattlesnakes without slowing. It found what it wanted in the final blocked-off pen at the far end of the main visitor's room on the other side of a sheet of one-inch-thick Plexiglas.

A plaque set below the exterior window was etched with the legend P. Molurus. Below that, in smaller letters, was written Indian Python.

The thing that had been Remo Williams paused before the sheet of heavy reinforced Plexiglas.

Remo could see himself in the glossy reflective surface of the glass-walled python cage, but everything seemed strange and distant. It was as if he were a faraway spectator to his own actions. His face, crawling with shadows, was a hollow-eyed death's-head.

When the demon force had taken over his mind, Remo had been helpless. He saw the image of the malevolent combatant that had raged within him since his encounter at the Truth Church ranch strike out at the more docile form. He did not know if the blow had struck home, but at the point when the outstretched hand of the evil combatant would have landed, both creatures had fled from his vision.

The dimensionless black plain on which they had stood was with him still, but it was now vacant, devoid of any life.

The moment they had vanished, Remo Williams had died, as well.

He remembered the look of anguish on Chiun's face when the old man realized that he had lost him to the Pythia. He recalled vividly his flight from Folcroft. He

296

remembered skulking through the streets of Rye like some mongrel dog.

A full day of restless wandering for the soul that now controlled Remo's body had passed. And he had watched it all from a surreal vantage point, back behind his own eyes.

Superimposed above all the images flashing before him was the vacant black battlefield. Remo had the intense feeling that there was something lurking over the alien horizon. Something more deadly than the spirit of the Pythia now controlling his actions.

The reptile house at the Bronx Zoo reappeared before him in a haze. His own face in the window of the python tank was washed-out and lifeless. A skull clinging to a thin mask of flesh.

A hand flew out before him. Remo recognized it as his own. It struck the side of the tank, and a vertical crack appeared beneath the tips of his slashing fingers. The thick Plexiglas split into two neat halves, and the thing that controlled Remo popped one side from its frame and set the heavy sheet of glass on the floor beside the tank.

A sudden hop, and he was gliding wraithlike through the cage. The leaves from a dozen different transplanted subtropical bushes brushed silently against his shins as he moved.

It was humid inside the cage, and the thing that had taken possession of Remo smelled the air like an alert hunter.

Behind it and unseen, something large and dark uncoiled from the low-slung branch of an artificial tallow tree.

Remo somehow knew what was happening. The

297

mingling of minds had produced a dim form of understanding within him.

It was the snake. The snake held some kind of significance.

He saw visions, more images across the limitless black plain.

The evil combatant returned, but this time he was alone. He appeared almost as an infant in this vision and he wore on his back a quiver full of arrows. In his hand he held a golden bow.

All at once there appeared before the young combatant a great serpent. It moved to attack the boy. Quick as a flash, the youth's hand sought a quivered arrow and launched the deadly missile into the head of the massive creature. The small warrior repeated this motion again and again, spearing the hapless creature with arrow after arrow until at last its great pointed tail flopped lifelessly to the ground.

It was dead.

The image vanished. Remo was again in the reptile cage.

The serpent. Its death was somehow part of a rebirth.

But not of the Pythia. It was the rebirth of something much vaster. Something far more terrifying. Something hunkered down over the far side of the horizon of his mind.

As his thoughts returned in the cage, some lucid part of Remo's brain told him that something was at his ankle.

Like a spectator to his own actions, his head looked down, allowing Remo to see what his body had felt.

A fat, gleaming brown rope was wrapped around

298

his right leg. It was banded and spotted in hues of chocolate and mud.

The thing moved and Remo fell.

Palm fronds slapped against his forehead. Remo landed face first in a tuft of tall sawgrass.

A cool pressure surrounded his waist.

The slow, crushing sensation didn't faze the presence of the Pythia in Remo's mind. As the snake's scaly coils slid up around his chest, it remained calm. As if the python sought this cold encounter.

As the unblinking head looped higher, the massive body rippled almost imperceptibly while wrapping its neck around Remo's throat. He felt a growing pressure against his windpipe.

The python, purchased from an East Indian zoological society, was over thirty feet long and had not eaten in days. While it was normal for a python to attack smaller animals, it wasn't unheard of for a snake as large as this one to attack and suffocate something Remo's size. Especially when hungry.

The creature's amber eyes looked directly into Remo's own as it constricted its muscular coils harder.

With every exhalation, the python squeezed Remo's rib cage. Every intake of breath that followed was shallower and less charged with oxygen than the one before. Inexorably the python's shrinking body was starving Remo's lungs of the one element that fueled the sun source that was Sinanju.

Oxygen.

The alien force in Remo's mind seemed almost to mock the efforts of the huge reptile. As the snake strove harder to crush the breath from the warmblooded mammal trapped within its constrictor coils,

299

the demon within Remo slowly extracted a hand from the living bonds.

Remo watched as his own hand swatted the creature's flat head, almost as if the Pythia was remonstrating a badly behaved pet.

Immediately the python's coils dropped into loose ropes. It flopped to the cage floor.

Shedding the last clinging coils, the thing that possessed Remo stood.

In the thicket of carefully tended jungle, the reptile stirred. It had only been stunned. The flat, blunt head swayed back and forth, as if adjusting to the vibrations it felt through the bottom of the cage.

Remo felt himself step over the snake. The head lifted slightly and turned toward the new movement. He felt a tingle of evil jubilance in the pit of his own stomach.

Remo sensed what was really happening. The demon within him was only playing with the giant snake. It intended to toy with the creature, and when the entertainment value had at last been exhausted, it would slaughter the python in fulfillment of an ancient prophecy. This was somehow the final step toward the ultimate perversion of Remo's body. An inexplicable rite of passage.

And Remo felt a deep, helpless shame that his perfect body was being corrupted by this ancient demon.

He could not allow it to happen.

The snake slithered about his ankles once again. This time the demon within Remo anticipated the attack. He didn't fall.

While the inner presence was concentrating on the

300

external pressure of the predator snake, Remo willed himself loose.

The thick hide wrapped around his chest.

Remo forced himself outward, pushing back to where his mind belonged. As he concentrated all his energy on a single, minuscule effort, he imagined sweat appearing on some internal brow. It was a small thing. But it would be proof that Remo was not totally helpless.

The snake pulled itself up around his neck and bobbed unsteadily in a gawking position a foot before the pale white face of its prey. A long flat tongue darted hungrily from its lipless mouth.

Remo pushed outward. Farther, farther.

The snake brought its alien snout closer. The huge coils below tightened.

With a phenomenal effort of will, Remo forced his index finger to twitch. The movement was quick and sharp. He felt the rough texture of the snake's hide against the pad of his finger.

He felt.

There was a flare of surprise from the presence within him.

Remo pushed again—hard. His hand twitched spas-tically. It rubbed along the interior of the coiled snake.

Something close to panic rose from the spirit of the Pythia within him. It was an inner remonstration. The Pythia had frittered away precious time when it should have first concentrated all of its efforts dispelling the last vestiges of consciousness from its latest vessel.

The rebirth was incomplete. To become the true Pythia, it had to kill the snake. And if the Pythia failed,

301

Apollo could not assert his presence in the modern world.

Both hands moved freely now. The shoulders rolled in a shrugging motion, pushing the snake down farther.

The spirit of the Pythia had underestimated Sinanju. Underestimated its power because of the weak-minded Tang so many years before.

The Pythia had assumed that the Remo-vessel was as corruptible as the others. But his training in Sinanju had made Remo stronger.

It could not fail its master, not now. Not when it was so close.

The Pythia forced its will upon its vessel once more.

Remo's hands wrapped around the python's throat. The Pythia squeezed.

The thin, merciless reptilian mouth dropped open as the creature gulped helplessly for air. It thrashed its head, but could not prevail. The giant tail swung around defensively, looping around Remo's ankles.

Remo had had possession of his body only briefly. With a murderous lunge the demon within him had reasserted itself. It felt as if his spirit had been knocked backward into his own mind. Remo concentrated harder, trying to assert mastery over his own body once more.

As the life ebbed from its heavy, limp frame, the tail of the snake began twitching reflexively. It was dying. And Remo was the instrument of its death.

Remo suddenly felt the huge thing he had sensed on the other side of the bleak internal horizon loom into view. The thing was giant. It strode across the barren terrain of his thoughts like a colossus. It was

302

nearly larger than his mind could conceive, greater than his consciousness could encompass. It was a vague mountain of pure evil. And it was moving toward him.

At that moment Remo realized that it would not be possible to defeat the thing within him in this place. He could quell it, stall it. But it could not be beaten.

Not while it still dwelled within him.

It would first need to be removed.

With a sudden desperate leap, Remo forced his spirit outward. In a flash of blinding energy he was in control of his body once more.

His limbs jolted at the sudden surge of energy in his muscles, and Remo, still wrapped in the loosened coils of the deadly python, dropped in a heap to the cage floor.

In a struggle that wasn't visible externally, but that exploded within him with a force more powerful than a supernova, Remo seized his essence from the spirit of the Pythia, taking hold of his own mind like a tenacious climber scrambling for a handhold above the precipice of his own darkest fears.

Desperately he held on to his body with his mind, with his will, with his very soul.

The snake, jarred loose by Remo's actions, relaxed its coils from around its slender prey, to slither off into the leaf-choked shadows, apparently deciding that its meal was no longer worth the effort needed to conquer.

Sweating and shivering, Remo climbed to his feet.

His mind had touched that of the creature within him—and he now knew what it had intended all along.

The Pythia was as much a servant of Apollo as the

303

vessels were servants to the Pythia. And the giant evil thing that had moved toward him in his thoughts was the spirit of the sun god himself, ready to take possession of Pythia's latest vessel.

East would meet West within him.

Remo felt the mocking presence at the periphery of his thoughts once again and knew it to be Apollo.

He couldn't beat him. He had quelled the spirit of Apollo for now, beaten the Pythia twice in as many days, but he couldn't fight this battle over and over again. It had taken all his inner strength to stave off the Pythia this time. Next time Remo couldn't hope to win. Not until he banished the spirit that lurked within the darkest recesses of his own mind.

The spirit had slithered into his mind via the smoke and steam of the Pythia Pit, and instinct told him that any hope of separating their intertwined minds resided in the rocky hillock of the modern Delphic temple far to the west.

Remo would have to return to Ranch Ragnarok.

His jaw set in grim determination, Remo jumped down from the cage.

Behind him the torpid python slept peacefully in the shadows.

In a darkened basement room on Long Island Sound, a pair of hazel eyes opened with a start.

The only sound to stir in the room in more than six hours was that of the heavy door opening and closing.

Kaspar was standing atop the Pythia platform in his pale priestly vestments.

This was odd, thought Esther Clear-Seer. He hadn't worn the strange pagan robes since the young Sinanju Master had fled into the night two days before.

Kaspar glared angrily at Esther as she mounted the stairs.

"What is this?" he demanded, pointing.

Behind him, sandwiched between two burly Truth Church acolytes, was Buffy Brand. The young girl looked pale and shaken.

"This is the sneaking Fed I caught with Cole's daughter," Esther explained, forcing a steady tone. She noted with surprise that Lori Cole was seated once more atop the small wooden tripod. All that was missing from the strange scene was the noxious yellow smoke. A column of vaporous steam rose up from the rock fissure. That was all.

Kaspar tapped his foot impatiently. "She is still alive," he said, extending an index finger toward Buffy.

"Oh, I didn't tell you?" Esther returned blandly.

"You told me you killed her."

Esther shook her head. "I told you I took care of

305

her," she corrected. "And I did. And what were you doing snooping around the bunkers?"

Kaspar grew angry. "She escaped," he hissed at Esther. ' 'We were lucky one of the patrols stumbled upon her."

It was Esther who was angry now as she turned on Buffy. She thought she had locked the girl securely away in a tiny punishment cubicle in one of the rear bunkers. Perhaps the girl might have compatriots on the Truth Church grounds, she thought. "How did you get out?" she demanded.

Buffy refused to respond. Her mouth was twisted shut in defiance.

Esther turned back to Kaspar. "It doesn't matter anymore," she said firmly. "She didn't escape."

"The young one from Sinanju was able to escape in spite of his injuries," Kaspar countered. "I am wondering now if it was this little spy who aided him."

Esther suddenly remembered the two rows of dead Truth Church guards who had ambushed Remo within the Ragnarok compound. The video cameras and explosives that night had been intended to disorient the young Sinanju Master named Remo and lure him back to the Pythia Pit. Esther had been surprised to find that so many of the guards had been shot from behind. They didn't have video on the incident. She assumed that Remo had captured a weapon and assassinated the acolytes himself.

"So what if she helped the guy escape?" Esther said, knowing that it did indeed make a great deal of difference. "He hasn't blabbed to the FBI yet. He's

306

probably lying dead somewhere out in the greasewood scrub."

"You are a fool," Kaspar snapped.

"Not as big a one as you are," Esther replied calmly. "Look, it would be better for us in court if we kept this one alive."

"That's good advice," Buffy said, glaring at Kaspar. "The two of you are finished."

Buffy had given up struggling long before. Her hands were bound with thick rope cords, and her wrists were bloodied from trying to twist herself free. The Truth Church acolytes squeezed her biceps in their meaty fists. She subsided.

"Now, now," Esther remonstrated. "Remember the Book of Samuel, wherein we are instructed by our Lord to turn the other cheek."

"There is no Book of Samuel," Buffy said flatly. "And I prefer Revelations." She began quoting. '"And the beast was seized and with it the false prophet. And these two were cast alive into the pool of fire that burns with brimstone.'" Buffy's stare bore into the blackened soul of Esther Clear-Seer, and when the young woman smiled her perfect smile, it was sincere.

Esther shivered involuntarily. The Feds these days were getting creepier and creepier.

"Okay—you win. Go ahead and kill her," she muttered to Kaspar.

"No," Kaspar said. "She is to be a sacrifice to my master..."

Esther arched a very black eyebrow. "Graduated from goats, have you?"

"And you will perform the sacrifice."

307

Esther waved the suggestion away. "I don't stoop to slaughtering goats or lambs," she said. "Have one of the acolytes do it."

"You will perform the ritual, for it was you who saw fit to hide this spy from my sight. Perhaps this will help you to better grasp your earthly obligations."

Esther bit her tart tongue. No point in arguing. Just kill the girl and get on with her life. She dared not tell him that she had driven out to Hot Springs State Park and released the last Pythia into the wild like a captivity-bred condor. Her mind was shot, and she'd probably die from exposure. But if she survived, Esther could always claim at the trial she tried to help the girl out.

"Do you want me to do it now?" she asked, controlling herself.

Kaspar shook his head. "It is not the appointed time. Are your acolytes in readiness for the senator's reception?"

Esther nodded. "Everything's set. After today I doubt they'll be my acolytes any longer. No way can the Truth Church survive the hell about to break loose in Thermopolis."

"Oh, it will survive," Kaspar assured her. "When my master returns to us, we will unleash power greater than any seen on this planet in two millennia."

Kaspar turned away from Esther and began fussing around the tripod and the Cole girl. "Go supervise the operation," he said dismissively. "Be certain that nothing goes wrong."

Esther had decided not to ask how Kaspar knew for certain that his master was returning. But as she crossed the platform, it came to her.

308

She could see down through the grate beneath the small stool. The stone urn had been replaced on the outcropping of rock within the jagged crevice. And Esther saw with alarm that the yellow powder within it was glowing.

Harold W. Smith had locked his briefcase in the trunk of his rental car before hiking more than three miles to the center of Thermopolis, Wyoming.

He guessed by the choke of cars parked at the outskirts of town and the increasing noise as he got closer to Arapahoe Street that the Hot Springs State Fair was a big event in this part of the state. But still Smith was surprised by the sheer numbers of people who had migrated to what was just an ordinary sleepy Western town.

Compared to the state fair, the rally held for Senator Cole a few weeks earlier looked, in retrospect, like an anemic Rotary Club meeting.

That was not to say the earlier event hadn't been large for a town Thermopolis's size. It was just that the state fair was something everyone in the area could enjoy, election year or not.

The downtown area had been blocked off to all through traffic. Dozens of large green-and-white-striped tents had been propped up in the park across from city hall. Some straddled the asphalt strip on Arapahoe Street between the small brick library building and the new post office/minimall.

Hundreds upon hundreds of people were crowded into the vicinity of Arapahoe between Cottonwood Street and Beartooth Road. The park was clogged with a sea of bobbing heads.

309

There were still a great many Cole banners flapping gaily in the seasonably cool breeze. Signs in support of the senator hung on telephone poles as far as the eye could see. One had been slung down the side of the four-story office building adjacent to the city hall, but few people paid them any attention. This was a day to forget about politics.

There were no Calhoun posters in sight—the few who had hung signs in defiance of the overwhelming support for Senator Cole having lost their nerve since their candidate dropped out of the race. A coming grand-jury investigation into the molestation charges didn't bolster partisan confidence any.

As Smith moved uncomfortably through the sea of pedestrians, he thought it odd that there seemed to be almost as many Mark Kaspar posters in the crowd as there were Jackson Cole placards. In a few acts of random political zealotry, some had been stapled over Cole posters. But most were mingling within the body of the crowd, carried on poles by roving ideologues. It seemed to Smith he could not walk ten feet without bumping into noisy Kaspar supporters.

On the posters Mark Kaspar's face showed an uncharacteristic grin from a larger-than-life center square that was framed on three sides by a patriotic red, white and blue border. Beneath the picture on a block of white, large stenciled letters proclaimed Mark Kaspar, Man Of The Era.

His supporters carried Kaspar's reptilian face around determinedly on the ends of their sticks, annoying the hometown crowd who overwhelmingly supported the popular incumbent senator.

Smith asked around and found that Cole had not yet

310

made his appearance. When asked where the senator might be, a few people pointed vaguely in the direction of a potbellied man in an out-of-style polyester suit and a big foam campaign hat.

Smith found, upon questioning the man, that he was mayor of Thermopolis and that, even though he wasn't really supposed to tell anyone, he'd let Smith in on a little secret. The senator was in the last closed-off tent beyond the peanut vendors.

"And he better get out here soon," the mayor enthused. ' 'This is a big, happy hometown crowd. Great place for a politician to press the flesh. Damn great place." Someone called out to him, and the mayor made a beeline back to the Buckhorn beer booth.

As he hurried to the last tent, nearly colliding with one of the pole-carrying Kaspar supporters, Smith wondered how many other people the mayor had spoken to.

At the tent Smith found his path barred.

"Excuse me, sir," a Cole staffer said firmly. "No admittance to the general public. But I'll convey your support to the senator." He tried to steer this gray-flannel supporter away from the flap of the senator's tent, but found that he would not be moved.

Smith produced a card that identified him as a member of the United States Secret Service and held it beneath the upturned nose of the senator's staffer.

The clean-shaved young man checked the card scrupulously. He then looked the unhappy-looking man in the nondescript gray suit up and down critically.

"You're a little old for Secret Service, aren't you, Pops?"

"It is not your place to make that observation,"

311

Smith said forcefully, as if to explain away his advanced years. Experience had taught him that most things said with authority were accepted without question. He returned the ID to his pocket.

"Guess not," the man said agreeably. He was nervously scanning the crowd, concerned the senator's tent would be overrun if he left his post for a minute.

Smith glanced at the crowd. Although there appeared to be more Kaspar signs gathered at this end of Arapahoe Street than anywhere else, no one seemed much interested in the last tent. In point of fact, it was the presence of the overly vigilant staffer who had planted himself outside the closed flap that seemed to have attracted the most attention.

When the staffer was finally persuaded things would not fall apart if he abandoned his post for a few seconds, he led Smith inside.

The atmosphere within the tent was not quite that of a political nerve center. About a dozen people milled about. Some local politicians in sweat-stained suits, taking their jobs on the Thermopolis city council far too seriously; a few Cole aides; a couple of the senator's friends—local business people who had stopped to wish him well and ended up chatting among themselves.

Senator Jackson Cole was in his shirtsleeves, sitting cross-legged on one of the several dozen metal folding chairs that had been left in the tent for his convenience. Most were folded and leaning up against a rickety old table, but the senator had found himself a nice spot on the trampled grass floor to unfold his seat. He was scanning a few sheets of fax paper through a

312

pair of granny-style bifocals. He looked like a balding condor in cowboy boots.

"Senator Cole," Smith said, stepping away from the tent flap.

The senator glanced up, seemingly annoyed at the unfamiliar voice. He gave his nervous assistant a displeased look.

"It's okay, Senator," the young man explained, motioning to Smith. "He's Secret Service."

Cole looked at the proffered card suspiciously, then returned it to Smith.

"So what do you want?" he asked. His voice suggested a perpetual peevishness, and a slightly protruding lower jaw caused him to whistle softly when he pronounced the letter 5.

"The President was concerned for your safety, sir," Smith said. "With the strange circumstances surrounding this campaign so far, he thought it best you have some kind of protection."

"So he sent you?" Cole said with a tired chuckle. "You look like you last saw duty under ol' LBJ."

"He was concerned," Smith repeated, unfazed by the senatorial dig.

Cole removed his glasses and wearily massaged his eyelids beneath large bony fingers.

"You're a couple days too late. You realize that, don't you, Smith?" he asked.

"I was given a full briefing before leaving Washington," Smith replied. "I am sorry about your daughter."

The staffer visibly winced. It was obvious the campaign staff had been avoiding the subject of the kidnapping.

313

Cole looked up at the Secret Service agent with something bordering on respect.

"Appreciate the good thought," he said.

Smith hunched awkwardly beneath the sloping green-and-white stripes of the tent roof. His eyes were determined gray flecks beneath his rimless glasses.

Cole nodded to Smith. It was a gesture of respect, as much as one of appreciation. He stood up, grabbing his suit jacket from the folding chair.

"Let's go out and kiss some babies," he announced with a tight smile.

As he ushered his nervous aides and the Secret Service agent from the tent, in his heart Jackson Cole wished more than anything that he could kiss his own baby again.

Remo hailed a taxi at the airport.

At first the cabbie was reluctant to drive as far as Thermopolis. The round trip would take a couple of hours minimum, and besides, the fare in the back seat had a hacking cough that sounded like he belongedyin a TB clinic. It didn't help that he also reeked like a pile of sun-ripened eggs.

Remo had persuaded the cabbie to change his mind by peeling hundred-dollar bills from the thick roll of cash in his pocket. When the man ceased griping and started drooling, Remo stopped peeling.

Every route into Thermopolis was tied up for some kind of festival, Remo saw. The driver had been forced to take a dozen detours before they finally turned onto the familiar road that led out to the Truth Church ranch.

The taxi deposited Remo near the blinking yellow light, and Remo slipped into the woods as the car drove away.

Remo encountered no patrols as he moved onto one of the wooded paths that led up to the main ranch compound.

The guard towers at the perimeter looked abandoned.

315

As he approached, Remo sensed no hum from the electrified fence. Just deadness. It was just as well. He was in no mood for acrobatics.

Coming to a side gate, Remo stepped up onto a square of raised concrete in which an anchoring hurricane fence pole had been sunk. He gripped the pipe in his hands and pulled. Concrete dust exploded around his shoes like clods of trampled dirt. With a protesting cry of metal, the pole wrenched free of the mortar.

There was a steady snap, snap, snap of metal fence links as Remo pulled the pole back toward him. When he was finished, Remo rolled the chain-link section around the pole and dumped it off to one side. It clung limply to the next upright post, bouncing slightly.

As he stepped through the newly formed gate, Remo was startled by a voice behind him.

"How fortunate for you that the power was not on," the voice said.

Remo wheeled.

The Master of Sinanju stood beside the guard tower, a blot in a crimson kimono. His bony hands were tucked inside the voluminous sleeves, which lay across his belly.

"How did you find me, Little Father?" Remo asked quietly.

"I followed the smell," Chiun explained simply.

Remo nodded. For some reason the strong sulphur odor around him had grown more powerful since the incident at the zoo.

"You shouldn't have come," Remo said, shaking his head slowly. "I don't want this thing inside me attacking you, too."

1

316

"I am safe," said Chiun. "It is you the sun god seeks."

Remo smiled darkly. "So, you here to give me a pep talk?"

Chiun's eyes thinned. "I am here because I am here."

Before he could reply, a sudden coughing spasm fshook Remo.

"It is worse?" Chiun asked, face quirking up in concern.

The fit of coughing abated. Remo nodded. "A little," he admitted, wiping tears from his watering eyes. Something seemed to drain from him at this small effort. All at once he gripped his head in his hands in a burst of frustration. If only he could shake the presence within him.

"I don't think I can beat this thing, Chiun. It's already too powerful." When he looked into the old man's eyes, the tears on Remo's face were no longer the by-product of coughing. "I'm sorry I let you down, Little Father," he choked out. "I wasn't strong enough to fight it."

Remo turned away. He wanted to hit something. He wanted to throw something. He wanted to rip something apart and shred it with his bare hands. Anything to quell the feeling of loss and utter helplessness welling up inside him. Instead, Remo found himself staring sullenly at the hard-trampled earth at Chiun's black-sandaled feet.

Chiun's wrinkled visage had grown stiff. "I will not hear this foolishness, Remo. You have let nothing down but your guard. Despite the tumult in your mind, your essence lives." He lifted his bearded chin

317

proudly. His scrawny neck extended like a turtle's from its shell. "Hear this now, my son. Every day you breathe brings glory upon the House of Sinanju. You do not let me down, because I will not allow this."

In spite of the mocking presence in his mind, a swelling pride at Chiun's words took root within Remo.

"I will do my best, Little Father," he said, bowing to his Master.

"That is what I expect from you," Chiun replied with a nod of satisfaction. "For having been trained by the best, only the best resides within you."

"So, you going to wait here for me?" Remo asked. He feared this might be the last time he would ever see Chiun. A part of him did not want the moment to end.

Chiun shook his head. "I must now join Emperor Smith in town."

"Smitty's in Thermopolis?" Remo asked. "Why?"

Chiun shrugged. "The day I understand Smith is the day I surrender sanity,** he said. "But I have an obligation to my emperor." He started across the expanse between the fence and the woods, but paused after only a few feet. "Remember, Remo, the spirit of Apollo resides in the smoke. Be wary of it always."

They both seemed on the verge of saying more, but at last they bowed with respectful heads, then turned to their respective paths.

A few hundred yards from the first concrete building, Remo looked back. Chiun had already reached the edge of the forest. A moment later he was gone.

As he scanned the empty plain, Remo's eyes

318

alighted on one of the vacant guard towers. Where were the Truth Church guards?

He made hard fists and spun back toward the buildings.

"Be careful, Little Father," he said softly to himself.

And somewhere in his mind he thought he heard Chiun's voice warning him to do the same.

"So, what are you, like Clint Eastwood in that movie?"

Smith raised a narrow grayish eyebrow. He was, of course, aware of the actor, but he had not seen one of his films in more than twenty years. He shrugged his incomprehension at the young Senator Cole staffer.

"You know, the one where he played the over-the-hill Secret Service agent?" he reminded. "I figured you must have seen it a hundred times."

The staffer had been stung by the way the senator had warmed up to Smith. He knew that in some circles it would be considered a pretty trivial thing to be worked up over, but in Washington entire careers had been built on things far less petty.

The staffer bobbed along annoyingly beside him as Smith attempted to survey the crowd. As far as the CURE director could tell, about twenty thousand people jammed Arapahoe Street, and so far he had only seen two uniformed police officers.

If an attack came, he would be alone defending Senator Cole.

The senator appeared to be unfazed by the crush of people. He worked the crowd like a consummate professional, calling many people by name.

319

Smith didn't know what he was looking for, but his old instincts were alert. He sensed there was some kind of danger lurking just out of sight in the crowd.

As Senator Cole grabbed a few outstretched hands, his entourage moved deeper into the packed corridor of humanity that lined the street.

Smith's eyes scanned the crowd on either side as they went, carefully keeping things in view.

If he had looked more carefully behind, he would have noticed several Mark Kaspar campaign posters had drifted up, and were now following a safe distance in their wake.

Remo didn't bother with the bunker tunnels. He had gone straight to the old airplane hangar on the adjacent lot.

The goat pen he had seen on his first visit to the ranch was less full this day. The animals bleated in fear at his approach. ,

Remo rounded the back of the building from the direction opposite the one in which he had escaped—with Buffy Brand's help—earlier in the week. It was because he had not left by this route that he had not seen the pile of rotting carcasses.

Remo almost fell into it.

A shallow pit had been dug, but was nearly obscured by the mountain of dead goats piled on this side of the hangar. The ground around the pit was damp with oozing fluids.

The remains of Kaspar's sacrificial animals.

Pounds of powdered limestone had been shoveled onto the pitiful bodies. But no amount of lime would have masked the horrid stench. The stink of rotten

320

flesh attracted all manner of scavenger insects. The air teemed with thick black swarms of flies. They bred in the naked eye sockets of the small corpses, and the oldest of the bodies were covered in part by wriggling white maggots.

Carrion flies buzzed and swirled around his head as Remo moved toward the hangar's side door. He steadied himself as he took hold of the handle.

The separate consciousness within his mind seemed poised to attack. He didn't know if opening the door to the Pythia chamber would unleash the floodgates once again. It had taken nearly every bit of strength he had to overthrow the presence of the Pythia back in the zoo.

And what of Apollo?

Remo didn't know if he was up to another conflict with the lesser entity of Apollo's emissary. The power of the sun god would surely be too great to withstand.

His only chance—a hunch really—would be to bound up to the top of the platform and to attempt to expel the spirit residing within him into the steam emanating from the fissure before Apollo could take full control of his mind. For Remo knew if that happened, the battle would be lost.

Nerves tight, Remo flung open the door and leaped into the Pythia chamber.

The noxious yellow smoke overtook him immediately.

A fresh cloud of the sickly sulphur fog belched up from the crevice like ash from a jaundiced volcano. It flowed around the room, slipping into every corner, enveloping Remo like an enticing shroud.

He grabbed the door frame for support.

321

A voice cried out.

"Remo!"

His head swam. His vision blurred. He was seeing everything around him in a whirling kaleidoscope of overlapping images. Remo looked up, eyes seeking the point where he thought the voice had come from.

Buffy Brand was manacled at the top of the rocky hill. Her ankles and wrists were snapped securely in twin sets of iron shackles. The leg irons were fastened to the stone platform by a heavy length of chain.

Remo felt the spirit of the Pythia washing over the dams he had built up in his mind. It was like a violently roiling flood, sweeping away a helplessly inadequate levee made of twigs and sand.

He focused on the bottom step.

Must get to the top.

Remo took a few clumsy steps into the chamber.

"Get out of here, Remo!" Buffy yelled.

He didn't know where the voice came from this time. It was Buffy once again, but the disorienting effect of the swelling tide in his brain was worsening with every step. He couldn't tell if she was before him or behind.

His foot touched the first step.

The footfall was somehow soft and echoey. And far away.

Another step.

The black battlefield returned in Remo's mind. This time the bleak sky of the vision, which had been black, as well, was painted in sickly smears of bloody red.

The third step.

The combatants appeared. One vicious, the other docile.

322

Over the horizon a black shape grew like time-lapse photos of the birth of a mountain.

Remo forced himself up. Must make it to the top.

He took the next half-dozen steps in jerky, uncertain strides, twice almost tumbling backward. Charged by some unseen electrical force, the yellow smoke crackled in minilightning bursts all around him. Remo bulled through it all.

Somehow, some way he reached the top.

The Cole girl. Somewhere in his mind Remo recognized her for who she really was. She sat on the tripod, glassy-eyed, face dead of all emotion.

Buffy Brand was to the girl's right. She stared at Remo with frightened eyes and babbled some warning that he couldn't understand.

The world swam around him in swirls of colored light.

He moved across the platform.

The presence was seeping through Remo's disordered mind once more.

It was strangely comforting this time. Somehow here, in the Pythia Pit, it was soft and inviting, rather than something he should fear. It was something to accept. To embrace.

The thing that told him he should fight was small and weak within him. It was easy to ignore that stubborn part of his mind.

East had met West. It was his destiny.

Through drunken eyes, Remo watched someone else step out from behind a tapestry at the far end of the platform. A little man dressed in strange robes. He was uttering incantations that Remo couldn't understand. For a brief instant he thought he should

323

recognize the man, but in his drunken state he couldn't tell. Remo ignored him and moved toward the tripod.

The Cole girl rose at his approach.

As if in some prearranged ritual, she moved aside as he stepped on the metal grate that traversed the rocky fissure.

Smoke poured from the crevice as thick as that from an oil-well fire.

It was his destiny. East had met West. There was no sense fighting destiny. Especially his own.

Carefully Remo took his seat on the tripod of Apollo's Pythia.

The white-robed man whom Remo thought he should have recognized stepped in front of him. He wore a wicked smile as he stared coldly into Remo's dilating pupils.

On the battlefield of his mind, Remo watched the fierce combatant strike a final, terminal blow against his docile opponent. And for the first time Remo saw the face of the victim. As the body fell to the barren plain, Remo saw that the combatant's face was his own.

And in that minuscule part of his mind that he could still call his own, Remo bade a silent farewell to his father and teacher, the Master of Sinanju.

Harold Smith didn't know what he had done to rankle Senator Cole's assistant, but he wished there was some way he could take whatever it was back. The young idiot was becoming a nuisance.

"When was the last time you fired a gun, Pops?" The question was asked with a malice bordering on glee.

324

Smith continued to watch the crowd surging around them as the senator chatted with a group of older women near a booth that was stocked from top to bottom with rag dolls, patchwork quilts and a dozen other handmade items.

"I am regularly recertified." Smith didn't look at the young man as he spoke.

"No, did you ever fire at someone?" the staffer asked. He seemed to consider this a kind of witticism, for there was a humorous, self-congratulatory glint in the depths of his eyes.

"That is not something I wish to share with you," Smith replied. He noticed a woman standing over by one of the concession stands who was eyeing the senator strangely. She had a kerchief wrapped around her head, and wore a pair of dark sunglasses so large they made her look almost like an oversize insect. Was she looking this way or wasn't she? Smith couldn't tell for sure.

A moment later she had turned away, becoming fixated on something on the other side of the pavilion.

Probably just trying to find a lost friend, Smith decided, and continued scanning the crowd.

There certainly were a lot of supporters carrying Mark Kaspar signs beneath the tent. Some of them had to crouch so that the long poles didn't get caught against the festive, multicolored tarpaulin roof.

They seemed to be converging in Cole's general area.

Smith turned his attention back to the woman in the sunglasses.

What was it about her? She was somehow familiar....

325

She seemed to be nodding to a cluster of supporters carrying Kaspar signs. Never uttered a word, but it appeared as if those she nodded to understood some unspoken command.

As she stepped from the cover of the tent back out into the bright sunlight, it suddenly occurred to Smith where he knew her from. He had seen her face several times while he was researching the Church of the Absolute and Incontrovertible Truth. She had even worn the same sunglasses in one picture.

Esther Clear-Seer.

The people with the signs supported Mark Kaspar. And they had surrounded Senator Jackson Cole on all sides.

"At your age, you probably need help loading the magazine, huh?" the Cole staffer was saying.

The young man chuckled at his own comment. The chuckle mutated into a choked gurgle when the part of his brain that controlled the laughing function was rudely disrupted by a small piece of soft lead that had traveled at great velocity from the other side of the tent.

The staffer's forehead exploded outward. Then the sound of the gunshot registered on this end of the tent. Dollops of blood and sticky gray brain sludge splattered across a quilt depicting meticulously sewn scenes of early Wyoming pioneer life.

The staffer fell to his knees, his mouth sagging in shock. Before he had even hit the asphalt, Smith had drawn his own gun and, crouching like a football lineman, threw one gray shoulder into the back of Senator Cole. The force propelled Cole through the open

326

wooden archway of the quilting booth. When a second shot rang out, Smith threw himself atop the senator.

A fat woman Cole had been speaking with was struck in the shoulder by the bullet. It spun her around like a confused dancer without a partner. She dropped heavily to her ample bottom, stunned. A fountain of red burbled up from beneath her smart cotton blouse.

Screaming erupted all around. Most people had frozen in shock when the first shot rang out. By the second they were shocked out of their shock. The crowd under the tent scrambled in all directions.

Behind the cover of the small booth, Senator Cole sat stunned and blinking like a stupefied ostrich.

No time to check on him now. As he and Cole had ducked for cover, Smith registered the Kaspar campaigners drawing weapons from beneath their candidate's smiling face. They had been concealed in the hollow centers of the poles on which they had carried their posters.

The front of the booth was draped across with a sheet of wide crepe paper. Smith tore a hole large enough to see out across the main body of the tent.

Pairs of nervous legs went scampering close by. Not much farther away he could see an advancing group of armed men. Smith aimed his automatic at the closest gunman and pulled the trigger.

A satisfying explosion came from the heavy gun. The bullet struck the first man dead center in the chest. He toppled backward, his rifle clattering away from his twitching fingers.

The rest scattered like roaches, taking cover behind the dozen other carnival stands that stretched across the far side of the tent.

327

The burp of an automatic weapon preceded a shower of bullets across the open face of the booth where Smith and Cole were hidden. Fabric from shrapnel-torn quilts exploded in every direction, blowing wildly from the various impact points before settling softly to the asphalt floor.

A gunman appeared over the top of one of the concession counters. But before he was able to squeeze the trigger on his AR-15, Smith loosed two more shots. The gunman flung up his arms, then he sank behind the counter. He didn't appear again.

"Who is it?" Cole hissed. "Who's trying to get me?"

Smith was surprised that the man sounded so calm. Probably still in shock.

"I believe they are members of the Truth Church, Senator."

Cole screwed up his leathery face in confusion. "The cult?" he asked.

Smith had no time to respond. Two other members of the Truth Church were moving out from behind the raffle stand. They moved from folding chairs to tables, and when they were close enough, Smith fired his last three shots at the pair. He only hit one.

Jamming a hand into his jacket pocket, Smith fumbled for the spare ammunition clip he brought with him. But even as he did, he knew that if the gunman had continued moving forward he wouldn't have time to reload before the assailant made it to the booth.

Smith had just rammed the clip home, and was yanking back on the slide, when he saw the barrel of the AR-15 appear over the counter of the booth above their heads like the snout of a curious anteater.

328

Another second, and the barrel would be aimed at them. A second after that, Harold W. Smith and Senator Jackson Cole would be dead.

But those two seconds were precisely two seconds too long.

A shrill voice ripped the deathly still air.

"Hold, vassal of evil!"

A blur of crimson whirled across Smith's field of vision.

Before he knew what had happened, the rifle had vanished back over the top of the counter. Smith again peeked out through the hole in the booth, and he saw the gunman lying facedown on the ground, his own weapon jutting from his back like the dorsal fin of a shark.

A wizened face appeared over the counter.

"What are you doing here!" Smith exploded. "Where is Remo?"

The Master of Sinanju's eyes grew heavy of lid.

"Normally, when one preserves the life of one's emperor, the skies rain soft gold, not hard questions," Chiun said aridly.

Smith pushed himself up to a crouching position. "There are other assailants here," he warned Chiun.

"I will deal with such ruffians," Chiun said. "I have cleared a path so that you may lead your charge to safety." He gestured back in the direction from which he had come, behind Smith.

Smith glanced over his shoulder. He saw a motionless leg lying at an unnatural angle through the nearby rear tent flap. Close by lay a trampled Mark Kaspar poster.

329

Without another word Chiun moved toward the center of the tent.

The other members of the Truth Church, emboldened by the absence of return gunfire, had come out of hiding and were again advancing on Smith's position.

Like a fiery red dervish, Chiun swirled into the center of the mob.

One gunman, then another, raised their weapons to fire upon the Master of Sinanju. But it seemed as if he was never where they expected him to be. And as they redirected their fire, trying to fix their bizarre target, one by one they began dropping.

Smith watched for a moment. Only when he was certain that Chiun had crowded the remaining gunmen inside did he urge the senator to his feet. The two men scurried, crouching, out the rear tent flap to safety.

Esther Clear-Seer had watched the attack from a safe distance outside the tent.

The crowds had swarmed around her when the shooting started, but by this time most had fled screaming to safety. Aside from her Truth Church acolytes, Arapahoe Street was all but deserted.

She had no idea who the old guy with Cole was, but when she heard the last of eight bullets fired and didn't hear another as her men approached the booth, she was certain that the senator was finished.

And then the Asian had surged out of nowhere, arms high, face a thundercloud of righteous wrath.

He was the same old Asian who had come to her ranch with that Remo. The one who had broken her nose. The one Kaspar called the Master of Sinanju.

330

Esther had looked forward to seeing that old fossil again. She wanted to teach him a lesson that would never let him contemplate again blackening both all-seeing eyes and impacting her holy sinus cavities.

And it was just fine with her if her loyal acolytes did all the maiming and bone busting for her.

The old man was quickly surrounded. He disappeared under the bigger and taller bodies that closed in with slow, steady menace.

Esther Clear-Seer smiled. This would be worth waiting for.

When the bodies of her Truth Church acolytes began dropping around the feet of the old man, she changed her evil mind. It might be better for her own personal safety if she watched the proceedings from an even greater distance, after all.

In a blind panic Esther Clear-Seer turned and ran after the last remnants of the fleeing crowd, and her ears filled with the ugly, too-familiar sound of bones breaking and shattering.

Chapter Twenty-One

first the blackness was complete.

But then slowly, almost imperceptibly, scenery began to resolve from the darkness around him. Shades of gray appeared as the ink of total blackness bled away, illuminating some areas, highlighting others.

The flickering mirage congealed into a familiar setting.

It was the expansive plain on which the two warriors had battled. As the lighter shades of gray took hold in the lowering sky, Remo knew now that it was no longer the scene of his tortured visions, but the actual field itself. He didn't know how he knew this.

As he walked along, Remo felt the solid earth beneath his feet, breathed the air of the strange perpetual twilight.

Were he to walk a hundred yards or a hundred years, he would never be able to tell.

The plain was perfectly flat and bare. He detected no vegetation, no animals. As far as the eye could see, there was not even a solitary stone. Just more of the same bleak, barren expanse stretching limitlessly off to the unreachable point where land met sky.

And the sky itself seemed nothing more than a va-

332

cant extension of the land. It was a sky without sun or stars or moon. Without life.

Remo walked on to a point that he knew instinctively to be the center of the plain. He had no idea from where this knowledge came, but when he reached the middle, he stopped and turned.

And there behind him was the weird figure who had struck down the helpless combatant of his thoughts.

Remo could see the warrior clearly now, though his mind still couldn't reconcile the image. A creature dressed in yellow smoke, the foul exhalations of the pit. Remo knew it to be the Pythia.

Their roles now were reversed. Remo could see the giant looming shape of his prior visions floating at some indistinct point in the distance. He realized on some primal level that this was where he should rightfully be. Apollo had assumed control of his body, and the Pythia now stood guard against the threat from within.

That threat was Remo.

The figure of the Pythia raised its hands and took up a menacing posture.

"Night tiger of Sinanju, you continue to fight." It was a statement of fact.

Remo stood his ground. "I do," he replied.

"That which you consider your soul should have fled into the Void when my master assumed his predestined place in the world of mortals. If you fail to leave of your own volition, Sinanju, it is within my power to destroy your essence for all eternity. You will know neither pleasure nor pain nor hope nor sorrow. You will not be wept for, for you will not have existed. Is this your desire?"

333

This creature had mocked him in his thoughts, usurped his mind, spirited him from the physical world into this hellish twilight. And now it threatened to rob Remo of his soul if he didn't go peacefully into the Void.

It offered him a simple choice...but Remo was prepared to make neither. He instead chose that which the Pythia did not offer.

In the vision in his mind, Remo forced himself to smile.

"Take your best shot, smoky."

And a deadly hand lashed out at Remo's indomitable form.

Esther Clear-Seer was breathless when she burst into the Pythia chamber. She began gagging on the thick sulphur smoke as she tried to suck down lungfuls of air.

"That old Sinanju guy is in town," she panted to Kaspar, repressing her gag reflex at the noxious stench.

Kaspar, poised expectantly at the apex of the Pythia platform, was indifferent to Esther's report. "It does not matter," he said with a wave of the hand.

"Like hell it doesn't," Esther said, mounting the stairs. She noticed Lori Cole sitting off to one side of the platform. "When I took off, he'd already taken out at least a dozen of my crack acolytes. It took me three years to build my following back to this level, and you've got jne sacrificing all of them like lambs in one afternoon. Plus I think Cole got away."

This news nearly got a reaction out of Kaspar, but at that moment the eyes of what had been Remo Wil-

334

Hams fluttered open. The head moved around, as if testing the bones and muscles of the neck for the first time. The eyes this time seemed more focused than those of the others who had straddled the wooden tripod.

Kaspar appeared to be fascinated by every movement the man on the stool made. Esther realized that she wasn't going to get any sympathy out of him for the great setback the Truth Church had suffered that day.

"So he came back after all, huh?" she said, nodding to Remo.

When Kaspar looked back at her, his eyes were moist with barely containable joy. "He has indeed come back," he said reverently.

"Yeah, well...right." Esther shot a baffled look at Buffy Brand, who was still manacled beside the crevice. But the young girl was staring fearfully at the man on the stool.

And what had once been Remo spoke.

"I live," Remo pronounced to Kaspar in a voice that was not his. "East has met West. The prophecy is fulfilled."

And the eyes of Apollo incarnate looked with fiery satisfaction on the modern world.

Though the smoke of the Pythia's body appeared insubstantial, Remo's hands felt as though they were striking solid flesh and bone.

It was not as it had been in his mind.

Here, in this netherworld of his own thoughts, unencumbered by distractions of the natural world, Remo stood on an equal footing with the Pythia.

335

More than equal footing.

A fist snaked out with lightning speed from the cloud's left node. Remo deflected the blow easily. His own hand shot out, connecting sharply with the creature's midsection. The sound of expelled wind came from the Pythia, and Remo didn't know if in this strange ethereal plain he was seeing things as they really were—or fashioning in his own perception responses that were easier for his mind to understand.

He only knew the Pythia was injured.

The thing had been attempting to block him from passing over toward the spot where Apollo resided, but it now staggered to one side.

Remo's hand snapped out once more, and again it landed where the thing's belly should have been. Another gasp for air, and the Pythia weaved farther to one side. It raised its hands defensively.

It was almost too easy. Remo brought the side of his hand in a chopping motion against the temple of the Pythia.

The creature dropped to the plain, gasping for breath in a desperate, feeble gurgle.

Remo stepped beyond the stricken form. Apollo waited beyond.

Kaspar-s delight was boundless. Esther stood dumbly behind him. They faced the new Pythia.

"Your humble servant waits breathless to perform your earthly bidding," he said obsequiously. "I am eager to rule this land in your name."

The thing within Remo gave the appearance of looking down on Kaspar even though, seated, it was a good foot below the little man.

336

"All will be as my servant predicted," the voice said sonorously.

"The prophecy?" Kaspar said, licking his lips anxiously. "I will govern the land in which I dwell?"

"All will be as I have foreseen."

Kaspar couldn't contain his ecstasy. This was no longer the Pythia he spoke to. The servant of Apollo had been banished to some unimportant corner within the vessel. These words were spoken by the sun god himself—and they confirmed that he would rule the United States of America.

"I am humbled by the gifts you have bestowed upon me, my master," Kaspar said, bowing. "The sacrifice we now make is a homage to your ineffable greatness."

He pulled the ceremonial dagger from the scabbard at his waist and, turning, summoned Esther Clear-Seer to him.

Esther wasn't sure what was going on, but she understood enough to know that it was something more vast and powerful than she had ever encountered. Dumbly she walked over to Kaspar and took the proffered knife. He gestured to Buffy Brand, and like an automaton, Esther began walking stiffly over to the girl, all the time never taking her eyes off the creature on the tripod.

Buffy, as well, was fixated on the man on the stool. But as Esther approached, knife in hand, she began struggling fearfully, trying to pull away. The heavy chains at her wrists and ankles prevented her from moving.

As Esther raised the knife, ready to bring it slashing down and across Buffy's throat, a sudden scream dis-

337

tracted her. When she turned, she saw the mouth of what had been Remo opened in shock. The cruel face was a mask of rage and hate.

Kaspar stood before the tripod, surrounded in furious puffs of sickly sulphur smoke, a look of helpless confusion creasing his narrow features.

Before Kaspar could say or do anything, the head of Apollo slumped back to the body of its host vessel.

"Little man from Sinanju, you think you can best Apollo?" The voice was filled with anger and scorn.

Apollo appeared on the plain the instant Remo had stepped past the prone figure of the Pythia. He barred Remo's way.

The sun god wasn't as huge as he had appeared in the previous visions, but he was a powerful being nonetheless. He towered several feet above Remo. A giant among mortals. Around his shoulders was draped a cloak of fire, and across his back was slung a quiver filled with golden arrows. In his hand he held a mighty longbow. His face was a radiant bronze shield crowned by hair the color of sunshine. The eyes were reddish gold.

Wordlessly Remo took a step forward.

A hand flew faster than Remo's eyes could detect. Up, around, behind. A golden blur raced from the center of the bowstring.

Remo felt the arrow strike his shoulder. It thumped him back a pace, throwing him off stride. A second arrow flew, striking just below the first. He tried to take another step, but a third arrow, then a fourth and fifth in rapid succession knocked him back in place.

The arrows continued to fly. Each time Remo was

338

sure the quiver must be empty, another deadly missile hurtled through the air of the netherworld.

His body was racked in pain. Blood flowed freely from hundreds of open wounds. Through it all, Remo did not fall. He refused to.

When the pain became too great and Remo was certain that his mind could no longer endure the torment of this other world, he suddenly felt another presence explode in white-hot brilliance in his thoughts.

It was something that was vast beyond his comprehension, but it didn't belong to the sinister creatures that had inhabited his thoughts of late. This was a presence that was neither evil nor judgmental, but was, incongruously, fierce and violent all the same. It was a force so powerful that it could not be reconciled to the modern world.

And it was familiar.

The force took over his will, but didn't attempt to obliterate Remo's consciousness. He remained a detached spectator, as he had been in the previous battles—but to a lesser degree. He was still his own self—yet now that self had become part of a greater whole.

And the force within him spoke and it did say, "Foolish minion of Greece! Save your simple tools of destruction for the ignorant who fear and serve you."

And in his mind Remo's hand swept down and yanked the arrows from his body as though they were nothing more than feathers. When he again looked up, he was on a level with the creature before him.

"I will have my due," Apollo sneered. "Atonement for the destruction of my earthly temple by the fool

339

Tang. It is as I have foreseen—East has met West. The night tiger belongs to the gods."

The being within Remo threw back its head and laughed loudly at the endless black sky. "East has met West, fool," it spit. "But / am fulfillment of your prophecy."

Apollo grew angry of tone. "Who is this who speaks to me from the mind of my Sinanju vessel?" he demanded.

And the voice within Remo intoned, "I am created Shiva, the Destroyer—death, the shatterer of worlds. The dead night tiger made whole by the Master of Sinanju. Prepare to pay with blood, corrupter of my avatar, Shiva Remo."

He advanced on Apollo, hands floating before him like questing python heads, ready to strike a deadly blow.

And in this place of immortals that knew neither time nor space nor dimension, the spirit of the sun god felt fear.

"What's happening?" Esther Clear-Seer asked fearfully. The knife was forgotten. She had dropped it at the feet of Buffy Brand when the voices started emanating from the mouth of the vessel on the tripod.

They were strange and alien voices. Loud and fearful. A struggle was taking place somewhere within the heart of the vessel. The body twitched in tiny spasms as cries of pain and anguish issued from its mouth.

All at once the sounds ceased, and the body became still once more.

Kaspar shot a worried look at Esther Clear-Seer, who had backed fearfully to the top of the stone stair-

340

case. He stepped closer to the tripod, afraid that some unseen internal force had destroyed the integrity of the vessel. Remo's dark head was still slumped down on his chest, and there appeared to be no breathing coming from the vessel. Carefully Kaspar took a thick wrist in his hand, seeking a pulse.

The head suddenly rose. A pair of dead black eyes lifted, then bore into Kaspar's soul.

"Boo," said Remo Williams in his own voice.

Kaspar jumped as if shocked by electricity. He tried to pull away, but Remo had grabbed him by the arm. Kaspar stood rooted in place atop the metal grate as Remo got to his feet.

"This is not possible!" Kaspar yelled. He could feel the bones of his wrist shattering beneath the pressure of Remo's viselike grip. "My master prophesied my greatness! I will govern the land in which I dwell!"

"That is true," Remo said, and the smile that spread across his features was one of cruel joy. "But the land you govern is your own grave."

And with that Remo swung his other hand around and clapped it firmly atop Kaspar's head. As he held Kaspar in place with one hand, he pushed downward with the other.

In all, it took less than a minute. Remo made certain that Mark Kaspar was conscious until the last possible second. Kaspar's screams as his legs were shredded through the grate of the Pythia Pit grew more frenzied as his pelvis and torso passed into the crevice beneath.

It was as if he were being swallowed up by some breed of rock-dwelling shark, and the screams subsided as his heart muscle passed out the far end of the grate in three distinct sections. When it was all that

>

341

was left, Remo pressed down with the sole of his shoe on the skull, delivering Kaspar's brain with a final,

n< feeble snap into the belly of the dwindling yellow

v smoke.

f He turned on Esther Clear-Seer.

| She had watched, horrified, the whole time Kaspar

I was being shoved like a blob of pasta through a noodle maker. But when Remo turned his deep-set eyes on her, she began stepping backward down the stairs. Her hands lifted defensively. "He made me do it all," she said desperately. "I didn't even want to kidnap the girls. I thought it was stupid. Bad for business. He made me do it. He was the devil and he made me do it!" Remo hadn't moved. He stared at Esther as she continued inching down the stairs. ! "You kidnapped the girls," he said flatly.

\ "Hey, it was just another way to make a buck,"

, she said. Behind Remo she noticed that the yellow smoke began to pour more freely from the crevice beneath. She bit the inside of her cheek, stalling for time. Remo still hadn't moved. "I'm just a businesswoman at heart," Esther said with a shrug.

The smoke had gathered behind Buffy Brand, whose eyes were zipping back and forth between Esther and Remo. She never saw the thick yellow fog even as it shoved through her thin blouse and disappeared with her. The girl's back suddenly arched as if she had been stabbed between the shoulder blades. A glazed expression settled across her features and, without any warning, she threw the metal chain that bound her wrists around Remo's exposed throat.

Esther had been backing down the stairs slowly, but

i j

342

when the chain bit into Remo's flesh, she stopped completely.

Remo didn't struggle. He simply reached up and snapped one of the metal links. The two halves of the broken chain slithered uselessly over his shoulders. He broke the chain at Buffy's legs and lifted her away from the rocky crevice, setting her carefully atop the platform.

Esther took this as her cue to leave. Heart beating like a trip-hammer, she turned and raced down the remainder of the stairs.

Once Buffy was safe, Remo bounded to the top of the staircase and, with a simple flex of his calf muscles, launched himself from the edge of the Pythia platform. He moved at an angle through the dwindling yellow smoke and, at the apex of his turn, his back barely brushing the vaulted concrete ceiling, he tucked his legs in close to his body and executed a flawless somersault, landing on both feet at the bottom of the stairs.

Remo stood face-to-stunned-face with Esther Clear-Seer.

"Tah-dah!" said Remo, throwing his arms out wide.

Esther Clear-Seer had no place to run. Remo barred her way. And all at once she knew in a sudden terrifying spark of blinding realization that this man was going to make her suffer for every evil she had committed in her life. Especially for the kidnappings.

It was the only time in her life one of her prophecies came true.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Harold Smith and the Master of Sinanju caught up with Remo at the main gates to Ranch Ragnarok. He had sat the still-unconscious Buffy Brand against the nearest guard tower. Beside her, staring blankly into the forest, was Lori Cole.

Smith left the door to his rental car open and, ignoring Remo, stooped to examine the Cole girl.

"Sorry, Smitty. Her mind's gone," Remo said vaguely. "Buffy should pull through, though." He continued fiddling earnestly with something in his hands.

"Mark Kaspar and Esther Clear-Seer?" Smith asked.

Remo shook his head. The look on his face told Smith not to press the point. He began loading the two women in the back of his car.

Chiun had sidled up beside Remo, and fell to watching the young man as he worked.

"You are well," the Master of Sinanju said, his eyes unreadable, his tone deceptively casual.

Remo nodded. "The prophecy was told in Old World terms, but it was intended for the New World. It wasn't Sinanju and Greece. The 'East' was Sinanju,

344

but the 'West' meant America." He looked up from his work. "I am the prophecy."

Chiun nodded.

"I have always suspected there was something fundamentally wrong with the legend of Tang. He is remembered as a dullard. Perhaps history has been too kind to him."

Remo sensed that Chiun was about to have another go at the ancient scrolls of Sinanju with a quill pen and a bottle of Wite-Out. Before then, Remo had one more thing to do.

"We should leave," Smith said, straightening from the back of the car. The girls were safely strapped in, ready to be dropped off at the nearest hospital. "The state police are arriving in Thermopolis. We should be gone before they begin making inquiries."

"Right behind you, Smitty," Remo said. He turned a small knob and squinted in confusion at what was an unplanned response.

"What is that?" Smith asked, nodding to the knapsack in Remo's hand.

"Just something I picked up from one of the bunkers. Did you know this place was loaded witii explosives and gasoline?"

"I was aware of that."

"It's kind of convenient," Remo said. His tongue jutted between his thin lips as he made a final adjustment on the contents of the knapsack. "There," he announced proudly.

Smith peered inside the small bag. "Remo, that is a timer-detonator," he said worriedly.

"Yup. I filled the Pythia chamber with enough explosives to take out half the state. It should take care

345

of the bunkers, as well. But I'm not so hot with gadgets. So I suggest we get out of here. Fast."

And with that Remo pulled the knapsack closed and flung it deep into the Ragnarok grounds. It soared through the air until it was nearly a speck in the clear blue sky. Only Remo and Chiun saw it drop neatly through the open skylight of the Pythia Pit.

They were back in the rental car, Smith behind the wheel, and driving rapidly down the dirt access road when the first explosion rocked the ground beneath them. This was rapidly followed by others that soon became one long percussive wave of shuddering rumbles and thunderings.

A tiny hail of black pebbles pelted the roof and hood of the fleeing car as the Wyoming prairie collapsed and ignited in leaping monsters of searing flame.

"You may cancel the submarine vessel, Emperor Smith," Chiun said thoughtfully from the passenger's seat. ' 'Now that all dangers have passed, the House of Sinanju stands ready to serve your mighty throne."

From the back seat, beside Buffy Brand, Remo snorted loudly. Smith, uncomfortable at perpetuating the lie, nonetheless nodded stiffly as the car plowed out onto the main road beneath the flashing amber light.

Neither Remo nor Chiun was watching as a huge cloud of dirty yellow smoke belched high above the treetops behind them.

EPILOGUE

"Okay, that's it! That's it!" The supervisor was yelling at Nick Biel and Nick really didn't like it at all. His boss had been acting like a show-off ever since the bigshot had shown up earlier in the afternoon.

The entire area was charred black from the fires that had raged across the plains months before and Nick's backhoe was having a hard enough time getting in and out of the trenches that were the result of all the collapsed underground structures. The absolute last thing Nick needed was somebody screaming at him.

He got down out of the cab and walked around to where the supervisor and the mysterious bigshot stood. He Was again struck by something familiar about the man. But he felt that way a lot. Last week he swore he had seen Bruce Willis at the mall.

He dismissed the thought and, following his supervisor's shouted instructions, got down on his ample belly and reached down into the collapsed wreckage of one of the buildings. He pulled a charred piece of corrugated tin out of the way and found the object below it. Just where the stranger said it would be.

Nick was amazed that it could have survived all of the explosions intact and he was even more amazed that someone would want something so filthy.

347

The man had thanked Nick's supervisor, and after he left everything had returned to business as usual. Nick had gone back to clearing away the building debris so that the environmental clean-up crews could get into the deepest bunkers.

All day as he worked, Nick kept wondering why the mysterious man looked so familiar. It wasn't until he was home in bed that night that the answer finally came to him. His union had urged its members to vote for the man during one of the past presidential elections.

He wondered what Michael "Prince" Princippi would want with a dirty old crockpot filled with yellow powder.